Tuesday, March 02, 2004
Copyright © Las Vegas Review-Journal

NIGHT BEAT: Artists should support 'Grey Album'

For a few years, DJs have been recording mix-CDs and selling them in small stores and putting them online -- even though they are infringing on other musicians' copyrighted property.

So lawyers for EMI, the company that owns the rights to recordings by the Beatles, issued a cease and desist order when DJ Danger Mouse, an English transplant from Athens, Ga., mixed parts of the "White Album" behind rap vocals from Jay-Z's latest, "The Black Album."

Danger Mouse's mix, "The Grey Album," is on the Web here and there. It's half-brilliant and half-OK.

Danger Mouse told the New Yorker he logged about 200 hours making it. And he didn't just find rhythms on the "White Album" that would fit Jay-Z's pace. He sought sounds that emotionally fit each rap, using loops and snippets, sometimes backward, to make whole songs.

The strength of "The Grey Album" is not just Danger Mouse's thoughtful editing, but the large power of "The White Album." Although, the mean husk of Jay-Z's voice also is captivatingly intimidating.

What is remarkable is that it makes us listen to "Helter Skelter" and "Julia" in different ways, as rips and skids, and we remember how great "The Beatles" (the "White Album's" real name) still is.

On Feb. 24, the anti-industry site, Downhillbattle.org, encouraged other sites to put the disc online for 24 hours. It's too bad Paul McCartney, Ringo Starr, Yoko Ono and Jay-Z don't just give "Grey" a green-light. It could be a free download, or sold at cost at retail stores. That could start yet more appreciation for the band -- just as mix-CDs do for others who let DJs spin them anew. ...

On Sunday, the House of Blues stages a promising alternative show by the talented Saves the Day, atmospheric Grandaddy, interesting Fire Theft and incredible Dios.

Grandaddy comes while in a small transition. It went from doing experimental music, recording backward and such, to somewhat more mainstream structures.

"We grew up listening to the radio," guitarist Jim Fairchild explains. "It's fun to sit around and (experiment), but we're putting music out there, and I want people to be able to listen to it."

Fairchild still likes searching for that "next freaky sound," just not too much.

"That can be," he says, "unhealthy, like, `Oh, my buddy has an El Camino, let's crash it into the house and record it!' "

He doesn't analyze his own music too much, he says. But when he does, he thinks it helps his Modesto, Calif., band to have big chops:

"It's good to know a bunch of stuff. I think that's why the Beatles were the Beatles. They learned hundreds, or probably thousands, of songs. So they had this massive vocabulary to draw from."

And that's a Beatles wrap. Sunday's all-ages show starts at 6:45 p.m. It costs $22.

Doug Elfman's Nightbeat column appears on Tuesdays.