Plankton: Please steal this blog post

The ’60s had Motown and The Beatles. The ’70s was punk rock and disco. The ’80s spawned laser portraiture and synthpop, and the ’90s, well, the ’90s had hammer time. So what are we supposed to remember the ’00s for?

I’ve been pondering this question for a while. The most cohesive endpoint I could muster is the lumbering monster of indie music - but somehow, that seems to entirely miss the point. What holds this decade together is not a specific genre, if anything, it’s an entire lack thereof, not a sound in itself, but a way of treating sound, using it, and listening to it.

In the absence of any truly original genres or movements, contemporary music is well versed in stealing from its peers, whether its the theft of style (e.g. Fleet Foxes pilfering from Crosby, Stills & Nash), substance (the notorious Coldplay court case) or raw sound (as in Radiohead’s sampling of Mild Und Leise). And it’s not just the musician, but the listener too; the decade began with Napster and is ending in mass industry hysteria (apparently stealing doesn’t sell). To paraphrase, in the 21st century, music is stolen, in almost every conceivable notion of the word.

It’s a bleak outline, admittedly. But I don’t intend to cast a shadow, rather shine a light; for the most part modern music has more in common with the gripping narrative of a heist than it does daylight robbery. Consider the cultural significance of mashup maverick Girl Talk, in particular the rapid fire sampling of ‘What It’s All About’, of which Wired drew the rather fetching timeline below (full image here):

MP3: ‘What It’s All About’ - Girl Talk

‘What It’s All About’ is an eerie (albeit unintended) caricature of music in the ’00s; an identity derived from a complete lack of identity, with thirty-five samples spanning an array of decades and styles, the only shared characteristic a kinship within the same grand tapestry of theft. Dare I say, it’s a mirror held up to the decade, the reflection terrifying and ingenious in equal measures - entirely derivative, granted, but there is definite artistic integrity and a wholly distinct vision here, a fresh breed of brilliance somehow unique to its own era. Is this not a great thing, in its own delicate way?

Consider too that a legal clearing of ‘What It’s All About’ is entirely inconceivable (even if it were backed by the world’s most expensive lawyers) and yet last.fm counts nearly 70,000 listeners to this day. Theft has never been so accessible.

Of course, sampling - and the modern musical values that are associated with it - are not entirely new. But that is to miss the point; when DJ Shadow dropped the unbelievable Endtroducing upon the world in 1996, he did so with a vision that existed separately from the (almost incidental) sampling. Try listening to ‘Stem/Long Stem’ and telling me otherwise.

MP3: ‘Stem/Long Stem’ - DJ Shadow

Where this leaves music an industry is another question altogether. Perhaps the apocalypse truly is (almost) upon us, but even if that were the case, I’m inclined to take a leaf out of the Andrew Bird school of thought; when it all comes crashing down, there will be tables, chairs, pony rides and dancing bears, heck, there may even be a band. So take a seat, and pass the popcorn… *

MP3: ‘Tables and Chairs’ - Andrew Bird

Plankton x

* He did say ”there will be snacks”, right?