DIGITAL MURK

Downloaders of MP3s are being offered a very different history of rock, rewritten by small children who've never seen a copy of MOJO in their lives. By a process of online Chinese whispers, a lot of classic rock songs are cropping up attributed to the wrong artists. No, A Horse With No Name is not by Neil Young. No, Stuck In The Middle With You is not a Dylan song. (In case you don't know, both of these were recorded by people aping their heroes, turning out passable imitations of the "greater" artists - see last post.) Smoke On The Water is definitely NOT in the "Jimmy" Hendrix back catalogue! And there is no song called Everybody Must Get Stoned. There should be a new word for these files. Ideas, anyone?

Added to this, there are fantasy MP3s put together by computer geeks. Hendrix did play Day Tripper in '67, but it wasn't with John Lennon. Would have been a nice gig, though.

It's interesting to see what people come up with. I wonder if in years to come, the music of lesser known musicians will just drift around the wireless networks in complete anonymity, or be swallowed up by the better known names. Maybe there will be authorship disputes, like the theory that Shakespeare's plays were written by Ben Jonson (or was it Marlowe?) Reputations will be tarnished forever; I mean, Stuck in The Middle is a great pop song, but Dylan would have thrown the lyrics out the next morning.