This is an interesting video Bruce Conner made to go with a Brian Eno / David Byrne song called Mea Culpa. The song comes off a 1981 album called My Life in the Bush of Ghosts, which is an interesting album, both artistically and historically. It’s a fairly early example of a record which stitches together samples and field recordings from such disparate sources as American talk-radio shows, Lebanese mountain singers and Muslim chanting (to name a few). But naturally, it wasn’t the first, and some feel that Eno and Byrne get too much credit. I’ve heard rumors that Holger Czukay from Can always felt that Eno had ripped him off. (He apparently played a pre-release version of his conceptually similar album Movies for Eno, who then rushed off to record My Life in the Bush of Ghosts with Byrne). While trying (unsuccessfully) to confirm this rumor, I discovered that Jon Hassell thinks he is the conceptual father of this album too. I guess it is a bit ironic to argue over who came up with the idea of musical appropriation first — but maybe I wouldn’t be saying that if Brian Eno stole my big idea…

UPDATE: Looks like YouTube took down the video. And that was by far the most interesting part of the post… You can watch a QuickTime version of it here.

UPDATE 2: The video is back. Sorry for the confusion