Brian Eno’s big idea (UPDATE)
Posted by ben on 13 Dec 2006 at 11:02 pm | Tagged as: music, video/film
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
Everything is a derivative element from a previous work in the 21st century. Sublime Frequencies makes a living doing what eno and byrne did in this type of recording, who cares where it originated, it’s brilliant either way. plaigarism shmagairism…art is appropriation anyway, the mimetic tendencies of others, myself including, doesn’t dismiss the work inherently, it does make it erudite and full of allusions if you let it…
I think the problem has more to do with the fact that journalists are so eager to credit someone or other (in this case Brian Eno) as groundbreaking / influential / original, and may not investigate influences on the artist that happened to “break through” into the mainstream.
On the other hand, there are plenty of artists who are too derivative — complete originality shouldn’t be the goal, but if an artist isn’t making a contribution, they shouldn’t expect much discussion of their work.
[...] Emv: Has Brian Eno ever stolen any of your ideas? MM: Are you calling Brian Eno an intellectual property thief? I don’t see that with him. I think he’s a pretty original composer/artist. You just didn’t pick the right name. [...]