Dean Gray Tuesday

Those that know me may know that I'm a big fan of bootleg mixes such as those posted by partyben and gybo. Occasionally a few of them get together and remix an entire album from a big artist. These have included the likes of The Prodigy and Chemical Brothers. The most famous would have been DJ Danger Mouse's mixing of Jay-Zs "Black" album with the Beatle's "White" album to produce, yes you've guessed it the "Grey" album. Soon after it's releasing on the net, EMI issued a cease-and-desist order and the site hosting it was pulled down. Its popularity exploded when the media reported on a mass protest called Grey Tuesday where as many people as possible hosted the files for people to download as a "f*** you" to the record company.

Well this time another bootlegger Dean Grey, with a little help from Party Ben, put up a remix of Green Day's "American Idiot" album called "American Edit", mixing the tracks with the likes of the Doctor Who theme tune, Kanye West, Blur, Bryan Adams, U2 and Coldplay amongst others. This week Warner's issued a cease and desist order and the files have been pulled. Well it looks like the bootlegging community is putting up a fight and another mass protest has been called this time called "Dean Grey Tuesday" (have to like the gray/grey pun) where the files will be available for one day only on the 13th of December on as many sites as is possible. If I had my own site I'd post them, instead I'll make the files available to those who ask; not sure how I'll do that exactly :D

Clearly I'm not opposed to bootlegging and to be honest I can't understand the attitude of the record companies. No one takes money away from the record companies or their artists, this is all free. The original material is being copied in part, but it is not the original recording that is being put out for people to download, just a reworking of it. The albums that get remixed in this way are usually those albums that are going to or have already sold thousands. American Idiot has been one of the biggest selling albums in recent years and ironically it's been a remix of one of their tracks,"Boulevard of Broken Dreams", which has become the biggest bootleg this year. People who are into the bootlegging scene probably have bigger music collections than most and are certainly more into music than the average fan, you need to be. Paul Morley couldn't have been closer when he described the bootleggers as having "a love of music bordering on the diseased". Actions like these won't stop these guys.

I would imagine that the band wouldn't mind their material being used in this manner, it's clearly some exec sat in his fancy chair behind a desk who is as responsible for the music as I am that is on a power trip. Besides isn't any publicity good publicity. Perhaps that's why they've done it.

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