we make love

So Canada is on the copyright blacklist.  Really.  Seriously?  Really!?

Michael Geist responds.

So do we.

Some exciting news regarding our remix project.

Pete Nickerson, a Toronto based engineer & producer, and bass player for the Toronto based band Cedar, is also going to take on Menergy!

Mr. Furious, of robodance fame, will be remixing The Tonic (one of our favourite songs to play).  Mr. Furious is a seasoned producer/dj/musician who has spent past years djing and producing drum and bass and electro.  He’s played shows with Human Kebab (from USS), Golden Girls, and TMDP, to name a few.  Terence is currently also playing in Cobra, where he is revisiting his guitar/rock roots.

Lauren Burrows, the very cool radio host from CBC Radio 3, interviewed Andrew about creative commons and our remix project.

You can hear the interview here.

(And if I sound like some heavy breathing perv, it was because I completely out of breath.  I was wrestling with my daughter - who actually hung up on Lauren the first time - when she called).

All of our work is released under a Creative Commons license, but we’d also like to help people creative derivative works. To that end, let us know if you’d like to remix any of our tracks from the new EP.

We’ll send you whatever you want, you remix it in whatever way you want, and license it under the same Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 license. And if it is good, like really good, maybe we can put it on our next CD single, due for this spring (and even give you a cut of all the millions we’re making doing this music thing). Email us at theband@thecrafteconomy.com if you’d like to remix something.

See, we’re just a little band trying to do big things, so we relish any attention we get, for whatever reason. EPIC FU is a very cool weekly web show that covers online pop culture. It’s fun and smart. Like us, right?.

Anyway, check them out. They mentioned us earlier this week, and pulled together a slick little package that makes us look fucking cool. And they show a part of a video where you can see Scott break his on stage intensity and swagger and break a smile on stage for the first and only time in modern history. Video is embedded below… Thanks EPIC FU!.

We weren’t originally going to release the Kill Bill C-61 CD out in the electronic realm, because we wanted it to be a neat thing for a few people (and really, Menergy is an unfinished, partially mixed, unmastered demo). But we’ve had a lot of people asking for a copy of the CD, and since we can’t really afford to burn and print anymore, we’ve decided that we’ll post the songs up on our music page so people around the world can have an opportunity to grab the songs.

Anyway, everybody, thanks for all your support and emails and well-wishing. We really do appreciate it.

(Well, not free for us - ha - we wish)! But free for you and free for freedom.

We’re handing out / sending / posting a bunch of CDs this weekend, throughout Toronto and the Hillside Festival in Guelph, that have a demo of Menergy and The Crash, The Wagons, The Dying Horses on it (licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 2.5 license, to bring attention to Bill C-61 (and yeah, some upcoming shows, and yeah, our upcoming CD - but really, that’s a good thing).

We think fighting C-61 is important, and we think you should as well. We’ve posted this before, but do some research on this bill. It’s a mess.

We’re only doing 150 of these CDs, mostly because it costs a bunch of cash to put them out, also because it’s kind of neat to have a piece of something that will never be physically put out by the band again (kind of like our original 200 only pressing of the All On C EP). Of course, you can copy it, and do what you want with it (within the limits of the license we’ve chosen), but this is all we’re putting out until we release our EP. 

Here’s the text of the file we’re including in the CD: Hi! Thanks for grabbing this CD. It contains a demo track of ‘Menergy’ (you’re one of the only 150 people to have a physical copy! AMAZING!), and one of our most downloaded songs, ‘The Crash, The Wagons, The Dying Horses’. We have a new EP coming out in late August, and a final mix of Menergy will be on it. So will a bunch of other new songs. We hope you will like them.

But we’ve got something else we’d like you to think about:Bill C-61 is going to change the way you get to listen and watch the videos and music you pay for.

It will make it illegal for you:- to backup your DVDs- to circumvent any ‘digital locks’ on media you pay for- to retain recorded programs for an extended time- to record / retain shows broadcast with a ‘no recording’ flag- and that’s not all. Here’s something that’s simple: This law is *fucked*. You need to fight it. This is far and beyond and more bizarre than the heavily criticized DMCA in the USA. Copyright should protect the rights of artists and producers of creative content, but it should not suppress creative and artistic expression. The Craft Economy has licensed our music, including this CD, using the Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 2.5 license. This license gives you the freedom to share our music with your friends and enemies, and remix and use it in new and creative ways, provided you attribute the work back to us, and you don’t make money off our work. It’s fair for you and us. This is the way art should work.Please do more reading on C-61 at the following links. A fair and civil future relies upon us, and our action.

The Bill: http://www2.parl.gc.ca/HousePublications/Publication.aspx?DocId=3570473&Mode=1&Language=E&File=39

Brendon Wilson breaks it down: http://www.brendonwilson.com/blog/2008/06/16/talking-points-to-defeat-bill-c-61/

Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_C-61

Michael Geist’s Blog: http://www.michaelgeist.ca/index.php

Fair Copyright for Canada News Aggregation: http://friendfeed.com/faircopyright4canada

The Craft Economy is Scott Birke, Andrew Bray, John Britton, Konstantine Kurelias, Linda McKenney, Christina Pilz. Contact us at: theband@thecrafteconomy.com. Our website is http://thecrafteconomy.com. Special thanks to Jake Janzen for his last minute help putting this together - http://purpleshagstudios.com/, and Kim Statham for buying and printing all these CDs for us.

This text and the CD it came with are all licensed under http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/2.5/ca/.