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An Interview with the Napster Bomber
By Ankarino Lara, ZDNet Music
June 1, 2000
Mark Gunderson is an artist, computer programmer, and a general wrench in the gears. He is a founding member of Evolution Controlled Creations, a Columbus, Ohio-based music label that has recently become infamous with the introduction of its now legendary Napster bombs. This innovative distribution plan has helped them turn a little-known EEC single into one of the most traded tracks on Napster. In this exclusive interview, Gunderson explains the methodology of his (often infuriating) Napster bombs and his underground take on digital music.
Define Culture Jamming.
The Evolution Control Committee frequently engages in actions of Culture Jamming, where the stream of mass media consciousness is polluted (or enriched, depending on your viewpoint) with creative fraud. Mass media is essentially a set of filters and rules that restrict what can be seen and heard. ECC considers these rules to be a set of challenges, and if we succeed in injecting a toy surprise in the mainstream's Cracker Jack, then we chalk up another win. I love the notion that but one seed can sprout a whole new tree of thought in an already established (and restricted) garden. Mass media can include not only the system of mainstream journalism and news, but also any of the "New Media" (like the Internet) or just any system that works on a large scale with a set of rules.
And then you found a need to jam Napster?
Yes. What is Napster designed to do? Napster is a file-sharing application. One big ideological promise was how artists of unknown origins could place their unreleased songs on Napster and get scores of new listeners. Wrong. People are just trading the same old pop and Britney Spears on Napster - it's all mainstream. We wanted to spread something more creative, be it through music or just through our actions.
What exactly is a Napster bomb?
A Napster bomb is basically a mislabeled file. For example, take The ECC's song, Rocked by Rape. We renamed our song a number of times: "AC/DC - Rocked By Rape (bootleg).mp3", "Beck - Slap Happy Mentos Eater (live - rare).mp3", and "Aphex Twin - Rocked By Rave (bootleg).mp3", to name a few. These were just the file names, but the file's internal ID3 tag would contain the correct credits. Then we offered these titles to Napster users. People ate it up; they downloaded them like crazy. From the feedback we got in e-mail and on our web page's message board, some people were unhappy with the results of their downloads, but a lot of people were pleased with what they got. Even though it wasn't what they were initially looking for, they ended up with something they had never heard but that they enjoyed.
And you don't think people were disappointed with the results?
Well sure, some people who have a dial-up connection were probably really disappointed. Can you imagine waiting an hour for one Sonic Youth song and then hearing our stuff? Though, the poetic justice there is that what they were looking for was illegal anyway, and perhaps they shouldn't have been downloading it in the first place.
Continued
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