MPS HOUR 14: All Sorts Of Drama...

I received this in my Soundcloud inbox a few days ago:

Hi Bj Fornicatti,

We've received a report directly from Universal Music Group that your track "MPS HR 11" contains "Family Feud" by Jay Z. As a result, your track has been removed from your profile for the time being.

If you think we've made a mistake, you can tell us about it by following the link below and filing a dispute. You can file a dispute if you think the person who reported your track got it wrong - for example, because you are the copyright owner or have permission from the copyright owner(s) to post this track to SoundCloud.

If you file a dispute and show us that you have all rights necessary to post this track, we will reinstate your track, no problem.

In all other cases, we will need to treat this as copyright infringement and you will receive a “strike” against your account. If you receive three of these strikes, your SoundCloud account will be terminated in accordance with our Terms of Use.

Copyright infringement is a serious matter, and we expect all SoundCloud users to respect other people’s copyright. To learn more about copyright, please visit our copyright information page and see our Help Center articles.

Thank you,
The SoundCloud Copyright Team

I pay Soundcloud for their service, and I was aware of the fact that doing this kind of podcast might one day result in something being taken down... but it was still something of a shock. I really have no one to blame but myself. I used Jay-Z's name in tags for the podcast and I guess I just thought that his people wouldn't go after me.

I understand that Soundcloud has no choice in the matter. They're struggling to stay alive right now and even if they weren't I don't think they can do anything except comply. I am used to this happening with Prince but I guess Jay-Z has taken up the mantle.

I had to replace the song with something else, and you can access the altered show on iTunes and Soundcloud now... but if you check the Links section of this blog page you'll find another link to another platform that has the unedited version of that hour.

As for the latest hour, I finish up my insightful conversation with Evan Shine... but not before I get rather emotional in a spoken segment referring to the suicide of Chester Bennington from Linkin Park. I left the emotion in because it is genuine but I almost edited it out. For some reason Chester's death has resonated with me, and this past week has seen me dealing with mortality in my own life and sharing that experience with whatever contingent of listeners I have out there.

In a tribute to the fallen, I ended up playing Linkin Park's nihilistic "In The End", a song as bleak and dark as The Doors in its embrace of apocalyptic dread. I use the comparison of The Doors as opposed to, say, a metal group like Black Sabbath or Metallica because the doom and gloom from metal can seem cartoonish and removed, even if it deals in serious issues. The Doors weren't joking, and neither is Chester when he belts out that chorus. The song takes on a gravity that is harder to shake in the wake of his demise.

I also include two cuts from what are, in my opinion, music's biggest losses in the past year and a half: Prince and David Bowie. "The Beautiful Ones" version included here did not make the Deluxe Edition of Purple Rain, but it should have. And Bowie's elegiac "Ashes To Ashes" speaks for itself.

For an episode largely devoid of humor, I tack on a bit by the late Sam Kinison at the very end tag. I reference Kinison during the opening segment, but the circumstances of his short life and untimely death fits the bill even as it breaks things up a bit.

I must admit, the more I listen to the segments with Evan the more I realize that I am dominating the conversation. My apologies to Evan for hogging the spotlight but I feel like this interview is actually a turning point in the podcast: by being open and honest with me, he drew a lot out of me that I had been holding back. In the future I hope to channel that new found forthrightness into the segments as opposed to the interviews, but I can't thank Evan enough for his participation in this podcast.

During the course of our interview I also get a chance to regale Evan with a story from my days playing in a live hip-hop group on the Sunset Strip. This segues into a performance our group Black Love & The Oral Syndrome did at The Roxbury in 1994. This is the first time I have ever played any of our music from that band anywhere. I had these tracks as Soundcloud cuts when I first started my account but took them down in order to make room, before I ultimately decided to pay for unlimited space.

So what will the future of Soundcloud be? Right now they are on shaky ground, and unless Chance The Rapper was serious about saving it I'm not sure I will be paying for their services for much longer. In the meantime, we'll keep preserving those mixtapes for all of y'all.