Corruption

Phillip Gunderson’s review of “Danger Mouse’s Grey Album, Mash-Ups, and the Age of Composition” cannot be called an actual review of Danger Mouse’s album but instead a review of the music industry as a whole. First off, Gunderson was a faculty member at San Diego Miramar College. He published this article in the literary article, PMC, in 2004. Gunderson’s article focuses on file sharing and the music industry as a whole after he talks about Danger Mouse’s album. He goes on to discuss the music industry and almost everything that he says about it is negative but in actuality he is actually for Mash-Ups.



Gunderson does not specify who the direct audience is but because he placed the article in a scholarly one, it can be assumed that he is talking to people on a more intellectual level. This can be proven with the type of language and vocabulary he uses in his writings. He used college level terms that not many people who are not professors or of that higher thinking, average Joe’s, would know what meant. In most cases I had to use a dictionary in order to understand what was going on. Why he chose to write about such topic and place such heavy vocabulary in it is fair from my imagination.

The very beginning of the “review” discusses the actual album. Gunderson gives more of his opinion rather than an actual review of the songs. From the surface, it seems as though he is tearing down Danger Mouse’s attempts to bring together two different genres of music in this age were musicians are experimenting with different things. After he is done discussing the album in the same paragraph he begins to discuss peer to peer file sharing. It seems as though he agrees with this even though it is seen as illegal, he points out the fact that music fans are fed up with the high prices. With file sharing more music is leaked to different audiences which in return gives artists their big start which could not b accomplished in today’s economy because of the prices. With the Mash-ups bringing together two artists from two different genres and even two different time periods, Danger Mouse was able to open up Jay-Z and the Beetles to a new audience that in most cases they would not have been heard by.




After his “review” he then begins to discuss the music industry and how far it has come today. He begins first by discussing how hard it was for artists to get in a studio and how a band had to have money to even afford the time. The recording industry is so focused on the money that they do not make real music anymore. This is why artists are going to “bedroom producers” to produce the professional sounding albums that independent artists are putting out today. As a result the music industry is suffering. Another factor in the suffrage of the industry is the file sharing that Gunderson refers to throughout the beginning of the “review”. It seems as though he is very much against the idea of file sharing because he discusses copyrighting laws. He even goes as far to use Disney’s copyright protections to discuss just how serious some people get when it comes to distributing their merchandise and how much people are so more focused on money instead of being focused on the quality of what they are putting out and how the public feels about the work.

Another point Gunderson makes is that Mash-Ups are not all about being serious. They are more so used to make people laugh and sometimes think about what the true meanings of the songs are. Gunderson calls the Grey Album not only a history lesson, but also “an act of resistance”. I can agree with this because Mash-Ups go against what traditional music is considered to be. With Mash-Ups anybody can take the songs and mix them in their own image. This in return gives the public a new perspective of the songs and opens them up to new artists.



Gunderson’s last point is the way Danger Mouse distributes his music. He basically allows the consumers decide how much they want to pay, if anything, for the music. This is quite unheard of but at the same time his music was being heard by different people and that’s all he wanted anyway. Due to copyright laws he had to stop the distribution of his work but on what is considered “Grey Tuesday” the album was released by some two hundred sites in MP3 format to be downloaded. The sales were so successful that if it had of been sold in stores, it would have been one of the top ten albums.

As I stated before I believe Gunderson’s “review” is not an actual review of Danger Mouse’s album, but instead it is a review of the music industry and what it is and has become. Gunderson really focused heavily on how the music industry is so money hungry and how much they would rather get money instead of producing real music. Gunderson almost uses his article to encourage the people to go against what the music industry has become and use file sharing equipment and make Mash-Ups because the producers are not concerned with the people only with what they can get in return. The downside of that is the artists are not getting paid but they are getting the recognition that comes with Mash-Ups being produced.

The article by Gunderson gave insight to the world of Mash-Ups and just how corrupt the music industry has become. He used Danger Mouse’s Grey Album to break down the music industry and to show the people that they do not need to depend solely on the industry to make it when they can do it on their own.