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The NeoPlagiaristic Bastards play "There is Nothing New Under the Sun (nor the sun itself)"From the liner notes to the NeoPlagiaristic Bastards' 43rd self-titled album, Self-Titled. Artist's statement: "The NeoPlagiaristic Bastards recognize that all art is inherently unoriginal. 'There is nothing new under the sun.' Everything follows from everything else, retroactively and recursively. Inspiration merely the highest form of interactive theft. Therefore the NPBs steal songs from everywhere in history and promote them as their own, crossing genres in a dizzyingly simple ride of cover tunes and outright musical looting and plundering. This isn't sampling, this is wholehearted lifting. Using the best in (stolen) biomorphing technologies, they shift their appearance, stage, instruments, and styles to match the artist whose material they are playing. This approach is deemed Holistic Plagiarism. On the rare occasion when the NPBs play what is commonly mislabeled 'new material', they are practicing Preemptive Plagiarism: the practice of stealing ideas from the future before they occur. This absolves anyone who might do something similar from being accused of copying--as it would instead be the reverse. It would even be proposed that the current version of the NPBs are stealing ideas from upcoming much-improved versions of themselves. " Account of a NeoPlagiaristic Bastard concert"Dude, I'd heard about these guys before. They were supposed to be more awesome than awesome. So like, I go to the place, and there's nobody there. There's nothing at all. I'm like, what the frell? This whole crowd is staring at an empty stage before the concert's supposed to happen. There's not even any instruments up there! Everyone's majorly bumming, thinking the concert was canceled without even a datasphere leak. Shiznit! "Then it was so trippin'! The concert started. No no, take me this not, seen, the MUSIC didn't just start. The Band happened. It happened to us. Can't describe it tschi-lo better, neh? First thing crowd knew, we was bumpin' and grindin' ragefisting to get the show started...then how do you do, there was a Band up there! Not A band, anyband (though they were anyband and are anyband, not what I mean, seen?), but The Band, the Only Band, the cloverflockin' En Pee Bees!!! "Now I not being one of them chargeheads, see, you keep that off-record so-so, seyeelo. And those metapharmecueticals? Gone, frellin' gone off them, man, touch not for megacycles, okay? So! Swearin', I so do, frito-lay, that the Band was NOT there those moments before the music begun. Nonexisto, no problemo, man! But I saw them, I saw them, sneaky little Bastards! They came from the crowd, the CROWD! Cheeky buggers vaya-a-dios hid themselves into the audience, what with their sneaky biomorphing trickery, pfat! They ran onto the stage, and there then were instruments...came from the instantiators, I'm sayin'! That's got snerve, blurness, that does. "And then they played, and I blunt you not, komradish, they were someone else! No sheezy! It was literally the bees knees! The wasps nipples! Clamdram-up went the crowd, all rift-waving and bounce dancy! Sleen, frood, just sleen...the whole night they then played every song differently and as different bands. But they were still the Band. THE Band, know what I intimate, chan-tastic? "After the show the crowd stagerushed, to find no stage, no Band, no instruments...they had vanished in the very grippin' rush! I fork you knot!" Cynical comment on datasphere forum discussing the musicality and virtue of the NeoPlagiaristic Bastards"Look, these guys are a joke, okay? They can't play music! They're like watching a time machine. Sure, it's nostalgia for long-forgotten bands and musical genres. Who cares? They're simply not being ORIGINAL. I think I've figured it out. If there were any of their songs that were even ever original, they deny it. The NPBs are incapable of such. They steal from everyone equally, even bands nobody has ever heard of. Maybe that's how they disguise their own material if it exists. And don't get me started on their albums! I can understand the appeal of the live concert. It's fun, sure, even if they are only the Biggest Cover Band Ever, as some are saying. But fifty-two albums? And every single one self-titled? I'll tell you what they are. Tracks played in the exact style of another group, with the exact arrangement, vocal pitch, lyrics, and instrumental solos...that's not called an album. That's called a Compilation. They have no right to even pretend that it's theirs if it's indistinguishable! " Overheard in the 'Tude, before a concert by someone else entirely unrelated to the NPB, but whom the NPB had recently imitated"Either the NeoPlagiaristic Bastards are the best art-bomb ever, or they're perfect frauds, using sensory-overlay hologram recordings and reenactments stolen from other live shows. They might not even be on the 'stage' at all! But one thing's for sure...I'll never go to another concert again without suspecting that it might be the NPB playing us all for fools. And THAT, my friend, is the true intent of an art-bomb." Here, wot's all this, then?The Band is a Mask. Yes, the whole thing. The entity known as The NeoPlagiaristic Bastards doesn't itself truly exist until the concert. It is a free-floating conceptual entity that self-organizes into spontaneous acts of creative thievery. Everything is then stolen from somewhere and somewhen else. Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. The meta-gestalt known as The Band is in love with the universe of music, and therefore becomes it. It's not a portable, living tangible character as such...but it exists as the multi-mass-media entity wrapped into anything involving the NPB. Feel free to elaborate, spread rumors, feed the databeast. |