Ugly Edits

Those with concerns about the legality/morality of these platters need to relax a little and follow the groove; sure, the economic and the political are important aspects, but first the music.

As suggested in the descriptive "ugly", there's no detailed ableton-based tweaking here. Theo wields his Akai like a machete, radically reshaping these classic tracks for optimum late-night basement dancefloor performance. And of course EQ'ing the hell out of them in typical Parrish fashion.

The most direct and elemental of these raw and uncompromising productions (the love i lost, sugarhill gang) are prime-time disco destroyers, the more difficult and slower burning cuts (jill scott, slowly surely) will reward the patient listener with personal revelations and unrepeatable 7am communal daylight denial moments.

Important music.

I think this is interesting -- illegitimate activity or artistic creative licence?
(I'm talking outside of the legal vs. illegal as given under the law of any specific country and the question of whether you are allowed to use the original artists work or not, kind of morality here. But rather much more about the rights the original artist has for personal control, perhaps, but not always, through to payment over their work!)

Just to be difficult, my opinion falls somewhere between the two. The issue here is that Theo is very creatively adapting work of original artists and adding much extra production, often in a subtle way which the listener cannot quite comprehend in any real way, all done in order to re-understand the original work.
Whilst we the listener often enjoy (or distain) what he may have done, or indeed not done, to the original work; in my opinion the former tends to be the case. Love it or hate it though, it deserves merit for it's shear creative imagination by Theo.
And I and many others happen to like most of it, with just a few tracks that personally leave me cold.

The issue of rights the original artist has over their work is somewhat of a minefield...
If Theo is profiting from the sale, which he clearly must be in a minor way (given the small pressings of these things) then he must be in the wrong, right? But then we must ask, if he went to any of the record companies that control the licensing of the original artists work, would they in fact allow any of it to be released legitimately?
This is the unknown. But given the past record of many a record company, the answer is more likely than not to be he is NOT ALLOWED to release. And more over, even if he tried to get the companies themselves to release his version, they would surely deem it uncommercial in both sound (very underground) and profitability (not enough profit to justify the outlay or costs) terms.
This then leads on to the ARTIST control, and the answer here is really that of Chinese whispers. Once you have put something out into the world, it forms part of the thoughts and influences that others may draw upon, so you really have no control, or right to control, over your work after this. You make your money, like all of us need in order to survive, by people who like your work parting company with their cash for decent 'proper' pressings through the legitimate channel of your record company/label releasing, and getting distributed, your work.

So where does this leave the creative person like Theo with a demand for their work? Either they don't bother, and we the fans don't get to have a copy unless a CDR makes it's way into our hands (somehow unlikely), as well as Theo not getting paid for his creative efforts. Or he is forced into pressing it under the oldest form of releasing "unlicensed" music: THE WHITE LABEL.
And as mentioned previously, due to the highly limited pressings of these things, there is just enough money for him alone to make a living at it, so paying the original artists anything is just not viable. If he were making more than enough profit from it, then a jesture of goodwill to them might perhaps be justifiable.

Such is life...

I recently thought deeper about these edits.
As initially I still do not find much wrong with pressing limited quantity re-edits for the sake of late night dance-floor DJ usage and I also realise that Theo Parrish might not have had yet the same opportunities given than say a UK based disc-jockey such as Greg Wilson or others (as they could in some case have a records company dealing with them fix clearance terms with possibly any titles' copyrights holders).
That said I do not find re-edits to be the most creative approach to music making and I assume and realise now that Theo Parrish just made this for his own dance-floor pleasing.

Now what is sadly to witness here is when some of these Ugly Edits even have been bootlegged. Obviously enough for its own fan base now to scrutinize any Ugly version as rip-off copies or not; a slightly absurd situation considering the limited edits were probably made for personal use and a few friends around and connections (although they have been shop distributed) and if certainly sound quality comparison would matter, the UK bootlegs of 'bootlegs' aren't yet specially lower priced and the UK versions seems nearly equally much sought after.

I would then suggest the pirate 'copycats' merchants and even edits buying fanatics to try doing their own edits instead! Best doing so of course just safely pretending that the originals of the resulting processed, lifted and dumbed-down or tweaked quality titles weren't thought out and made with the best possible emotions, musicianship, production and arrangement skills possible back in the days.

Though frankly I don't suggest this for being fond of contemporary edits, as these years of re-edits craze is since a while in overdose mode. Does it reflect for a lack of aspiration (better than inspiration) at producing anything fresh, a tad new (if possible) or even curious or challenging musically in dance music these days? Maybe but let's explore wider horizons or favor other musical styles than we usually do and we may find some works newly released which have more creative, risky, innovative or at least balanced or honest approach to music making then the countless remakes, cover versions, re-edits, or sampled based MTV tracks we shouldn't usually spend any dime for.

I don't say by the way that Theo Parrish does the above crap but I do prefer the stuff he compose on his own and I don't see why the originals would be less danceable. This concept of making 'classic' tracks more dance-floor friendly tend to wear-off with time and now that plenty of peoples just do that (re-edits and the likes) spotting frankly originality or artistry in composition became paradoxically both easy and difficult.