The Story of Pop, with Alan Freeman.(henceforth refferred to as Fluff)

Fluff:  Greetings everyone. This is Alan Freeman, with the BBC's Story
of Pop. Part 48: It's a Steal. In this edition of the Story of Pop we'll be 
looking at the practice of .... Sampling, the basis for much of the dance 
music of the late 1980's, and the early 90's. Wonderful toys aren't they??

>Amongst other things, Fluff talks over JAMMs (Whitney joins the JAMMs),
abridged<

Fluff:....... Cold Cut talking through some of the dozens of samples they 
used for their version of 'Paid in Full' in 1987

>hear familiar strains of "This is Radio Freedom". 3am Eternal played in
background<

Fluff: The sampler also allowed a lot of the normally reticent back-room
boys of pop to step into the limelight and become performing artists
themselves. Former manager of Echo and the Bunnymen, Bill Drummond,remembers
the day his samplers made him see the light, following which he teamed up 
ith Jim McCauty [sic - as Fluff pronounces it] to form two groups, The JAMS 
and KLF.

Bill Drummond: It was New Year's Day, um, the first day of 1987. I was at 
home with my parents, I was going for a walk in the morning, it was, like,
bright blue sky, and I thought "I'm going to make a hip-hop record. Who can 
I make a hip-hop record with?". I wasn't brave enough to go and do it myself,
cos, although I can play the guitar, and I can knock out a few things on 
the piano, I knew nothing, personally, about the technology. And, I thought,
I knew Jimi, I knew he was a like spirit, we share similar tastes and 
backgrounds in music and things. So I phoned him up that day and said 
"Let's form a band called The Justified Ancients of Mu-Mu.". And he knew 
exactly, to coin a phrase "Where I was coming from". And within a week 
we had recorded our first single which was called "All You Need Is Love"

>Hear abridged AYNIS with "motherfuckers" distorted out, and
"What the F.." cut off by intro to "Next"<

Fluff: But when the Justified Ancients Of Mu-Mu became successful,
a number of the artists whose records they'd `borrowed from' started
chasing them for copyright payments.

>Hear Dancing Queen, Fluff and Bill talk over<

Fluff: Soon Bill Drummond found himself up against the legal right of ABBA.

BD We didn't think that anybody would take notice of us. We thought it was 
going to be completely underground in one word, but at the same time I felt
that there was a whole new generation, I know it's going to sound really 
patronising, but that there was going to be a whole new generation of 
people, young people, who were going to get used to working with the
computers, the cheap computers, cheap gear. They weren't going to want to 
know about the electric guitar. All that image was just so old-hat, they 
weren't going to be bothered about that. They were grab this gear, and make
these records, and make this music, and I believed that that was going to 
happen within three months. I thought everybody was going to be at my state 
of mind.
The track that caused all the problem on 1987 was a track called "The Queen
and I", which was totally based on ABBAs song, "Dancing Queen". On our 
multi-track we recorded the complete version of Dancing Queen, and then we
added everything else we wanted added, then we mixed it. We just mixed their
track in and out. And they were completely, utterly horrified with what we'd
done. They wanted them destroyed straight away, they wanted all copies that
had been sold brought back in, they wanted us to get everything back. I mean,
it was just a complete impossibility, and we went to a lawyer to ask him his
advice on this, then I started reading all the legal stuff on copyright laws 
since they were first developed in the 17th Century, when they first came in.

>Dancing Queen fades, Justified and Ancient/WTIL (White Room intro.) starts up<

BD: And then I basically sat down and started writing this whole thesis 
about the defence of what we were doing, artistically and creatively.

>Distinctively hear "You'd better not stop them cos' they're coming through" 
then WTIL. Bill talks over<

BD: If machines are going to be invented, like samplers, you can't stop them.
It's like inventing the electric guitar, then saying "Well, I'm afraid you 
can't play it". If felt like all these acoustic guitars were coming out with 
all these laws saying " 'Fraid that's it boys, you can't play the electric 
guitar." It seemed that big to me at the time. 

>WTIL continues<

Fluff: It wasn't just KLF who found themselves in trouble for sampling. Dave 
Durrell of M.A.R.R.S. faced legal difficulties with this no. 1 from 1987.

>Hear Pump up the Volume by M.A.R.R.S.<

.............

>Fluff finishes by saying:<

Fluff: And we'll end this edition of The Story of Pop with......

>Programme concludes with "Something Good" [I think it is called] by Utah
Saints<

Fluff: Part 48 of The Story of Pop was researched, written and produced by 
Paul Kent. Next week you can hear part 49, "Raving, I'm Raving", which as you
may gather from the title looks at the rave scene and includes rare archive
footage of Mark Radcliffe.
Until then turr-rah!