 Hey
Napsters! Steal This Song!
(3:45) [8/9/00/2:00 am]
MP3
Liner Notes
One day while surfing, James and Lil' Lars
Came upon a thing that should not be,
Called up their lawyers, worked up all those poor rock stars.
(But we've bought all those albums, can't you see?)
A C-chord's what you're playing
& a C-note's what they're paying.
When you said, "Nothing Else Matters,"
Thought you were better than the boys who sang "Shattered."
Hey Napsters everywhere, come steal this song!
Hey Napsters everywhere, come steal this song!
& if I say I've done it for the kids, tell me I'm wrong.
Hey Napsters everywhere, come steal this song!
The town that the builders plowed over
Became the cornerstone of our hearts' shared vision:
To talk to any friend no matter how distant their place or unfamiliar
their slang or unintelligible their accent,
To talk & exchange & reminisce & build up plans for the future.
Soon Dre had run straight out his mansion
To join up with the powers that be.
(A chronic symptom of the bands that fail when they end their run
Is turn & bite the hands that feed.)
Didn't know that "Ain't Nothin' But A G-Thang"
Was just some hollow gangbangin' slang.
But now I know that "Dre Day"
Is all about another payday.
Hey Napsters everywhere, come steal this song!
Hey Napsters everywhere, come steal this song!
& if I say I've done it for the kids, tell me I'm wrong.
Hey Napsters everywhere, come steal this song!
The computers & bulldozers that rejected our quaintness of isolation
Became the tools that brought this biggest small town.
You can't stop people from giving gifts;
You can't stop people from trading riffs;
You can't stop people from sharing it;
You can't shut down the whole Internet.
Haymarket riots always erupt
When cost is down but the price is upped.
When Art's just for the richest five percent,
The shining empires start their descent.
There's those "fanatics" who download your songs
Who've bought all of your albums that exist;
& those who rip just your one single never buy the rare
Japanese Import Interview Discs.
We all knew the Material Girl
From her "boy" belt & red lip curl.
Make an album with more than one song,
Then I'd buy it when it comes along.
Hey Napsters everywhere, come steal this song!
Hey Napsters everywhere, come steal this song!
& if I say I've done it for the kids, tell me I'm wrong.
Hey Napsters everywhere, come steal this song!
The hands whose autographs felled the cities
(The small towns that trickled down to drop the ma 'n' pop's to close
up shop),
Those hands that we sent right back our monies to
Ask us to stop,
To stop creating this Twin Peaks town
(The one we can't have outdoors anymore,
The one we build on everytime we dial on,
The one they took the originals of),
& they ask us to play fair?
I'm trading The Chronic in for Hard Promises;
I'll trade The Black Album in for Black Planet;
Madonna, don't preach, now, when you're keeping my money;
I'll never buy your stupid records again.
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And they ask us to play fair?
Jeff Moher - Additional Drums / Jeffroy Romanow & Bill Balek -
Background Voxes / Theresa Brooks - Additional Lead Vox & Bass
Guitar
The Dambuilders - “Digitize”,
“Discopolis”, & “On The Slide” / Men At Work
- “Dr Heckyll & Mr Jive”
"Got a woman that loves me
And I love her so
But she's all dressed up now
With nowhere to go
All of our hang-outs
Are boarded up and closed
Or bein' bought by somebody
Nobody knows
But things ain't that bad
We still got the kids
We're goin' to the movies
Right after this
Is there anybody out there
With a voice loud and clear
Gonna sing all the words
That we all wanna hear?"
- Neil Young, "Depression Blues" (1983)
"Talk to me my long-lost friend
And tell me how you are
Are you happy with your circumstance?
Are you driving a new car?
Does it get you where you wanna go
With it's seven-year warranty?
Or just another hundred-thousand miles away
From the days that used to be?"
- Neil Young, "The Days That Used To Be"
(1990)
"Come with me back to the Stone Age times of the early '80s,
a time when VCRs were the size of small cars and we learned about
computers in movies like "WarGames" and "Tron." There was a thriving
heavy-metal underground at this time. Mainstream metal was dominated
by hair bands like Mötley Crüe, Bon Jovi and Poison. As with other
underground scenes, this underground was born out of hatred for the
mainstream of the day. The unwashed image of Motörhead was the aesthetic
of this scene, not the spandex and hairspray of Mötley Crüe.
A big part of this scene was tape trading. Tape traders networked
via the pen-pals section in English hard-rock magazines like Kerrang!
and the now-defunct Sounds. There were few independent record
labels at that time catering to the metal crowd; we traded demos and
live tapes by dozens of band who didn't have a record out. The metal
underground was just as legitimate as any punk scene, especially in
the San Francisco Bay Area. Some of the bands eventually had limited
success; a few are still stumbling along (shout-outs go to Anthrax,
Megadeth and Slayer), but most of these bands never put out more than
an album or a single, and the majority are now long forgotten (special
shout-outs go to Jaguar, Blitzkrieg, Control and Anvil Chorus).
Back in the Stone Age, tape trades took weeks to complete as letters
and packages were sent and received. Communication at that time was
done by means of a now-ancient art that required the participant to
be familiar with the technology of envelopes and postage. Bands would
get famous without even having played a show or releasing a record,
but simply on the strength of their tape getting distributed to tape
traders around the world.
In 1982, an upstart band called Metallica provided a few tape-trading
friends with a demo tape of seven songs, called No Life 'Till Leather.
Dubbed and re-dubbed and re-re-dubbed, the tape made its way from
California to Chicago, to New York, to England, to Holland, to Germany.
Within months, the band had fans worldwide ----- without the benefit
of a publicist, an A&R person or a marketing budget. It's anybody's
guess how many people were actually involved in this tape-trading
network, but a good number of these charter Metallica fans were budding
rock journalists who wrote for the various underground metal zines
and magazines of the time (added shout-outs go to Metal Mania,
Whiplash, Aardschok, and Metal Forces); their
enthusiasm for this unknown California band was very soon transmitted
to thousands of their readers.
The rest, as they say, is history . . ."
- Brian Lew, "Metallica, How Could You?"
from MP3.com (2000)
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