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Sound Tracks: “Meet Me In the Basement” by Broken Social Scene

By Nicole Villeneuve

Believe it or not, music videos still exist. Sound Tracks trolls the internet to find the best and the worst of local artists’ new singles and the good, bad, or otherwise noteworthy visuals that accompany them.

“This is what adbusters [sic] would look like as a video,” says user rueabbey, an observation that, sadly, is not entirely untrue, from the (ever-mind-boggling, ever-entertaining) YouTube comment section of the new Broken Social Scene video. Or, at least, the new Broken Social Scene–approved video.
Three days ago, via the official Arts&Crafts YouTube account, a video for the easy-to-digest instrumental banger “Meet Me In the Basement” was posted with the following comment from the band: “This video was made as a response to the G20 Summit in Toronto June, 2010. The rest speaks for itself. It was sent to us by a lover of our music who wants to remain anonymous. We are very proud to share this mash-up with you.” Contained within it are countless clips of political figures, political events, violence, famine, Ryan Long from Ajax’s ska brats The Johnstones with a Justin Bieber poster, sex, pop culture figures, etc. (You know, the usual.) Naturally, there’s lots of footage of the G20, much of which is easily recognizable from the more high-traffic videos of the weekend’s events, some of which we rounded up last month.
Of course, fans make videos for their favourite artists (and TV shows, and movies, and pets, and just everything) all the time, though admittedly not often to the level of assembling and editing that went into this one, which is decent, if not a little simple. One of the G20 videos used—The Battle of Toronto—was shot and edited by Miguel Barbosa of YEAH! Films, and the chopping up and use of his video (not to mention his face, at 0:39) was not only a surprise, but a bit deflating. “I was upset they blatantly used my footage without credit to me whatsoever. I’ve been making movies for years, and the G20 video was my first sort of impression on a mass scale of my filmmaking.”
Although the source of the video remains a mystery to anyone outside of the secret Arts&Crafts lairs, Barbosa has since sent a yet-unanswered email to the record label requesting acknowledgement. In the meantime though, might as well milk it, right? “Since it won’t be taken down, I will absolutely use it in my portfolio.”

Comments

  • http://undefined warmflash

    We need to build a G20 Atrocity Museum and Interpretive Center downtown. This would be a big tourist destination. We must petition the Federal, Provincial and City government to give us the money to build this civil rights memorial.
    With live twice hourly atrocity re-enactments, burning police cars, interactive kiosks, weapons displays, a restaurant, a children’s village and gift shop — selling black t-shirts, 2 x 4′s, DVD’s, Doc Martins, posters, — the G20 Atrocity Museum and Interpretive Center could be as big a draw as Caribana or the CHIN Picnic.
    Tourists and local would flock to see this.

  • http://bit.ly/accozzaglia accozzaglia

    BSC are nothing if not opportunistic.

  • http://bit.ly/accozzaglia accozzaglia

    YEAH! films were opportunistic, too.
    Payback is a bitch.

  • http://undefined Miguel

    I did nothing morally wrong by shooting. Nothing warrants ‘payback’, especially from an office chair.
    Thanks for the words in the article.

  • http://bit.ly/accozzaglia accozzaglia

    It’s not about morality. Save that speech for someone else.
    It was “payback” in that you made a sick clip that came off as glib and commercialized, not editorialized, and it caught the notice of others who in turn chose to use it in their mish-mash. It might be a good one for your portfolio, but it came off as being more about you and your chops more than the gravity of the political moment. In this quest to “be the first” in a cut-copy-paste age, the upside is you got to be first in your interpretation and very visible doing it, but IP laws notwithstanding, it also sets you up for being appropriated by anyone who wants to use portions from what you post. That’s the payback for self-promotional immediacy. Perhaps a Creative Commons licence could have helped here with issues like commercial use, attribution, and, derivative from the original.
    If the use of your YouTube clip by a party for BSC mattered this much to you, then there was always an option of not posting it online at all and instead producing it for a DVD that you could sell as a documentary: the G20, as seen through your eyes. Even if not a guarantee that it would get used, you would have a bit more control and a lot more leverage in challenging unauthorized use of your footage.
    Just be flattered that your footage was polished enough to get even more free promotion from the press buzz for this music video by a highly influential Toronto pop group.