John Hult

You’d think free music or movies would be enough.

It has always amazed me that file-swappers get angry enough to run over small children when they discover that the song they’ve just downloaded is improperly labelled.

But I can’t blame them?even if it is technically their own musical ignorance that causes the mislabelings.

Some of it is understandable.

Stealers Wheel sounds a helluva lot like Bob Dylan with their tune “Stuck In The Middle With You.” Still, its not him, and if you search for the song, it’s almost always labeled as Bob.

“Leaving On A Jet Plane” is another tune that causes confuson. This is not Janis Joplin. John Denver wrote the song. Peter, Paul and Mary did the song. Judy Collins did the song. Janis never did. Sorry.

But some of the mislabeling is just laziness. Just because Me First and the Gimmie Gimmies do punk covers doesn’t mean they are the only group that does them. Less Than jake did an entire album of songs from Grease, for goodness sakes.

I once saw a file called “cake-creep radiohead cover live acoustic.” File swappers never seem to capitalize, either?but that’s another story. It was actually just the album version of the Radiohead tune.

Of course, I guess all of this mislabeling isn’t so bad.

This summer, I heard a coworker complain that he had downloaded a file labeled as “The Two Towers.”

It was actually Spider-Man, but he wasn’t complaining. I wouldn’t have either?he got that flick with a modem.