Plunderphonic – Plunderphonic

Plunderific fun for everyone! Plunderphonic by Plunderphonic is a fantastic release for almost any scenario. Almost. I've brought my own burnt cdr (ed from the website) to work, family gatherings and parties and got many entertaining reactions from many people of many different personalities. Some thought nothing of it and just simply shook their head, sure. Others simply did not care. No one ever attempted to shut it off however. Plunderphonic is not necessarily an exclusive gem in the underground culture. It's an interesting human experiment if you like seeing reactions. I encourage others to bring Plunderphonic out from the underground and let the life above hear its bizarrely rearranged "beauty" of music we already know.

~Mike

The distribution of "Plunderphonic" stopped as of December 1989 after Canadian Recording Industry Association & CBS Records, representing Michael Jackson took a legal action against John Oswald.

"We finally agreed on a list which made me quite happy” says Oswald. “lt effectively took me out of the Plunderphonic CD distribution business. I could no longer send these things around for free. I was ordered to destroy the CDs which l had remaining in my possession, which were about 300. They were delivered to CRIA's lawyers by my lawyers and were subsequently crushed by somebody they hired. This made me quite happy because it put them in a position of being CD crushers, audio book burners and all the things we can associate with those fascist type tactics. Their initial demands were that all copies be recalled. I said I wasn‘t willing to do that, and I got my lawyer to convince them that it was impractical and unnecessary. But to back that up, I had statements from several radio stations, most particularly KPFA in San Francisco, that they weren’t willing to give up their copy, and they would welcome a visit from the Royal Canadian Mounted Police trying to take it back. We also had an agreement that if I fulfilled those requirements I could talk all l wanted about the thing.”

Ultimately, John Oswald wasn’t concerned about the destruction of the master, because of the disabled copy-protection flag, any of the existing CDs could be recorded digitally, and after all, it could be listened to in libraries and radio stations across the country. Distribution was then taken up by radio stations and organizations like the "Copyright violation squad" in Iowa who would dub copies free of charge if supplied with a blank cassette.