Man-Cat @ The Rhythm Room

Oh, to be the highway patrolman who pulls over this band’s Econoline! “What’s with all the sinister masks, fellas? You’re not one of those 99 percenters, are ya?” He’d most certainly demand to see their registration, and in the course of his interrogation, he’d come to learn that they are all thievin’ heathens who make music through the illegal practice of sampling. That’s why they need the masks, because they’re also pretending to be a pseudo-RIAA-crybaby-concern group called the AAI (Association for Artistic Integrity) that maintains that music is only music when it is made with six strings and guitar heroics and that sampling is nothing more than consumer fraud. “We’ll help you decide what music is good and bad for you,” their propaganda decrees. And yet if this all-stealing, all-unoriginal Man-Cat aggregation were to stand trial, the jury of peer-to-peer sharers would be hard-pressed to even pull one recognizable copyright-infringin’ soundbite off the group’s five-song EP, one with a title that might make Ted Nugent’s pecker stand to attention: “How to Hunt, Catch, and Kill the Deviant, Degenerate Musical Collective Known as Man-Cat.” Since it’s free for download at www.keepmusicsafe.org , Judge Mathis might have to let them go with a warning.