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1968: Beatles release The White Album. 2003: Jay-Z releases The Black Album. 2004: Hip-hop DJ Danger Mouse takes both, remixes and makes something new: The Grey Album. 2004: Beatles label EMI sends cease and desist letters to websites hosting Danger Mouse’s reworking, citing copyright violations. Anticorporatelabel music activists get their backs up, come up…
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The first time I met him, when Val brought me to meet her family on one of those early days, he told me that he’d gotten his start as a bootlegger running hooch across the Ohio River. His wife, he told me, had been his getaway driver — that’s how they’d met. In retrospect,…