CHICAGO — Local music pirate Adam Crawford attempted to get members of Space Motel to play “Free Bird” by shouting out the name of a poorly labeled file he found on LimeWire in 2007, confirmed multiple confused show attendees.
“I have been shouting out for the headlining band to play lynyrd_skynyrd_zz_top_ccr_song_freebird_rock.mp3 at shows ever since I found a full version that didn’t randomly start playing audio from a ‘Family Guy’ episode 15 seconds into the song,” Crawford explained while playing Snake on his flip phone. “It’s never worked. I usually just get blank stares from the people around me and the band always dismisses me like I’m some sort of freak, but I will never stop trying as long as I have beer and a voice. I’m kind of a champion for the people in that way.”
Space Motel ignored Crawford’s request to play the song despite his repeated, loud efforts.
“I heard some drunk guy screaming a random string of words, and punctuations, but I could still distinctly hear ‘Free Bird’ amongst the jumble,” explained Space Motel vocalist Dylan Lynch. “I tried to ignore him because that joke has plagued me since I started playing live music and I have never found it funny. Honestly though, I was more concerned that he was having some sort of mental breakdown. He sounded like someone that was having a break with reality. I asked security to check if he was ok and they just said ‘we don’t get paid to coach people through nervous breakdowns.’”
Media professor Ramona Werner studies music accessibility at DePaul University and is very aware of LimeWire and its users.
“LimeWire is a now-defunct platform that provided access to free music downloads for countless people, but often the song titles were superfluous or mislabeled,” said Werner. “In my research I have found that to this day LimeWire users will erroneously name songs or attribute a song to the wrong artist. To be frank, the accessibility of correctly labeled music on the internet in modern times should make it easy to find the correct names of songs, but the problem still persists. Even Youtube, a legitimate pit of misinformation, has better labeling on their videos. In a manuscript I am currently writing, I attribute this phenomenon to deliberate ignorance and misplaced overconfidence.”
At press time, Crawford was eating a hot dog and listening to led_zeppelin_black_paint_roll_stones_sex.mp3 on his Zune.