FROM: Chris Butler/Future Fossil Music
TO: The Known World

"The Devil Glitch", my 69-minute song that contains over 500 verses, has just been acknowledged by the Guinness Book of World Records to be the "World's Longest Pop Song".

In a letter dated July 11th, Managing Editor Christine Heilman informed me that the song will be included in the 1998 U.S. edition as tops in this category. Although I didn't write the song to break any record, it is one more exciting accolade that this unique project has generated, and I am honored to be selected.

The song began as a mere five-minute version (included on the CD for the chronologically impaired), with a 12 verse vamp at the end. As a gag, I started writing extra verses, and three months later I had enough to fill an entire CD. After recording a backing track with vocals and an acoustic guitar, I passed out 3- to 4-minute chunks to musicians I have produced and/or played with, asking them to flesh-out the arrangement in anyway they saw fit. With 14 contributors in hand (including Freedy Johnston, Kramer, The Gefkens and even my Mom), I then digitally edited the whole thing together into one long, seamless tune...with only a brief "pause for station identification" should any radio station be crazy enough to play the whole thing. To my surprise, several stations including WFMU (East Orange, NJ), WNYU (NYC), KVMR (Nevada City, CA), KPSU (Portland, OR) plus others have all given it a spin.

Writing a 69-minute pop song is one thing...proving that it's the longest is quite another. Guinness asked for independent verification, and although I knew it to be a valid claim, getting others to confirm it became a "computer era" question, where information becomes available only if the question is phrased correctly. For example, neither the Library of Congress (where American copyrights are registered), BMI and ASCAP (the USA's major performance rights organizations) nor The Harry Fox Agency (collector of mechanical rights) can search their databases for length...only by title and author. Luckily, David Sanjek of the BMI Archives was able to confirm my claim stating that "I know of no other commercial piece of music that received sufficient public distribution that comes close to The Devil Glitch in length and scope." William Shurck, the Sound Recordings Archivist at Bowling Green State University's Music Library and Sound Archive, also saw no reason to dispute my claim, based on his "...40-plus years of working with popular music."

For more information regarding "The Devil Glitch", please contact

Future Fossil Music
PO Box 6248
Hoboken, NJ 07030

http://www.nutscape.com/ChrisButler/
BEEZWAX2@aol.com