GUINNESS BOOK
OF WORLD RECORDS
declares
"THE DEVIL GLITCH"
to be
WORLDS'S LONGEST
POP SONG
FROM: Chris Butler/Future Fossil Music
TO: The KnownWorld
"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 informedme that the song will be included in the 1998 U.S. edition as tops in thiscategory. Although I didn't write the song to break any record, it is onemore exciting accolade that this unique project has generated, and I amhonored to be selected.
The song began as a mere five-minute version (included on the CD forthe 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 tofill an entire CD. After recording a backing track with vocals and anacoustic guitar, I passed out 3- to 4-minute chunks to musicians I haveproduced and/or played with, asking them to flesh-out the arrangement inanyway they saw fit. With 14 contributors in hand (including FreedyJohnston, Kramer, The Gefkens and even my Mom), I then digitally editedthe whole thing together into one long, seamless tune...with only a brief"pause for station identification" should any radio station be crazyenough to play the whole thing. To my surprise, several stations includingWFMU (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 thelongest is quite another. Guinness asked for independent verification, andalthough I knew it to be a valid claim, getting others to confirm itbecame a "computer era" question, where information becomes available onlyif the question is phrased correctly. For example, neither the Library ofCongress (where American copyrights are registered), BMI and ASCAP (theUSA's major performance rights organizations) nor The Harry Fox Agency(collector of mechanical rights) can search their databases forlength...only by title and author. Luckily, David Sanjek of the BMIArchives was able to confirm my claim stating that "I know of no othercommercial piece of music that received sufficient public distributionthat comes close to The Devil Glitch in length and scope." William Shurck,the Sound Recordings Archivist at Bowling Green State University's MusicLibrary and Sound Archive, also saw no reason to dispute my claim, basedon 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
Reach out!
Replies will be slow, however, since I will be very busy with morenormal pursuits...
like growing the World's Largest Kumquat.