Just as musicians found a 
way aroudn the expensive 
establishment methods 
of music distribution, 
students are exploring 
different channels of 
acquiring textbooks. I 
know this sounds like a 
leap, but stay with me.

ALEC COHEN /. DAILY

In 1942, a radio station 
director 
named 
George 
Goodwin published a set of 
three inch by five inch cards. 
The front of each card was 
printed with the most basic 
musical 
information 
about 
a song — lyrics, notes — and 
the back had text about the 
song’s authors, publishers and 
copyright holders. Goodwin 
called 
this 
collection 
the 
Tune-Dex, 
and 
it 
would 
change music forever.
Goodwin’s Tune-Dex was 
based off the card catalogue 
system, an apparatus that 
was 
for 
many 
years 
the 
basis 
of 
every 
library’s organizational 
structure. 
In 
1942, 
Goodwin placed a full-
page advertisement in 
“Variety,” 
calling 
his 
creation the “First and 
Only Permanent Living 
Index of Popular Music.”
Tune-Dex was one of 
the 
first 
subscription 
services, 
delivering 
new 
cards 
to 
those 
who had applied for 
“charter subscription.” 
In the days before the 
internet, musicians had 
to contact publishers for 
sheet music. The whole 
process 
was 
labor-
intensive and expensive, 
and it didn’t really serve 
the needs of people who 
wanted to learn new, 
popular music. Tune-
Dex was intended for 
professional 
musicians 
who 
needed 
to 
pick 
up songs very quickly 
and didn’t have time to 
contact the copyright 
holders. Radio stations 
and 
lounge 
owners 
were 
also 
interested 
in 
keeping 
up 
with 
the latest hits, but it 
wouldn’t 
have 
made 
sense for them to order 
sheet 
music 
either. 
Somehow, 
Goodwin 
convinced 
publishers 
to let him copy and sell 
abbreviated 
versions 
of their music. When 
Goodwin died in 1965, 
the Tune-Dex monopoly — 
which was largely a one-man 
operation — came to an end.
But Goodwin’s idea had 
caught on, and musicians 
(and other interested parties) 
were no longer willing to buy 
hundreds of pages of loose-leaf 
sheet music from publishing 
companies. Beginning in the 
1940s, cocktail lounges were 
springing up everywhere, a 
mix between a bar, a dance 
hall and a restaurant where 
you could drink and hang out 
while listening to live music. 
The musicians who played at 
these places were often asked 
by patrons to play current 
hits, a feat which was much 
easier if they had Tune-Dex 
cards for the songs. Musicians 
wanted something convenient 
and 
cheap 
to 
help 
them 
navigate the flexibility they 
were now expected to have. 
Tune-Dex cards were easier 
to carry around than sheet 

music and helped musicians 
keep up with the latest songs, 
but the cards could easily be 
lost, so when Goodwin died, 
the Tune-Dex concept was 
altered slightly. Abbreviated 
songs were formatted as “fake 
books,” a way for musicians to 
keep track of tunes they had 
heard once or twice, but didn’t 
know well enough to play 
without some foundational 
direction.
Music 
publishing 
companies didn’t create these 
fake books, so musicians were 
forced to go underground. 
This is how the bootleg fake 
book industry was born; out of 
necessity, not maliciousness, 

and in response to the changes 
in 
audience 
demand 
and 
performance styles that were 
recognized by musicians, but 
not copyright holders.
This 
is 
a 
moderately 
interesting 
(if 
technical) 
anecdote in the recent history 
of the music industry. It’s 
also a useful example of how 
publishing 
and 
copyright 
companies 
have 
difficulty 
keeping up with cultural and 
technological changes. The 
story of fake books is about 
both publishing and music, 
about the ways that words are 
protected by the law and how 
artists find ways to say the 
things they want to anyway.
Copyright and art has a 
very 
complicated 
history. 
Copyright 
law 
protects 
artists and creators, but it 
also limits the consumers 
of their work, meaning that 
the same channels through 
which an artist can make 

a living are also the ones 
that can prevent them from 
gaining experience and an 
audience. Fake books are an 
example of a phenomenon 
that can be found anywhere 
copyrighted content gets too 
expensive 
or 
burdensome. 
Just as musicians found a 
way around the expensive 
establishment 
methods 
of 
music distribution, students 
are 
exploring 
different 
channels 
of 
acquiring 
textbooks. I know this seems 
like a leap, but stay with me.
In recent years, textbooks 
have become so expensive 
that many students simply 
cannot 
afford 
them; 
Vox 
reported an 88 percent 
increase in prices from 
2006 to 2016. There are 
a few reasons behind 
this. 
Textbooks 
now 
often come with single-
use access codes for 
online 
materials, 
and 
the lack of competition 
(five companies own 80 
percent of the market) 
means publishers don’t 
need to worry about 
students 
buying 
a 
cheaper version of their 
product.
The strategies that 
textbook 
publishers 
are 
using 
to 
make 
their 
products 
more 
affordable 
are 
not 
cutting 
it. 
Cengage, 
for 
example, 
offers 
subscription 
services, 
so that students can 
have online access to 
a number of textbooks 
for one price — but that 
option can be nearly 
$180 per semester, with 
a firm access expiration 
date and no possibility 
for reselling.
In response, students 
have found a solution 
that 
takes 
a 
similar 
approach as fake books: 
open access textbooks. 
Free the Textbook is 
a 
non-profit 
working 
to help students and 
professors 
create 
a 
new 
culture 
around 
textbooks. 
They 
ask 
professors to consider 
the cost of textbooks 
when 
assigning 
material, 
stop requiring students to 
buy access to quizzes and 
homework 
and 
collaborate 
with librarians and scholars 
to create high-quality, open 
source textbooks.
Like fake books, the open 
access movement is about 
fixing an issue that publishing 
companies have so far been 
unable to address adequately. 
While 
it’s 
important 
to 
compensate 
authors, 
the 
current 
textbook 
system 
prioritizes corporate profit 
over 
students’ 
education. 
Luckily, students and their 
professors are finding new, 
innovative 
ways 
to 
make 
knowledge more accessible. 
Open access textbooks are the 
fake books of higher education, 
a way to democratize an 
industry 
by 
providing 
students with knowledge in 
a way that is both accessible 
and affordable.

Real books, fake books 
and the space in between

MIRIAM FRANCISCO
Daily Arts Wrtier

B-SIDE: BOOK REVIEW

‘I Wanna Marry Harry ’

in this series, three daily arts writers in 
varying states of mind visit the same 
place and write about their experiences.

baked.buzzed.bored.

this week’s destination:

Some call me a stoner with too much free time to watch television. I call myself 
a cultural anthropologist who, with the assistance of THC, has the abil-
ity to consistently (sniff out?) the top tier of pop culture. The next 
throwback on my queue was a little ditty called “I Wanna 
Marry ‘Harry,’” originally broadcasted on none other 
than FOX, the Rupert Murdoch owned-network 
responsible for such greats as “My Big Fat 
Obnoxious Boss” and “Mr. Personality.”
Entering into this show in a 
post-Meghan Markle world, I 
was a bit critical. How would this 
make my Lord and Savior/part-time 
Queen of the Blacks™, the Duchess of Sussex 
look? Is this their meeting story? Then, I realized 
that this show was not only American-produced, but 
also was made years ago, and I looked in the mirror and 
felt like a reallll dipshit. So, here we are at the beginning of the 
show. The show started off on a strong foot by hiring a man who isn’t 
even British, but from Papua New Guinea. His accent was great. Appar-
ently, the FAKE Prince Harry they hired has a “93% face match” to the actual 
Windsor. Nope, you read that correctly. The FOX Network used fake science as a 
justification for a mediocre doppelganger. His name is Matt Hicks, and if you’re won-
dering if he seemed stable enough to participate in this pseudo-social experiment and not 
experience an immense power trip, he most certainly is not.
This particular quality in Matt — the gradual formation of the belief that he truly 
is Prince Harry — comprises the bulk of the reason why the meat of the show became 
unwatchable for me. Or, at least unwatchable without wincing because I was locked into 
that baby for a good three ‘sodes. The biggest question I ran into was whether or not the 
women (read: Charlotte Russe managers turned “actresses”) actually knew that this guy 
was a nobody, or if some of them actually lived in the delusion that the royal family would 
actually participate in a reality show wherein the women wear jean cutoffs as formal wear. 
Legally, they dodged the whole “identity fraud” thing by only referring to Matt as “sir.” So, 
if you think about it, there was a lot of leeway for the women to actually believe that this 
really was Prince Harry, so much so that the entire B-arc of the show was centered around 
the few daring women inside the house that began to question — weeks in — if this all 
seemed a bit too good to be true.

Man, this show is really boring. It’s not even bad in the fun 
way, it’s just a huge drag.
The premise is as ridiculous as it sounds — a “Bachelor” 
type show with the man in question being a “lookalike” of 
Prince Harry, Duke of Sussex. Twelve vapid stereotypically-
American women vie for his affection over the course of sev-
eral weeks. At first they are not told that the man is Prince 
Harry, it is merely suggested that it may be. Later, they are 
told that he is, in fact, royalty. Aside from being stupid, the 
concept is pretty creepy as well, the deception being a stone’s 
throw away from wearing a mask of human skin a la Ed Gein.
Most reality television requires some suspension of dis-
belief, but this is insane. There is a less-than-zero percent 
chance that these women did not figure out that that this 
bland rock-kicker was not in the line of succession to the 
British throne. It’s not like they didn’t have clues — aside 
from the important fact that he doesn’t resemble Prince 
Harry in the slightest, his accent isn’t correct, he suffered 
from an acute case of flop sweat and his “security detail” was 
wearing sunglasses that look like they came from the clear-
ance rack at Bass Pro Shops.
I had hoped that getting drunk would make it more enjoy-
able, but alcohol was no match for the fucking awfulness of 
this show. It did, however, help me identify what the intend-
ed purpose of this trainwreck was — performative cruelty, 
designed to make you laugh at the vapidness and greed of 
the contestants. I can see how this could be a funny concept, 
even if it is mean-spirited, but it just wasn’t. The contestants 
weren’t interesting enough, the “prince” was bland and the 
drama wasn’t that dramatic.

I dabble in dating shows. Bachelor in Paradise is fantastic. How-
ever, I dabble less in the Royal Family, and this is apparently true 
for the average American, hence the mere existence of “I Wanna 
Marry ‘Harry.’”
This obscene show works as follows: A bunch of women who 
share the acute, American awareness of the celebrity of the Royal 
Family, their knowledge fueled by tabloids depicting Prince Har-
ry’s Las Vegas buttox scandal and the Queen’s hats, are taken to an 
English estate to be the victims of a seriously creepy ruse 
in which an “Environmental Consultant” pretends 
to be Prince Harry in the hopes that one woman 
(or many — this guy was horny as shit) will fall 
in love with him and remain in love with him 
when he finally reveals his true identity as an 
“Environmental Consultant.”
That was a mouthful, and it’s almost 
impossible to believe that such a ludacris 
show actually aired on FOX before it was 
pulled after four episodes. Now, I could 
easily deride the show, but I’m not going to 
do that. The show is supposed to be derid-
ed. Instead, I’d like to interpret it charita-
bly.
I’ve really never seen anything like “I 
Wanna Marry ‘Harry.’” It poses quite an inter-
esting interplay between fantasy and reality, 
something akin to a reality TV-regular TV hybrid. 
Kingsley, fake Harry’s butler, is literally acting, grant-
ed very poorly, like a royal butler for the entire show, even 
when interacting with fake Harry. The same goes for all of the other 
service members that are meant to create the illusion of royalty — 
it’s like the Walmart version of the Walmart version of Downton 
Abbey. On the other hand, the show is riddled with typical reality 
TV tropes: mean girls, random shouting, the sense that the entire 
episode is one big trailer and surgically repaired audio clips that 
sound like Siri explaining why the girl who gets to stay in the master 
bedroom with fake Harry is actually a bitch. So in one foul swoop, 
you get people playing a part alongside people that are supposedly 

4B —Thursday, March 28, 2019
b-side
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com