I was thinking that I
might get my solicitors, Sue, Grabbit and Run to sue the Whole Music
World for ripping off my music and lyrics. They are gonna do it on a
No Win No Fee basis, but I am pretty confident that very soon the Rights
to All Music Ever will be mine and I will own Everything, including Marvin Gaye, Michael
Jackson, The Zep and a lot of other Dead People. There are a number of reasons
as to why I may resort to this.
First: As
some of you may know, when I was a Small Hat and needed to sit on
three cushions to play the piano, my favourite Aunty Winnie used to
shut me in her parlour while I practiced my composition 'Thunder and
Lightning' using my open palms and fists in a highly creative and
original way. At the same time, I would sing loudly, mainly on one
note, about Maureen with The Pony Tail, how my evil parents were
trying to end my world, Misery and building exploding boats made out
of Meccano. Only yesterday, I heard the Crush Metal band, Bruised
Eyeballs using those very same random fist actions in their
so-called original composition 'Maureen's Plaits'. I was angry, I can
tell you.
Second:
Whilst busy composing in Winnie's parlour, I stumbled across the idea
that if I played 'Thunder and Lightning' in sections of twelve
repeated Bashbits and then repeated the bit about Maureen and the Meccano
in the middle, it would last exactly long enough to end just as Aunty
Win came in with the Tizer and some bars of Kit Kat. She and I
decided, over a drink, that my original work should be called The
Twelve Kit Kat Bar Basheroo. You must agree that it has quite
obviously been copied, sampled, nicked and ripped off ever since. I
haven't seen a penny.
Third:
At that time my little hands could not span an octave so I used two
hands and in doing so I invented the trick Arpeggio and by playing on the
black notes and white notes in turn I clearly invented Minor and
Major stuff too. Next time you go to a gig, suss out the keyboard
player. I guarantee he will be using both arpeggios and black and
white notes.
Fourth:
After a few divorces and a reckless plunge into the art market, I
need to get my hands on some money to support all my expensive
habits. I have been looking around for a dodgy grey area of the market that
might be fertile ground for some gratuitous funding. I was thinking
about a Wind Farm or some forest in Scotland but my friends at SG &
R said they had spotted Old Music as a prime growth area.
Fifth:
SGR's beautifully-suited 'Music is Fair Game' specialist attorney,
tells me that cover versions of 'I Will Always Love You' and
'Hallelujah' are now the high spots of X factor and in addition the
BBC is rushing out whole weekends of Fifties and Sixties music -
where much ownership and royalties were agreed in a dark club between 'Jack The Weasel's Record Company' and the 'What Planet Are We On I Just
Wanna Play Music' musician. He keeps sending me bottles of Stoly and
telling me The Time is Right. He has a great line in cliches, like
most lawyers, but he knows an opening when he sees one and reckons that Leonard Cohen's 'secret chord' is probably one of my Thunder and Lightning chords.
Six:
Should anyone foolishly try to suggest that other people did this
before the 'Thunder and Lightning Break-Through', we will take them
on an expensive six month tour through my family genealogy and point
out my connections to madrigal players, Shakespearean Hautbois and my
earlier musical predecessors. Stick that bill in your expensive Attorney's
pipe.
Seven: He
has also pointed out that a lot of the people involved in this 'It's
mine and I'll sue you' mallarkey are either dead, ill or in Fairy
Land and consequently all those supposed 'spit on the hand' deals are
hard to substantiate. If I were to put all my Aunt Winnie's relatives
on the stand (she alas is Upstairs now, singing along to one of my
compositions) and I offered half my proceeds to music charities, any
court in the land (by which I mean America) would agree with me and
not only would we clean up, but I would become a modern day folk
hero.
- - - - -
- - - - - - - - - -
Ok. You're Right. This is
not a joke. No musician (or indeed, any creative artist) likes his or
her work being hi-jacked, stolen or generally ripped off without any
attribution, financial or otherwise. Hours, weeks, months and years
may have gone into creating a piece. Although it is nothing new, over
the last decade or so 'sampling' has become a quite common aspect of
modern music and nowadays there are usually some solid arrangements
in place and it gets done with agreement. Whether you have any time
for those who do this to earn a living, is quite another matter.
However when it is done blatantly without agreement it is Theft. Ask 'The Verve' how expensive that can be – and there are plenty of other
examples. Also, every day, a thousand bands do a thousand cover
versions of famous pieces of music. Again, that may not be your bag,
but (to be very kind) they are probably not intending to overtly
steal creativity and disguise it as their own. They put their hands
up, publicly attribute - and we all understand what is going on.
Nowadays,
musicians are much more savvy about protecting their material in both
music and lyric form. They have better knowledge, better legal
support, unions and hopefully, better informed managers and agents.
It has long been the case that the lyric writer will be the recipient
of richer rewards and the history of lyric ownership in particular is
littered with the battered bodies of those who have fought and failed
to clarify ownership. Again, that situation has changed radically for
the better but occasionally when the sale of a song collection comes
on the market the swords and writs get flourished once more. There
are handsome prizes to be won.
However,
what has emerged of late, is not the justifiable prosecution of Intellectual and Copyright Theft but what is becoming to look like a growth business
in Music Legal Opportunism. It would seem that out there in the world
of litigation, there are people employed to look for musical
similarities, resonances, note groupings – even an 'atmospheric'
likeness to previous work. This in turn has produced an industry of
university 'professors', 'musicologists' and sundry 'experts' who
somehow are looked to as the people who may 'know' whether a piece
has been 'stolen' or not. Nobody, it seems is bothering to consult
any musicians.
Clearly
there have been many injustices which date from an earlier period, a
lot from the fifties and sixties, when for many it seemed at the
time, legal rights ownership was not a priority. Absolutely,
some of these were wholesale fraud, some a clever adoptive sleight of hand; others were just crap lax
management and quite rightly, justice must be seen to be done and
compensation is due. Even today there are villains out there looking
to take advantage of the unsuspecting and innocent. But musicians
are, for the most part, getting smarter.
Nevertheless,
when it comes to the hind-sighted public forensic analysis of the
structure, notation and style of the composition of an established
piece of work - that may have first been dreamed up by an artist on
the back of an envelope - then we are now entering the world of
Litigation LaLa Land. Listening to a lawyer struggling to claim that
the whole of a piece of music has been stolen because the opening
arpeggio was 'similar' to one used elsewhere would be funny if it were
not so sad and damaging.
The idea that serious musicians cast
around looking for stuff to nick, when their whole raison d'etre is
to produce something original is laughable. The scoundrels will
sink. The originals will fly. We know that. However, when it comes to Music and Finance, all the lawyers in this area of litigation are
Tone Deaf.
Anyway,
soon I will own everything...or so Sue, Grabbit and Run keep telling
me. Trust me. Your music will be safe with me.
Pip Pip!
The Blues Man in The Hat
(Reading this blog aloud to an audience does not constitute an infringement of my hereditaments or some such bollox etc etc etc.....)