Let's talk about music

[FreeCandy44]

Im pretty sure ill be at this show.

[JS©]

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[FreeCandy44]

Missing DOWN and Devil You Know tonight at AE makes me a sad panda.

[Factorial]

Some good "pop" songs on the latest Billy Bragg:

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With that steel guitar this should be a country hit.

[Factorial]

Looks like Jimmy Paige, et al is getting sued for plagiarism yet again, now over Stairway to Heaven. This time by the band Spirit who Zeppelin opened for on their first US tour:

In 1968 a Los Angeles area band called Spirit put out its first album, the self-titled Spirit. Among the songs was an instrumental piece, Taurus, written by the band’s guitarist, Randy California. (Born Randy Wolfe, California got his stage name while playing with Jimi Hendrix’s band in New York in 1966. Hendrix took to calling him Randy California to distinguish him from another Randy in the band. California, only 15 at the time, chose to make it stick.) Taurus runs just 2 minutes and 37 seconds. About a minute of it is a plucked guitar line that sounds a lot like the opening measures of Stairway to Heaven.

http://www.businessweek.com/articles/20 ... ing#r=read" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

[JS©]

Just turned on the Billboard Awards. I have no **** idea what is going on.

/goes back to posting 80s and 90s songs in the random songs thread.

[Sam's Drunk Dog]

My wife got us Paul McCartney tickets at the CEC as an annivesary gift. Pumped.

[Gaucho]

Sweet.

[JS©]

Looks like Jimmy Paige, et al is getting sued for plagiarism yet again, now over Stairway to Heaven. This time by the band Spirit who Zeppelin opened for on their first US tour:

In 1968 a Los Angeles area band called Spirit put out its first album, the self-titled Spirit. Among the songs was an instrumental piece, Taurus, written by the band’s guitarist, Randy California. (Born Randy Wolfe, California got his stage name while playing with Jimi Hendrix’s band in New York in 1966. Hendrix took to calling him Randy California to distinguish him from another Randy in the band. California, only 15 at the time, chose to make it stick.) Taurus runs just 2 minutes and 37 seconds. About a minute of it is a plucked guitar line that sounds a lot like the opening measures of Stairway to Heaven.

http://www.businessweek.com/articles/20 ... ing#r=read" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

http://www.businessweek.com/articles/20 ... ck-history" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

I got the easy one on the first try

[blackjack68]

Based on musical preferences posted here, I don't think most will care, but it's still a CSB, so I'm sharing it.

There's a bluesy southern rock band we follow, Homemade Wine out of Knoxville, TN. I had them play a house concert last September with 85 people in my small backyard in New Jersey.

Last night, the lead guitarist Andy Westcott, who was in Key West with the band for Friday and Saturday shows, was playing with some other guys at the Green Parrot. In walks, Zac Brown and joins them on stage for three songs. Afterwards, Zac tells my friend, "You're a monster." Very cool experience for Andy. And, of course in this day and age, it was captured on video.

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Yeah, yeah...csb. But he looks like he really was enjoying himself.

[FreeCandy44]

Thats actually pretty cool.

[Digitalgypsy66]

My wife got us Paul McCartney tickets at the CEC as an annivesary gift. Pumped.

I'm going to have to go see him this year. Ringo's touring too...I hate saying it might be the last time they'll be touring, but Ringo turns 74 this summer.

So, I've been (slowly) reading Mark Lewisohn's Beatle biography, Tune In. It's the first volume of a planned trilogy, and this volume covers up until late 1962...at 900 pages or so.

Anyway, it's a great read, very well researched, and it spends a lot of time (at this stage, right before they recorded with EMI what would become their first major release) talking about the Liverpool music scene. Nearly all of the bands were what we'd call cover bands, rarely playing original music. According to promoters and fans, that's what the public wanted to hear - these local bands doing American hits. What got the Beatles foot in the door with Parlophone/EMI was three original songs' publishing rights. Not their recorded versions, which were done as a "test" for Decca records (and featured a nervous Paul and, well, Pete Best's crummy drumming). The publishing company, owned/partnered with EMI said that they would get the Beatles recording time in exchange for the publishing rights of the unique original songs (Like Dreamers Do, Love of the Loved, and Hello Little Girl). Really very interesting how the conservative British recording industry kept passing these guys over.

Lewisohn goes over the Beatles' favorite songs, which got me thinking about McCartney's 1999 album, Run Devil Run, which had a lot his favorite songs from the 1950s and a few new songs. David Gilmour played guitar on most of the album, too. It's really quite good:

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On another note, how does one get away with uploading an entire album without a copyright takedown? I tried uploading an unlisted, private video of my kids with some Benny Hill music and got a strike?

[tifosi77]

The Zeppelin 'Stairway' stuff is old news. I'm surprised this is the first time the Spirit camp has pressed a claim. If you're able to get copies of their albums that were made at the time of their release, the writing credits on nearly all of the songs are just "Plant/Page"........ but get copies from later years, like CDs, and holy crikey, they appear to have had quite a lot of 'co-writers'. Who were predominantly old, black men from the American south.

Zep are a bunch of thieving batsards. That fact is doubly frustrating because they certainly had the musical wherewithal to not be that. But the list of 'their' songs that they've wrongfully claimed authorship of is staggering.....

"Babe I'm Gonna Leave You", "Black Mountain Side", "Communication Breakdown", "Dazed And Confused", "Hats Off To (Roy) Harper" (Harper is a friend of a friend, and I've gotten to hang out with him. He's cool.), "How Many More Times", "The Lemon Song", "Moby Dick", "Nobody's Fault But Mine", "Since I've Been Lovin' You", "Stairway To Heaven", "Whole Lotta Love"......................................... and that's just a partial list from memory.

On another note, how does one get away with uploading an entire album without a copyright takedown? I tried uploading an unlisted, private video of my kids with some Benny Hill music and got a strike?

YouTube has a filter - called Content ID - that analyzes every frame that's uploaded. There's something like 100 hours of material uploaded to YouTube every minute of every day, so the idea of having human beings filter content is farcical. Familiar stuff - like "Yackety Sax", the Benny Hill song - will get flagged more readily because they've likely got that dialed in after several years of getting takedown requests. A 15-year old McCartney record which may have never had a takedown claim filed for it may simply not be recognized by the filter. So absent the filter flag, it would require the actual copyright owner stumbling across the upload and sending a DMCA takedown notice to YouTube. (This is a fairly easy process now, but it used to be the bane of my professional life)

Funny thing about the filters they use - they don't seem to be able to recognize or tag 'authorized' content. As a result, the social media manager at my company gets about half a dozen takedowns from YouTube every week saying that we are violating our own copyrights on material we are uploading to our own YouTube channel. Appreciate the solid, but it just creates more work for her as she has to prove we own our own material or else the video gets auto-flushed.

[tifosi77]

My wife got us Paul McCartney tickets at the CEC as an annivesary gift. Pumped.

Looking for tickets to the Dodger Stadium show in August. Seats are........ not cheap.

[columbia]

He needs the money.

[Digitalgypsy66]

I know the Beatles/Apple Ltd are vicious about copyright, and justly so. I just assumed McCartney would be as well.

[tifosi77]

True enough, but you can still easily find uploads of pretty much all the Beatles' repertoire on YouTube.

[Troy Loney]

He needs the money.

There seems to be a huge disconnect between the old guard in the music performing in the industry and the people into it now. I remember that David Byrne op ed condemning spotify somewhat recently and also an issue with Morrissey being an *** about a gig in San Jose, essentially making the venue cancel another show because it was too close to his show (lol).

Basically those old guys who made lots of dough feel all sorts of entitled to money even though no one is making the kind of money they used to in pop music...it's just like an outright denial of the realities of the industry.

[tifosi77]

The reality of the industry is that touring and merch is where the money's at now. Look up '360 deal'. Look up the dates of the highest grossing tours of all-time. Shoot, even monetized YouTube channels, since we're sort of on the subject.

Fact is, Spotify is utterly terrible for artists. The model is set up to replace ownership of physical/digital media. I see a lot of comparisons to the royalty payouts of a terrestrial radio spin vs a play on Spotify or Rdio, but the real comparison should be the rev share of a purchase off iTunes/Amazon/Google Play/etc. Sure, there are people who listen to Spotify/Rdio and still buy music. But the majority use the streaming services to eliminate the need to keep and curate their music collection.

Consider Cracker's song "Low" - For a three-month period in 2013, it had 116,280 plays on Spotify, resulting in a check to one of the writers for $12.05. Conversely, on the back of only 18,797 plays on AM and FM radio during the same period, he was paid $1,373. That's kind of a big difference.

Streaming might be a great way for people to consume music, but it's a crap way to pay artists for the music you're listening to.

[Tico Rick]

This is a bit random but I recently came across "The Summer Knows" which was one of the songs in the movie "The Summer of '42". Everywhere I look it is credited as having been composed by the French composer Michel Legrand in 1971. But when I heard it I instantly thought of "Penelope", written by the Spanish composers Joan Manuel Serrat and Augusto Algueró in 1969. Exact same melodies, but nowhere can I find mention of this. Given how popular the song "Penelope" became in Spain and Latin America and the movie "The Summer of '42" became in the US, is it possible that the Spanish composers didn't know about the similaries, or bother to file suit?

Serrat's "Penelope"
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Legrand's "The Summer Knows"
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[FreeCandy44]

Was digging around in a box in my basement and found a like new The Police greatest hits cd. Its gonna be a good day.

[eddysnake]

Anyone ever listen to Sonny Landreth? Pretty amazing slide guitarist. He's headlining a free jazz festival in Indiana, PA this weekend.

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[FreeCandy44]

Looks like im road trippin to see Pearl Jam in Cincy this October.

[Bioshock]

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[Bioshock]

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