Copyright, Music, My Stories, Piracy, Stupidity

Copyright Stupidity Again And Again

Remember the days of going into a restaurant or a pub/bar and hearing live music. Depending on the venue and what they offered, in most of the cases the bands would play cover songs. Well those venues are drying up faster today than the lands starved of rain.

You see when you have a law that gives power to organisations that contribute nothing creatively to the arts, however their whole business model is based around the arts, you get some nasty juju going down.

The music licensing agencies are financially challenged. Their whole business model was based on radio plays and sales. So when the Record Labels controlled the gates, the music licensing agencies smiled all the way to the bank. However, when that gate was blown open by Napster, then P2P, then the iTunes store and now streaming, the monies coming in to these agencies started to dry up.

So these agencies decided to diversify (and I use that world with a lot of sarcasm). Their diversification efforts involved shaking down venues that provided a live music service to the community and getting them to pay extortion like amounts if the bands played cover songs.

It has been happening for the last five years.

Does anyone think that the monies that BMI (one of the music licensing agencies involved in these shakedowns) collects from these venues would end up going back to the artists that had their songs supposedly “infringed on”.

Or what about the monies that Universal is aiming to collect from companies that offer care packages for prisoners. For those that don’t know, Universal Music has filed a complaint against companies selling “care packages which contain mix tapes” for families to send to prisoners.

Is it another shakedown attempt to extort money from companies or a sincere attempt to compensate their artists?

Asking an owner of an establishment to pay three sets of license fees just to allow local bands to perform is always going to end with the owner ending live music at their venue. Especially the smaller venues.

It’s simply bully tactics by an agency and Copyright Laws allow it to be a bully. Of course those Copyright Laws got re-written by the large associations like the RIAA and the MPAA over the last 60 years to ensure that laws kept the balance of power on their side.

BMI says that it’s songwriters and composers deserve compensation for their creative works.

So they view the collection of licensing fees from venues that are of zero risk to the music industry as crucial. But what they are actually doing is harming the music industry.

Does anyone seriously believe that Diamond Head was compensated when Metallica performed their songs at venues prior to being signed? I have bootlegs of shows from Motley Crue, Poison and Ratt before they were signed. A decent amount of cover songs are performed at the gigs and there is no way that the songwriters got compensated back then for these performances. The licensing agencies didn’t give a shit about venues at that point in time.

But now they do and the law allows them to do what they do. Just because it is law it doesn’t mean the practice is acceptable. Copyright Law is stacked in favour of the monopolies. Hell, they had a big hand in ensuring that it was re-written to keep that power in tact. So what we have are a bunch of government granted monopolies that contribute nothing to the arts, but have a large say in the arts.

That is why organisations like Rightscorp come to be. Again they contribute nothing to the arts. They are copyright trolls sent in to shakedown people. There is no other word to describe their business models.

But we still get the same bullshit from these agencies and associations that the world needs stronger copyright.

What the world needs is sensible copyright.

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A to Z of Making It, Copyright, Music, My Stories, Piracy, Stupidity, Treating Fans Like Shit

Seriously… Ray Luzier

Isn’t it time that the argument stops being about what has been lost to what can be gained when it comes to copyright infringement/piracy.

Seriously I am disappointed from artists in the metal and rock genres that talk shit like this. It started with Lars Ulrich and Napster. It continued with Gene Simmons and Paul Stanley talking crap. Scott Ian got in on the act. Yngwie Malmsteen and Joe Lynn Turner also had their views and now we have Ray Luzier.

Lets play a little game.

Who can name a song that Ray Luzier wrote? Does anyone know who Ray Luzier is?

I am pretty sure that no one can name one song that he has written of the top of their heads. So why is he given time to make uninformed comments.

He ripped on a fan of Army Of Anyone because he turned up with a burnt CD of the “Army Of Anyone” album and asked it to be signed. Any artists that equates a fan listening to their music as a lost sale should not be in the music business at all. So Ray starts to have a go at the fan because he didn’t have ten bucks to spend on a CD. He accused him of stealing it.

Does Ray even know the definition of stealing?

It means to take (the property of another) without right or permission.

Music is not property, however the CD that the music is on is property. So Ray is accusing a fan of stealing his CD. But wait a second, the kid turned up with a blank CD, that had music copied on it from a friend. It wasn’t Ray’s actual CD and the music on the burnt CD had not been stolen, because the “Army Of Anyone” catalogue is available for purchase and for streaming everywhere. It still could be available in brick and mortar shops (depending if they have old copies lying around because I can’t see many people clamouring to order it)

So what is it Ray.

Stealing or Copyright infringement. And I am sure that Ray Luzier was an angel who never ever got a copy of another bands music on a cassette tape. He must have had so much disposable income in the Eighties that he purchased the originals all the time.

But this is his best quote. “Someone’s gotta do something — put a chip in there where you can’t duplicate it. You know what I mean?!”

So at first he is having a bitch at people infringing on the music he is involved with and now he also wants is to punish the real fans that purchase the CD by not allowing them to media shift it to their mp3 player.

I think that Ray should read up a bit on the Sony BMG Rootkit scandal first. Sony tried to be that someone who tried to do something. What they did was that when a music disc was inserted into a computer, it installed software illegally (and in the background without the user knowing) that ended up creating vulnerabilities in the computer operating system which was then exploited by malware.

This attempt of DRM by Sony led to public outcry, government investigations and class-action lawsuits. DVD manufacturers also tried this and guess what happened. A kid in a bedroom created a program to circumvent the DRM on DVD’s.

Does Ray even know that Amazon has an AutoRip feature. So when a person buys a CD from Amazon, they get an AutoRip of it from download. Does Ray even know that all Pledge Music campaigns perks come with a digital copy of the album.

Seriously dude, I have the “KXM” CD because I am a George Lynch fan. I haven’t played it again after giving it around 20 plus spins. I have listened to the “Army Of Anyone” CD. I got a ripped copy as well from a friend who is a die-hard Stone Temple Pilots fan. It became a coffee coaster after the initial listen.

But Ray seems to fail to see that people still buy albums that they like, along with streaming albums that they like.

Five Finger Death Punch at the moment have combined sales of over 800,000 copies in the US of their “Wrong Side Of Heaven/Righteous Side Of Hell” releases. At the rate they are going, each album will be certified Gold in the U.S. All of their previous albums have been certified Gold in the U.S and again, they are still selling so expect them to pass Platinum in the years to come.

Shinedown, Avenged Sevenfold and Volbeat are bands that are also selling albums week in/week out.

All of the above bands have double-digit numbers on Spotify plus sold out shows at the box office.

So I think its time that the misinformed musicians stop ripping on their fans and start connecting with them. We are the ones that sustain you and if you choose to not be in music anymore because someone is downloading your music, then be gone because you are in the game for the wrong reasons.

Another will come and take your place that doesn’t think of money, because money was always a by-product of the music. It never was THE PRODUCT.

ONE FINAL NOTE: A local retailer in Australia called JB HI-FI is having a deal going on that is marketed as 3 for $10. I was in there on Friday to buy a Halo game for my kids and I thought I would spend 5 minutes to go through the various boxes to see if there was anything that I liked.

I found “Megadeth – Ruse In Peace Live” on Blu-Ray, “Megadeth – Countdown To Extinction Deluxe 20th Anniversary Boxed CD” ( I already own the 92 release CD along with the 2004 remastered/remixed edition bonus tracks edition, so this is the third time I have purchased this album) and a band that I have heard of in name only called “The Red Jumpsuit Apparatus” just so I could round out the $10 deal.

Today I went to another JB Hi-Fi store about 30 minutes away and they didn’t have those albums as part of their deal. And I was curious as to why. So I found them in the metal section and I took note of the prices.

MEGADETH – Rust In Peace (BluRay) was selling for $27.99

MEGADETH – Countdown To Extinction (20th Anniversary Edition) was selling for $28.99.

THE RED JUMPSUIT APPARATUS – Lonely Road was selling for $18.99

Now for the math. I picked up all three for $10 at one store, however 30 minutes away in another store if I wanted to pick up those three albums I would have had to pay $75.97.

ONE FINAL NOTE II: Today I picked up a “Rush Greatest Hits CD”, “Killers – Battleborn” and Guns N Roses – “Chinese Democracy.” The Gunners purchase was purely to add to the CD collection so that Gunners discography looks complete.

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A to Z of Making It, Music, My Stories, Unsung Heroes

Build Your Own Music Road

The Madonna leak made something visible that was never there before. The record label along with the artist reacted swiftly. They didn’t react by going nuclear with lawyers. They reacted by coordinating to finish a sub-set of songs and having them available for purchase on iTunes. Hanging over Madonna and her team was the Christmas break and a deadline to get the music to iTunes before they shut down for the period. However they got it done and the result was that the songs dominated the iTunes charts and sales.

In the Eighties when Madonna broke through, the game was about marketing the album to death so that it would have a big first week and by default retailers would order more stock. Today, an album has a huge lead up and then what.

AC/DC had a huge lead up with “Rock Or Bust”. The Malcolm Young illness story was free marketing, the Phil Rudd legal shenanigans was also free marketing and add to that free marketing all the paid for marketing. And if the band expected huge sales on the board they would be seriously disappointed. However is that a true indication of an albums reach or influence.

In the end, its not about how many records or mp3’s got sold. It’s about who is listening to it. Does it really matter to AC/DC because everyone knows AC/DC makes their money on the road?

Machine Head released an album that sold decent in the first week for a metal band. The media were all over it and then it disappeared from the news outlets. However if you go on Spotify, you will see numbers there of people listening to it. Go to YouTube and you will see the same. Go on Facebook and you will see fans engaging with each other and talking about the album. Subscribe to Robb’s blog posts and you will see the discussions they generate among the people.

The game has shifted. It’s all about the audience and if the audience is listening to an album six months or a year after the release date then that is not news to the media outlets like Blabbermouth and Loudwire. What is news to these outlets is the album release and the lead up. But that is not the only news the audience cares about.

Robb Flynn is aware that to triumph in the future you need to be prepared for a long game. Excellence will survive and you need to work it.

Jonathan Coulton is not a name that is popular in metal and rock circles however the way he has embraced new business models is a great example of an artist who is building his own road and making a living in the process.

As with a lot of musicians, Coulton tried to become a professional musician 25 years ago, however he was unable to break through the gatekeepers. Thanks to the internet, he nurtured its power and reach and became a success this time around. This is the beauty of the internet when it is done right. It levels the playing field. Coulton didn’t have the opportunity under the old system however today he has found his niche and is making pretty good money in the process.

In 2010, he brought in $500,000. And guess what, because he doesn’t have the entourage that other artists have, the majority of the money earned was for him. In other words he cut out as many middle men as he could and that meant the record label.

He used the web and connected with people who became fans, however the big break came with a geeky song about an out of love computer programmer called “Code Monkey”. As I have said a million times it is all about the song. In this case, Coulton put the song on his site, techies picked it up and started discussion it in forums and the rest is history.

One other thing to note here, is that since 2003, he has released music consistently and every year. In some years it was multiple releases. How many metal and rock artists are doing that right now.

I know that George Lynch is and he is an established artist. Check out the last eight years:

2007 – George Lynch – Guitar Slinger
2008 – George Lynch – Scorpion Tales
2008 – Souls Of We – Let The Truth Be Known
2009 – Lynch Mob – Smoke And Mirrors
2010 – George Lynch – Orchestral Mayhem
2011 – George Lynch – Kill All Control
2012 – Lynch Mob – Sound Mountain Sessions
2012 – T&N – Slave To The Empire
2013 – George Lynch – Legacy (EP)
2013 – Lynch Mob – Unplugged: Live From Sugarhill Studios
2014 – KXM – KXM
2014 – Lynch Mob – Sun Red Sun
2015 – Sweet And Lynch – Only To Rise

Who else?

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A to Z of Making It, Music, My Stories

Distribution

Last year a couple of big corporation plays happened.

The Amazon/Hachette war was not about books. It was about a power play between Corporations. One Corporation has the distribution and the reach, while the other has the content. Somewhere in between are the writers who are paid sweet f.a while Hachette and Amazon rake in millions.

The YouTube/Independent Label war was not about music. It was about a power play between a new cultural gatekeeper and a union of labels that want to play the music game. As with the Amazon/Hachette war, one corporation has the distribution and the reach, while the other has the content. While the major labels got favourable licensing deals because they bring in most of the traffic, the independents got a pittance. Somewhere in between are the artists and the songwriters who are again paid sweet f.a while YouTube and the major labels rake in millions.

What does this tell us about the world?

It tells us that DISTRIBUTION IS KING. It was never content. Content has to go to where people can buy it, see it or hear it and distribution puts it there. However distribution as usual is controlled by corporations. The record labels used to control it and now the techies control it. Copyright infringement was never the issue for the record labels. Their real issue was that their control of the distribution chain was diminished or made obsolete by the internet.

As a by-product, creators may gain fame from the sales of their works however the money remains with the distributor. How do you think the major labels became major labels in the first place? It was due to distribution. Apple promotes itself as a manufacturer and a software maker however underneath all the front end marketing they make their money as a distributor.

So with different corporations controlling the distribution chain what does the mean for us?

The same as it always has. Corporations are not our friends as they are all about the bottom line and with the Internet every store is next door to each other and only a mouse click away. With so much competition only a select few survives.

Napster decimated the record stores. While ignorant media outlets trump up a small vinyl increase, YouTube and Spotify are increasing their power exponentially. That’s right, we have people celebrating the old vinyl format and overpaying while the digital distributors aren’t even paying attention as they grow bigger and bigger.

YouTube is the place we check out to try/sample everything. Google is the place we go to for search. Facebook is our digital home, showing the world what such great and happy lives we lead while under the surface it’s actually hard and depressing. Amazon is where we go and buy everything. Apple is still in front for the smartphone wars even though the Samsung products offer way more features. There is a war between various streaming services going on right now. Expect one to survive and at the moment Spotify is in the lead for music and Netflix for movies.

Is this good for us?

All we have done is replace one cultural gatekeeper with another. But the problem with this replacement is that we are also giving a large part of lives to these new cultural gatekeepers. Google has our search histories in waiting and target ads based on that. Amazon gives us recommendations based on our purchase and view history. Facebook has our private history and so on. We threw away our privacy like it was a piece of trash. We gave it away for free.

Are we really moving into a George Orwell Big Brother world?

We threw our hats in the rings with the techies because they stood for something once. But the truth is money corrupts everything. And our politicians are not going to stand up against the corporations because politics is all about money.

The ignorant still focus on the decline of CD’s and now MP3’s while trumping up the return of VINYL. The wannabe trash all end up on reality TV shows believing that it is a stepping stone to a career in the entertainment business. In all of this, the artists and the writers keep on getting hurt while the powerful fight over their creations. They are just pawns in their game.

Don’t get me wrong, I love a trustworthy shopfront that is reliable with their deliveries, however I don’t like a shopfront that can control everything. And that is the problem in the digital world. No one is looking out for the consumers, us. We believe that the techies have our best interests because so many of the things we do are free, like Facebook and Google and YouTube. However they are not looking out for us and the politicians we vote in are not looking out for us either as they are in bed with whoever contributes to their campaigns. And the big IT companies have no competitors at the moment.

We used to join together under artists however they are all now part of the corporate machine with so many deals crossing over it makes the mechanics of the brain look simple.

Why do you think Dodge and Motley Crue are in bed with each other?

Dodge has realised that Motley Crue fans will be more inclined to purchase high performing cars so the partnership will allow Dodge to distribute more vehicles so that they can make money.

So don’t believe everything you read. Distribution is the reason why corporations become monopolies and the truth is this; the corporation that controls the distribution chain wins.

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A to Z of Making It, Music, My Stories, Stupidity, Unsung Heroes

So You Wanna Be In A Band

ENTITLEMENT

I feel bitter as I’m going through a clean up/archiving process of some old emails. What can I say, they just brought back so many bad memories from my ex band members.

The first thing that stands out is the entitlement of my ex band members. Just because they played an instrument on a song, they argued that they were entitled to a song writing percentage. Just because they suggested that we play the riff once instead of twice, they believed they were entitled to a song writing percentage. And the bass player who joined to play live gigs also put in a song writing claim.

The band was formed in 2008. The majority of the songs that I used in the band were written during 2004 to 2006. I registered the songs with the rights organisation during that time as I was planning on shopping them around to other artists. Even though I showed these facts to my band members they still argued with me over their entitlement to a song writing share for the songs.

Let’s face it, bands are complex beasts and very hard to hold together. Instant fame and riches could push aside some of those bad vibes for a little while or maybe even a decade. However those bad vibes will always come to the forefront until an explosion happens of mass proportions. Motley Crue and Vince, Axl Rose and the rest of the Gunners crew, Don Dokken and George Lynch, The Eagles, Machine Head and Adam Duce. And there are many more examples when that innocent love for music turns sour.

Arguments ensure over money all the time because each band member is on a different financial path. Some are on unemployment benefits, some are on unemployment benefits and casual wages, some are on something else all the time and some are full-time workers. Some band members are more important to the band than others.

The thing that pissed me off the most was when I used to hear the drummer or the bassist or the vocalist telling other people that they were involved in creating the songs and that they had some input. That piece of dishonesty didn’t sit well with me and still to this day it makes me bitter.

DISHONESTY

I know that all of the songs have been written by me and only me. I was the one that spent time away from my family to write the songs. I was the one that recorded them on my Zoom 8 track machine alone late into the night. I was the one who tabbed them on Power Tab while my foot was rocking the bouncer in an attempt to put them to sleep.

To me, if a person suggests that we do the chorus once instead of twice that is not a reason to add them as songwriters. They didn’t contribute anything musical to the song nor did they contribute any new lyrical ideas or melodies. All they did was suggest to play a piece of music/words already written once instead of twice. In an end of credits scroll list from a movie these people will be listed as editors. The writer is still the writer regardless of what the editors do with the script flow.

So of course, I confront the drummer at his dishonest statements, and of course he disagrees with me aggressively stating that he did provide input. Of course I don’t let it slide easily and I ask him what input did he actually have. What piece of music did he contribute? What lyrical verse or melody did he contribute?

He answers that he provided ideas on subject matter. I reply that an idea does not mean that he wrote any music and lyrics. He answers that he assisted with a melody in a verse. I ask him what did he actually change that was so different to what I wrote in the first place.

Singing a word by enhancing the syllables is not a reason to get a song writing credit. Otherwise, James LaBrie or Vince Neil would get song writing credits all the time. Hell, if I used the logic that the drummer put forward that would mean that Bruce Dickinson needs a songwriting credit for every single Iron Maiden song, even the ones from the Paul Dianno and Blaze Bayley era of the band as Bruce did enhance the vocal delivery.

At this point, the singer and the bass player are on the drummers side and I feel betrayed.

BETRAYAL

I remember the day when I got a call from the rights organisation advising me that counter claims have been made on the songs I wrote from the drummer, the bassist and the vocalist. I was in a state of shock. And boy did I hate and curse them bad. I will never forget that moment because it made me realise how deceitful and dishonest people can be.

I told the rights organisation that I do not agree with their counter-claim however the rights organisation did not care either way. The songs go into suspension and any money accumulated from them is held by the rights organisation. For the rights organisation it is a win win. But for me, it was a loss. I had to get a lawyer who charged an arm and a leg however the work that he did was not of the quality that he charged me for. I was told that the onus was on me to prove that I wrote the songs. I saw this as unfair and unjust. The onus should be on them to prove that they contributed to the song writing.

So why did all of this rubbish happen?

GREED leads to a sense of ENTITLEMENT. What I had was a bunch of average musicians that have never written a song in their lives wanting to change the truth so that they are seen as more important than what they really are/were. To prove my point once I was out of the band, in the space of eight months they didn’t write nor release not one NEW song. What a bunch of talents, hey? And then the band ended.

So while forming bands are initially fun, if any artist is serious about making it in the music business and they think that the above doesn’t happen then they are living in a delusional world. This is what happens in the real world because untalented people are greedy. This is what happens because untalented people want to trump up their efforts as being more important than what they really were.

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A to Z of Making It, Alternate Reality, Music, My Stories

2015

STREAMING
Streaming wins. So if you are an artist and your business model is based on recording an album and selling it, then you are challenged. However if you are an artist that creates new music to engage with your fan base then the world is your oyster.

DATA
The greatest value of any online company lays in the consumer data it collects. Why do you think Google, Amazon and Facebook are valued so high? So if you are an artist with an online presence what do you know about your fans? How do you turn fans into customers? How do you reward them?

DIVERSIFY
Diversity is the key to survival in any business. Amazon back in 1993 started off as an online bookstore. Now look at what it sells and what other services it provides. If you are an artist you start off with creating music. Then what is the plan.

NEWS/MEDIA
Who can we trust to be impartial today? The main news outlets are owned by massive corporations who are conspiring to control the narrative. They exist today to serve a select few. The ones that control the narrative are the ones that control life because in the end people love a story. That’s why novels, TV and movies are popular. That’s why reality TV shows employ scriptwriters.

TOURING
All the money for the artists is in touring. If you are a new band, then you need to establish a fan base before you even contemplate playing a show or touring. It’s totally different to when I was starting out. If you are a small independent band and self funded or a large independent band and self funded your mission is to constantly release new music, connect with fans and play live. It’s a lot of hard work and if all band members are not on the same page animosity ensures.

ALBUMS
If you are going to spend the better part of a year writing and recording it, then it needs to be great from start to finish. Good is not good enough anymore. Even though Five Finger Death Punch released two albums worth of music they really had enough great songs for one nine track album. Machine Head went three tracks too many on their new slab. Megadeth on Super Collider really had three good songs with a cool cover of Thin Lizzy. It should have been an EP instead of an album. Isn’t it better to tour on four great songs then a whole albums worth of music where only one song is included in the live set.

TECH
Our digital lives are all tangled up with the big technology companies, like Google, Amazon, Apple and Facebook. These big techies are also becoming the powerful cultural gatekeepers that the much despised record labels held so dear for so long. Will the same hate befall the new cultural gatekeepers like it did the record labels.

TRUST
Our relationship with the large tech companies is based on trust: we trust them however we don’t really understand what they are gathering on us. And that trust will start to erode.

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Alternate Reality, Derivative Works, Influenced, Music, My Stories, Unsung Heroes

Chapter 2

I have been having fun with the story based on Metallica songs and their themes, so here is Chapter 2.

Chapter 2…

–1974–

The town of “Devils Dance” never really lived up to his infamous name. It was always a quiet little town that housed a lot of the dock workers before the war. Trouble didn’t exist and the residents normally slept with doors unlocked and windows open.

However after the war the town saw a large cultural shift. The young started to demonstrate. The woman of the world started to liberate. The establishments that existed started to feel very threatened.

That is when The Metal Militia came to town.

When ‘E.B’ came back from the war he was changed. The innocence was gone. The dreams and hopes that his father had for him died in the war with the burning bodies of napalm and hydrogen.

Broken, beat and scarred, E.B tried his best to adjust to the normal way of life; however the streets that he knew had changed so much.  Glorious shopfronts had bordered up signs and the ones that didn’t had dirty windows.

Along with four other vets in Frantic Frank, Dyers Eve and the twins, Stone D.F and Nole A.F. Clover they became secretly known as the “Unknown Five” and in social circles people knew them as “The Metal Militia”.

E.B wrote a lot of short stories while he was in Vietnam and he kept on mailing them to his home address.  One of the stories had a poem in it that would become the mission statement for the new entity.

To Live Is To Die

We are the battery that will seek and destroy with no remorse

We are one identity as we are all the same fighting for one cause

On through the mist and the madness

We are trying to get the message to you

We are the Metal Militia

The title of the poem where the last five words that ‘E.B’ heard from his best friend “One” as his legless and armless body spasmed all over the jungle floor from an enemy landmine.

You see, when E.B was in Vietnam he found something spiritual and supernatural. Subsequently the task of protecting what he found was bestowed on him by the aging Buddhist monks who guarded the secrets. You see, the thing that should not be, is not something that someone will come across accidently. The guardians of it are natural selected. It’s evolution at play, where the strongest are selected to continue with progress.

E.B’s tour involved a lot of secret visits to The Temple of Wolf And Man. Under the tutelage of the Phantom Lord, E.B learned the ways of the Guardians, their fighting styles and eventually he found a way to tap into the spirit world. In one of his many meditation sessions he communicated with powerful old spirits. The words of that meditative walk through the spirit world still remain with him.

“What we have bestowed upon you must be kept safe at all costs for if it does fall into the wrong hands, it would be dangerous to humanity to possess. The spirit world entrusts this secret knowledge to you Edward Breadfan.”

Little did E.B know that while the Spirit World saw him as benevolent and good, another world was unleashing Five Evil Worshippers to sow confusion and reclaim the books of secret knowledge that are now in the possession of E.B.

–Current Day–The City Of Devils Dance

Change can be bad or good. It all depends on people’s point of view. Stone D.F has seen change happen around him. The upbringing of Orion has been entrusted to Stone and he is struggling with it. He doesn’t know much about Orion or his heritage.

Orion for the lack of a better word lives day-to-day. When he runs out of money to buy liquor, he gets small jobs as a stand over man until he has enough money to supply his addiction for a while. In between drunken stupors, Orion is haunted by a vision of a brunette lady and a legacy of what-ifs.  He is at his favourite bar, “Whiskey In The Jar-O” when his phone rings.

Orion looks at the screen and it is from an unknown number. He never answers calls from unknown numbers. He waits until it rings out as the stripper spread eagles herself around the pole.

The phone rings again. Orion peers at the screen again and it shows up as No Number. Blank. No number whatsoever is present. Orion wonders how can that be and in the end curiosity got the better of him.

“Hello”.

There is a silence on the other end.

Then a deep voice is heard. “Is this Orion Ktulu?”

“Who is this?” replies Orion.

For some reason the voice on the other side is satisfied that Orion is on the other line.

“You must return to the City of the Beholder. Your father has died.”

Orion is stunned. He didn’t envision the day turning into a mystery.

Who is the person asking him to return to his birth place?

A birth place that Orion cannot even remember and for the first time in his life it is the first clue he has received that deals with his past. He has no idea who his father is. His mentor Stone has told him that his father loved him and that in order to keep his only son safe, his father needed to send Orion away.

What Orion knows is that he was born in January 1976, during a freak lightning storm. One of the worst ever storms ever recorded.

His mother died in childbirth and throughout the years, Orion has felt the presence of a person who seemed to be there at the right time to save him from an unfavourable outcome.

Orion is about to respond.

The line is dead.

— Current Day–The City Of Carpe Diem

June Sowhat is a ten-year old girl who is watching television. She is flicking through the channels and her attention is caught by a picture of an overturned bus.

June gazes at the television screen. The aerial views show buses, trucks and cars all tangled up and in bits. There is a section that is all burnt out.

June gets up off the coach and reaches over to the notepad on the coffee table. On the notepad there is some writing.

“City Bus 1366 – 8.32am”

June puts her gaze back to the television. The news scroll at the bottom grabs her attention.

“The 8.32am City Bus overturned causing a large accident. The number of fatalities is high. Although unconfirmed, initial numbers estimate the death toll to reach the 300 mark. Emergency number is 1-300-555-777…”

June doesn’t take her eyes off the screen. She makes a small whimpering sound that no one hears.

–Current Day–The City Of Carpe Diem Sanitarium

An elderly woman screams.

At 8.34am she broke her arms and legs.

Mysteriously.

A minute later her skin started to blister like she was caught in a fire.

Sweet Amber Sowhat is the mother of Fixxxer. She can see a TV screen mounted on the wall opposite her.  The number of the bus unsettles her.

1366.

–Current Day–The City Of Carpe Diem Hospital

Fixxxer’s eyes slowly open. The fluoro lighting while normally dull is super bright. Fixxxer blinks his vision back and he realizes that he is in a hospital bed. A doctor enters the room.

“How are you feeling?” asks the Doctor.

“Okay, I guess,” replies David as the Doctor flashes a light in Fixxxer’s eyes.

“Do you know where you are?”

“In an emergency room”, answers Fixxxer.

“You were in a serious accident. Do you remember it?”

“I remember the trip and picking up speed and then nothing. Why are you looking at me?

“When your bus overturned it caused a massive pile up and then an explosion. The bus was the epicentre of the accident and the explosion. They only found one person alive so far and that is you and you don’t have a scratch on you nor a broken bone nor any burns.”

Fixxxer notices another Doctor looking at him from a distance, Asian in appearance.  His gaze unsettles him and the name tag even more so.

WALTER CYANIDE.

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Copyright, Music, My Stories, Piracy, Stupidity

So Many Different Arguments Over One Word

Copyright like streaming is an argument that is loaded with emotion instead of facts.

Copyright supporters will argue that copyright is tied to creativity while culture supporters will argue that copyright makes culture disappear and the Public Domain supporters will argue that Copyright has been hijacked by corporations that seek to lock up culture in order to preserve profits. On top of all that you also have the PIRACY argument which in a nutshell is really copyright infringement and finally you have the issue when songs start to sound similar, the songwriters go to war with each other over plagiarism, which somehow gets linked back to the copyright.

So many different arguments over one word. COPYRIGHT.

What is true is that Copyright is MEANT to be the piece of legislation that encourages creativity. However, copyright as it currently stands does everything in its power to oppose creativity.

In a nutshell all humans create and we do that without any thoughts of copyright. We don’t wake up in the morning and say, “Gee, thanks to Copyright, I can now create”. We wake up, with an idea in our heads and we get to work on fleshing it out, be it a story or a song or a script or a play or a piece of art.

And that is how it is has always been. Humans create because they want to.

“We always say that the copyright system supports creativity and artists. But copyright’s foundation is about the allocation of economic rights that are bought and sold. It’s a system that’s built on money.”

That is what copyright is today, a monopoly system controlled by corporations and the argument that these corporations push forward with is that “stronger copyright is needed to encourage creativity”. That is why so many works are locked up by these organisations that control the copyrights. That is why they get laws retroactively passed to stop works from falling into the Public Domain.

The whole British Invasion happened because those artists built on the works of the artists that came before them. By doing so, a whole cultural movement happened and the world as it was known changed forever.

Did you know that Sony (who is one of the Corporations that scream for stronger copyright) is now getting sued by musicians for using 10 to 15 seconds of their music without a proper license in “The Interview”.

But with everything that involves money, Sony will pay up to make it go away and then claim it back on their various insurances for the mistakes. But the point is, it shows that everyone infringes on Copyright all the time. It could be intentional or unintentional.

And this happens a lot because copyright is broken. If you need further proof that the true purpose of copyright has been hijacked, then look no further than the various biopics that are getting made.

The Jimi Hendrix biopic does not have any original Hendrix music. The Bon Scott biopic is going down the same boat. For both of these, the heirs of the artists used copyright as blackmail to get the biopic creators to change their story because they didn’t like the way the creators depicted the musical heroes. Very similar to how Judas Priest pulled out of the Rock Star movie when they didn’t like the way the script was heading. By pulling out as consultants they also refused to license their music as well.

We also have a new film about Martin Luther King that has his heirs refusing to allow the filmmakers to use his speech. However in this instance, the heirs didn’t count on the filmmaker being so savvy. What the filmmaker did was create a derivative version of the speech that has the same effect but uses totally different words.

And the reason why the heirs refused permission is money. King’s heirs want as much as they can get for it and Copyright law allows them to do it. What we have here is an Estate that contributes nothing creatively however they do their best at stopping other creations from happening unless they get paid. So can someone please tell me how Copyright is promoting creativity in this instance?

The deeper issue here is that Copyright lasts way too long. The speeches occurred over 50 years ago and Copyright was not designed to provide an income to the heirs of the creator.

Copyright was always meant to provide an income to the creator themselves which very often was not the case. George Clinton the grandfather of funk was in a lengthy court battle with Bridgeport Music who owned the rights of his most popular songs. John Fogerty got sued by his ex-label boss from the CCR days. Both of those artists signed deals without fully understanding what they signed away. And guess what. They still kept on creating regardless of how they were getting blindsided and shafted by the creative accounting of the record labels.

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Music, My Stories, Stupidity, Unsung Heroes

George Lynch and Don Dokken

The history of George Lynch is a complex one to say the least. He auditioned for Ozzy’s band at the same time as Randy Rhoads did. Once Randy got the gig, Lynch got Randy’s teaching gig. He auditioned again after the tragic death of Randy Rhoads and this time he lost out to Jake E.Lee.

And then Dokken broke through with “Tooth And Nail”. They continued that momentum with “Under Lock And Key” and “Back For The Attack”.

And then it was over. Don Dokken said that it was the ego of George Lynch that broke up Dokken. Ego is a very ambiguous word to use. Ego means a person’s sense of self-esteem or self-importance, so I can’t see how if a person has a high self-esteem it can be seen as a negative or bad enough to break up a band.

What we do know is that Don Dokken was the one that got the original recording deal with Elektra Records. He got that recording deal based on songs that George Lynch and Mick Brown had written in their earlier bands.

This is the way Mick Brown told it:

“He took some material that George and I had wrote and took it to Germany and pretty much put his name on it, you know what I am saying (laughing) and he got a recording contract. So he called me up to play. I looked over at George and I said George, this guy’s got our music and he’s got a record deal and we were pretty upset about that because he’s got our songs. But then we also thought, it’s kind of an open door so we went along with it. I think probably when people talk about the turmoil in Dokken, that was pretty much the moment where it all started. I remember Don asking us to, if he could take some of our songs over there to try and get something going in Europe and we said “No” but he did anyway.”

And this is the way Don Dokken told it:

“When I went to Germany to get the record deal, they wanted to sign me as a solo artist. The original album, Breaking The Chains originally came out in Europe and the band was called was called Don Dokken. It was pretty rare. There were 500 copies of it that said “Don” on the cover. So when we got the band together, I just dropped the “Don” and we became Dokken.”

INSERT: Disagreement Number one.

The label then would not give any extra shares to George Lynch or Mick Brown, so the monies came from Don Dokken’s slice of the pie which was already pretty shitty and that pie got diminished even further when Jeff Pilson joined. This battle for an equal split proved to be a source of animosity.

INSERT: Disagreement Number two.

Remember Vivian Campbell. He was livid that he didn’t get an equal split from Dio. Randy Rhoads confronted Ozzy about the “Blizzard Of Ozz” band and why the album was going to be marketed as Ozzy Osbourne’s solos act.

However the most stupid thing any band could do is split up at their commercial peak.

On a press tour for the “Back For The Attack” Don Dokken said the following about George Lynch:

“I don’t dig him and he don’t dig me. But we respect each other as musicians. He can be a total jerk, but I’m not that easy to get along with either.”

Dokken (the band) at the time of the split were ready to re-negotiate their deal. They had the leverage and the sales on the board. They had Q-Prime Management on board. According to Lynch, Don Dokken didn’t want to share any new deal. He saw it as his band, with his name on it and any new deal would involve Don Dokken only with the remaining band members reduced to hired guns.

According to Lynch, Dokken told the band the following:

“I’m gonna try to take the whole thing and run with it, and you guys are gonna get left in the dust, and if you’re lucky, I might hire you.”

In the end, the band split. George Lynch and Mick Brown got a deal with Elektra Records while Don Dokken got wined and dined by Geffen Records and eventually signed a deal with them. Jeff Pilson, who was in my mind the better songwriter got going with various other creative outlets. According to Pilson, the band had a lot of egos and it was those egos that got in the way.

“It wasn’t really that different from other bands with the exception that we aired our dirty laundry in public.”

That is true.

After the split, the bickering didn’t end there.

In 1990, George Lynch, Jeff Pilson and Mick Brown went to court to stop Don Dokken from using his surname for any new solo band. They heard that Don Dokken was planning to release his first solo album as Dokken II. This didn’t sit well with them and they went to court to get an injunction to stop Don Dokken from using the name Dokken or Dokken II.

However, what Lynch and Dokken did was shoot each other in the foot. A good vocalist will always need a good guitarist and a good guitarist will always need a good vocalist. This is the secret of a lot of the bands successes. Vivian Campbell had Ronnie James Dio. George Lynch had Don Dokken. John Sykes had David Coverdale. Jimmy Page had Robert Plant. Paul Kossoff had Paul Rodgers. Mick Ralphs had Paul Rodgers.

And being in a band is not a guarantee. In the October 1989 issue of Guitar World it was a period of change for a lot of guitarists. Steve Stevens was on the cover with the headline, “Life After Billy Idol”. There was also a boxed picture of George Lynch with the headline “Bye-Bye Dokken”. Jake E.Lee was also featured talking about Badlands and life after Ozzy.

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A to Z of Making It, Classic Songs to Be Discovered, Derivative Works, Influenced, Music, My Stories, Unsung Heroes

Thrash Metal

I am a great believer that certain musical styles rise to prominence on the backs of social change or a social movement. There is a quote from Deena Weinstein who is a Professor at DePaul University in the Metal Evolution Thrash Episode that goes something like this;

“When Thrash started in the early eighties Thatcher and Reagan were in charge and we had a highly conservative very restrictive kind of society and if you’re a teenager especially a teenage male, yuck, you don’t want to live in a place where they are in charge. This made males feel like they had to fight against the system just to stay in place and that kind of aggression leads to a sense of wanting to be louder and faster.”

By 1988, Thrash Metal in Australia was becoming huge. There was a substantial underground movement of thrash bands or bands that dabbled in rock, thrash and traditional heavy metal and there was an audience for it. Suburban garages became jam rooms for a million wannabe thrash bands.

And then came Metallica to our shorelines for the “Justice” tour.

All of those suburban teens who had seen their parents deal with the Black Monday Wall Street crash purchased tickets.

All of those suburban teens from immigrant families that had seen their parents get dicked around and racially abused purchased tickets.

All of those suburban teens that had seen their parents get shafted from various long-term state governments that dealt in corruption purchased tickets.

All of those suburban teens that had seen their parents get fired from companies that dealt in corruption and bribery of politicians purchased tickets

 

All of those suburban teens who didn’t fit in to the new divide between the haves and the have-nots purchased tickets.

All of those suburban teens who had finished high school or dropped out and couldn’t hold down any jobs or get work, scrapped up enough cash to purchase tickets.

We even made the news. In our excitement to get into the venue, we broke down gates and fences. When the police came we resisted. So many misfits, that just wanted to fit in.

We all stood together with people wearing Venom, Judas Priest, Iron Maiden, Ozzy Osbourne, first two albums Motley Crue, Twisted Sister and Slayer tops. This was our moment and the “…And Justice For All” album with its lyrical themes of corruption and truth being sold to the highest bidder was the same shit that we faced or our parents had faced. We all related to the “injustice” themes throughout the album.

I have always debated with people who was the biggest band in the genre. I always saw it from an influential musical point of view and others saw it from a sales point of view. Metallica and Megadeth to me are the two bands that had their feet in so many genres. With each album they kept on crossing over into new markets. That is why to me, the Black album wasn’t outside of the norm for what the Metallica sound is.

In the doco, Sam Dunn (the interviewer) felt betrayed when Metallica came out with the “Black” album. He wasn’t alone in that view-point. A lot of my peers also felt betrayed at the album however I couldn’t understand their viewpoint.

Metallica always had more accessible shorter songs on every single album leading up to the “Black” album.

What about, “For Whom The Bells Toll”, “Escape” and “Trapped Under Ice” from the “Ride The Lightning” album.

What about, “Leper Messiah” (how good is that bass riff (RIP: CLIFF BURTON) over the E5 power chords from 0.33 to 0.55) and “The Thing That Should Not Be” from the “Master Of Puppets” album while the “…And Justice For All” album had the big one, “Harvester Of Sorrow.”

All of those songs are more or less at the same tempo that the “Black” album songs are at.

I for one am glad that Metallica had the balls to make the “Black” album instead of “And Justice For All Part Two”, which if you look closely at it, the Justice album was more or less, “Ride The Lightning Part III”.

Megadeth on the other hand, in between their drug addictions and overdoses created some definitive songs. All of the thrash fans that felt betrayed at the Black album liked “Peace Sells”. That is why their view points just didn’t make sense.

Yes people, the mighty Dave Mustaine was way ahead of his time. He gave Metallica that technicality and their sound in the early years and by 1986, he gave the Thrash movement a crossover hit song in “Peace Sells”. It was all over MTV.

And that is the reason why this sub-genre has survived and grown. The two biggest bands of the movement just kept on crossing over and those two biggest bands had two super influential songwriters in Dave Mustaine and James Hetfield. It’s hard to believe that once upon a time they were in the same band.

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