LooneyTunes

We all read the papers and accept most of it as true or accurate.
We also assume that a Queen's Counsel, engaged at a daily fee that could buy a car, would know what he was talking about.

This is not always the case.
This week the news subtitles imply that Colin Hay stole a tune.
.

From our reading of all the reports of the stoush over this charge, we give you quotes from published claims:

"Federal Court was told today 'the owners of the copyright should be entitled to royalties earned by MenAtWork for their 1980s smash hit" because - "Kookaburra Sits in the Old Gum Tree is

a distinct and memorable Australian melody"

NOT AT ALL. It is Welsh - an old song about blackbirds:

"Wele ti'n eistedd aderyn du?"

"based on the agreement under which the song was written, the copyright was actually held by the Girl Guides Association."

To the lyric maybe. Hay did not use the lyric.

"Kookaburra" was entered in 1934 into a competition run by the Girl Guides Association of Victoria, with the rights of the winning song to be sold to raise money "
"In court documents, Larrikin said 'Kookaburra' was written by Toorak college teacher Marion Sinclair in 1934 for a Girl Guides jamboree in Melbourne".

NOT quite correct either. Sinclair could not have had the 1934 jamboree in mind in 1932 when she wrote her lyric using the traditional Welsh melody.

Sinclair "signed over her copyright to the Libraries Board of South Australia in 1987, a year before her death, it said. In 2000, Larrikin/Festival took over the copyright in an agreement backdated to 1990".

* * * * *

So Festival Records, owners of the Larrikin label back-catalogue,

claiming to own a traditional Welsh tune,

lyricised winner of a 1934 contest which made it

the property of Girl Guides Victoria,

suing EMI Records as publishers of Hay's 1981 composition ... and the cheque, after The Lawyers Cut, will be sent to Old South Wales?.

A timeline we made from published claims by this case
1932, Marion Sinclair, put a kookaburra-themed lyric to a Traditional Welsh Folk melody (Anon.)
1934 it won a competition and became the property of The Girl Guides Of Australia.
1981, Colin Straw inserted a sample bar of this traditional Welsh melody into his 'DownUnder' composition ( note: melody not her lyric or their lyric)
1987 Marion Sinclair signed away to the Libraries Board Of South Australia) her right to her 'round' song (the one that became the property of the Guides).
1995 Festive records consumed the small Larrikin Records label.
2000 Festival/Larrikin "took over the copyright" ...

and all this legal carry-on over 2 bars of music.

The creative directors of every advertising agency know that 2-bars can be used without having to pay a royalty, so WTF?

Anyone reading headlines this week in Australia and in the international music trade mags, assumes from these headlines that Colin Straw is a plagiarist.
This is not the case, but will this be the outcome of the lawsuit?

May Mr. Straw, and good sense prevail.

Historically, musical copyright ceased 50 years from composition.
In 1956 rock-and-roll changed the nature of music and it's earning capacity.
All those hot songs in the free use public domain in 2006/7/8/9? - gee we don't think so, and sure enough, our the-PM John Howard embraced a FreeTrade Agreement with the Bush USA which re-proscribed the deal as

"50 years from the death of the composer".
That gave them all some time to figure out how to hang onto their income from all those Chuck Berry songs he sold to his publishers for a flat $10 in 1959 anyhow.

Disclaimer

Photograph copyright Ann O'Dyne

In the event we, farking great Marshall Stacks are incarcerated for sub-judice,

1. we will finally have a fixed address,

2. be sure we will torture our captors by singing Stand By Your Man relentlessly.

Rock ON.

First published 2009, republished 2010 on the day the verdict went againts Mr Hay. This is a dreadful miscarriage of the law, by people operating at their level of incompetence.

Knickers, Nick.

What a far cry it is from the early performing days of the revered Mr Nicholas Cave, (when his promoters pleaded unsuccessfully with the shocking but influential COUNTDOWN TV show, for a chart-enabling appearance)
that now he just seems to be everywhere.
At one stage, a Boys Next Door ligger had actually become the editor at the Australian Women’s Weekly, that bastion of median media-ness, and I truly expected to see a cover story on him.
I have been vindicated in my own opinion, by reading the brave James Valentine One-Trick Nick, which says

'Nick Worshippers grew up and became rock critics and festival directors and magazine people and anytime they could they got Nick a gig.
If Nick brought out a recording it was always five stars. If Nick wrote a film, it was incredible. Would Nick mind if we set a ballet to his music? Could Nick curate something for us, write a forward, could he sculpt something?
Then we can write about it, and put Nick on the cover of our magazine and show once again how cool we are, because we get Nick Cave'.

Overland magazine published The Monarch Of Middlebrow by Anwyn Crawford who says it all for me, better than I could myself:

'it is largely this ubiquity that makes me despise Cave and his work now with the passion that perhaps only a former fan can muster. I can still listen to The Birthday Party and find Cave’s sordid fantasies of woman-pie, kewpie dolls and six-inch gold blades stuck ‘in the head of a girl’ exhilarating and disturbing in equal measure. It hasn’t taken fifteen years for Cave’s misogyny to dawn on me, but at least in 1981 no-one was trying to cover over his sexual obsessions with the tasteful drapery of redeemed Christian, reformed addict, doting father and national icon'.

At Crikey.com's design blog the discussion was about clothes, one pair of very tight blood-red knickers you saw above. These were photographed by ex-Melbourne-Punk-Scenester, now as world famous as Annie Leibovitz - Polly Borland,

in tight close-up at the very seam of their reason for existing, and

as a result, censored by eebay (the hypocrites who bank secretively in Suisse).

Despite the eloquent opinion of Sophie Cunningham –

'The image takes the old adage that sex sells though that, in itself, isn’t the problem to my mind. What I’m not keen on is that it’s an incredibly passive and vulnerable image that invites imagined violation and is a bit of a ‘fuck you’ to women who want to buy the book. I’d also note that it gets tiresome that in the old ’sex sells’ line, it’s usually women’s body’s who do the selling, and disembodied bits of them at that' ...

being printed right there on Crikey for all commentors to read, my pal Bwca Brownie was flamed for daring to suggest Emperor Cave wears as little as the poor bloodied Bunny.

Recently at a bloggers house I saw his Leonard Cohen DVD documentary where N.E.Cave is asked for his opinion (see? he is everywhere) and mentions being impressed that a girl in his country home town had a Cohen album (this must have been prior to 1976 and she probably bought the LP mail-order from where I worked at Dr.Pepper's Records in Collins Street.) and that it had influenced him for life.

I thought at the time The Real Story is That Girl In Warracknabeal.

the worst thing ...

The worst thing you can do to anybody is deprive them of your presence, and abandonment occurs in more than several forms. The last time I spoke with the late Mr Howard, we were walking up the Acland Street hill at the end of a weekday in 1996, a long amiable chat while I marvelled at his long spidery swift legs. For several years I was close to his work and (except for the very first two (some hall and then the Swinny student union gig) I saw him every single time he played a Melbourne gig with The Boys Next Door - from the Tiger Lounge 1978 to the Hearts London Farewell gig 1981. When the band got on the plane after that, I can clearly recall going for dinner in a South Yarra restaurant and being unable to eat as I felt so fearful of how our little quintet would cope. I feel that bad now. Rowland was a highly intelligent and genuinely good person, so I really, really wish he had not deprived us of his presence. Bless your soul dear RSH, bless your soul.

THE Rolling Stone

1. In the beginning, Brian Jones asked Mick Jagger if he would like to join HIS band.
2. Brian was a masterful and innovative musician.
3. The dreadful behaviour which pissed-off the other Stones,

was clearly an undiagnosed brain disease.
4. Resentful of Brian's hedonistic lifestyle which they witnessed while renovating his house,

some low-class builders murdered him.

There's a book by Terry Rawlings you should read.

IT inspired a film, and today

some new evidence.

(The Terry Rawlings book linked above, describes all the erratic behaviour which unfortunately caused the other Stones, and his various partners, to give up trying to cope with Brian.)

It sounded to me like a rerun of the Dudley Moore situation:
On 30 September 1999, Moore announced that he was suffering from the terminal degenerative brain disorder progressive supranuclear palsy, some of whose early symptoms were so similar to liquor intoxication" (from the wiki on D.M.)

"Officially, Jones drowned, aged 27, in his pool at Cotchford Farm, Hartfield, East Sussex, on July 2, 1969, allegedly "under the influence of drink and drugs".
An inquest recorded a verdict of death by misadventure, even though the post-mortem report said there were no illegal drugs in the star’s body, just the equivalent of three-and-a-half pints of beer."

His fans will be pleased if this new investigation removes the impression that

he fell in his pool while Out Of His Head.

The Killer makes it to 74

Goodness Gracious! Great Balls Of Fire
There's A Whole Lotta Shakin' Goin' On
as we wish a Happy Birthday to

Jerry "The Killer" Lee Lewis.

He's A Real Wild Child and 74 today.

He played Sydney's White City arena in 1970 and I was there (now wishing I could remember more than that it was just a rockin good time)
This 1959 photo from his appearance in a Melbourne radio station studio.
I guess their toes are tappin' ... or they are repressed by societal mores of the era. God knows, but bless you we know you still rock out dear Jerry Lee.

Many Happy Returns also to
Mick B.N.D.Harvey, and
Laurence J Richards, legendary Melbourne Music Promoter who, as well as booking Radio Birdman at his Richmond Tiger Lounge in 1978, ran The Crystal Ballroom and booked a sold-out Daddy Cool concert in Hamilton while he was still at school.

09-09-09

NINE
Deep Space NINE
The Law Of NINES
Revolution No: 9
and he was born on the 9th -

dear Dr. Winston O'Boogie said of 'Revolution No. 9'

"I think it was the best thing I've ever done".

(I should have cropped the murderer out of that picture. dear John.)

The Art of Chris Farlowe

Rhythm and Blues was the music of

Sixties MODS, and the soulful

Farlowe got as close to the black heart of R&B

as any white-boy could.

The Art of Chris Farlowe was released December 1966.

on Andrew Loog Oldham's incestuous IMMEDIATE Records label.

When we weren't at our typing jobs in the Melbourne CBD, or

dancing in our Prue Acton mini-dresses at The Catcher* and The Thumpin' Tum*,

we were drinking cheap cider and playing that Farlowe vinyl into onion rings.

These are the tracks that epitomise 1967 for me:

Side 1

What Becomes of the Broken Hearted

We're Doing Fine
Life is But Nothing
Paint It, Black
Cuttin' In
Open the Door to Your Heart
Out of Time.
Side 2
North South East West
You're So Good For Me
It Was Easier to Hurt Her

(co-written by Jerry Ragavoy who also wrote Stay With Me Baby, one of The Great R&B songs of all time)
I'm Free
I've Been Loving You Too Long

(this track has great rock-cello backing)
Reach Out (I'll Be There)
Ride On, Baby

We LOVED this album (still do).

You can find YuToobs of Farlowe and be rewarded.

We knew nothing about him at all back then, beyond the liner notes, except that it seemed the most wonderful music and people who could ignore it, mystified us.

*The Catcher (In The Rye) 471 Flinders Lane Melbourne, uber-hip Mod hangout with Members, founded by photographer Ron Eden and Graham Geddes.

*The Thumpin' Tum 50 Lt.Latrobe St Melbourne, founded by Ken Moate and Ken Minogue and was ultra-hip while they ran it in the 1960's. There was no better place or time to be a teenage girl.