flight of the conchords

my new favorite wierd band.....

singing the same song

i was going to write about avril lavigne's problems with writing a song that turns out to have already been written. however, i need to think about this a little longer, since a blogger i very much admire has already written on the same subject.

http://culturalsnow.blogspot.com/

no matter. a few hours of cogitating and i'll be back.

and here i am.

so this is what i think. we listen to LOTS and LOTS of songs over our lifetime. I know this is true because an obscure song from the 60's can come on the radio, a song i didn't even like, and i will start singing along, and know every word. if i were a song writer, how would i know what came from my own creativity and what came from the vast well of songs i have heard? some might be obvious, but others could be so obscure that, if pointed out to the songwriter, she or he might be completely surprised. and of course defiant. or defensive.

i don't know. i think these cases need to find an actual conscious attempt by one songwriter to steal the work of another songwriter. if the chord progressions are the same (duh, how hard is that?) and the lyrics have similarities, that doesn't prove intent. okay, that's the word i want - intent. did George Harrison intend to steal and did Avril intend to steal? did they sit in a little room, the door closed tight against the world and said, "oh i love this riff/chord progression/lyric and i will use it my song and no one will ever know." if they did, sue them. if they just used the forces of deep and rich memory, then thank them for bringing some old song to the fore, and go on your way.

one last point - when Dani California came out (RHCP) everyone pointed out how very much like Tom Petty's Mary Jane's Last Dance it was. do you know what happened? tons of people downloaded the Petty song (as did i) and so Tom made a few bucks off the renewed interest in an old song. and, as far as i know, he hasn't sued anybody.

there, there

I cannot even read the front page of the LA Times anymore. Libby gets a pardon, Cheney is a rogue politician, our mayor has an affair (which i don't care about, but the moralizing public does and so he's ruined), and there are more contractors working in Iraq than soldiers. I didn't even read that last article, but then I find I can't read anything about Iraq. It's all too painful and quite reminds me of the Vietnam war. Look, I'm even using upper-case letters in this post, so obviously, I'm upset.

And if I turn to the California section, I get what I call the "dead baby" news. One story after another about kids dying in car accidents, at the hands of family members, in swimming pools, in hot cars. Also too depressing.

So I read the Calendar and then I feel remiss, because those asshole owners of the Times have decided that people in LA don't need foreign news, that they just need entertainment news. And here I am, proving them right.

But it's not that I want entertainment news and don't want foreign news. I just can't take the feeling of helplessness whenever I have to confront more of the ineptness and evilness of this administration, and the horrors of the Iraq war. There's always that tendency to say, "somebody needs to do something." I just don't know who that somebody is, and I don't know what I can do (besides the money I send to organizations). So I will read Calendar, and the comics, and do the sudoku until 2008 when hopefully a new president will rise from the ashes of this current administration and offer hope.

on itunes right now: incongruously, the white stripes, "hotel yorba"