New Silverchair video: Straight Lines

Well, the video looks like something I'd expect from The Spice Girls or Cher, but I liked the song "Straight Lines" a while back when Tankboy posted it, and I think I like it more now. At the time he referred to Silverchair as "the poor man's Nirvana (even poorer than Bush, if you can believe that)" but I think a Coldplay/Keane comparison is more proper now. Our boys're all growns up. Do yourself a favor and don't give up on the track before the 3 minute mark.

The new Silverchair record Young Modern comes out July 24 in the US.

**Update** There's a much higher quality video available for streaming here, but it was crashing some browsers.

Denoument: Mike Doughty is forgiving

Because what good is a story without an ending?

Subject:	Please be nice to Maïdi Roth.
Body:	We've been communicating in Frenglish, and she's being very cool. We're gonna sort this out. I am so happy that so many people have been jumping to my defense. Most awesome. I am lucky to be with you. Mike

All's well that ends well, I say. Mike Doughty is a class act, and Ms. Roth, it would appear, is saving some face. Chances are that someone else ganked the music on her behalf and she never knew about it.

[Mike Doughty @ MySpace]

Is Avril Lavigne a thief?

This one's a little less obvious and blatant than the Mike Doughty case, and also a little further along in that lawyers are involved.

Play the video above and decide for yourself if Avril (or the people who write her songs for her) ripped off obscure 70's pop-rockers The Rubinoos*. Nicholas Carlin, the lawyer representing Rubinoos songwriter/founder Tommy Dunbar, certainly thinks she did.

"She's made a lot of money off of my client's song," Carlin said by phone from northern California, where the claim was filed.

"The entire song is not the same, they have different bridges, but the heart and soul of her song is directly taken from our client's song."

Terry McBride, Avril's manager and head honcho at Nettwerk (who seem, above all other management companies, to get it) is pissed:

Lavigne's manager, Terry McBride, scoffed at the charges, calling the suit "baseless" and little more than a "case of legal blackmail."

"Avril's a great songwriter and she's proving it over and over and over again," McBride said from Vancouver, where he runs Nettwerk Music Group.

But here's the thing: a song doesn't need to be an exact copy for a judge to decide there has been an infringement, and it's anything but an exact science. And even though McBride has gone so far as to hire musicologists (Where do I get that job? -Ed.) that have sided with him and called the Rubinoos claim baseless, he is considering settling out of court to save some cash.

He noted that a similar claim against his client Sarah McLachlan about 10 years ago cost roughly $500,000 to defeat in court. When Nettwerk tried to recoup the costs from the plaintiffs, they declared bankruptcy, he said.

Veteran entertainment lawyer Paul Sanderson said copyright suits are common in the music business and are often settled out of court.

"There used to be a saying in the industry: 'Where there's a hit, there's a writ,' " said Sanderson, a Toronto lawyer who used to represent Lavigne and whose current clients include Chantal Kreviazuk and Ron Sexsmith.

"It really is about the money. If someone thinks that they have a possibility of making some money out of the claim and there's money in the pipeline that's been earned by a song ... there's money there to argue about."

McBride said his current legal battle is "an unfortunate part of this business."

"We will try and settle for costs that will be less than defending," he said. "Emotionally, it sucks. But at the end of the day you have to take that out of it."

The bottom line for me is this: what are the chances Avril Lavigne, who you would have trouble convincing me has even a modicum of cultural awareness beyond her own years, has ever heard this obscure track? I can't really see her combing through the used vinyl racks at her local record store and being taken by the snappy name of the Rubinoos. If she had written "Girlfriend" all by herself, this would probably just be coincidence. But the suit also names her songwriting partner "Dr. Luke" (Are you serious? -Ed.), whose CV suggests a bit more awareness.

Here's how this thing's going to go down:

• McBride settles out of court but maintains his client's integrity.
  
• Avril claims complete ignorance of the Rubinoos existence (probably true).
• Dr. Luke makes mental note that no matter how obscure a song from his childhood seems to be, if he makes a hit out of it for some pop-tart, someone is going to come a-knocking for an easy payday.
• The Rubinoos, encouraged by more press over this case than the band ever got for their music, go on tour. Nobody cares.
  

[CANOE]


* I'm always a little bit surprised when bands like The Rubinoos have MySpace pages. I know everyone has one at this point, but still. The Rubinoos have one. What a world.

UNKLE - Burn My Shadow video

I haven't been paying much attention to U.N.K.L.E. for a while. Pretty much since Psyence Fiction, actually. So long, in fact, that it appears they've dropped the periods right out of the name without me knowing -- It's just UNKLE now. But this video is completely awesome. Consider me interested again.
Burn My Shadow

Add to My Profile | More Videos

That's Goran Visnjic in the video, of ER fame. Ian Astbury of The Cult fame on vox. UNKLE's War Stories is out in the US July 24.

Mike Doughty gets his rock ganked

A MySpace bulletin from the unspeakably good Mike Doughty:

Subject:	French lady ganks my rock!
Body:	Listener Sigz, in France, hipped me to this. A French singer/songwriter named Maidi Roth has done, uh, I spose you could say a very faithful homage to "I Hear the Bells." Check out this extremely ballsy song called "Aprés Toi". Most of all, I have to say, I'm happy that somebody in France is listening. Thanks Sigz!

In this day and age, you have to be out of your goddamn mind to lift a song that was on Grey's Anatomy of all shows (even my Mom knows this song) and not think anyone will notice. But Maidi Roth truly seems to have done exactly that.

Listen to "I Hear The Bells" at Mike Doughty's MySpace.

Then listen to "Aprés Toi" here.

Come on.

**UPDATE** So the song has now been disabled on Maidi Roth's MySpace page, but if you still haven't heard the ripoff, here's a YouTube video for it that will also probably be disabled soon:

Just saying

You really should go to Good Weather for Airstrikes and download the latest M3 mix. It is with a completely straight face that I tell you I pooped my pants a little bit about halfway through. Ok a lot.

Does iTunes need Universal?

I'd say the answer is no. And especially not if Universal CEO Doug Morris is after what I think he's after: a cut of iPod revenues.

Sure, it worked on Microsoft. M$ was willing to bend over backwards to procure major label participation in its Zune store, an essential accompaniment to the launch of what many in the blogging community affectionately refer to as the "shiny brown turd." Universal actually held a few cards in those negotiations.

But now they've gotten cocky, and it's going to blow up in their unthinkable faces. Steve Jobs is the first to admit that most iPods contain very low ratios of iTMS-bought music to music secured in other ways. And I don't think you'd have to buy him too many drinks before he happily confided in you that Apple makes almost nothing on the iTunes store, compared to their iPod revenue.

Please believe me when I tell you that Steve Jobs is not losing any sleep over the fact that The Bloodhound Gang's catalog may disappear from iTunes.

The bottom line: Apple has a place in the future of music distribution/acquisition. Universal owns a lot of IP and that'll sustain them indefinitely, but their place as real players in the future remains in question. This latest (mis)step does little other than highlight how much they still don't get it.

[New York Times]