Sound Alikes

[Len911]

Mojo, thanks but I wasn't the one who mentioned Jan and Dean,lol!!

She lost the Ford one but I think I saw that she got $400,000 from Young and Rubicom, but it's so hard to keep up with the appeals and what's pending. It does though sort of bring up the idea that if her background singer could sound authentic enough to sue, it begs the question, that maybe she didn't really have anything that skillful or unique in the first place or whether or not her background singer maybe was the divine Miss M's voice (I believe she got sued on that one, because there was another divine miss M,lol). I am surprised the background singer didn't sue because she was probably the most skilled, able to sing her part and Bette's but only getting a small percentage and none of the notoriety or fame that Miss M got.

[rnrmachine]

All the cover bands I have seen/heard... it's not hard to find singers that can sing just like certain singers. I have heard Queensryche copies, Journey, Skid Row, Ozzy, Pearl Jam, STP, Led Zep, etc... and those are the ones just off the top of my head.

For every excellent original band I heard, before becoming nationally famous, I have heard easily 100+ amazing cover bands. And that is only about a 10 year window. Finding a singer that can cover amazing performances is so much easier then finding a singer that can do an original amazing performance.

Just my experiences... not like I grew up in LA or NY so it could be much different in those places... I grew up in the Philly area.

Rob

[nick.moxsom]

I can quote an example of a worldwide smash hit from the early 80's (I worked with the British writer and have original demos in my possession with me singing) where the record company had to settle out of court with a US songwriter because the UK hit shared one word in the title with the previously-written US song. The suggestion was that the person who helped the US songwriter record his song, being my brother, MUST have sent me a tape of it, from which my friend wrote the UK hit. No such exchange ever took place. It was pure serendipity.

At the time we didn't have "no-win-no-fee" lawyers in the UK, so this scenario was very unlikely to occur (unless a writer was exptremely rich already, in which case, why would you bother?). The irony was, the US writer's song was an exact copy of the chord sequence of a previous Fleetwood Mac hit, yet he ended up with the bucks, and his song never needed to be heard by anyone outside court. In the UK we are now suffering from a disease you in the US have had for many years – lawyers dictate what happens, and only if there's money to be made. Meanwhile, innocent, genuine creators' reputations get dragged through the mud and their names besmirched. I can never be sure I'm not on a blacklist somewhere. Nice business we're in!

[Len911]

The good news Nick is that if you were on such a blacklist there would probably be attorney's soliciting you to remove you from the list, for a fee of course.

[mojobone]

Mojo, thanks but I wasn't the one who mentioned Jan and Dean,lol!!

Yeah, sorry 'bout that, Tom. (it was fret17's comment I was referring to) You 'name and numbers' guys all look alike on the internet....maybe invest in an avatar?

[mojobone]

All the cover bands I have seen/heard... it's not hard to find singers that can sing just like certain singers. I have heard Queensryche copies, Journey, Skid Row, Ozzy, Pearl Jam, STP, Led Zep, etc... and those are the ones just off the top of my head.

For every excellent original band I heard, before becoming nationally famous, I have heard easily 100+ amazing cover bands. And that is only about a 10 year window. Finding a singer that can cover amazing performances is so much easier then finding a singer that can do an original amazing performance.

+1 to the above. When I opened for Molly Hatchet some years ago, they had one original member (the guitarist) who'd kept the bus, the PA and the rights to the name, and an amazing singer named Bobby something from Kansas, and they sounded 100% Molly Hatchet. This other night while opening for a now defunct Nashville band I won't name, we spotted the headliner's bass player standing next to the mixing board holding up his cell phone while we were playing "Hell, Yeah" by Montgomery/Gentry; we later asked the sound guy what's up, he says the guy had Eddie Montgomery hisself on the phone listening to us doing their song. The kicker? A couple months later I watched 'em -M/G, that is, butcher it pretty bad on Regis & Kelly. (in all fairness, it was way early in the morning, by musician time) Thing is, we'd had to eighty-six about five songs that were originally done by the (you guessed it) aforementioned headliner that same night. My opinion, they played 'em a little better than we did, heh.

John Mellencamp tells a story about walking into a club and hearing a bar band butchering "I Need A Lover (That Won't Drive Me Crazy) He says he thinks about that every time he's tempted to over-complicate a song he's writing; I don't know what's worse, hearing a cover band mess up your song, or hearing 'em do it better than you.

I think I'd have to say it's even harder to produce a new version of a cover song and make it your own.

[fret17]

Mojo, thanks but I wasn't the one who mentioned Jan and Dean,lol!!

Yeah, sorry 'bout that, Tom. (it was fret17's comment I was referring to) You 'name and numbers' guys all look alike on the internet....maybe invest in an avatar?

It took me a week just trying to get a link to my hosting page when I started....lol
I gave up trying an avatar....but I loved the movie!

[rnrmachine]

Hey Mojo,

Interesting story there... I don't know what would be worse either. LOL I suppose I would hope for better and it sells well so I can at least get paid for it.

Rob

[riHDer]

Hey, sorry I haven't posted the song that I started this thread with but I've been a member for 4 years and never figured out
(or forgot) how to find the link for a song on my profile page. Can someone help me out here so I can get the link up here?
Thanks.
John

[mojobone]

The info is here:



http://forums.taxi.com/topic25079.html