[ebick]

I always knew that there were issues with regard to royalties and the sale of recordings of cover material, but this is the first I have ever heard of such a thing on live performances. How could such a thing be policed? If I'm playing at the local pub's open Mic night and I play Scarlet Begonias, I'm supposed to have gotten prior permission? I mean, I can see where there is a difference between a nobody like me and a band that sells out large venues, but exactly where is the line?

As far as the McCartney thing, I think it started with "Yesterday"; a song that both he and John were in complete agreement that it was all Paul. Paul didn't like the fact that in certain media, the writing credit held only so many characters and so there were places where his name wasn't even mentioned. And I think he started asking Yoko only to switch the credit on that one song. When she refused, he became more aggressive with other songs.

According to Paul, there were actually only a few songs that he and John actually worked on together and that at one point, they each wrote a list of which songs they thought were exclusively theirs and that they were in virtually complete agreement.

[strumminsix]

Sorry if I broke the rules by posting.

If anyone wants anything feel free to email me.

I've already sent out a few emails to a bunch of people and would be happy to send out 1 group email a day to whomever has asked for some tunes. In it I'll fill all the requests the best I can so you'll get yours and a few others.

Just please put in the title RUKIND so I know it's not SPAM.

Take care gang!

[Cosmic C]

Hey Gregg, thanks for the explanation and your work in tracking all that stuff down. It would be better to have something and have done it right rather than to have them all go bye-bye because of legal issues. That would be bad for all of us and probably an unbelieveable headache for you guys. Thanks again.

[gr8fulbluz]

I am not sure this is where to post this, but here goes for your enjoyment and information.

I found this article on the MPA issue crackdown


ALSO a petition site on the issue.Sign Here

I dont use the tabs site much but for the occasional spot and i love this one
have fun, And long live rukind

[ghostofjerome]

i find it interesting that midnight moonlight is amongst the missing, yet other peter rowan songs (i.e. missippi moon, land of the navajo) are still posted on the sight. i am certainly not complaining, but am wondering about the inconsistancy, esp since i came to the site to get the one chord i can't remember in midnight moonlight lol

[phpbb]

What appears to be an inconsistency is actually a confusion between the song writer with the song publisher. More often than not, they are not the same people. If there is an inconsistency, it would be in posting them at all, but I feel that these are important enough to Jerry's work that I hope, just like the GD, that Peter Rowan or David Grisman would kindly ask me to take them down, and I would.

PS - For a tutorial on how to find this info, read my post above. To help you along, Peter Rowan is covered under BMI.

[marc420]

I understand that, I was referring to what mike said.

One of the wonderful and anarchistic things about the internet is that its virtually impossible to really erase anything. Everything that you've ever seen on the internet at anytime is usually archived somewhere out there. www.archive.org is a cool place to look, and the wayback machine referenced lets you search by address and find various archived versions of any web site by the date you want to look.

Besides, they've got lots of audience recorded dead shows in another section.

[prephippie]

These look familiar:
http://www.ogregod.com/tabs/Grateful_Dead.htm

[Mick]

I always knew that there were issues with regard to royalties and the sale of recordings of cover material, but this is the first I have ever heard of such a thing on live performances. How could such a thing be policed? If I'm playing at the local pub's open Mic night and I play Scarlet Begonias, I'm supposed to have gotten prior permission? I mean, I can see where there is a difference between a nobody like me and a band that sells out large venues, but exactly where is the line?

The whole thing depends on what you mean when you say "live performance". Since Scarlet Begonias is on the Mars Hotel album, it is a published work, and therefore it is in the public domain (which is different than being a public domain song, I can write more about that later, but I'll try to stay on topic here) which means that you are entitled to "fair use". Fair use means that you can sing and play that song to your heart's content for your "friends and family" as long as no one is obtaining any financial gain from the performance of the song. If you are playing in a band in a bar, there are clearly more people there than your friends and family, and the bar is using your performance to entice customers into the establishment where hopefully they will buy drinks and you are possibly getting paid for the performance, clearly this is not fair use. Generally, in this type of environment, the bar or other establishment where you are playing is obligated to buy a "site license" from an appropriate "PRO" to have live music performed on the premises, and if they do, then you are within the law to play cover tunes and even get paid for doing so. There are places here in NYC that have bands come and demand that they play "original music only", this is because they have chosen not to pay the site license and still wish to be in compliance with the law. The whole thing with restaurants not singing "Happy Birthday" to you on your birthday has to do with this, for them to legally do this (since Happy Birthday is a copyrighted work), they would need to buy a site license and they chose not to. Fear not though, when you sing it to your family members at home over a flaming cake, you are clearly within fair use.

There are some grey areas however. We have a block party on our street every few years. It has occurred to me that if the committee asked me and a few of my buddies to pull out the guitars and play a set (which would ALL be cover tunes), would this be legal without paying a site license. Since there would be a lot more than my regular "friends and family" there? I expect that most people knowledgable in this area would say that we are violating fair use from a letter-of-the-law standpoint. But from a spirit-of-the-law standpoint, I think we are OK as long as we are just jamming and singing for fun. Should we make up some business cards and pass them around at the party in an effort to drum up paid gigs at other parties and the like, I think we would be violating the letter and the spirit of the law.

[BuddhaG]

Mick, I've got a technical question for you based on what you just posted.

My friends recently got a gig at the Legion for Canadian Veterans (Canada's equivalent of a VFW lodge). They (we) are getting paid 100 bucks per performance between like 5 or 6 people to play cover songs and probably some originals at some point down the line.

We have only done this once so far but they invited us to come back in two weeks because everybody enjoyed it so much. It is a very loose affair with pretty much no expectations of us to be good. Of course messing up a classic song everybody knows can be really hilarious.

So my question is, are we going against the law? You may not be familiar with laws in Canada and I am not either but I suspect they have something similar in place. I guess I should ask the bar owner if they have a site license or not.

I honestly don't think anybody is going to come and sue our asses for showing our friends and some veterans a fun time by playing cover songs for ~20$ per performer.

What do you think?