Who in the hell is GEMA?

I had intended to fire another shot across the bow of the Music Publishers Association of America. You know, the turkey’s threatening legal action against OLGA, the On Line Guitar Archives. But, in browsing the net, researching stories, I came across an article from Germany that I found both interesting and scary.

A collection rights society is responsible for collecting fees for the performance and mechanical reproduction of musical or other copyrighted works. The MPA, for example, represents the copyright holders who publish sheet music and tab, and see to it that everyone pays for the privilege of publishing copyrighted works in any format, whether for profit or pleasure.

A collection “rights” outfit in Germany is currently negotiating a deal with manufacturers of PC’s whereby they will pay a “levy” to that society, GEMA, on the sale of all new computers sold in that country.

Their justification is that PC’s allow users to make private copies of text, audio and video data distributed over the internet. Since private copying can’t be stopped, they want levies to be paid on new computers in the same way as it is now paid on CD’s, DVD’s, audio cassettes, etc. The money collected, theoretically, will be distributed to the creators of the copyrighted works.

And, before I go much further, I should point out that the collection of a levy is a done deal; the sticking point is how much the levy will be. The organization representing the manufacturers of the PC’s has suggested 15 Euros ($20.00 Cdn) per unit. GEMA is asking for over 36 Euros per unit ($50.00 Cdn).

But, even the most cursory investigation reveals some very serious concerns with this idea. Among the major flaws is a presumption of guilt. GEMA is assuming that every computer purchased will be used to make illegal copies of music, movies and computer applications. This is not the case. And people who download, store or distribute perfectly legal material via the internet should not be required to pay extortion money to anyone for the right to do so.

For example, one of my favourite sites is Project Gutenberg. There you can download free copies of some of the classics of literature; Robert Louis Stevenson, Sir Walter Scott, Victor Hugo, James Fenimore Cooper, Edgar Rice Burroughs, etc, etc. And, there are probably thousands of free computer applications being distributed freely and legally under various licenses across the internet. Should users be required to pay a fee for downloading and copying this legal material?

No one should be fooled by the suggestion that it is the manufacturer who is paying the levy, not the consumer. That’s a no brainer. The additional cost will be passed on to the consumer, whether or not they use their PC for an illegal purpose.

Then there’s the fact that there is already a levy on the blank media, the CD’s, DVD’s, etc. That’s already true in Canada, as well as in Germany. And, in Germany there is an additional levy on the device used to create the media, CD and DVD burners, for example. Adding a levy on top of that is going a little overboard.

And, if the levy itself isn’t going overboard, then the demand by GEMA that the levy should be retroactive to 2002 certainly has to be considered overkill. Estimates are that between 2002 through 2005, there were 13 million computers sold in Germany. The estimated cost of a retroactive levy is 350 million Euros; that’s roughly half a billion dollars Canadian.

Canada’s copyright legislation is being discussed in Parliament as I write this post. Given some of the things happening in the world of copyright restriction, enforcers such as the RIAA, the MMPA, the MPA, and GEMA in Germany, Canadians should be paying a whole lot more attention to what’s happening. There’s a lot more than a few bucks involved.

It’s a matter of personal freedom. Think about it for a minute. Every time you buy a blank CD to record a video of little Bobby’s birthday party, you’re paying a levy to some group you’ve likely never heard of, simply because that blank CD could be used to illegally copy restricted material.

Most people pay little attention to copyright laws, because they don’t think their personal freedoms are jeopardized by copyright restrictions; they’re wrong. And, given the material I’ve collected while researching this topic, I’ll probably be ranting about this bloody madness in future posts.

Weird & wacky county songs (Part 2)

Country music has been around for a long time. Most people give Jimmie Rodgers and the Carter Family credit for the creation of the genre back in 1926 -1927

Both those talents recorded old ballads, often with a new twist, before they got around to writing their own songs. However, neither of these icons can be blamed for the song titles populating the music scene since their demise.

Critics pan country for using the same tired cliches; writing songs about getting drunk, getting laid and going to jail. Admittedly, there are some themes used more or less consistently in country music. Country love songs, for example, seem to follow one of several formulae:

• Boy meets girl, boy loses girl, boy gets drunk and cries in his beer
  
• Boy meets girl, boy marries girl, boy gets drunk and cries in his beer
  
• Boy meets girl, girl loses boy to another girl, girl gets drunk and cries in her beer
  
• Boy meets girl, girl loses boy to another man, girl gets drunk and cries in her beer (Sorry folks, it’s true. Some guy wrote a song called, “I Fell For Her, She Fell For Him, He Fell For Me”
  
• Boy meets girl, boy catches girl cheating and shoots her winding up in jail before he can get drunk and cry in his beer
  

But not all country songs are love songs. For every song about some guy falling for a pretty girl, there’s one about some guy getting saddled with an ugly one. It’s just that songs about ugly women rarely reach the top of the country charts.

How many people have a copy of Ronnie Prophet’s Greatest Hits album, with Ronnie doing, “I Should Have Used A Brown Paper Sack”? Come on people. Give me a break. I can’t be the only one who bought that album. But, as bad as it was, Ronnie didn’t get as vicious as the guy who wrote, “I Wouldn’t Take Her To A Dog Fight (I’m Afraid She’d Win)” or that other classic put-down, “You're The Reason Our Kids Are So Ugly”.

And, I’ve got very little time for guys who want to cry in their beer even when they get the girl. Mickey Gilley started it off with a song called, “Don’t All The Girls Look Prettier At Closing Time.” Wiilie Nelson piped in a few years later with a song called, “I Went To Bed At 2 With A 10 (And Woke Up This Morning At 10 With A 2)”.

I have absolutely no pity for those guys. Everybody knows drinking and chasing women go hand in hand. But guys, if you got that drunk, you got what you deserved. And if you found the situation so distasteful, maybe you should have gone home alone and hummed a few bars of, “At the Gas Station of Love, I Got the Self Service Pump”. Ok, that’s not country, it’s a weird Al Yankovic song, but it fits well. From a personal point of view, when “She Looks Good Thru The Bottom Of My Shot Glass”, it’s time to call it a night.

And, I guess it should be pointed out that it’s not only guys who wake up in the morning disappointed. How about Deana Carter when she begs the question, “Is This Why I Shaved My Legs?” She doesn’t sound a bit like a happy camper to me.

And, I guess I should offer a word of advice to the girl who sang, “All The Guys Who Turn Me On, Turn Me Down”. Try getting to the bar a little later in the evening, preferably near closing time. And remember, all the girls look prettier through the bottom of a shot glass, so buy him a few drinks. He’ll love you for it and that’s what you’re after, after all. Or, you could follow the advice of Georgia White, an old blues artist who used to do a song called, "If I Can't Sell It I'll Keep Sittin' On It (Before I Give It Away). Yes, the song was about peddling ass.

Another staple of the country genre is songs about the womanizer who runs off with your woman sending you to the nearest bar to cry in your beer. Songs like, “He’s Got A Way With Women And He Just Got Away With Mine.” Or that other old country standard, “It Took A Helluva Man To Take My Anne, But It Sure Didn't Take Him Long “ or the one by Jim Eberhart that says, “My Wife Ran Off With My Best Friend (And I Sure Do Miss Him)“

And, country singers always have a word or two to say about nagging wives; songs like, “It's Hard to Kiss the Lips at Night (That Chew Your Ass Out All Day Long)

Wow. Reading all these great song titles has suddenly filled me with inspiration. I think I’ll grab my guitar and write myself a country song. I’ve already got the title. I’ll call it, “I’m Gonna Put A Bar In The Back Of My Car And Drive Myself To Drink.” No, maybe not. I think that one’s already been done.

But I will return to this topic at another time.

The Torching of Todd's Outhouse

It’s Gone, Boys. It’s Gone
By Matt Todd

The night was cold,
The moon was full,
Snow lay on the ground
Some drunken bum came stumbling home
And burned our shithouse down.
We didn’t mind
His going in
We never locked the door
But he never put out his cigarette
He just dropped it on the floor

Chorus:
It’s gone, boys, it’s gone
The news is going round
Some tobacco smoking, drunken fiend
Has burned Todd’s shithouse down.

I’ll bet I know
Who did the deed
My brother Tom did shout
‘Twas that drunken weasel down the road
Let’s burn the bastard out
But Da said no,
Here’s what we’ll do
While the snow’s still on the ground
Dump the porcelain pot at Willie’s
‘Cause our shithouse has burned down
Repeat Chorus:

When the frost unfroze
We built a hut,
Dug a new hole in the ground
Still cussin’ that miserable son-of-a-bitch
Who burned our shithouse down
Repeat Chorus:

There she was; up in flames

Since the music industry shut down OLGA (On Line Guitar Archives) with threats of legal action, free tab and song lyrics are a little harder to find. I’ve found a couple of sources who appear to have reached some sort of compromise with the blood sucking legal beagles of the record companies and the music publishers. Not that I’m taking sides, you understand. The money grubbing bastards have a perfectly legal right to squeeze poor, old guitar pickers like myself for every last dime. Morally, of course, it’s another issue.

One of the better sites still active, is Roughstock.com; check them out if you’re looking for country tabs or lyrics. Recently, I was on this site looking for the words to an old Bobby Bare tune. I spotted a song called “The Little Brown Building”, recorded by Bare in the early sixties .

The little brown building he sang about was, of course, an outhouse. An outhouse? You know, the little house out behind the big house where you went to relieve yourself. What do you mean, ”Relieve yourself of what?” Where you went to take a shit, dammit. Yes, that too. But, you could do that behind any bush in the yard as long as the neighbours couldn’t see you. Anyway, the first verse of the song goes;
They passed an ordinance in the town
They said we’d have to tear it down
That little old shack, out back
So dear to me
Though the Health Department said
It’s day was over and dead
It will live forever in my memory

It was intended, I recall, as a novelty song. But I also recall thinking at the time “What’s so funny about an outhouse?” You see, at the time the song debuted on radio, we still had ours. No, not the radio, the outhouse. Well, yes, we still had the old Marconi, but we’d stopped using it in favour of getting bleary-eyed watching Cheyenne and Sugarfoot on the big, new radio with the pictures on it. Anyway, another line from the song goes:
It wasn’t fancy built at all,
It had newspapers on the wall
It was air-conditioned in the winter time

Except for the newspaper on the wall bit, that line pretty much describes our outhouse. (We used our old newspapers to start the fire in the coal stove.) Our humble hut was made of barn board; the sizable cracks between boards letting those cold winter winds come whistling through.

Do not laugh. It was not funny. Have you ever had to deal with frost-bite on the ass?

Anyway, as I sat there humming the tune to myself, it brought back memories (as any good country song should) of a time long ago and far away. I think I was in grade eight, which would make it some time around 1957 or 1958.

It happened in the wee hours of the morning, while we were all snug in our beds. The coal stove in the kitchen was banked, the new oil-fired floor furnace turned up just enough to keep the ice off your ass and I was having sweet dreams about my buddy’s older sister Dorothy. That’s when the racket started.

Visions of Dorothy vanished as quickly as if someone had pressed the delete button on some extraterrestrial computer keyboard.

As I blinked my eyes open, wondering why the bedroom light was flickering, I could hear an engine revving up just outside the bedroom wall. It sounded like someone was getting ready to drive a big Sherman tank through the side of the house. It wasn’t a tank, of course, but rather the pumper truck from the local fire hall.

That’s when I noticed the bedroom light wasn’t on, and the light illuminating the room had an eerie red glow. It’s also when I heard my younger brother, Tom, exclaim from the lower bunk: “Holy shit! The shitter’s on fire.”

Even back then, he had a way with words.

I jumped off the top bunk, retrieved my chinos and ran towards the window. (Not much running to do in a small, 9 x 9 room.) I was busy watching the local volunteer fire department put out the raging inferno that was our outhouse when I realized I’d forgotten to check the floor for bodies. No. No. Not dead bodies. My siblings.

Although that may sound silly, when there’s two parents and five kids in a two bedroom house with no basement, you never know where you’ll find one. And a couple of them were very small bodies which created a trip hazard.

Anyway, they put the fire out and we all got back to bed. Unfortunately, I was unable to revive my dream of Dorothy. In the morning, we woke with the dawn to the smoldering remains of our beloved outhouse. Alas. This story has no happy ending.

We’ll ignore the snickers of the other kids at school when the details of the Todd’s terrible tragedy started making the rounds. “Oh, my God. They still have one of them?” Some were more sympathetic. “That’s a sin. They’ll have to walk all the way to town and use the one in the co-op.”

To appreciate the full gravity of the situation, run this scenario in your mind. Your toilet won’t flush. The plumber can’t make it until next spring. You’ve got a spouse and five kids. What are you going to do? No. No. Besides tear your hair out.

Exactly. Run to the neighbours.

Several years ago, I tried to put the incident to music, thinking it might make a good country song. It didn’t work out. I had a title and a verse, but I realized I’d need several verses just to explain to the uninitiated what an outhouse was and how it was used.

Think about it. What is an outhouse, after all? It’s a little hut that sits over a big hole in the ground. And the seat inside has a small hole in it that you sit on after dropping your drawers. There’s usually flies a buzzing and you can find the thing in the dark by following your nose.

Anyway, I’ll tell the tale of the torching of Todd’s outhouse, in verse, in my next post.