COPYRIGHT VIOLATION SPECIAL

Because there aren't enough lawsuits in music!

Much of my favorite music never had enough commercial appeal to attract legal action. Here's a notable exception.

In the wake of the unforeseen success of the soundtrack album for the summer comedy "Ghostbusters," somebody dropped a lawsuit on Ray Parker Junior, whose tailor-made Ghostbusters Theme sounded a lot like Huey Lewis And The News's then-recent radio hit "I Want A New Drug."

When the litigation story broke, the bitterness of my feeling for Huey and company colored everything. Huey's hit seemed to me to have been built substantially on Soul Finger by the Bar-Kays, a once cherished forty-five I'd subsequently lost in a move. The single had a sentimental value for me, a partial soundtrack to my first tentative boogaloos with the opposite sex (dancing school, I mean).

As it turns out, the picture's producers had edited the title sequence to Huey's hit record, showing the result to Parker with the express wish that he replicate the effect with new music. The judge found for the plaintiffs, and the chunk of money Parker had received for his one hit was decimated, like the bison of the plains.

Having recently picked up a record of Soul Finger, I am newly certain that it is the prototype for Huey's song.

I don't know how much of the damages made their way back to Huey and his mates, but I still like to imagine Huey hacking off a piece of that money and sending it to the Bar-Kays, all of whom, I do not doubt, would find good use for it.

Download these and compare:
GHOSTBUSTERS THEME - Ray Parker Junior
I WANT A NEW DRUG - Huey Lewis And The News
SOUL FINGER - Bar-Kays

Hey! Watching an ad on Comedy Central last night I heard a few moments from Soul Finger by the Bar-Kays. It was set on a bus or a city commute train and I heard just the distinctive multi-tonguing of the trumpet fanfare from this record. Something dot com. Maybe these youngsters will get paid at last, now that they're approaching retirement age.

Thanks to Anonymous for notifying UKEBOX that these mp3 links were misattributed. Much obliged, Podna.

Penelope Houston As I Knew Her Sound

Penelope Houston was the wisest, fairest bandleader I ever worked for. I started about twenty years ago and I was cut about ten years ago. Playing in her band I saw a lot of Europe, where for the most part we traveled in comfort and had great shows, and the US, where for the most part (God bless Pittsburgh) we traveled like parasites and performed for annoyed and insulted teens.

I miss the music, and I miss the comraderie. Here are two lovely acoustic keepsakes from the last part of my tenure in Her Band, which was pushed ever louder, first by Warner's, and then by the chefin herself. I was comically slow to catch on, but both label and artist agreed they would have to replace the staff (even me!) if they were to make a new, more accessible sound.

Anyway, Water Wheel is from the Euro-only release, Karmal Apple, and doesn't use the actual Her Band line-up. Our drummer, Kevin Mummey, and I on string bass, play with the song's composer Pat Johnson on guitar, who chimes in as Penelope sings his erotic love song. (Not her typical subject matter.) I got to write the song a string chart, which my enduring associate Julian Smedley executed on violin and octave violin.

Penelope and Pat

Trouble Walks By, written by Virginia Dare's brilliant Mary O'Neil, is a song piggybacked on Karmal Apple's pre-release single, Ride. Present are Penelope Houston and Her Band for real: Kevin and me, Eliot Nemzer on fifths-tuned steel string guitar, and Mel Peppas on mandolin. This is all played and sung together in real time in our little practice space under what was then Penelope's house in Bernal Heights. This is how I remember our band sounding. I think I'll have that little drink about now.

Water Wheel - Penelope Houston
Trouble Walks By - Penelope Houston and Her Band

One Minute Vacations

Below I've placed a link to a page offering an archive of minute-long environmental recordings, called "one minute vacations." It's part of a web site oxymoronically, but all the more appealingly, called Quiet American. Avail yourself of dozens of stereophonic "you are there" recordings of sonically distinctive locations on this planet. This site really has taken me away from my everyday reality more than once, and sometimes that's the most desirable thing of all.

LINK: One Minute Vacations (The site administrator emphatically suggests listening on headphones to the recordings posted there.) The entire enterprise appears to be the vital expression of a soul awestruck and intoxicated with the beauty of sound, one to whom I am increasingly grateful for this offering of love.