Here is my music site http://www.myspace.com/bruceshakmanoverdrive
The first few songs were professionally recorded at Prairie Sun Recording Studio in Cotati CA. and it's modern rock. I sing and play some guitar. The last couple are acoustic and are more like Beatlesque. They were recorded in my basement.peace and good listening. bruce

...are some of my biggest musical and philosophical influences. If you want to check out something new, yet familiar, pay me a visit at...

www.myspace.com/thecaptainmidnightband

www.captainmidnightband.com

www.myspace.com/asiftrio

Dr. T of the Art Punk Band

I am very interested in the answer to Brother Martin's question about covering songs. Some of you will recall, that in Sept. he asked:

"Here's the thing....the fat cats have been tightening up the intellectual property laws, and I can no longer just post Beatles songs without paying some agency in New York, even though I am not selling them, just making them available for free download...I have direct agreements with Richard Thompson and with Kate Wolf's estate that it's OK for me to post my covers of their songs....is this permission implicit with the Dead's work (along with taping), or do I need to ask somebody?"

I think the legal issues here are tricky. When bands sell albums with cover songs, part of the revenues go to the songwriter or company within the music industry that manages the property rights to the song. When bands perform perform cover songs at performances, or a song is played on the radio or Music services like Rhapsody or Napster, my understanding is that some revenues are provided to the songwriter as well--x cents per stream, download, etc. I think state licensing fees for musical performances might also provide revenues back to the song management company.

I think the taping at Dead shows, which the band actively encouraged--and helped endear them to many a listener--is different. They chose not to exercise their (legal and potentially enforceable) rights to uses of their performances in order to encourage music sharing. In doing so, they showed listeners how they valued community over profit. It is one reason they are legends in the music world.

Cover songs are numerous on Myspace and You Tube, I presume without any compensation to the songwriter--but I think a legal dispute is still on-going related to this, and who knows how this may turn out? Because of the uncertainty about this issue, my band decided to only place originals on our myspace page (myspace/artpunkband) or our You Tube page. But I would prefer to have a mix of originals and covers--we love playing Ripple, Sugaree, Uncle John's Band, US Blues, and Box of Rain, as well as a variety of Kinks, Beatles, Dylan, Neil Young covers.

Copyrights do expire, and songs eventually become part of the public domain--when anyone can use--but this takes a long time, especially in the United States. In Europe, I think, copyrights expire after 50 years, but in the US copyrights remain in effect for songs written in 1923 or later. There are some exceptions when songs are placed on the public domain by the writer---and there are websites where you can look up if a song is on the Public Domain. Two songs that we cover and have recorded versions of are Shady Grove and Lord Franklin (Pentangle): these songs, I believe, were written long before 1923 and are listed as public domain songs, so we would not have concerns about using these songs.

I think it is a shame that property rights on songs are enforced to this extent and remain in effect for so long. We had recorded a song "Electric Cottenfields" that was adapted from the old Ledbelly song (1941), but done with a rough electric guitar wall of sound effect. It was only about 40 seconds long--but we decided not to take a chance with copyright enfringement after seeing the copyright was still in effect. We took it off before the album was placed on line. We were going to put another song "Jet Plane Blues" on the album-- which is basically the old folk song done in a minor electric blues format--try it--you might find that this works well. But "Jet Plane" is still under copyright protection as well, so we did not include it.

The copyright issue was one reason we are now participating with the Creative Commons Music Community---the music site is Jamendo.com. All music placed on line is always 100% free for streaming or downloading, and all participating musicians agree to loosen the copyright restrictions over the music they place on line to encourage sharing. Others are always free to copy, share, or cover their music. You might find some interesting music on the Jamendo site to cover. So check it out. And if you do, please listen or download (always free) our new album, "Uncommon Creations", by "The Art Punk Band" on Jamendo.com. A direct link to our free album download on Jamendo is also on our myspace/artpunkband page. Hope to catch up with you there one of these days.

Thanks

Dr. T of the Art Punk Band

HELP! I Need to play out more. I'm performing with The JFP about once a month at Beau's Bar in Greenlawn, LI. Check out band at www.thejfp.com and click "audio". We Need More Gigs and Bigger Crowds so we can make MORE MONEY! Reach me at garykeys88@optonline.net. I'm sure we could work out a deal!