Though it’s only April, this has already been a bad year for Western popular music in terms of deaths of important artists. The biggest one was David Bowie, but other deaths have included Glenn Frey of the Eagles, Paul Kantner and Signe Toly Anderson of Jefferson Airplane, Keith Emerson of Emerson, Lake and Palmer (considered by many to be the most technically proficient keyboardist in rock music), George Martin (the Beatles' producer and the man with perhaps the best claim to be the "fifth Beatle"), and Maurice White of Earth, Wind and Fire. Last week another name was added to the list, one as big as Bowie. I’m referring of course to Prince (or Prince Rogers Nelson, to give him his full name), who died unexpectedly last week at the age of 57.
As was the case with Bowie, I have to admit that my own music collection only contains a limited number of Prince albums, though there were several others I’d always intended to pick up if I ever saw them used (I can’t afford to buy much music new nowadays, unless it’s discounted). For a long time, the only Prince CDs I had were the two that make up the compilation The Hits. I later acquired Purple Rain, the album most commonly cited as his best, the second disc of Sign 'O' the Times, another acknowledged career highlight and an album I had a tape copy of in college (I’ve tried to find a used copy of the first disc ever since getting the first, but with no luck yet), and the later album Musicology. I’d also like to get a copy of 1999 if I ever come across a reasonably inexpensive one.
Back when I first got heavily into music in college, I was mostly into classic rock, so I tended to think of Prince as a good example of an artist I objectively considered brilliant and innovative but who had limited appeal to me subjectively, aside from a few songs that I loved even then, in contrast to more conventional rock artists like Journey or Styx. My tastes have fortunately broadened somewhat, so I’m if anything more likely to put on a Prince album than my Journey best-of compilation (though I still like a lot of Journey songs, especially “Don’t Stop Believing”), but it’s still true that I never got that deeply into Prince. In the wake of his death, I’ve been listening to some of the Prince CDs I have, and I have been even more impressed by them than I remember being (it's also only in the past few years that I've come to appreciate what a great guitarist he was), even if it’s still not likely that I’ll ever want to collect everything he ever did. One thing is for sure, though; there are enough Prince songs that I think are not just good but great to easily fill up a CD. The list below contains most of my favorites, though as is usual with these things, if I redid the list on another day it’d probably be slightly different. Since my exposure to his music has been mainly limited to the hits, there nothing really surprising here, and dedicated Prince fans could no doubt easily name a dozen worthy tracks that I didn’t even consider (because I’m not sufficiently familiar with them). No matter; this is my own subjective taste at work here. It’s enough to say that a CD with all these songs would sound really great.
The first four songs are the ones I’d usually name as my absolute favorite Prince songs, though naturally the order is subject to change, and several other songs could potentially break into the top ranks depending on my mood. Similarly, the rest of the songs are (very) roughly in order of preference, though especially in the second half of the list the order could easily be switched around. My own preferences among Prince’s songs are mostly about the music, the groove and the melody rather than the lyrics, though in some cases the lyrics are also a key attraction. Certainly my very favorite songs have some lyrics that I really like, and many of the others have some clever lines. Two songs, both from the Sign 'O' the Times album, deserve special mention in the lyric department. I like the title track’s unusually direct sociopolitical bent, though I have problems with a couple lines. The bit about the drug-taking cousin implies the inaccurate characterization of marijuana as a so-called “gateway drug” that was pushed so hard in the drug war, and the contrast made between poverty and spaceflight might be taken to imply that there is something wrong with pursuing the latter, when a much better contrast would be between poverty and military spending, or just consumer spending on useless junk (space exploration, on the other hand, brings many benefits in the long run, both tangible and intangible). Despite these quibbles, the song’s lyrics are well written, and deeper than is usual for Prince. “The Cross” is a song I like mostly for its music, including the vaguely Middle Eastern sounding rift running through it. I don’t share the religious sentiment Prince expresses in the lyrics, but it does make for an unusual contrast with most of his other lyrical themes. But as I said, with Prince in most cases what really grabs the listener is the music, and in all of the songs listed below, he outdid himself in that department.
I also included a selection of my favorite versions of Prince songs recorded by other artists, whether the songs were first performed by these artists (e.g. the Bangles’ “Manic Monday”) or were covers of songs previously performed by Prince or one of his various protégés (e.g., “I Feel for You” and “Nothing Compares 2 U”).
15 Favorite Songs by Prince
Purple Rain
1999
I Could Never Take the Place of Your Man [link is to a live version w. great guitar intro]
Little Red Corvette
Let’s Go Crazy
Raspberry Beret [audio of live version only]
When Doves Cry
Sign 'O' the Times
Diamonds and Pearls
Pop Life
7
Peach
Kiss
Musicology
The Most Beautiful Girl in the World
Why You Wanna Treat Me So Bad
Honorable Mentions: Starfish and Coffee (Prince/Susannah Melvoin), U Got the Look, I Would Die 4 U, Controversy, Delirious, The Cross, Adore, Cream
Favorite Prince Songs Recorded by Other Artists
Manic Monday The Bangles
Nothing Compares 2 U Sinead O’Connor
I Feel for You Chaka Khan
Yo Mister Patti LaBelle
Five Women Joe Cocker
Round and Round Tevin Campbell
Love…Thy Will Be Done (Prince/Martika) Martika
The Glamorous Life (Prince/Sheila E) Sheila E
Saturday, April 30, 2016
Thursday, March 31, 2016
Who Owns the Songs?
As I mentioned in a previous post, after recording a few special lunar new year shows for my radio program on Taiwanese popular music, I learned that because of copyright issues, some of the songs I had originally recorded couldn’t be broadcast. This particular problem is connected to a whole host of related issues, so I thought it was worth discussing in some detail.
Basically, in late January the radio station received a notice from a company that claimed to own the rights to or have exclusive licenses to songs owned by several mostly defunct (or at least not actively releasing new music) record companies. This company said that they had quit the intermediary performance-rights organizations (equivalent to BMI and ASCAP in the US) that handle most music copyrights in Taiwan and that anyone wanting to use the songs they held the rights to should contact them directly. The notice came with a list of all the songs they claimed ownership of or exclusive rights to. The list includes hundreds of songs, including most of those released by several record companies that were among the most prominent in the latter decades of the 20th century. Many of these companies did have policies of buying the rights to songs from the writers, so it is not implausible that someone who bought the companies or their assets could end up owning the rights. But in the case of some of the songs, the claim to ownership seems questionable, as I’ll explain later. Then there’s the question of whether record companies should be able to purchase total control over the rights to songs, which is another point I’ll come back to.
The immediate problem arose when the radio station apparently contacted the alleged holder of these copyrights about broadcasting the songs they owned. From what I was told by an artist, the standard charge for broadcasting a song is just a few NT dollars, or somewhere around a tenth of a US dollar. But apparently the copyright owner asked for NT$6000 (about US$200) to broadcast one song one time! Of course no radio station could possibly afford to pay that much, so asking for such a rate was essentially equivalent to refusing permission altogether. Aside from the immediate frustration of being forced to exclude all these songs from any shows I plan in the immediate future, this situation started a whole train of thought about both this specific situation and about its implications for copyright law and ownership of culture in general.
My first question was who the copyright owner in this particular instance was. There were actually three notifications sent to the radio station simultaneously in the name of two record companies – one a fairly prominent one called Jima Records (吉馬唱片) that released many Hoklo albums in the 1980s and 1990s and the other an obscure one – and a third company, and another notification in the name of the third company addressed to Taiwan’s largest KTV (karaoke) chain. But three of the notifications were issued from the same address and had the same contact person, and the contact person from the fourth (sent to the radio station by the more obscure record company) was listed as an additional contact person on one of the other notifications, so it is clear that they are all connected. According to company databases online, the contact person on most of the notices is the person in charge of the third company. This company has an English name which hints at some connection to music or audio equipment, but I didn’t see any sign online of any products being sold under that name, and their company’s registered business scope mainly involves computer-related products. I also didn’t find any information that was clearly about the owner of the company; I found several people with the same name, but I couldn’t tell which if any of them was the same person as the owner. In any event, aside from Jima Records, this person has apparently bought the assets of Lige Records (麗歌唱片) and Kolin Records (歌林唱片), two of the biggest record companies of the 1970s and 1980s, along with a couple of other companies.
So is this person just a dedicated music lover who is rich enough to collect not just records but entire record companies? That’s a possibility; I know one man who out of an interest in old music has bought the assets of at least one defunct record company in addition to the one his family already owned. Perhaps this unknown person who has bought up all these other companies is still unclear about how he should handle the rights he has purchased, or he is for some reason confusing broadcasting with doing a recorded song cover (the rate quoted would be quite reasonable for something like that). But even if his true motivations are innocent, the simple possibility that someone could purchase the rights to such a large number of songs and charge astronomical rates to anyone who wants to use them in any way has some very disturbing implications.
While it may be possible to come up with innocent reasons why someone would want to buy up a lot of song rights and charge a high price for licensing (though it’s pretty hard to think of any really good reasons for the latter), another possible motivation is pure greed. Perhaps he thinks that he can do something similar to what some pharmaceutical companies in the US have done, which is raise the price of certain drugs to outrageous levels in the knowledge that those who really need them will have no choice but to pay. Of course no one needs music in the same way they may need lifesaving drugs, but if even a few people are so desperate to license a particular song that they’ll pay the asking price, he can make more from a single licensing deal as he could from a hundred at the standard rate. Of course one would hope that no one does agree to pay and thereby help such price gouging to succeed, but the possibility does exist.
But even greed is not the most disturbing possible motivation for such a move. The list of songs that this company and its presumed owner claim to own include a number of the most famous popular songs in Taiwan, including such songs as the Hoklo classics “Longing for the Spring Breeze” (望春風), “Four Seasons of Red” (四季紅) and “Mending a Broken Net” (補破網) and the Mandarin classic “Green Island Serenade” (綠島小夜曲). They also claim to own the rights to a number of famous songs from China, including “When Will He Return” (何日君再來). These particular ownership claims are dubious, as these songs are all over half a century old and the record companies that originally released several of the songs have been gone for almost as long. If the songwriters sold their rights at the time the songs were released, it seems rather unlikely that this company (or anyone else) could have somehow acquired ownership of them (it’s notable that in the case of the Japanese era Hoklo songs they only claim a few of the most famous songs, which represent a very small portion of those released by the original Japanese colonial era record company). It’s possible that they or a predecessor company bought the rights to the songs directly from the songwriters or their heirs decades after the songs were first released, but this doesn’t seem all that likely either, since none of these companies was particularly closely associated with the songs. As for the Chinese songs, the original company is (I think) now owned by EMI, so at most this company might have acquired an exclusive license for Taiwan, though even that seems improbable. For that matter, even in the cases of songs where the rights were definitely sold to the record companies, such as those released by Lige and Kolin, it's quite possible that the original copyright transfer agreements (if any were actually signed) have vanished, making it hard to prove any claims to the rights.
Regardless of the legitimacy of these ownership claims, if no one challenges them, by charging such a high price for anyone to use the songs (I’m assuming here that they would ask similarly high amounts for concert performances and karaoke, which seems likely), they will effectively cause these songs to disappear from public performances and broadcasts. Considering that songs like “Longing for the Spring Breeze” and “Green Island Serenade” are practically like alternative national anthems, this would be a major loss for Taiwanese culture, almost on par with locking the Mona Lisa away where no one could see it. But why would anyone intentionally strike such a blow at Taiwanese culture? It occurred to me that if China wanted to hold parts of Taiwanese cultural property hostage for political reasons, perhaps as part of an effort to claim them all as Chinese cultural property (which they already do, in the sense that songs and performers from Taiwan are always identified as being from “Taiwan Province, China” if they appear on Chinese broadcasts and such), one way to do so would be to buy up as much Taiwanese cultural property as possible and deprive Taiwanese of the use of it. While it’s not clear what good this would actually do China, a lot of their aggressive behavior toward Taiwan in the past has been counterproductive, and yet they still do it. In other words, logic doesn’t always play much of a role, so I don’t think we can entirely discount the possibility that China or some elements of its leadership (or some of its more nationalistic private citizens) might consider doing something along these lines.
I have seen no evidence that this company or its owner has any connection to China (their registered address is in Taipei), and it’s quite possible that they have none. But even if they don’t, it’s certainly possible that China could attempt something similar in the future, and it seems to me that Taiwan would be wise to ensure that no outside group could in the future attempt to obtain control of a large part of Taiwan’s cultural legacy in such a manner. For that matter, even if there is no political motivation behind this particular company’s acquisition of such a large part of Taiwan’s song catalogue, it doesn’t strike me as a good thing to allow anyone to obtain exclusive ownership to songs that in a very real sense are the common cultural property of all Taiwanese. Why should anyone have the right to deprive the Taiwanese public of the right to hear these songs, whether on the radio, on TV or in concert?
Of course this problem is not limited to music or to Taiwan; companies like Disney in the US also seem to be trying to gain control of a big part of the common culture of English-speaking countries. Disney not only owns the characters that originated with them, but has also bought popular cultural properties such as Winnie the Pooh, the Muppets and Star Wars, and by their widely promoted films based on public domain characters like Snow White, Sleeping Beauty, Cinderella, the Little Mermaid, and so forth, they have made their versions the ones most commonly associated with these folk characters, even if they don’t actually own them. On the other hand, even Mickey Mouse would now be in the public domain if Disney hadn’t successfully pushed the US Congress to change copyright law (the new version is sometimes jokingly referred to as “the Mickey Mouse Protection Act”). While it’s not unreasonable for the creators of cultural icons to want some control over their creations and the profits derived from them, it seems like there should be a better way to balance the rights of the creators and those of the public at large, especially where widely loved cultural properties are concerned.
After all, while Ludwig von Beethoven wrote “Fur Elise” and Stephen Foster wrote “Oh Susanna”, now these songs belong to everyone, as do thousands of folk songs for which even the original author is unknown. The same is true for numerous other parts of our cultural heritage. In fact, one could argue that to a certain degree, even recent cultural creations such as songs, books and films from the past few decades don't belong solely to their creators, much less to corporations that may have purchased the rights to them. For instance, people even dispute the right of someone such as George Lucas to make changes to his Star Wars films, arguing that the original releases are the true versions, and Lucas's later versions are not legitimate. Regardless of how one feels about this particular case (my own feeling is that while a creator like Lucas of course has the right to alter his own creations, he can't dictate which version will be most widely accepted or preferred, though his opinion inevitably will carry greater weight than anyone else's), it should be obvious that while the original creator may retain ultimate authority over his creations, just by releasing them to the public he or she must accept that they have become in some ways the common property of all. A song, book or other work of art may be interpreted or used in ways that its creator never anticipated, and at least some of these interpretations and uses may become an integral aspect of the work. But if a work is not even completely under the control of its actual creator, to what degree can or should we accept someone who didn't even create it trying to deprive others of the right to use or even enjoy it?
One possible solution to this problem already exists in the form of Creative Commons, which allows far more flexibility for people to use cultural creations, especially in non-commercial contexts. But even standard copyright law could use some revision. For instance, it seems like the law could be written such that for uses of a song such as broadcasting it on the radio or on TV, performing it in a concert or singing it in a karaoke or KTV there could be a standard rate, set by an appropriate government agency and adjusted periodically for inflation. This would prevent this type of price gouging and ensure that all songs remain available to the public, while guaranteeing that copyright owners still get paid. Another possibility is expanding (and more clearly defining) the scope of fair use. I don't think the average restaurant or pub should need to license a song just to play it on their stereo or PA system. If I had an album out, I'd want to make it as easy as possible for people to play it, even if they weren't paying for it. After all, extra exposure is more valuable in the long run. It might be a good idea to clarify - and restrict - the circumstances where licensing is necessary.
But another part of copyright law that I think could use some reconsideration is the length of the time that copyright is protected. According to current Taiwanese law, a song becomes public domain fifty years after the death of the songwriter. This means that the music for the songs “Longing for the Spring Breeze” and “Four Seasons of Red” is actually in the public domain, as the composer Deng Yuxian (鄧雨賢) died in 1944, while the lyrics are still under copyright, since the lyricist Li Linqiu (李臨秋) only died in 1979. But this period of time seems rather excessive. While it is fair that the families of a songwriter (or of an author or other artist) should get at least some of the benefit from their work after their death, especially in case where the creator dies young (sometimes even before they themselves enjoy any profit from their work), a shorter period like twenty or twenty five years seems like it should be sufficient. But in cases where the writer (willingly or not) has sold or transferred all their rights, it doesn’t make sense for the length of copyright protection to be tied to their lifespans at all. For instance, among the songs claimed in the case discussed above are the earliest popular songs written by two of Taiwan’s most prominent latter day songwriters, Luo Dayou (Lo Ta-yu; 羅大佑) and Li Taixiang (Li Tai-hsiang; 李泰祥), songs that were originally released in the 1970s. The latter died only two years ago, and the former is still alive. Why should this company that bought up all the rights to their songs be able to maintain copyright protection for them for half a century after they die? It’s not as if either the songwriters themselves or their families are getting any benefit from them. I think that a much more reasonable arrangement for songs or other cultural creations is that in cases where the original creator no longer owns the rights, they should become public domain around, say, twenty years after the creator signed the rights away. This would give the buyer of the rights plenty of time to recoup what they paid the actual creator (often an extremely limited amount in any case; Luo sold the rights to his first few songs for NT$2000 apiece in the late 1970s, and the usual rate at the time Li’s first songs were released was even lower), but not allow them to profit from something they didn’t create themselves for as long as a century in cases where the writer is particularly long-lived. After all, the original point of copyright law was to protect the actual creators. Now it has been distorted into a tool for corporate entities to profit off the works of artists who often get little real benefit from their work. We should make changes to ensure that it regains its proper focus, protecting the real creators of artistic works, while allowing the public at large to enjoy what is in the final analysis our common cultural heritage.
[Updated 2016/04/20 to add an additional paragraph on the ways in which works of art become to some degree public property.]
Basically, in late January the radio station received a notice from a company that claimed to own the rights to or have exclusive licenses to songs owned by several mostly defunct (or at least not actively releasing new music) record companies. This company said that they had quit the intermediary performance-rights organizations (equivalent to BMI and ASCAP in the US) that handle most music copyrights in Taiwan and that anyone wanting to use the songs they held the rights to should contact them directly. The notice came with a list of all the songs they claimed ownership of or exclusive rights to. The list includes hundreds of songs, including most of those released by several record companies that were among the most prominent in the latter decades of the 20th century. Many of these companies did have policies of buying the rights to songs from the writers, so it is not implausible that someone who bought the companies or their assets could end up owning the rights. But in the case of some of the songs, the claim to ownership seems questionable, as I’ll explain later. Then there’s the question of whether record companies should be able to purchase total control over the rights to songs, which is another point I’ll come back to.
The immediate problem arose when the radio station apparently contacted the alleged holder of these copyrights about broadcasting the songs they owned. From what I was told by an artist, the standard charge for broadcasting a song is just a few NT dollars, or somewhere around a tenth of a US dollar. But apparently the copyright owner asked for NT$6000 (about US$200) to broadcast one song one time! Of course no radio station could possibly afford to pay that much, so asking for such a rate was essentially equivalent to refusing permission altogether. Aside from the immediate frustration of being forced to exclude all these songs from any shows I plan in the immediate future, this situation started a whole train of thought about both this specific situation and about its implications for copyright law and ownership of culture in general.
My first question was who the copyright owner in this particular instance was. There were actually three notifications sent to the radio station simultaneously in the name of two record companies – one a fairly prominent one called Jima Records (吉馬唱片) that released many Hoklo albums in the 1980s and 1990s and the other an obscure one – and a third company, and another notification in the name of the third company addressed to Taiwan’s largest KTV (karaoke) chain. But three of the notifications were issued from the same address and had the same contact person, and the contact person from the fourth (sent to the radio station by the more obscure record company) was listed as an additional contact person on one of the other notifications, so it is clear that they are all connected. According to company databases online, the contact person on most of the notices is the person in charge of the third company. This company has an English name which hints at some connection to music or audio equipment, but I didn’t see any sign online of any products being sold under that name, and their company’s registered business scope mainly involves computer-related products. I also didn’t find any information that was clearly about the owner of the company; I found several people with the same name, but I couldn’t tell which if any of them was the same person as the owner. In any event, aside from Jima Records, this person has apparently bought the assets of Lige Records (麗歌唱片) and Kolin Records (歌林唱片), two of the biggest record companies of the 1970s and 1980s, along with a couple of other companies.
So is this person just a dedicated music lover who is rich enough to collect not just records but entire record companies? That’s a possibility; I know one man who out of an interest in old music has bought the assets of at least one defunct record company in addition to the one his family already owned. Perhaps this unknown person who has bought up all these other companies is still unclear about how he should handle the rights he has purchased, or he is for some reason confusing broadcasting with doing a recorded song cover (the rate quoted would be quite reasonable for something like that). But even if his true motivations are innocent, the simple possibility that someone could purchase the rights to such a large number of songs and charge astronomical rates to anyone who wants to use them in any way has some very disturbing implications.
While it may be possible to come up with innocent reasons why someone would want to buy up a lot of song rights and charge a high price for licensing (though it’s pretty hard to think of any really good reasons for the latter), another possible motivation is pure greed. Perhaps he thinks that he can do something similar to what some pharmaceutical companies in the US have done, which is raise the price of certain drugs to outrageous levels in the knowledge that those who really need them will have no choice but to pay. Of course no one needs music in the same way they may need lifesaving drugs, but if even a few people are so desperate to license a particular song that they’ll pay the asking price, he can make more from a single licensing deal as he could from a hundred at the standard rate. Of course one would hope that no one does agree to pay and thereby help such price gouging to succeed, but the possibility does exist.
But even greed is not the most disturbing possible motivation for such a move. The list of songs that this company and its presumed owner claim to own include a number of the most famous popular songs in Taiwan, including such songs as the Hoklo classics “Longing for the Spring Breeze” (望春風), “Four Seasons of Red” (四季紅) and “Mending a Broken Net” (補破網) and the Mandarin classic “Green Island Serenade” (綠島小夜曲). They also claim to own the rights to a number of famous songs from China, including “When Will He Return” (何日君再來). These particular ownership claims are dubious, as these songs are all over half a century old and the record companies that originally released several of the songs have been gone for almost as long. If the songwriters sold their rights at the time the songs were released, it seems rather unlikely that this company (or anyone else) could have somehow acquired ownership of them (it’s notable that in the case of the Japanese era Hoklo songs they only claim a few of the most famous songs, which represent a very small portion of those released by the original Japanese colonial era record company). It’s possible that they or a predecessor company bought the rights to the songs directly from the songwriters or their heirs decades after the songs were first released, but this doesn’t seem all that likely either, since none of these companies was particularly closely associated with the songs. As for the Chinese songs, the original company is (I think) now owned by EMI, so at most this company might have acquired an exclusive license for Taiwan, though even that seems improbable. For that matter, even in the cases of songs where the rights were definitely sold to the record companies, such as those released by Lige and Kolin, it's quite possible that the original copyright transfer agreements (if any were actually signed) have vanished, making it hard to prove any claims to the rights.
Regardless of the legitimacy of these ownership claims, if no one challenges them, by charging such a high price for anyone to use the songs (I’m assuming here that they would ask similarly high amounts for concert performances and karaoke, which seems likely), they will effectively cause these songs to disappear from public performances and broadcasts. Considering that songs like “Longing for the Spring Breeze” and “Green Island Serenade” are practically like alternative national anthems, this would be a major loss for Taiwanese culture, almost on par with locking the Mona Lisa away where no one could see it. But why would anyone intentionally strike such a blow at Taiwanese culture? It occurred to me that if China wanted to hold parts of Taiwanese cultural property hostage for political reasons, perhaps as part of an effort to claim them all as Chinese cultural property (which they already do, in the sense that songs and performers from Taiwan are always identified as being from “Taiwan Province, China” if they appear on Chinese broadcasts and such), one way to do so would be to buy up as much Taiwanese cultural property as possible and deprive Taiwanese of the use of it. While it’s not clear what good this would actually do China, a lot of their aggressive behavior toward Taiwan in the past has been counterproductive, and yet they still do it. In other words, logic doesn’t always play much of a role, so I don’t think we can entirely discount the possibility that China or some elements of its leadership (or some of its more nationalistic private citizens) might consider doing something along these lines.
I have seen no evidence that this company or its owner has any connection to China (their registered address is in Taipei), and it’s quite possible that they have none. But even if they don’t, it’s certainly possible that China could attempt something similar in the future, and it seems to me that Taiwan would be wise to ensure that no outside group could in the future attempt to obtain control of a large part of Taiwan’s cultural legacy in such a manner. For that matter, even if there is no political motivation behind this particular company’s acquisition of such a large part of Taiwan’s song catalogue, it doesn’t strike me as a good thing to allow anyone to obtain exclusive ownership to songs that in a very real sense are the common cultural property of all Taiwanese. Why should anyone have the right to deprive the Taiwanese public of the right to hear these songs, whether on the radio, on TV or in concert?
Of course this problem is not limited to music or to Taiwan; companies like Disney in the US also seem to be trying to gain control of a big part of the common culture of English-speaking countries. Disney not only owns the characters that originated with them, but has also bought popular cultural properties such as Winnie the Pooh, the Muppets and Star Wars, and by their widely promoted films based on public domain characters like Snow White, Sleeping Beauty, Cinderella, the Little Mermaid, and so forth, they have made their versions the ones most commonly associated with these folk characters, even if they don’t actually own them. On the other hand, even Mickey Mouse would now be in the public domain if Disney hadn’t successfully pushed the US Congress to change copyright law (the new version is sometimes jokingly referred to as “the Mickey Mouse Protection Act”). While it’s not unreasonable for the creators of cultural icons to want some control over their creations and the profits derived from them, it seems like there should be a better way to balance the rights of the creators and those of the public at large, especially where widely loved cultural properties are concerned.
After all, while Ludwig von Beethoven wrote “Fur Elise” and Stephen Foster wrote “Oh Susanna”, now these songs belong to everyone, as do thousands of folk songs for which even the original author is unknown. The same is true for numerous other parts of our cultural heritage. In fact, one could argue that to a certain degree, even recent cultural creations such as songs, books and films from the past few decades don't belong solely to their creators, much less to corporations that may have purchased the rights to them. For instance, people even dispute the right of someone such as George Lucas to make changes to his Star Wars films, arguing that the original releases are the true versions, and Lucas's later versions are not legitimate. Regardless of how one feels about this particular case (my own feeling is that while a creator like Lucas of course has the right to alter his own creations, he can't dictate which version will be most widely accepted or preferred, though his opinion inevitably will carry greater weight than anyone else's), it should be obvious that while the original creator may retain ultimate authority over his creations, just by releasing them to the public he or she must accept that they have become in some ways the common property of all. A song, book or other work of art may be interpreted or used in ways that its creator never anticipated, and at least some of these interpretations and uses may become an integral aspect of the work. But if a work is not even completely under the control of its actual creator, to what degree can or should we accept someone who didn't even create it trying to deprive others of the right to use or even enjoy it?
One possible solution to this problem already exists in the form of Creative Commons, which allows far more flexibility for people to use cultural creations, especially in non-commercial contexts. But even standard copyright law could use some revision. For instance, it seems like the law could be written such that for uses of a song such as broadcasting it on the radio or on TV, performing it in a concert or singing it in a karaoke or KTV there could be a standard rate, set by an appropriate government agency and adjusted periodically for inflation. This would prevent this type of price gouging and ensure that all songs remain available to the public, while guaranteeing that copyright owners still get paid. Another possibility is expanding (and more clearly defining) the scope of fair use. I don't think the average restaurant or pub should need to license a song just to play it on their stereo or PA system. If I had an album out, I'd want to make it as easy as possible for people to play it, even if they weren't paying for it. After all, extra exposure is more valuable in the long run. It might be a good idea to clarify - and restrict - the circumstances where licensing is necessary.
But another part of copyright law that I think could use some reconsideration is the length of the time that copyright is protected. According to current Taiwanese law, a song becomes public domain fifty years after the death of the songwriter. This means that the music for the songs “Longing for the Spring Breeze” and “Four Seasons of Red” is actually in the public domain, as the composer Deng Yuxian (鄧雨賢) died in 1944, while the lyrics are still under copyright, since the lyricist Li Linqiu (李臨秋) only died in 1979. But this period of time seems rather excessive. While it is fair that the families of a songwriter (or of an author or other artist) should get at least some of the benefit from their work after their death, especially in case where the creator dies young (sometimes even before they themselves enjoy any profit from their work), a shorter period like twenty or twenty five years seems like it should be sufficient. But in cases where the writer (willingly or not) has sold or transferred all their rights, it doesn’t make sense for the length of copyright protection to be tied to their lifespans at all. For instance, among the songs claimed in the case discussed above are the earliest popular songs written by two of Taiwan’s most prominent latter day songwriters, Luo Dayou (Lo Ta-yu; 羅大佑) and Li Taixiang (Li Tai-hsiang; 李泰祥), songs that were originally released in the 1970s. The latter died only two years ago, and the former is still alive. Why should this company that bought up all the rights to their songs be able to maintain copyright protection for them for half a century after they die? It’s not as if either the songwriters themselves or their families are getting any benefit from them. I think that a much more reasonable arrangement for songs or other cultural creations is that in cases where the original creator no longer owns the rights, they should become public domain around, say, twenty years after the creator signed the rights away. This would give the buyer of the rights plenty of time to recoup what they paid the actual creator (often an extremely limited amount in any case; Luo sold the rights to his first few songs for NT$2000 apiece in the late 1970s, and the usual rate at the time Li’s first songs were released was even lower), but not allow them to profit from something they didn’t create themselves for as long as a century in cases where the writer is particularly long-lived. After all, the original point of copyright law was to protect the actual creators. Now it has been distorted into a tool for corporate entities to profit off the works of artists who often get little real benefit from their work. We should make changes to ensure that it regains its proper focus, protecting the real creators of artistic works, while allowing the public at large to enjoy what is in the final analysis our common cultural heritage.
[Updated 2016/04/20 to add an additional paragraph on the ways in which works of art become to some degree public property.]
Monday, February 29, 2016
Radio Program: An Overview of Taiwanese Popular Music History
As I mentioned a couple of months ago, I'm now doing a radio show on Taiwanese popular music every other week on the radio station News98 (98.1) in Taiwan. For the lunar new year holiday, I was asked to a few extra shows, and I decided to use them as an opportunity to play a sampling of Taiwanese pop songs from throughout the 20th century. I don't think the shows turned out as well as they could have, for a number of reasons. For one thing, the scheduling of the broadcasts was still in flux when I left for my vacation, so many listeners may not have found it easy to hear all of the shows. An even bigger problem was that after the shows had been recorded but before they were broadcast, the station (along with all other stations in Taiwan) received a notification that a large bunch of songs had copyright issues, including quite a few that I had included. These songs all had to be cut out of the shows before they were broadcast. As a result, what people heard fell well short of what I had intended. So I am posting here not only all the songs that were broadcast but also those that were originally included but cut later, and even a few others that I had to cut at the time of recording due to length. They are roughly chronologically divided into three groups, covering the era of Japanese rule and the immediate post war period, followed by the 1960s and 1970s, and finally the 1980s and 1990s. Needless to say, there are plenty of songs from all these eras that are as good as those found here, as this was just intended as an overview. Note that I haven't included links for the songs this time. Most of them can be found on Youtube and other websites just by pasting in the titles, though particularly for the older songs the versions available on line are in most cases likely to be later covers.
台灣流行音樂簡史
I
桃花泣血記〈詞：詹天馬 曲：王雲峰〉 純純[劉清香] (1932)
一個紅蛋〈詞：李臨秋 曲：鄧雨賢〉 純純 (1933)
街頭的流浪[失業兄弟]〈詞：守真 曲：周玉當〉 青春美 (1934/12)
心酸酸〈詞：陳達儒 曲：姚讚福〉 秀鑾 (1936)
白牡丹〈詞：陳達儒 曲：陳秋霖〉 根根 (1936)
農村曲〈詞：陳達儒 曲：蘇桐〉 青春美 (1937)
四季紅〈詞：李臨秋 曲：鄧雨賢〉 純純、豔豔 (約1938)
青春嶺〈詞：陳達儒 曲：蘇桐〉 王福、秀鑾 (約1939)
誤認君〈詞曲：奧稽文藝部〉 阿冉妹 (1934)
番社の娘/十八姑娘一朵花〈詞：栗原白也 曲：堂崎夜雨[鄧雨賢]〉 佐塚佐和子(1939)/劉韻(1958)
加路蘭港之戀-奈羅灣多也〈詞曲：日高敏倉〉 盧秀花/林成松 (early 1960s [written in early 1940s])
望你早歸〈詞：那卡諾[黃仲鑫] 曲：楊三郎〉 (1946)
補破網〈詞：李臨秋 曲：王雲峰〉 秀芬 (1948)
安平追想曲〈詞：陳達儒 曲：許石〉 美美 (1951-2)
高山青〈詞：鄧禹平 曲：張徹〉 何綺蘭、許自謙 (1950s) [from 阿里山風雲 (1949)]
綠島小夜曲〈詞：潘英傑 曲：周藍萍〉 紫薇 (約1954)
黃昏嶺〈詞：周添旺 曲：三界稔[日本曲]〉 紀露霞 (約1957)
黃昏的故鄉〈詞：愁人[文夏]譯寫 曲：中野忠晴[日本原曲:赤い夕陽の故郷]〉 文夏 (1959)
孤女的願望〈詞：葉俊麟 曲：米山正夫[日本原曲:花笠道中]〉 陳芬蘭 (1959)
舊情綿綿〈詞：葉俊麟 曲：洪一峰〉 洪一峰 (1959-60)
暗淡的月〈詞：葉俊麟 曲：吳晉淮〉 吳晉淮 (1959-60)
台灣好〈詞：羅家倫 曲：山地民謠〉 美黛 (1964 [written in early 1950s])
II
回想曲〈詞：楊正[周藍萍] 曲：周藍萍〉 紫薇 (1961)
意難忘〈詞：慎芝 曲：俊一[佐々木俊一]〉 美黛 (1963) 原曲:東京小夜曲
山地情歌[離別故鄉/馬蘭之戀] 〈詞：黃敏 曲：山地民謠〉 文鶯
送情郎到軍中[阿美三鳳]〈詞曲：曾美愛**〉 玲蘭（曾美愛）/盧靜子 (1965/1967)
墓仔埔也敢去〈詞：郭大誠 曲：吉田正〉 葉啟田 (1965)
水車姑娘〈詞：葉俊麟 曲：米山正夫[日本曲]〉 尤萍[陳淑樺] (1967)
苦酒滿杯〈詞：慎芝 曲：姚讚福〉 謝雷 (1967)
今天不回家〈詞：諸戈[莊奴] 曲：古月[左宏元]〉 姚蘇蓉 (1969)
為何命如此（苦海女神龍）〈詞：黃俊雄 曲：猪俣公章〉 邱蘭芬 (1970)
Whiter Shade of Pale (Brooker/Fisher/Reid/Bach) 雷蒙合唱團 (1970)
我沒有騙你〈詞：莊奴 曲：公羽[翁清溪]〉 包娜娜 (1971)
送君珠淚滴〈詞：徐品榮 曲：周宜新〉 丁黛 (1971)
我的歌〈詞曲：洪小喬〉 洪小喬 (1973)
熱情的沙漠〈詞：李潔心 曲：加瀨邦彥、山上路夫〉 歐陽菲菲 (1974)
江湖上〈詞：余光中 曲：楊弦〉 楊弦 (1975)
我是一片雲〈詞：瓊瑤 曲：古月[左宏元]〉 鳳飛飛 (1977)
姑娘的酒窩〈詞：周燕蘭 曲：岳勳[李基生]〉 高凌風 (1977)
小城故事〈詞：莊奴[黃河] 曲：湯尼[翁清溪]〉 鄧麗君 (1979)
拜訪春天〈詞：林建助 曲：陳輝雄〉 施孝榮 (1981)
無緣〈詞：呂金守 曲：吳盛智〉 吳盛智 (1981)
可憐的落魄人〈詞曲：高飛龍[高子洋]〉 陳明仁 (1981)
心事誰人知〈詞曲：蔡振南〉 沈文程 (1982)
III
鹿港小鎮〈詞曲：羅大佑〉 羅大佑 (1982)
一樣的月光〈詞：吳念真、羅大佑 曲：李壽全〉 蘇芮 (1983)
從現在開始〈詞曲：紅螞蟻〉 紅螞蟻合唱團 (1985)
舞女〈詞曲：俞隆華〉 陳小雲 (1984)
夢田〈詞：三毛[陳平] 曲：翁孝良〉 潘越雲 & 齊豫 (1985)
生命中的精靈〈詞曲：李宗盛〉 李宗盛 (1986)
玫瑰人生〈詞：慎芝 曲：張弘毅〉 許景淳 (1987)
雁渡寒潭〈詞曲：黃舒駿〉 黃舒駿 (1989)
抓狂〈詞：王明輝、陳主惠 曲：Asanee Chotikul〉 黑名單工作室 (1989)
向前走〈詞曲：林強〉 林強 (1990)
打〈詞：林暐哲 曲：林暐哲、李欣芸〉 Baboo (1992)
把悲傷留給自己〈詞曲：陳昇〉 陳昇 (1991)
孤枕難眠〈詞曲：劉志宏〉 周華健 (1993)
用心良苦〈詞：十一郎 曲：張宇〉 張宇 (1993)
自由歌〈詞曲：張雨生〉 張雨生 (1994)
不夠放肆〈詞曲：陳珊妮〉 陳珊妮 (1994)
斷腸詩〈詞曲：伍佰[吳俊霖]〉 伍佰 & China Blue (1998)
原來你什麼都不要〈詞：鄔裕康 曲：郭子〉 張惠妹 (1996)
愛的初體驗〈詞曲：張震嶽〉 張震嶽 (1997)
神話〈詞：林志興，陳光榮譯寫 曲：陳建年〉 Samingad〈紀曉君〉 (1999)
下淡水河寫著我等介族譜〈詞：鐘永豐 曲：林生祥〉 交工樂隊 (1999)
雌雄胴體〈詞曲：阿信．五月天〉 小平／五月天 (1999)
農村出事情〈詞曲：蔡海恩〉 濁水溪公社 (1999)
轉吧、七彩霓虹燈〈詞曲：小應[應蔚民]〉 夾子電動大樂隊 (2000/12)
台灣流行音樂簡史
I
桃花泣血記〈詞：詹天馬 曲：王雲峰〉 純純[劉清香] (1932)
一個紅蛋〈詞：李臨秋 曲：鄧雨賢〉 純純 (1933)
街頭的流浪[失業兄弟]〈詞：守真 曲：周玉當〉 青春美 (1934/12)
心酸酸〈詞：陳達儒 曲：姚讚福〉 秀鑾 (1936)
白牡丹〈詞：陳達儒 曲：陳秋霖〉 根根 (1936)
農村曲〈詞：陳達儒 曲：蘇桐〉 青春美 (1937)
四季紅〈詞：李臨秋 曲：鄧雨賢〉 純純、豔豔 (約1938)
青春嶺〈詞：陳達儒 曲：蘇桐〉 王福、秀鑾 (約1939)
誤認君〈詞曲：奧稽文藝部〉 阿冉妹 (1934)
番社の娘/十八姑娘一朵花〈詞：栗原白也 曲：堂崎夜雨[鄧雨賢]〉 佐塚佐和子(1939)/劉韻(1958)
加路蘭港之戀-奈羅灣多也〈詞曲：日高敏倉〉 盧秀花/林成松 (early 1960s [written in early 1940s])
望你早歸〈詞：那卡諾[黃仲鑫] 曲：楊三郎〉 (1946)
補破網〈詞：李臨秋 曲：王雲峰〉 秀芬 (1948)
安平追想曲〈詞：陳達儒 曲：許石〉 美美 (1951-2)
高山青〈詞：鄧禹平 曲：張徹〉 何綺蘭、許自謙 (1950s) [from 阿里山風雲 (1949)]
綠島小夜曲〈詞：潘英傑 曲：周藍萍〉 紫薇 (約1954)
黃昏嶺〈詞：周添旺 曲：三界稔[日本曲]〉 紀露霞 (約1957)
黃昏的故鄉〈詞：愁人[文夏]譯寫 曲：中野忠晴[日本原曲:赤い夕陽の故郷]〉 文夏 (1959)
孤女的願望〈詞：葉俊麟 曲：米山正夫[日本原曲:花笠道中]〉 陳芬蘭 (1959)
舊情綿綿〈詞：葉俊麟 曲：洪一峰〉 洪一峰 (1959-60)
暗淡的月〈詞：葉俊麟 曲：吳晉淮〉 吳晉淮 (1959-60)
台灣好〈詞：羅家倫 曲：山地民謠〉 美黛 (1964 [written in early 1950s])
II
回想曲〈詞：楊正[周藍萍] 曲：周藍萍〉 紫薇 (1961)
意難忘〈詞：慎芝 曲：俊一[佐々木俊一]〉 美黛 (1963) 原曲:東京小夜曲
山地情歌[離別故鄉/馬蘭之戀] 〈詞：黃敏 曲：山地民謠〉 文鶯
送情郎到軍中[阿美三鳳]〈詞曲：曾美愛**〉 玲蘭（曾美愛）/盧靜子 (1965/1967)
墓仔埔也敢去〈詞：郭大誠 曲：吉田正〉 葉啟田 (1965)
水車姑娘〈詞：葉俊麟 曲：米山正夫[日本曲]〉 尤萍[陳淑樺] (1967)
苦酒滿杯〈詞：慎芝 曲：姚讚福〉 謝雷 (1967)
今天不回家〈詞：諸戈[莊奴] 曲：古月[左宏元]〉 姚蘇蓉 (1969)
為何命如此（苦海女神龍）〈詞：黃俊雄 曲：猪俣公章〉 邱蘭芬 (1970)
Whiter Shade of Pale (Brooker/Fisher/Reid/Bach) 雷蒙合唱團 (1970)
我沒有騙你〈詞：莊奴 曲：公羽[翁清溪]〉 包娜娜 (1971)
送君珠淚滴〈詞：徐品榮 曲：周宜新〉 丁黛 (1971)
我的歌〈詞曲：洪小喬〉 洪小喬 (1973)
熱情的沙漠〈詞：李潔心 曲：加瀨邦彥、山上路夫〉 歐陽菲菲 (1974)
江湖上〈詞：余光中 曲：楊弦〉 楊弦 (1975)
我是一片雲〈詞：瓊瑤 曲：古月[左宏元]〉 鳳飛飛 (1977)
姑娘的酒窩〈詞：周燕蘭 曲：岳勳[李基生]〉 高凌風 (1977)
小城故事〈詞：莊奴[黃河] 曲：湯尼[翁清溪]〉 鄧麗君 (1979)
拜訪春天〈詞：林建助 曲：陳輝雄〉 施孝榮 (1981)
無緣〈詞：呂金守 曲：吳盛智〉 吳盛智 (1981)
可憐的落魄人〈詞曲：高飛龍[高子洋]〉 陳明仁 (1981)
心事誰人知〈詞曲：蔡振南〉 沈文程 (1982)
III
鹿港小鎮〈詞曲：羅大佑〉 羅大佑 (1982)
一樣的月光〈詞：吳念真、羅大佑 曲：李壽全〉 蘇芮 (1983)
從現在開始〈詞曲：紅螞蟻〉 紅螞蟻合唱團 (1985)
舞女〈詞曲：俞隆華〉 陳小雲 (1984)
夢田〈詞：三毛[陳平] 曲：翁孝良〉 潘越雲 & 齊豫 (1985)
生命中的精靈〈詞曲：李宗盛〉 李宗盛 (1986)
玫瑰人生〈詞：慎芝 曲：張弘毅〉 許景淳 (1987)
雁渡寒潭〈詞曲：黃舒駿〉 黃舒駿 (1989)
抓狂〈詞：王明輝、陳主惠 曲：Asanee Chotikul〉 黑名單工作室 (1989)
向前走〈詞曲：林強〉 林強 (1990)
打〈詞：林暐哲 曲：林暐哲、李欣芸〉 Baboo (1992)
把悲傷留給自己〈詞曲：陳昇〉 陳昇 (1991)
孤枕難眠〈詞曲：劉志宏〉 周華健 (1993)
用心良苦〈詞：十一郎 曲：張宇〉 張宇 (1993)
自由歌〈詞曲：張雨生〉 張雨生 (1994)
不夠放肆〈詞曲：陳珊妮〉 陳珊妮 (1994)
斷腸詩〈詞曲：伍佰[吳俊霖]〉 伍佰 & China Blue (1998)
原來你什麼都不要〈詞：鄔裕康 曲：郭子〉 張惠妹 (1996)
愛的初體驗〈詞曲：張震嶽〉 張震嶽 (1997)
神話〈詞：林志興，陳光榮譯寫 曲：陳建年〉 Samingad〈紀曉君〉 (1999)
下淡水河寫著我等介族譜〈詞：鐘永豐 曲：林生祥〉 交工樂隊 (1999)
雌雄胴體〈詞曲：阿信．五月天〉 小平／五月天 (1999)
農村出事情〈詞曲：蔡海恩〉 濁水溪公社 (1999)
轉吧、七彩霓虹燈〈詞曲：小應[應蔚民]〉 夾子電動大樂隊 (2000/12)
Tuesday, January 26, 2016
Twelve Classic David Bowie Songs
Two major rock stars passed away in recent weeks. One was Glenn Frey, who along with Don Henley was one of the leaders and main songwriters of the Eagles. Since I did a brief post on my favorite Eagles songs not that long ago, I won't attempt to do a retrospective on Frey for now. Instead, I'd like to do my own brief (and wholly inadequate) tribute to the even more influential rocker who died not long before Frey: David Bowie. First off, I have to admit that my knowledge of Bowie is much more limited than it should be. For a long time, the only CD of his music I had was a Changesbowie compilation CD. It was only in the last few years that I acquired copies of Hunky Dory and The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars, and even more recently I was given a copy of 'Hours...', though I've only listened to it once in the brief time I've had it. Of course even aside from what is on the CDs I own, I've heard a few other Bowie songs over the years, and I'm fairly familiar with the basic outline of his career, particularly up to the early 1980s. But while I know bits of trivia about him, such as the fact that his first single, "Liza Jane", was released under the name Davie Jones [Bowie's birth name was David Jones] and the King Bees, or that he was one of the first to attempt to put English lyrics to the French song "Comme d'habitude", later adapted by Paul Anka as "My Way", there's still far too much of Bowie's music that I've never heard, making it impossible for me to do a proper retrospective covering his whole career. Instead, I've just selected ten favorites from the songs I know well. Rather than attempting to rank them, I've just listed them chronologically. If I really had to pick a single song as my favorite Bowie song, "Life on Mars", "Starman" and "Space Oddity" would be my most likely choices, but several others among these might also come out on top. I should also note that I could easily have put a few other songs from Hunky Dory and Ziggy Stardust in this list, as there are a lot of good ones on those albums, but I decided two songs from each was enough. There's also a good chance that after I've gotten a chance to listen to more of his most recent work I'd want to include at least one song from his last couple of albums. After his death I listened to 2013's "Where Are We Now" and his very last single "Lazarus", both of which struck me as quite good, but I'd prefer to listen to them more than once before I decide how I rank them in comparison to the songs listed here.
Twelve Classic David Bowie Songs
Space Oddity (Bowie) (1969) David Bowie
The Man Who Sold the World (Bowie) (1970) The Man Who Sold the World
Changes (Bowie) (1971) Hunky Dory
Life on Mars (Bowie) (1971) Hunky Dory
Starman (Bowie) (1972) The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars
Suffragette City (Bowie) (1972) The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars
Rebel Rebel (Bowie) (1974) Diamond Dogs
Young Americans (Bowie) (1975) Young Americans
"Heroes" (Bowie/Eno) (1977) "Heroes"
Ashes to Ashes (Bowie) (1980) Scary Monsters (and Super Creeps)
Let's Dance (Bowie) (1983) Let's Dance
Modern Love (Bowie) (1983) Let's Dance
Special Mention:
All the Young Dudes (Bowie) Mott the Hoople (1972)
Under Pressure (Queen/Bowie) Queen & David Bowie (1981)
Twelve Classic David Bowie Songs
Space Oddity (Bowie) (1969) David Bowie
The Man Who Sold the World (Bowie) (1970) The Man Who Sold the World
Changes (Bowie) (1971) Hunky Dory
Life on Mars (Bowie) (1971) Hunky Dory
Starman (Bowie) (1972) The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars
Suffragette City (Bowie) (1972) The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars
Rebel Rebel (Bowie) (1974) Diamond Dogs
Young Americans (Bowie) (1975) Young Americans
"Heroes" (Bowie/Eno) (1977) "Heroes"
Ashes to Ashes (Bowie) (1980) Scary Monsters (and Super Creeps)
Let's Dance (Bowie) (1983) Let's Dance
Modern Love (Bowie) (1983) Let's Dance
Special Mention:
All the Young Dudes (Bowie) Mott the Hoople (1972)
Under Pressure (Queen/Bowie) Queen & David Bowie (1981)
Thursday, December 31, 2015
Still the Greatest: The Essential Songs of the Beatles’ Solo Careers by Andrew Grant Jackson
Still the Greatest: The Essential Songs of the Beatles’ Solo Careers by Andrew Grant Jackson is another book covering a favorite speculative topic of many popular music fans: what would sort of albums might the Beatles have put out if they had stayed together? I have my own series of imaginary Beatles albums compiled from the best of their solo work, and in the past I wrote about another book covering the same ground, Jeff Walker’s Let’s Put the Beatles Back Together. Inevitably, I found myself looking at the differences between Still the Greatest and the latter book, not to mention my own albums. Rather than creating multi-CD box sets as Walker does, Jackson sticks to the standard album format, though with the interesting (though I’d say unnecessary) twist of making them exactly parallel the actual Beatles’ albums, so there is one double album in addition to a dozen single albums. As mentioned in my review of the other book, I think the album format makes a great deal more sense, as the idea that the Beatles would have released all their original material in multi-album sets even in the pre-CD era strikes me as highly unlikely. Another area where I think Jackson’s book is somewhat superior is that his discussions of the individual songs are more balanced length-wise and have less of a tendency to go too far off on tangents only barely related to the music, whereas Walker’s discussions of Lennon’s songs are a lot longer than those about the others’ material and tend to dwell a little too much on gossipy details about Lennon’s life (though much of it is admittedly interesting). Jackson also includes an appendix listing all of the actual solo albums released by the ex-Beatles, including the songs from each that he has put on his Beatles albums. He even compares the albums in terms of number of songs from each that he’s included. This is something that I thought Walker’s book should have had. Jackson, on the other hand, doesn’t try to improve the songs by editing them as Walker does, a good idea that I wouldn’t bother to actually do in most cases, and Walker adds a lot more side sets like cover albums, live albums and even albums combining the work of related artists like Yoko Ono and Lennon’s two sons.
As might be expected, I don’t agree with all of Jackson’s selections, though in most cases I disagree more about what he left out than what he put in, as most of his choices are at least decent and are often very good, even the ones I left out of my own albums. He doesn’t try to stretch Lennon’s material as far as Walker does, which means that on his post-1980 albums there are only a few Lennon songs (the last one has only McCartney and Starr songs, since Harrison had also died by then). This means his albums present a better picture of the four’s solo material, with McCartney being by far the most prolific over the entire post-breakup period and therefore having the most songs included. Even if it is argued that McCartney was more inconsistent than Lennon, meaning that he had a substantially lower great-to-mediocre ratio in his song output (which is I think debatable), the mere fact that he released far more songs even before Lennon’s death means that he easily had more worthy material. Walker ended up including a lot of songs from posthumous Lennon demo collections in order to have plenty of Lennon songs even on later sets. While I could see including a few of the best of these, it would be more natural to just let songs by McCartney and the others predominate on later faux Beatles sets, and perhaps just put on one or two Lennon songs from earlier in his solo career (after all, it was not unusual for the Beatles both as a band and as solo artists to release songs well after they had been written). Jackson’s solution of sticking fairly strictly to the actual release dates (which also means that his early to mid 1980s “Beatles” albums have few songs by Starr or Harrison, since they went for long periods without releasing anything) is also better than trying too hard to create a balance between contributions.
As noted above, Jackson also ranks the original solo albums by number of songs included. The ones at the top are mostly the ones one would expect, i.e., All Things Must Pass, Band on the Run, Imagine, Plastic Ono Band, Ram, and so forth. Further down there are some oddities, such as there being only a few songs from albums like Flaming Pie (the first of McCartney’s string of excellent post-Anthology albums) or Living in the Material World (which is only inferior to All Things Must Pass, Brainwashed, and possibly Cloud Nine among Harrison’s albums). He also includes too many cover songs. While I think all four did some excellent covers, I don’t think if they’d been releasing albums as the Beatles they’d have put many, if any, on them. It makes more sense to do a separate covers only album, as Walker did, or indeed as Lennon and McCartney did as solo artists (though the latter’s excellent rock ‘n’ roll covers album Run Devil Run included three good original tracks among the covers, including the great title track, which Jackson also leaves out). There are only four songs from Ringo, which is not only easily Starr’s best album but one of the best solo Beatle releases period. Venus and Mars, one of the better Wings albums, is also badly underrepresented. On the other hand, there are as many songs from Walls and Bridges as there are from Plastic Ono Band and Ram (seven each), putting it in the top six. While Walls and Bridges is a good album, I don’t think it’s that much better than Living in the Material World, Venus and Mars, Ringo, or for that matter Mind Games, all of which have far fewer songs included. And that’s without even getting into my disagreements regarding the individual songs, whether from the albums or from singles. But given how subjective these sorts of things are, some disagreement is inevitable. I suspect that if I actually sat down and assembled Jackson’s proposed albums – or for that matter Walker’s – I’d enjoy them immensely, at least nearly as much as I do the ones I put together myself. Still the Greatest will certainly be a major resource if I ever get around to completing my own set of imaginary post-breakup Beatles albums.
As might be expected, I don’t agree with all of Jackson’s selections, though in most cases I disagree more about what he left out than what he put in, as most of his choices are at least decent and are often very good, even the ones I left out of my own albums. He doesn’t try to stretch Lennon’s material as far as Walker does, which means that on his post-1980 albums there are only a few Lennon songs (the last one has only McCartney and Starr songs, since Harrison had also died by then). This means his albums present a better picture of the four’s solo material, with McCartney being by far the most prolific over the entire post-breakup period and therefore having the most songs included. Even if it is argued that McCartney was more inconsistent than Lennon, meaning that he had a substantially lower great-to-mediocre ratio in his song output (which is I think debatable), the mere fact that he released far more songs even before Lennon’s death means that he easily had more worthy material. Walker ended up including a lot of songs from posthumous Lennon demo collections in order to have plenty of Lennon songs even on later sets. While I could see including a few of the best of these, it would be more natural to just let songs by McCartney and the others predominate on later faux Beatles sets, and perhaps just put on one or two Lennon songs from earlier in his solo career (after all, it was not unusual for the Beatles both as a band and as solo artists to release songs well after they had been written). Jackson’s solution of sticking fairly strictly to the actual release dates (which also means that his early to mid 1980s “Beatles” albums have few songs by Starr or Harrison, since they went for long periods without releasing anything) is also better than trying too hard to create a balance between contributions.
As noted above, Jackson also ranks the original solo albums by number of songs included. The ones at the top are mostly the ones one would expect, i.e., All Things Must Pass, Band on the Run, Imagine, Plastic Ono Band, Ram, and so forth. Further down there are some oddities, such as there being only a few songs from albums like Flaming Pie (the first of McCartney’s string of excellent post-Anthology albums) or Living in the Material World (which is only inferior to All Things Must Pass, Brainwashed, and possibly Cloud Nine among Harrison’s albums). He also includes too many cover songs. While I think all four did some excellent covers, I don’t think if they’d been releasing albums as the Beatles they’d have put many, if any, on them. It makes more sense to do a separate covers only album, as Walker did, or indeed as Lennon and McCartney did as solo artists (though the latter’s excellent rock ‘n’ roll covers album Run Devil Run included three good original tracks among the covers, including the great title track, which Jackson also leaves out). There are only four songs from Ringo, which is not only easily Starr’s best album but one of the best solo Beatle releases period. Venus and Mars, one of the better Wings albums, is also badly underrepresented. On the other hand, there are as many songs from Walls and Bridges as there are from Plastic Ono Band and Ram (seven each), putting it in the top six. While Walls and Bridges is a good album, I don’t think it’s that much better than Living in the Material World, Venus and Mars, Ringo, or for that matter Mind Games, all of which have far fewer songs included. And that’s without even getting into my disagreements regarding the individual songs, whether from the albums or from singles. But given how subjective these sorts of things are, some disagreement is inevitable. I suspect that if I actually sat down and assembled Jackson’s proposed albums – or for that matter Walker’s – I’d enjoy them immensely, at least nearly as much as I do the ones I put together myself. Still the Greatest will certainly be a major resource if I ever get around to completing my own set of imaginary post-breakup Beatles albums.
Monday, November 30, 2015
New Radio Show on Taiwanese Popular Music
I recently started doing a show on the radio station News98 (98.1) in Taipei, Taiwan. The show is to be broadcast every other Saturday from 3 to 5 pm. I expect to mainly focus on Taiwanese popular music, but I haven’t got it planned out in much detail. Since I collect a pretty wide variety of music, I imagine I’ll end up playing music from all over. I am particularly interested unusual or obscure recordings, I want to try to play as many of these as I can, since listeners are less likely to hear many of them elsewhere. On the other hand, I don’t want to overdo it, especially since at this point I’m not sure how much the people likely to tune in are likely to already know. The trick will be to make sure the audience has some connection to most stuff I play, whether because they’ve actually heard it before (or some version of it), or because they are familiar with the artist, though of course there are also a lot of really good songs that I think most people will like even if they know nothing about them at all. Also I want to have a lot of variety in the themes of my shows, without the contrast being so great from show to show that people find it too much to take. In any case, while I may want to set up a separate blog dedicated especially to this show, for the time being I’ll occasionally post about it here.
For my first show, which was broadcast on November 14, I decided to play a wide variety of songs as sort of a preview of some of the types of music I expect to play on future shows. I framed it to roughly reflect my own journeys in learning about the popular music of Taiwan and nearby places in Asia. Thus I started with one of the songs that was popular at the time I first came to Taiwan, and continued with songs by some of the first singer-songwriters I was introduced to when I started listening seriously to Taiwanese pop. Then I followed my explorations further and further back into the past and into the pop music of the smaller ethnic groups in the country as I started to learn more about Taiwanese popular music history. I then played a few Taiwanese rock songs and rock songs from Hong Kong and Thailand, before concluding with a song by one of my favorite recent Taiwanese aboriginal groups. I hope this selection gave listeners a good idea of the music that can expect to hear on my show in the future.
情網〈詞：劉虞瑞 曲：伍思凱〉 張學友 (1993)
把悲傷留給自己〈詞曲：陳昇〉 陳昇 (1991)
向前走〈詞曲：林強〉 林強 (1990)
戀曲1990〈詞曲：羅大佑〉 羅大佑 (1988)
無聲的所在〈詞：陳世杰 曲：吳俊霖〉 伍佰 & China Blue (1995)
鹿港小鎮〈詞曲：羅大佑〉 羅大佑 (1982)
走在雨中〈詞曲：李泰祥〉 齊豫 (1979)
迴旋曲〈詞：余光中 曲：楊弦〉 楊弦 (1975)
你說過〈詞：吳文良 曲：洪小喬〉 洪小喬 (1972/07)
回想曲〈詞：楊正[周藍萍] 曲：周藍萍〉 紫薇 (1961)
秋風夜雨〈詞：周添旺 曲：楊三郎〉 陳芬蘭 (1965)
無緣〈詞：呂金守 曲：吳盛智〉 吳盛智 (1981)
有空來玩〈詞：陳明仁 曲：卑南歌謠〉 北原山貓 (1997)
我不能出嫁〈詞曲：阿美歌謠〉 盧靜子 (1968)
Heaven on Fire〈詞曲：孫寰東〉 Metal Kids (1988)
長城〈詞：劉卓輝/詹德茂 曲：黃家駒〉 Beyond (1992)
Made In Thailand (W/M: Yuenyong Ophakul) Carabao (1984)
困惑 (fast) 〈詞：查馬克、阿新、Suming 曲：Suming、阿新〉 圖騰樂團 (2006)
For my first show, which was broadcast on November 14, I decided to play a wide variety of songs as sort of a preview of some of the types of music I expect to play on future shows. I framed it to roughly reflect my own journeys in learning about the popular music of Taiwan and nearby places in Asia. Thus I started with one of the songs that was popular at the time I first came to Taiwan, and continued with songs by some of the first singer-songwriters I was introduced to when I started listening seriously to Taiwanese pop. Then I followed my explorations further and further back into the past and into the pop music of the smaller ethnic groups in the country as I started to learn more about Taiwanese popular music history. I then played a few Taiwanese rock songs and rock songs from Hong Kong and Thailand, before concluding with a song by one of my favorite recent Taiwanese aboriginal groups. I hope this selection gave listeners a good idea of the music that can expect to hear on my show in the future.
情網〈詞：劉虞瑞 曲：伍思凱〉 張學友 (1993)
把悲傷留給自己〈詞曲：陳昇〉 陳昇 (1991)
向前走〈詞曲：林強〉 林強 (1990)
戀曲1990〈詞曲：羅大佑〉 羅大佑 (1988)
無聲的所在〈詞：陳世杰 曲：吳俊霖〉 伍佰 & China Blue (1995)
鹿港小鎮〈詞曲：羅大佑〉 羅大佑 (1982)
走在雨中〈詞曲：李泰祥〉 齊豫 (1979)
迴旋曲〈詞：余光中 曲：楊弦〉 楊弦 (1975)
你說過〈詞：吳文良 曲：洪小喬〉 洪小喬 (1972/07)
回想曲〈詞：楊正[周藍萍] 曲：周藍萍〉 紫薇 (1961)
秋風夜雨〈詞：周添旺 曲：楊三郎〉 陳芬蘭 (1965)
無緣〈詞：呂金守 曲：吳盛智〉 吳盛智 (1981)
有空來玩〈詞：陳明仁 曲：卑南歌謠〉 北原山貓 (1997)
我不能出嫁〈詞曲：阿美歌謠〉 盧靜子 (1968)
Heaven on Fire〈詞曲：孫寰東〉 Metal Kids (1988)
長城〈詞：劉卓輝/詹德茂 曲：黃家駒〉 Beyond (1992)
Made In Thailand (W/M: Yuenyong Ophakul) Carabao (1984)
困惑 (fast) 〈詞：查馬克、阿新、Suming 曲：Suming、阿新〉 圖騰樂團 (2006)
Saturday, October 31, 2015
Thirty Favorite Soul and R&B Classics
So far on this blog I’ve written a lot about British rock bands like the Beatles, Queen and Genesis, but of course there’s a lot of other great music out there. One type of music which had a very big influence on artists like Paul McCartney, Freddie Mercury and Phil Collins (among many others) is African American music like rhythm and blues and soul. These terms often are used to cover a pretty broad range of music, from the songs that served as the foundation for rock and roll to the music of artists like Prince and Erykah Badu. But for the following list I’ve stuck to the classic soul and R&B of the 1960s and early 1970s. This is by no means a comprehensive list of all the great songs in these genres, as most of these artists have a lot of other brilliant songs (I restricted myself to no more than two by any one artist), and there are plenty other important artists that I have to admit are missing from my collection (actually, even in this list there are a few songs I don’t actually own a copy of, though I want to get them all eventually). These are just the songs that came to mind when I was trying to think of some R&B and soul classics. I even included an example of so-called “blue-eyed soul”, “You’ve Lost That Lovin’ Feeling” by the Righteous Brothers, as in my opinion it is good enough to stand alongside the others.
Thirty Favorite Soul and R&B Classics
What'd I Say (Charles) Ray Charles (1959)
Money (That's What I Want) (Gordy/Bradford/Strong) Barrett Strong (1959)
You Really Got a Hold on Me (Robinson) Smokey Robinson & the Miracles (1962)
Stand By Me (King/Leiber/Stoller) Ben E. King (1961)
A Change Is Gonna Come (Cooke) Sam Cooke (1964)
Dancing in the Street (Stevenson/Gaye/Hunter) Martha and the Vandellas (1964)
Under the Boardwalk (Young/Resnick) The Drifters (1964)
My Girl (Robinson/White) The Temptations (1964)
People Get Ready (Mayfield) The Impressions (1965)
The Tracks of My Tears (Robinson/Moore/Tarplin) Smokey Robinson & the Miracles (1965)
You've Lost That Lovin’ Feeling (Spector/Mann/Weil) The Righteous Brothers (1965)
I Got You (I Feel Good) (Brown) James Brown (1965)
You Can't Hurry Love (Holland/Dozier/Holland) The Supremes (1966)
Respect (Redding) Aretha Franklin (1967)
Reach Out (I'll Be There) (Holland/Dozier/Holland) The Four Tops (1966)
When a Man Loves a Woman (Lewis/Wright/Sledge) Percy Sledge (1966)
You Keep Me Hangin' On (Holland/Dozier/Holland) The Supremes (1966)
I'd Rather Go Blind (Jordan/Foster/James) Etta James (1967)
I Heard It Through the Grapevine (Whitfield/Strong) Marvin Gaye (1968)
(Sittin' On) the Dock of the Bay (Redding/Cropper) Otis Redding (1968)
Think (Franklin/White) Aretha Franklin (1968)
Everyday People (Stewart) Sly & the Family Stone (1968'
War (Whitfield/Strong) Edwin Starr (1970)
What's Goin' On (Cleveland/Benson/Gaye) Marvin Gaye (1971)
Papa Was a Rollin' Stone (Whitfield/Strong) The Temptations (1972)
Ain't No Sunshine (Withers) Bill Withers (1971)
Higher Ground (Wonder) Stevie Wonder (1973)
If You Don't Know Me By Now (Gamble/Huff) Harold Melvin (1972)
Fight the Power (Part 1 & 2) (Isley/Isley/Isley/Isley/Isley/Jasper) The Isley Brothers (1975)
Sir Duke (Wonder) Stevie Wonder (1976)
Thirty Favorite Soul and R&B Classics
What'd I Say (Charles) Ray Charles (1959)
Money (That's What I Want) (Gordy/Bradford/Strong) Barrett Strong (1959)
You Really Got a Hold on Me (Robinson) Smokey Robinson & the Miracles (1962)
Stand By Me (King/Leiber/Stoller) Ben E. King (1961)
A Change Is Gonna Come (Cooke) Sam Cooke (1964)
Dancing in the Street (Stevenson/Gaye/Hunter) Martha and the Vandellas (1964)
Under the Boardwalk (Young/Resnick) The Drifters (1964)
My Girl (Robinson/White) The Temptations (1964)
People Get Ready (Mayfield) The Impressions (1965)
The Tracks of My Tears (Robinson/Moore/Tarplin) Smokey Robinson & the Miracles (1965)
You've Lost That Lovin’ Feeling (Spector/Mann/Weil) The Righteous Brothers (1965)
I Got You (I Feel Good) (Brown) James Brown (1965)
You Can't Hurry Love (Holland/Dozier/Holland) The Supremes (1966)
Respect (Redding) Aretha Franklin (1967)
Reach Out (I'll Be There) (Holland/Dozier/Holland) The Four Tops (1966)
When a Man Loves a Woman (Lewis/Wright/Sledge) Percy Sledge (1966)
You Keep Me Hangin' On (Holland/Dozier/Holland) The Supremes (1966)
I'd Rather Go Blind (Jordan/Foster/James) Etta James (1967)
I Heard It Through the Grapevine (Whitfield/Strong) Marvin Gaye (1968)
(Sittin' On) the Dock of the Bay (Redding/Cropper) Otis Redding (1968)
Think (Franklin/White) Aretha Franklin (1968)
Everyday People (Stewart) Sly & the Family Stone (1968'
War (Whitfield/Strong) Edwin Starr (1970)
What's Goin' On (Cleveland/Benson/Gaye) Marvin Gaye (1971)
Papa Was a Rollin' Stone (Whitfield/Strong) The Temptations (1972)
Ain't No Sunshine (Withers) Bill Withers (1971)
Higher Ground (Wonder) Stevie Wonder (1973)
If You Don't Know Me By Now (Gamble/Huff) Harold Melvin (1972)
Fight the Power (Part 1 & 2) (Isley/Isley/Isley/Isley/Isley/Jasper) The Isley Brothers (1975)
Sir Duke (Wonder) Stevie Wonder (1976)
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