Carole King's new book is A Natural Woman. Carole's one of those people I grew up listening to so when Jim announced Saturday evening that the Carole King piece this edition would be written by Ava and C.I., I was a little ticked having spent the whole week reading the 450-page volume. With Ava and C.I.'s encouragement, I'm doing a short piece focusing on the book's biggest weakness.
No, not James Taylor. How anyone could be impressed with that strutting fool is beyond me. But I'm referring to the fact that Carole King doesn't grasp MP3s.
She's not just a recording artist. She's also the head of (yet another) label releasing her own work. So she should have some grasp on the issue or else shut up about it.
The words Napster never appear and I'm sure, were she to read this right now, she'd scratch her head and say, "Huh?"
At points in the books she rails against MP3s as a format. At other points, she grasps that downloads can be purchased. This isn't a minor matter because, this month in the US, digital downloads surpassed CDs in sales.
As a recording artist and as one now releasing her own product, Carole King should brush up on the basics. She might also attempt to review the work of Janis Ian on this subject or even call Janis for a tutorial.
Now let me be the heretic and explain the other reason her nonsense pissed me off. She wants you to listen to the Beach Boys "Good Vibrations" -- does she really believe most people haven't heard that song -- and download it, but pay for it.
Is she aware that when the US finally included music as a copyright, it was for one period of 28 years with a 14 year extension after that?
I ask that because I'm really shocked at how these people who made money -- made good money -- in the sixties while, for example, Little Eva got pennies seem to think that they're entitled to a lifetime copyright. By law, they are. They now can hold a copyright on a song they wrote for their lifetime plus seventy years.
"Good Vibrations" came out forty-six years ago. While I don't illegally download, I'm really not concerned as to whether or not Brian Wilson and Mike Love are still getting royalties on that song. Again, Little Eva got paid for the original chart life of "The Locomotion." Songwriters Carole King and Gerry Goffin have been paid year after year on every sale and every airplay of "The Locomotion." In what world is that fair?
The current efforts at attacking internet freedom such as SOPA are part of the lobbying that never ends by the entertainment industry. Apparently unable to create anything new of value, they have to continue to gnaw on the bones of the past. That is how you go from a musical copyright lasting 28 years with one 14 year extension to a musical copyright lasting a lifetime plus seventy years.
It's as if the whole notion of public domain has vanished, one more of the public commons steadily taken away.