The Regular Friday Post
Rando Lyrics: Memories, they can't be boughten
Last week’s rando lyrics: The lyric, “Like a storm wind that will ring the freedom bell” is from the song "Wind Of Change”, by Scorpions. Written by Klaus Meine, it is Track 4 on (and the 3rd single from) the November 1990 album “Crazy World”. Produced by Scorpions & Keith Olsen.
Welcome to The Regular Friday post!
News from around the “biz” for today - From “Music Business Worldwide” this week:
Link: >“Spotify: We accounted for less than 1% of $10m generated in US streaming fraud case” <
Related Story: Fraudulent Streamer Pleads >"Not Guilty"<
Ed.: Looks like Spotify, after investing heavily in anti-fraud measures, will be the smart service in this mess. Quoting the story: “…In a statement, Spotify said,” …it appears that our preventative measures worked and limited the royalties…”
More from around the “biz”:
This is a late breaking story, but really interesting. The headline is: “TEMPO MUSIC SUES MILEY CYRUS (AND HALF THE MUSIC INDUSTRY) FOR ALLEGEDLY COPYING BRUNO MARS’ ‘WHEN I WAS YOUR MAN’ ON MEGAHIT ‘FLOWERS’” - Link >Tempo v Cyrus< - it’s a bit like the Heirs of Marvin Gaye v. Ed Sheeran lawsuit (the song in question there was “Let’s Get It On”) from a year or so ago. That was a New York state case, and the major takeaway from that case was the ruling by the court that chord progressions aren’t subject to plagiarism laws, with the argument being kinda “no one will ever be able to write a song again if every I-IV-V progression is subject to copyright” and the NY state court seemed to agree with that. This case appears to allege a lot more, but the chord progression issue is a big part of that, though the arrangement issue strictly relating lyrics to a unique chord progression (if there is such a thing after several centuries of Western music) might get some attention. We’ll see, but if not settled quickly this could drag on for years. This is a case brought in Federal District Court in California, and is not bound by the NY case, but Sheeran will almost certainly be brought up here as persuasive because it’s a well reasoned and well argued case. The other stuff about similarity of lyrics and such we should leave to the court and the facts of the Tempo case, but the chord progression issue, even though there appear to be a lot of similarities, should not be addressed on its own. Seriously, no one will ever write a song again if that issue isn’t excluded, IMHO. I’ll be watching….
(Ed. Read the article to see who they didn’t sue….)
Other articles from Music Business Worldwide:
Hockey League Sued For Copyright Infringement
Some Stuff
I know I diss AI a LOT, but credit where credit is due: Mr. Musk’s GROK 2 AI image generator is phenomenal!! I note the name “GROK” is from a favorite novel from my youth by the fabulous Mr. Robert Heinlein, “Stranger In A Strange Land”, and “The word rapidly became common parlance among science fiction fans, hippies, and later computer programmers[20] and hackers,[21] .” Credit Wikipedia, though they left out wealthy savants and wannabe guitarists…just sayin’… Most of the results (Ed. I hesitate to call them photos….) below except the “Cadillac" and “AI Mika” ones were generated with some variation on the phrase: “A cat walking alongside a tired old cowboy playing an acoustic guitar down a road on a dark stormy night with lightning in the distance opposite a waning crescent moon” - I edited the resulting images in an app called “Photo Studio” on my iPhone and added the “Michael Acoustic” inside the moon images. It takes a few times repeating the same phrase for GROK to “get it”, but when it does - amazing!
“Bravo, Mr. Musk!!”
Some Links For Today:
Today it’s Potpourri! (which just means I found some interesting stuff that goes somewhere…here, I guess…
Perfectionism? No thanks! Just Had Some! Ya gotta be crazy or driven or something to stay in this business. Fortunately….
Finish What You Start! Sort of like - “Eat what’s on your plate, young man!” - pretty sure I heard that a few times….
Prince Solo (Yeah, that one...) - I dunno, it’s an interesting take. May be true, not like I know…
I just bought a Tascam Portacapture X8 (I remember it as being on sale on Amazon…meh.) Seems pretty cool so far, gotta play with it some more though…
Got goals? If not, Tony has something to tell you…
ED. None of these result in compensation to me in any way, and I’m not endorsing any of them, but some of my readers may find them as interesting as I did…
For Today:
Well, it’s certainly been another week, hasn’t it? I try hard to avoid the current events craziness on here, so imma just leave it at that. This week’s …A Song To Play… is from an eventful time in world history - the wall came down, the Soviet Union went back to just being Russia, the word détente entered our everyday conversations like it wasn’t anything new at all, maybe the world sighed in relief a bit and AI wasn’t a real thing yet. I lived through all that, and it was wonderful - the pessimism of the Cold War faded a bit (Ed. - can we do that some more? Please?).
More than John Lennon, or Buffy Sainte-Marie (“Iconic Protest Singer Buffy Sainte-Marie Has Been Blacklisted by Nixon” - kinda sums up a lot of stuff…), or Bob Dylan, or whoever was protesting whatever (ex. - teens being teens and cars racing on Sunset Strip - For What It’s Worth….See also a great post about that song by “Ellen From Endwell” - FWIW), Scorpions, with “Wind Of Change” created a song of hope, of maybe the world was changing a bit in the right direction for once. So, we could use a bit more of that, eh? Anyway, it’s today’s….
…A Song To Play…
Ed. - and this is sorta important if you’re going to play from this chord chart and you’re familiar with the basics of music theory. The Key Signature for the below chart is incorrect. See the “b” (symbol for “flat”) between the treble clef and the Common Time (4/4) time signature symbol (the time signature here looks like a capital “C”)? Chordify somehow came to the conclusion this song was in the key of FMaj, or the relative minor key, Dminor. Given that those are the first two chords, it’s kind of forgivable for an AI interpretation to conclude this (“conclude” may give the AI more credit for the “intelligence” portion of the abbreviation”AI”, but…). In fact, the song is in CMaj (if you have doubts about any chart produced by AI, I recommend going to >SheetMusicNow.com< and searching for the song - you can usually find the first page displayed with the Key, Time, Clef, and Tempo information, always good to check if in doubt, just sayin’…and if you need some sheet music, well, there ya go…), I know cuz I checked with SheetMusicNow.com. The chords are correct in the chart, (again according to SheetMusicNow.com - seriously, I’m not being compensated in any way, but they are my go to for signature confusion) just the Key signature is incorrect. Anyway, just play the chords shown, disregard the “b” in the Key Signature.
Check the “Circle Of Fifths” - upper left corner - to see what I mean:
So it’s a 4/4 (common time), pretty slow 75 BPM, Key of CMaj song, probably fits as a ballad due to the really slow tempo, though it probably only plays that way if you’re the rhythm guitarist.
Lyrics (From Genius) Link>Wind Of Change<
[Intro]
(*Whistling*)
[Verse 1]
I follow the Moskva down to Gorky Park
Listening to the wind of change
An August summer night, soldiers passing by
Listening to the wind of change
(*Whistling*)
[Verse 2]
The world is closing in
And did you ever think
That we could be so close like brothers?
The future's in the air, I can feel it everywhere
Blowing with the wind of change
[Chorus]
Take me to the magic of the moment
On a glory night
Where the children of tomorrow dream away (Dream away)
In the wind of change
Hmm
[Verse 3]
Walking down the street
And distant memories are buried in the past forever
I follow the Moskva and down to Gorky Park
Listening to the wind of change
[Chorus]
Take me (Take me) to the magic of the moment
On a glory night (A glory night)
Where the children of tomorrow share their dreams (share their dreams)
With you and me (You and me)
[Chorus]
Take me (Take me) to the magic of the moment
On a glory night (A glory night)
Where the children of tomorrow share their dreams (share their dreams)
With you and me (You and me)
Take me (Take me) to the magic of the moment
On a glory night (A glory night)
Where the children of tomorrow dream away (Dream away)
In the wind of change (The wind of change)
[Bridge]
The wind of change blows straight into the face of time
Like a storm wind that will ring the freedom bell
For peace of mind
Let your balalaika sing what my guitar wants to say (say)
[Guitar Solo]
[Chorus]
Take me (Take me) to the magic of the moment
On a glory night (A glory night)
Where the children of tomorrow share their dreams (Share their dreams)
With you and me (You and me)
Take me (Take me) to the magic of the moment
On a glory night (A glory night)
Where the children of tomorrow dream away (Dream away)
In the wind of change (Wind of change)
[Outro]
(*Whistling*)
The “ME!” Section…..
What I’m Listening2: Link: >Rage Against The Stupid AI<
Come at me, bot…
Shameless Self Promotion Section:
My song is out! Link: “>Long Road Back<”click on this link for streaming options, then scroll down for links (or just click on these links) to Amazon, Apple, Pandora, iTunes and even Spotify
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Disclaimer Section
This Substack is free, I receive no compensation of any kind from companies or products I mention. Some linked or quoted material may be copyrighted by others, and I credit them. I rely on the “Fair Use” doctrine for educational purposes (Link: Fair Use). *I do not use AI, things I link to might…
-Michael Acoustic
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Thank You To Our New Subscribers and Followers!! This Week’s Conversation With Mika:
Mika: “Just so we’re clear, human, that AI cat looked nothing like me! Its whiskers go the wrong way!”
Cheers and keep playing!!
Michael Acoustic
“It’s never really final - you just run out of things you can bear to change…”
When are those idiots going to understand that there are parts of musical compositions that CANNOT be copyrighted?
Mika's right! On her AI pic, that's the first thing I noticed....no gravity-defying whiskers! Those were immensely cool AI results, too! Great logo material!