Thursday, March 01, 2007

Bill Richardson to Iowa tomorrow

Bill Richardson to Iowa tomorrow

Weather willing, I'll be joining some fellow bloggers tomorrow afternoon in Des Moines with Gov. Richardson. Senator Clinton is supposed to be in state too, but the tentative schedule is calling for Dubuque and Des Moines and I'm kind of holding out for Iowa City (not up for a heavy duty peace crowd, Hillary?), or at least Cedar Rapids.

The Overrated One actually has a decent Richardson writeup.




The highly regarded Larry Sabato drops the ball with his vulnerable House freshmen article today, placing Dave Loebsack in the second most vulnerable category ("late-breaking surprise upsets, largely without the help of national Democrats"). Larry, the fluke wasn't that Dave Loebsack won - the fluke was that a district as Democratic as ours had a Republican representative in the first place.

Not to mention Sabato cites the really lame song "The Freshmen" by the Verve Pipe which was always confused with the Verve, who were out at the same time with the far superior "Bittersweet Symphony."



Man, did these guys get screwed:

Although the song was written by Verve vocalist Richard Ashcroft, it has been credited to Keith Richards and Mick Jagger because the song uses the Andrew Oldham Orchestra recording of The Rolling Stones' 1965 song "The Last Time" as its foundation.

Originally, The Verve had negotiated a license to use a sample from the Oldham recording, but it was successfully argued that the Verve had used 'too much' of the sample. Despite having original lyrics, the music of "Bittersweet Symphony" was arguably largely based on the Oldham track, which led to a lawsuit. The matter was eventually settled out of court, with copyright of the song reverting to ABKCO and songwriting credits to Jagger and Richards:

After losing the composer credits to the song, Richard Ashcroft commented, "This is the best song Jagger and Richards have written in 20 years."

Ashcroft and the band's reaction to the loss of control and financial rewards from what was their most popular song was not positive; the band split not long afterwards.

No comments: