Vinyl Notes

Seems like everyone is being sued these days. Folks are litigious about getting there money for song samples, undelivered books and dilution of the value of their names.

Courtney Love was sued earlier this week, for breaking an oral agreement with management firm, London Co. The firm claims that Love owes them 5% of her reported $19.5 million profits from the sale of Love’s portion of the Nirvana catalogue.

Lil Wayne may have had three weeks as king of the Billboard but now he’s being sued for copyright infringement. According to Rolling Stone, music publisher, Abkco filed suit against Wayne claiming that “playing with Fire” from Tha Carter III poses unfair competition with the Rolling Stones song “Play With Fire.” If Abkco is successful, Lil Wayne might be paying them some royalties from Tha Carter III.

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Many, many people had high expectations for Coldplay’s most recent release, hoping that it will be bigger and better than the last. While some make appropos comparisons to U2, I like to examine Coldplay at it own merit of melody, soundscape and rhythm (even though I haven’t heard the album yet, hehe). The reviews are lukewarm to raving and buzz abounds.

Speaking of which, over the last couple of weeks the buzz about Coldplay’s latest LP has reached a deafening level climaxing with the news that Coldplay was being accused of stealing the melody for “Viva La Vida” from New York band Creeky Boards. According to numerous reports, Creeky Boards front man, Andrew Hoepfner, claims that the melody originated from his song “The Songs I Didn’t Write” and he even asserts that Coldplay’s front man, Chris Martin, was at one of his shows in October. Hoepfner, cleverly, posted a video on YouTube for us to compare the songs for ourselves. What do you think?

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The music business can be a dirty game, especially when there is sentimentality involved. One such case is the news that Yoko Ono has decided to file a lawsuit against an up and coming artist named Lennon Murphy for using…get this…her own name.

When Murphy was signed to Arista Records in 2000 (Sony BMG), she and her A&R people requested Ono’s blessing to use “Lennon” as her stage name. In 2003 Murphy was granted official trademark ownership of the name, but now, just before the registration is scheduled to expire, Ms. Ono has is challenging this ownership, claiming that Murphy was causing confusion amongst the John Lennon fans by using the name. How very mean and petty of Ono.

In a distressed statement to her fans Lennon Murphy had this to say:

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