Re: Dave's bank account

Date: Thu, 05 Jun 2003 22:04:55 +0200
Newsgroups: alt.music.depeche-mode
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On Thu, 5 Jun 2003 20:38:44 +0200, "Dentaku" <email-address-deleted> wrote:
>| Considering it is his first time out of the blocks you should compare
>| it to Martin's first time. Is Dirty Sticky Floors better or worse than
>| Shoudn't Have Done That, Tora Tora Tora or The Meaning Of love?
>You can only compare music in it's timeframe. As it's ludicrous to compare
>exciter with speak and spell. If i compare Dave's work with most thing that
>are out there at the moment, it's just below par IMO. Give me Jemini anytime
I can agree with you but i never said you should compare it with Speak
and Spell more that you should compare it to Martin's first attempt at
lyric.
If you want to then find someone who recorded their first album of
songs this year like Dave has with the limited budget.
If Jemini are that poor excuse for a Eurovision entry we had then you
are a very sick puppy!
>| Yes and no. The band would have had to pay people to do what Alan did
>| for nothing. Therefore it could be argued that Alan did a lot fo work
>| for nothing and the band saved money because of that. Martin had a lot
>| of his songs written for him but the people, whoever they were never
>| got a brass farthing for it.
>I don't get this., You say Martin's getting false credits for his
>songwriting>
Yes, exactly! Martin did not write Enjoy The Silence, for example, as
we know it. Alan and Flood did. Let me give you an analogy. Say i
wrote a lyric set, basically a poem as a song is a poem set to music.
With these lyrics i recorded a very basic drum backing at 70bpm. Along
you come, take the song, increase the speed to 120bpm and write a
wonderful piece of music to go witht he words and it becomes a number
1 hit around the world.
Everyone buys this song by Dentaku and see that the person who wrote
the song is Engelkott. Later that year i win an Ivor Novello award for
writing the best song of the year when i actually wrote a very basic
and boring song but you made it the smash hit. Would you think it was
right that i got the credit and you got no credit?
That is basically what happend with ETS but that is an extreme case
and not the norm. In that example someone else wrote the song for
Martin and Martin got the credit. The average man in the street is not
interested in symantics and the fact it has (Gore) after that song
leads them to believe he wrote it, lock, stock and barrel.
But as i said, Martin is not alone in that and it happens all the time
in groups and so on.
>| I think it is widely acknowledged that Alan and Flood basically write
>| Enjoy The Silence fom the ashes of the demo. In case anyone disputes
>| this Alan admits to writing the bassline to World In My Eyes. Did he
>| get the credit? Did Martin get the credit for writing the song?
>| I hope you can see where i am going here.
>| Martin got paid for writing the song when all he did was write the
>| words and some chord structure
>
>There is a distinct difference between 'song'and 'lyric'. Martin doesn't get
>all this extra money because he thought up the music, or made the original
>demo, Martin gets double because he gets his cut out of what the band
>grossed, plus, through Grabbing Hands Music, the income for writing the
>lyrics. There is no dispute that he is the one who is responsible for the
>lyrics, is there? For the law he is entitled compensationn for any use of
>those lyrics, no matter if it is by his band DM, or by someone who put them
>on a website (which is illegal without the consent of Grabbing Hands)
No, Martin gets the extra mony for being the writer of the song. If,
in the case of ETS he got the credit for lyrics and Flood, Alan or
whoever got the credit for the music then he would have had to split
the extra money between himself and them for writing the song.
Christmas Island is an instrumental written by Martin and Alan. The
publishing company was Grabbing Hands and Sonet, who i assume acted on
Alan's behalf. This is because they wrote it together and as a result
they shared any royalties from writing it.
Under international copyright law, which can be obtained from
Copyright House in central London it is clearly stated how and why
royalties are paid on songs. If i was to record a People Are People it
is a recognised song. If i choose not to use the music but just use
the words i am still recording a song which has been registered under
copyright law.
What DM do in the studio is pre-copyright therefore whoever writes
major parts of the song should be credited. Pop down to Chappels of
Bond Street and buy the sheet music to World In My Eyes. The bass line
to that song was not written by Martin but it has Martin's name on it
and if i recorded that bass line who do you think would sue me? Alan,
who wrote it or Martin who owns the copyright for 'writing' it?
The law is an asss and copyright law is even more so!
>So when alan was member of the band, he got his 1/4 cut out of the general
>income, as did the others *if* they agreed to split equally. The could have
>agreed something else (and maybe they did, who knows?). They could (and
>should IMO) have agreed to label both songs and lyrics as 'Depeche Mode'so
>In that case anyone (including Fletch) would have gotten an equal split. But
>they didn't, as most bands don't.
This leads on to another interesting case in point. Who sat in the
studio and worked on the Violator with Flood? Who was in the studo
while the others were on holiday or partying? Who programmed the live
songs and programmed the samplers? It was Alan. I am not saying he did
it alone but he was the lone member of the band doing it.
Who got the credit for all of the above? Depeche Mode! Violator,
produced by Depeche Mode and Flood. That was one of Alan's major
gripes, that he did a lot of work alone with samples, arrangements but
the credit went to Depeche Mode not Alan Wilder. Fletch got a credit
for producing Violator! It is laughable really! The same went for
SOFAD and SOFAD live.
Sure, Alan worked for Depeche, which was why he did not feel part of
the group. Martin wrote songs and they were his but all the work Alan
did was the bands work.
>You have to realise that in the musicbusiness recording artists are
>relatively worse off, compared to songwriters. Session-artists or producers
>generaly get a fixed amount of money payed, not according to sales like
>musicians or songwriters, unless if they had that put in their contract.
I agree with you 100% but when someone brings in a very basic demo of
a song and someone else does a large amount of writing for that song
surely it is a collaboration?
>| Having said that, life is not fair. If i recorded any DM song and
>| changed everything except some lyrics Martin would still get paid
>| because it is his song even if 95% was different.
>And that's good too. It would be stealing if you did without paying,
>wouldn't it.
That was not my point. My point is that if i took Martin's words and i
used my own music, written by me it is still Martin's credit! If you
buy a piece of sheet music of a cover version of a song and it has the
new music to it the credit is still to the original writer of the
song. How can that be right?
The Jedi Knights mix of Home is 99% different to the original but if
you used some of it either as a sample or the music notes then Martin
gets the credit not Yoda, Luke and Obi Wan!