Not Neighborzly

I'll await the serial number on Jay's copyright of the songs. I am interested to see how he copyrighted them. Ken, I am Brett Benito. I helped manage Sunny Rude for awhile. I have been involved in music, playing BASS in several bands, and managing for over 20 years. I have come across a similar situation a couple times. I'll wait patiently to see Jay's copyright serial number.
— October 12, 2011 6:40 p.m.

Not Neighborzly

While I understand your reasoning Ken, I was surprised by the one sided stance that this article takes, without actually HAVING the facts or proof. I 100% agree with your statement: "Any musician reading this who is facing an issue like this (band breaks up, songwriters go different ways) needs to get legal advice as to how to protect their intellectual property." I think the article could have been written from an unbiased point of view, especially since you said above that Jay Crew says he "has proof", yet you haven't seen this. You are basically defaming a band (Sunny Rude) that has worked hard to establish it's reputation, based upon the claims of a scorned ex-band member that QUIT the band. Really? That doesn't seem right or fair. The next question I would ask you, is what did Jay Crew submit to the copyright office? A recording of the band at the time, with the Sunny Rude members playing the instruments? How would that recording be copyrighted only to Jay? Unless he submitted sheet music for each instrument, the copyright would belong to the entire band and the members playing the submitted recordings. Wouldn't it make sense that Jay Crew, a scorned ex-band member, would be upset of the success of his old band(now Sunny Rude), and would approach you to write this article. I do understand that you were approached or choose to write the article from the side of Bad Neighborz. But the bottom line is it very "gray" when a song is copyrighted. But in this case I would go with the facts/proof available(see the iTunes links above). And yes I do know of Paul McCartney, Sting and Rush. Even locally The Devastators singer is their bassist, Ivan. It just seems strange that if Jay Crew was the person who wrote all the melodies, and was able to write music for guitar AND bass, couldn't he write lyrics too? Doesn't it makes much more sense if they all jammed, and once a good melody was played on bass or guitar, the singer, Erik, would write lyrics over it? So a better article would have been about who owns the rights to music that is created as a band, and then the band splits or breaks up before recordings are released. If you quit a band, and THE BAND wrote all the songs together in band practice, can you take any of the BANDS songs with you? Wouldn't it be prudent to either get all the proof and facts in front of you, before you write an article. Isn't a reporter supposed to be unbiased? Unless you have proof in your hands that I don't know about. It seems that the iTunes links I provided above are the only proof that actually exists. Did you see those iTunes album release dates before or after you published your article?
— October 12, 2011 4:31 p.m.

Not Neighborzly

This article is slandered so far to one side, Ken should be sued for defamation of character. Why would a writer, in the music section, not know the laws with regards to the rights to songs. You can't copyright a chord progression. Its all about who RECORDED the ENTIRE song with lyrics and ALL instruments. All it takes is under 1 minute to google search "iTunes Sunny Rude" and "iTunes Bad Neighborz" and you can clearly see the Sunny Rude album was released 4 months before the Bad Neighborz album. Sunny Rude- http://itunes.apple.com/us/album/live-at-winstons… and Bad Neighborz- http://itunes.apple.com/us/album/sunny-d/id453539… Who is stealing who's songs?? Get your facts right, and do your research Ken, BEFORE you throw any Local, Hard working band under the bus. Its absurd to think that a Bass player who quits a band, before any songs are recorded, can claim he has rights to songs that were just starting to be worked. Especially if he didn't right any lyrics... Jay's quote: "Erik wrote the lyrics...." So if the hooks and lyrics to the 3 songs in question were written by Erik, why does Bad Neighborz think they have any rights to those lyrics. Any musician should read this article and realize the absurd claims by Jay Crew and Bad Neighborz.
— October 12, 2011 1:34 p.m.