No Chord Use, No Crime

After the highly successful guest blog-spot here by Boris F-Smythe with his unique perspective on Mp’s Expenses, I’m delighted today to give you syndicated news content from the Music-News/Music-Soothes site. As always, syndicated contact cannot be guaranteed for accuracy.

We know America is the land of the free. This is both useful and irksome, as freedom so often comes with lawsuits and litigation.

The estate of classical composer Johann Pachelbel have today launched several lawsuits against contemporary artists who they claim have sampled or borrowed their forefather’s creation. Due to a strange quirk of copyright, that famous progression of eight chords appears to have a unique protection independent of copyright laws, and the estate is aiming to preserve Johann’s work for future generations.

Such lawsuits are becoming commonplace in the 21st century. Even late in the 20th century there was the famous clashing of horns of Apple Records and Apple computers. This long-winded and, at times, bitter argument later resulted in the owners of Apple Acme Inc. attempting to register the phrase ‘a is for apple’ as their own personal creation, leaving grocers and farmers the world over fearing for their livelihood. The hashtag #apple became Twitter’s highest-rated trending topic for several consecutive days as Twits the world over traded ideas for a possible re-branding of the humble apple should the judge rule in favour of the big corporation.

Details of those named in the Pachelbel estate’s suit are unknown as lawyers eagerly prepare dossiers for the courts, but speculation is rife. The action could see a number of major recording artists under the spotlight. Green Day’s worldwide hit ‘Basket Case’ may escape the net as the penultimate chord missed, but Sir Paul McCartney’s hit ‘Let it be’ may not get off so likely.

Speaking from the Pachelbel Chateaux in Austria, Johann XII told press reporters, ‘I’m not copyrighting individual chords, just a simple 8-chord progression. Of course there will be some royalty money involved, but I’m not just doing this for the money … it’s to preserve my great-great-great-great-great-grandfather’s work. We will use the money to start our own radio station playing and touring group. We also have researchers working in laboratories to see if the Canon can be transposed into other keys. There were early experiments in F major, but we simply ran out of funds’.

Whilst those named in the action have yet to be named, some widely-respected songs may simply disappear from Music Store shelves, leaving gaps in almost every genre. Avril Levigne’s text-speak-spelt  ‘Sk8ter Boi’, Chirpy Antipodian popster Natalie Imbruglia’s ‘Torn’, and the Emerald Isle’s golden son Bono’s hit ‘With or Without You’ all use a strikingly similar chordal structure. Nineties Madchester sensation The Farm’s ‘Altogether Now’, Scotland’s Belle and Sebastian hit ‘Get Me Away From Here’. The Bob Marley estate may release a modified version of ‘No Woman, No Cry’ using the chorus ‘No Chord Use, No Crime’ in order to raise public support for the freedom of eight simple chords.

At the time of writing, new attentions we being placed towards lift manufacturers around the world, who are thought to have further compounded the problems by incorporating a special audio system in lifts which can only pipe-out the Canon in D.

It remains to be seen how this will develop. It is entirely likely that this argument will continue to go round in circles underneath the spotlight. So far it has gone around at least 56 times in an endless ostinato.