As many people know, Prince covered Radiohead’s hit song “Creep” at this years Coachella Festival. Now, controversy has emerged regarding the use of the song on YouTube.

“After word spread that Prince covered Radiohead’s “Creep” at the Coachella festival, the tens of thousands who couldn’t be there ran to YouTube for a peek. Everyone was quickly denied — even Radiohead.

All videos of Prince’s unique rendition of Radiohead’s early hit were quickly taken down, leaving only a message that his label, NPG Records, had removed the clips, claiming a copyright violation. But the posted videos were shot by fans and, obviously, the song isn’t Prince’s.”

Radiohead themselves, particularly Thom Yorke have been made aware of the current situation and were interviwed regarding it.

“Thom Yorke said he heard about Prince’s performance from a text message and thought it was “hilarious.” Yorke laughed when his bandmate, guitarist Ed O’Brien, said the blocking had prevented even him from seeing Prince’s version of their song.

“Really? He’s blocked it?” asked Yorke, who figured it was their song to block or not. “Surely we should block it. Hang on a moment.” Yorke added, “Well, tell him to unblock it. It’s our … song.”

“YouTube prohibits the posting of copyrighted material. If the site receives a complaint from a copyright owner, it will in most cases remove the video(s). Whether the same could be done for a company not holding a copyright is less clear, but Yorke’s argument would seem to bear some credence according to YouTube’s policies. YouTube, which is owned by Google, declined to comment.”

This has seemed to spark a new debate in digital copyright laws and rules, as it is an interesting twist of artist vs. artist as opposed to the usual band/artists vs. fan situation. I personally think as the writers of the song Radiohead should have the final say, either way it’s all kind of ridiculous.

Source.

(*Photo of Thom Yorke with Jazzmaster courtesy of abc.com).

So, over a week ago it was announced that Prince was added as a headliner to the Coachella Festival (look above, they even made special graphics for his appearance!). I had sort of already planned on not going, so I was just a little annoyed finding out that this bumped Portishead to sub-headliner status. Sub-headliner status means a shorter set-time.

While Prince is kind of cool, he’s not someone who I would ever really care about seeing. Its a little bit of a shame because Coachella will be Portishead’s first show in 10 years. I know people who are just going for them, or mainly going for them. Anyway, as long as Prince doesn’t let his super-male-diva side take over for too long everything should be alright. Remember what happened with Madonna?

At this point its pretty easy to see that Coachella’s kind of…well…blah, but there still are a ton of good bands playing that I’m kind of bummed to being missing out on…Battles, Aphex Twin, The Breeders, Portishead, Kraftwerk and Autolux. Although I have seen a few of those bands before, and will be seeing The Breeders on their own tour and presumably Portishead, since they have a new record coming out.

- Also: Have a happy Earth Day 2008! Do something positive. -

*(Graphics courtesy of coachella.com).

So I haven’t posted in a few days. Some interesting news has been reported in the past couple days, namely this years annual Lollapalooza lineup. In case you haven’t heard, a few years ago Lollapalooza changed from a touring festival to an annual one held in Chicago’s Grant Park. It takes place from August 1-3 this year.

The lineup this year looks pretty good to me, and features a lot of alternative, guitar bands.  Here are a sampling of the bands playing this year that I’d like to see…

Radiohead, Rage Against The Machine, Nine Inch Nails, Wilco, The Raconteurs, Gnarls Barkley, Broken Social Scene, Cat Power, Explosions In The Sky, Battles, The Black Keys and a rare festival appearance from Witchcraft.

Just based on those bands alone I’d be up for going. The early bird tickets have sold out, but at $195, the current ticket prices are dramatically less then Coachella at almost $300. Lollapalooza ticket prices also have no service charges. Although the lineup looks good, I have to see if a trip to Chicago at the beginning of August will work out for me.

So it’s gearing up to be Music Festival Season in the US again. What this means, is if you’re a hardcore music fan you have to decide, (assuming you aren’t rich) which festival you are going to attend, if any at all. Having been to both Coachella and Bonnaroo I can attest to it being a completely kick ass time. The lineups when I went, (Coachella 2006 and Bonnaroo 2007) were exceptional, and a lot of the bands playing complemented each other in a certain way. I have come across many threads online of seasoned festival goers remarking that Bonnaroo 2007 was one of the best festivals they ever attended. After looking at some of the lineups for some of the 2008 incarnations of these festivals, things seem a little different…

Before I rant about that…I thought I’d try to understand this whole seemingly recent, (for the US) music festival trend/phenomenon. First off, Europe has had huge, annual music festivals since the late 60’s and early 70’s. Some of these include the Reading Festival in England, which is one of the biggest, (around 100,000 people) and others like the Roskilde Festival in Denmark (around 80,000). There are a slew of others…so many I couldn’t possibly name them all here, but most major European countries play host to an average of 5 to 10 festivals on a yearly basis. It seems that besides a few random occurrences such as Woodstock and a few others, music festivals were not very common in the United States, especially annual ones.

This all changed after the Coachella Music & Arts Festival debuted in April, 1999 in the Indio, California desert…well not exactly… The first Coachella was a decidedly alternative festival, which featured Beck as a headliner on the first day, and Rage Against The Machine headlining the 2nd day. Other bands such as Tool, Pavement, At The Drive In, Cornelius, Modest Mouse, Spirtualized, and many others rounded out an extremely great lineup. Tickets for the festival were priced at $50 per day or $90 for both days. Around 10,000 people showed up each day, dealt with the pretty intense heat, (assisted by promoter Goldenvoice supplying everyone with as many free water bottles as they needed) and enjoyed themselves. This is a far cry from what the festival would become years later.

Following the 2002 edition of Coachella its reputation and number of attendees continued to grow…so much so that in 2004, the festival experienced its first sell out, (50,000 tickets sold for each day). This was due in part to the Pixies reunion and Radiohead as headliners. The 2007 edition of the festival saw 100,000 attendees present for Rage Against The Machine’s reunion set. Admission costs continued to increase as well. Single day passes for 2008 are $90 and 3-day passes are $269, (not including service charges).

After such success, many other promoters started to take notice. A lot of other annual festivals started to spring up all over the US and continue to do so. A few others established themselves with their own identity and vibe, such as Bonnaroo in rural Manchester, TN. Bonnaroo featured everything from alternative rock, to folk singers with acoustic guitars, to jam bands who play all electronic instruments (STS9). Concerning Bonnaroo’s atmosphere; the festival prided itself on being environmentally friendly, allowing taping of any artist, having local art, musicians and even microbreweries represented at the festival. In sharp contrast, several other events were obviously just pure attempts at corporate money-making fests, (such as the Virgin Festival in Baltimore, MD and Vegoose in Las Vegas, NV) and don’t really represent any sort of culture or strive for higher ideals or even an individual style. These totally corporate driven festivals charge very high prices for water and food and typically book the most mainstream/safe bands, to guarantee that the organizers will make a pretty penny.

It recent years; some of the originators are starting to become guilty of the same decisions many of their extremely corporate competitors continue to make. Coachella, for example, (a pretty much decidedly alternative festival) have booked generic pop acts such as Madonna and other heavily mainstream acts as headliners in an attempt to draw more people. As a result, many cult bands and acts who have given the festival its good reputation are relegated to smaller stages and shorter set times. This was seen as a slap in the face to most fans of the festival.

Bonnaroo’s lineup this year has Pearl Jam and Metallica as headliners as well as Kanye West. I’m not trying to insult fans of these artists, but compared to what Bonnaroo fans have come to expect this isn’t really their style. As much as the organizers say in press releases and articles that they are trying to “be more diverse” it is hard not to feel like they are just trying to make more money (ticket prices for this years festival are significantly more than years past and capacity has been increased to 130,000 people).

To further frustrate hardcore festival goers, is the fact that many of the bands booked on one festival, (usually Coachella) play ALL of the remaining festivals, making the lineups and the experience almost identical. As is the case this year with, most notably, Jack Johnson headlining Coachella, Bonnaroo AND the new All Points West Festival!!

I’m happy with my past 2 festival experiences, but this year, due to cost, and in my opinion - crappy lineups, I dont think I will be attending any. The way things are going this year doesn’t look good for the future of American music festivals. They’re just getting too bloated. I haven’t lost hope yet though, there is always next year…