Live Review

Jo Harman and Company – New Crawdaddy Club, Essex – Thursday 7th February 2013

Rising star Jo Harman and her ‘Company’, rolled into town tonight at Essex’s premier Blues Club, The New Crawdaddy. What was on evidence was a pool of outstanding talent that just wiped the floor.
Jo has a unique voice, very identifiable, very soulful, and verging on gospel at times, even she made reference to the influence. Then there’s her band . . . Guitar (Mike Davies)
, Keys (Steve Watts), Bass (Andy Tolman) and Drums (Martin Johnson). These guys deserve just as much credit as Jo herself, well nearly, even when its’ just guitar and voice, or full on, heads down, wipe out!
Each song, albeit original or subtle cover, has the ‘Harman Effect’, well crafted, full of emotion, plenty of light and shade and that added ‘Soul/Blues Funk’ that, from where I sit, essential
to keep 100% attention. From this musicians point of view there’s a lovely controlled emotion, Jo
and the band can de-clutter the notes, being frugal and economic with them, even with those that they don’t play!

We were treated with songs from past CD’s ‘Live at the Hideaway’ and the EP, but also with tasters from her forthcoming studio release ‘Dirt On My Tongue’. On tonight’s showing the Live ‘Hideaway’ CD is one aspect of Jo’s bow, but the studio album will, I’m sure, give another viewpoint. Live, Harman is a potent animal, balancing the song selection beautifully with just enough variety.

Tonight’s audience at Essex’s premier blues club The Crawdaddy, are not always open to such
diverse song selection, some songs very far from their comfort zone of the Blues, but tonight they were captivated, such is the appeal of Ms Harman and her band. Even a Bobby Bland song, made more famous by mane haired rocker David Coverdale – “Ain’t No Love In The Heart Of The City” was given the H & Co treatment. Even the normal, very staid Crawdaddions couldn’t resist this version.

The tide has certainly turned and Jo Harman is riding the crest of a wave. Very rare, nee never, does an artiste make two appearances at this venue in one year, but there’s a buzz doing the rounds that this might be the case, so if she does, fail not to catch her. If you missed her, then buy the audio formats, but . . .

Fail not to catch Jo Harman and her band, anywhere, for that matter!

Thanks to www.barebonesboogieband.com

Catch Jazz legend Courtney Pine at the Komedia

Just a quick one to say how excited we are to see the amazing Courtney Pine play at Brighton Komedia on the 7th of February. Debuting material from his 15th studio album, House of Legends sees the ground-breaking multi-instrumentalist returning to the instrument he is best known for - the sax.

A deeply personal project for Pine, this album is nonetheless a truly international affair, featuring musicians from Africa, the Caribbean and Europe and combining elements of Merengue, Mento, Calypso and Ska. Having just won the prestigious Jazzwise Album of the Year it has been dubbed "unquestionably one of the most joyous albums Pine has ever made." We can't wait!

Komedia Brighton, February 7th

Doors 8pm

Tickets £18

http://www.komedia.co.uk/brighton/music/

And here's some "Kingstonian Swing" to get you in the mood...

‘Hope I die before I get old…’ Copyright in classic rock recordings of the 60’s evade expiry in EU

Bob Dylan and the Beatles have both been in the Copyright news recently. This time it’s not about infringement wars but rather copyright expiry.

Under European Copyright law, the copyright period in a sound recording lasts 50 years which means at this point, i.e. sound recordings made prior to 1963, they then enter the public domain and can be reproduced without owing a stitch to the owner of the sound recording. For the year of 1962, this has
recently happened to the Beatle’s ‘Love me do’ (ok, they did get better) in which the copyright in the recorded track lapsed at the start of 2013. The same is true of Dylan’s 1962 first album, ingeniously titled ‘Dylan,’ but back to Bob later. This means that these recordings are now the public domain and
you can now freely re-issue them as a vinyl flexidisc taped to the side of a packet of cornflakes, if you so wish, without having to pay a stitch to the owner of the copyright of the recording (notably record companies).
Flexi-what? (look it up kids!)

The copyright in the actual written song however still, in the case of ‘Love me do’ belongs to Lennon and McCartney and lasts the life of the author + 70 years after the author’s death.

Yes you are reading correctly – 2 versions of copyright pertain: copyright in the written song and
copyright in the recorded or published (printed) version.

In the not too distant past, UK 1960s pop icon Sir Cliff Richard (look him up kids and watch ‘Summer Holiday’ whilst you’re at it!) helped champion the move to extend the duration of recorded copyright - arguing the fact that many artists and session musicians (which still happened to be alive and hadn’t overdosed/drowned in swimming pools/other) still made a living from the royalties (some probably needing it more so than others but we won’t go there!). The EU, in its infinite and wonderful wisdom, therefore decided at the end of 2012 to extend the period of recorded sound by 20 years to the
threshold of 70 years (this period is 95 years in the US) - meaning that most of us will probably ‘die before we get this old’ in any event). This whole EU extended copyright stuff, however, now needs to be ratified by the EU council (zzzz….) and is expected to be signed into being around November 2013.
So whilst recorded tracks prior to 1963 have already fallen into the public domain in the EU - year by year post this, recorded tracks will now get a stay of execution for another 20 years. So the 1976 classic ‘don’t fear the reaper’ can rest in peace until 2046.

Right, so what does this all mean? Well, pretty much that just some aging rock stars and record companies will still get some cash through their retirement from continued record sales. But actually, and probably most importantly, record companies will still be able to use a % of the proceeds of their back catalogue to fund new artists. For stuff which has already fallen into the public domain – this is now open to being freely released by any label.

Oh yes back to Dylan. There’s another twist to this copyright tale. If you have, say as a record company, a portfolio of recorded stuff which you own the copyright rights to but don’t release or publish it in the 50 year period, unless you do, the copyright reverts back to the original owner - so called ‘use it or lose it’. So to get around this Sony recently and very craftily released a limited addition of early Dylan demos so these will now also have also another 20 years in the EU.

Complicated? …….. If only Future Copyright had been around 50 years ago!

Future Copyright makes copyright super simple so you don’t even have to think about it. At the click of an upload it captures and evidences the copyright in your work as soon as you create it. You can build your own copyright portfolio of new creative ideas through to recorded master copies. It generates copyright certificates of who owns what, and you can choose to release stuff directly from FC in a controlled manner; having a full legal copyright audit trail or simply decide to things under lock and key.
Future Copyright works right out of the box. It’s Free - so feel free to step right up and use it.

Just don’t forget to invite us to your reunion gig in 2083 - by which time it will be all boobtubes and legwarmers again!