"Stop the Fake Band"
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Musician Burton Cummings, best known for the Canadian classic rock band the Guess Who, is celebrating the band’s 60th anniversary by hitting the road.
While it is a great achievement, he is certainly having some legal woes. Cummings and former bandmate Randy Bachman started a lawsuit against the current version of the Guess Who (which includes original drummer Garry Peterson) last fall, claiming that they are sharing false advertising and fooling fans into thinking that Cummings and Bachman are still part of the band to improve ticket sales for their concerts.
Burton Cummings of the Guess Who performs during the 2005 Juno Awards ceremony April 3, 2005 in Winnipeg, Canada. The Juno Awards are the main Music event in Canada and is run annually
As the lawsuit is ongoing, Cummings has now canceled his licensing agreements with performing rights organizations (PROs) so that the Guess Who’s music is no longer allowed to be performed in live venues. While this should effectively stop the current Guess Who from performing those songs, it will also cause Cummings to lose payments on any royalties from live performances, TV and radio placements, and more. It includes songs that he wrote, like “American Woman” — later covered by Lenny Kravitz — “These Eyes” and “No Sugar Tonight/New Mother Nature.”
Canadian rock band The Guess Who at Heathrow Airport, London, UK, February 1967. They are carrying boxes of Export A cigarettes. The band are Randy Bachman, Burton Cummings, Jim Kale and Garry Peterson
Evening Standard/Hulton Archive/Getty Images
Cummings said about his decision, “I’m willing to do anything to stop the fake band. They’re not the people who made these records and they shouldn’t act like they did.” He added, “This is about way more than just money. I wouldn’t have pulled the catalog if it wasn’t. This is about the legacy of the songs and the fact that the cover band is doing anything they can to erase me and Bachman from the history of the group. I see advertisements for their shows, and it’s me singing ‘American Woman.’”Bachman added that they found out about the false claims on social media because their fans alerted them. He explained that fans started sending “shots they had taken with their iPhone.” He continued, “They said ‘We drove 600 miles to see you and [instead saw] a bunch of guys who weren’t even born when these songs were hit songs,’ ‘We spent 100 bucks each, and there’s eight of us, and the songs don’t even sound like you guys.’ ‘”American Woman” now has a flute solo — and that doesn’t fit.’ Stuff like that. They started communicating with us directly.”
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There was a recent article in the Chicago Tribune newspaper about this
Of all the philosophical questions posed by pop music over the past 60 years or so — Will you love me tomorrow? Is there life on Mars? Should I stay or should I go? — among the toughest in 2024 is this: When is a famous rock band or R&B act no longer themselves? When should a group of musicians with a famous name stop performing under that famous name?
https://www.chicagotribune.com/2024/07/22/when-is-a-band-still-a-band/
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@taiwan_girl said in "Stop the Fake Band":
There was a recent article in the Chicago Tribune newspaper about this
Of all the philosophical questions posed by pop music over the past 60 years or so — Will you love me tomorrow? Is there life on Mars? Should I stay or should I go? — among the toughest in 2024 is this: When is a famous rock band or R&B act no longer themselves? When should a group of musicians with a famous name stop performing under that famous name?
https://www.chicagotribune.com/2024/07/22/when-is-a-band-still-a-band/
It's a bit like having a 50 year old broom. You've replaced the brush 3 times, and the handle twice, but it's still the same broom.
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Looking at the Wiki pages of so many of these bands, it's rare that the original group is there.
I saw that the Four Tops was one of the longest-lived groups with all the original members.
@Doctor-Phibes commented as I was posting - it's a good description.
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@Doctor-Phibes said in "Stop the Fake Band":
It's a bit like having a 50 year old broom. You've replaced the brush 3 times, and the handle twice, but it's still the same broom.
That is the famous "Ship of Theseus" paradox
The ship of Theseus, also known as Theseus’ paradox, is a thought experiment that raises the question of whether an object that has had all of its components replaced remains fundamentally the same object. The paradox is most notably recorded by Plutarch in Life of Theseus from the late first century. Plutarch asked whether a ship that had been restored by replacing every single wooden part remained the same ship.
The paradox had been discussed by other ancient philosophers such as Heraclitus and Plato prior to Plutarch’s writings, and more recently by Thomas Hobbes and John Locke.
https://open.library.okstate.edu/introphilosophy/chapter/ship-of-theseus/