Tuesday, May 04, 2004

KOPYRIGHT LIBERATION FRONT LIBERATED: If you play hard and fast with intellectual property, sooner or later you're going to get bitten in your own butt. That's the hard lesson being learned by Bill Drummond and Jimmy Cauty of the KLF, who have found their name pinched to promote a tour in Australia by Wanda Dee. Wanda, of course, was sampled by the KLF - "stolen" and "ignited into the KLF, and not by kind intervention", and now is taking part in a dance tour as either "Wanda Dee of the KLF" (her words) or "the KLF" (the promoter's). Her slightly tortuous logic runs like this:

"I am touring as Wanda Dee of The KLF. I have nothing to do with how the promoters promote it. I do everything in my power to make sure that the people know that the performers are coming out and not the producers. Again, the producers created that whole confusion. I am a solo entity and have always been a solo entity. Due to the fact that they didn't honour my contract with them, we did track them down and had to pull them by the coat-tails and get them to properly credit me for publishing. By the time we caught up with them they had not taken all of the publishing but most of it. I had to settle with them. They were supposed to give me a feature credit in the video as part of my contract and they were supposed to give me an extra track that they were to produce as part of my agreement but they kept my track, they still have it to this day. They didn't credit me. They in turn caused all the confusion."

There's more confusion, though, as the tour also features "C+C Music Factory", or, rather, Barbara Tucker. Tucker was originally in C+C, but solely as a dancer. However, Robert Clivilies has given her act an official blessing: "As the last surviving co-creator, co-producer and sole remaining owner of the C+C Music Factory name and franchise, there is only (1) one current incarnation of my multi-platinum group that has been personally sanctioned by my office to rightfully and legally use the name in conjunction with live concert performances and events both domestically in the U.S. and internationally around the world; and that is the C+C Music Factory show featuring Barbara Tucker." So, who'd feel cheated by that, then?

Snap make up the third part of the tour, although unusually, they do feature an original, singing member of the band - Turbo B. Just the one, mind, but it seems that that's more than you;d have any right to expect these days.


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