A few more Digital Rights gone wrong and in need of righting....

I can't start this story without just linking to it, and to leading with the lede from it:

I don’t care how many Grateful Dead shows you saw over the years, or how many Jimi Hendrix outtakes you’ve downloaded, or how many Led Zeppelin bootlegs you have. Unless you’ve spent you life listening to those in a cave, the guitarist whose work you have probably listened to the most is Tommy Tedesco.

Though most of the 1960s and 1970s, the Niagara Falls native was a Los Angeles session guitarist, part of a loose-knit group of about 20 musicians nicknamed the Wrecking Crew that played on an astonishing amount of the music we associate with that era.

Initially cohering as the studio band that produced Phil Spector’s famous “Wall of Sound,” the Wrecking Crew played on hits by artists from Frank Sinatra to the Monkees, from the Byrds to the Chipmunks, from Simon and Garfunkel to Sonny and Cher. They’re the band on many of the Beach Boys’ albums—and yes, that includes Pet Sounds.

They also did film scores, commercials and TV themes. The twanging theme on TV’s Bonanza was Tedesco. They were valued by producers who had limited amounts of studio time and minimal resources, before the development of multitrack recording systems, when you either did it right or did it again. 

I knew other names from that article, from last week's Artvoice, our local arts/alt weekly: Hal Blaine (one of the names I remember as being one of the real musicians behind the early 70s Partridge Family episodes). Plas Johnson  (cited here, and in my memory, as being the sax soloist on the iconic Mancini Pink Panther theme).  Plus at least one other not named here: Larry Carlton, who wrecked with the Crew for much of that era, and was still sessioning when Hill Street Blues came along in the 80s and needed a majorly cool guitar riff for the single of the Mike Post theme.

Some argue about the name and the precise legacy: Carol Kaye, "First Lady of Bass" and part of the history, questions the Tedesco version of things on her website as reported in comments to the Artvoice piece. Whichever version is the most accurate or complete, the fact remains that these musicians   deserve more accolade, and exposure, than the past 30-50 years have given them.

And that's a shame.

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The Tedesco version of events has been laid down on video since 2008, but you cannot watch more than the brief (and unembeddable) clip of it at that link above. Not in cyberspace, and certainly not in the comfort of your living room, because the producers have been unable to secure the DVD rights to the songs presented in the piece:

Although it has been complete since 2008, The Wrecking Crew remains unreleased, and it will not be released until Tedesco raises the money necessary to license the 130 songs heard in the film.

“People would always suggest we do this film with fewer songs,” he says by phone from California, “but you can’t tell this story without giving an idea of the scope. Legally I could probably license it to PBS or VH1, but there’s no point without a DVD to sell.” Although he’s had some success negotiating the costs down, the sheer number of rights holders remains a problem. And he is determined to do everything on the up and up, knowing that paying the costs means getting money into the pockets of the guys whose stories are told here.

If anything cries out for a more definitive exception for "fair use," it is this. Our current copyright law dates to 1976, before the advent of the Interwebs and the 0's and 1's that now define so much of our lives.  Because "fair use" was defined then in such broad and simultaneously vague terms, it's become an almost 40-year-old game of chicken as users try to figure out whether theirs is or isn't- with prohibitive penalties if they're wrong.

Similar things come up in near daily experiences of mine. At least once a week, I run into a YouTube I'd like to merely watch, but can't, because I'm using my tablet to pull it up: "mobile" rights are defined separately from PC-ish ones, and Google's lawyers have recommended they simply shut down access if the originator hasn't expressly given that permission.  And then there are issues like those being faced by Tedesco's successors. For years, I've been reminded of, and have wanted to re-watch, clips from the groundbreaking 1980s program The Tracey Ullman Show. Good luck with that: either because the producers are in a hissy with the Simpsons' creators over use of their primordial shorts from the episodes, or because they haven't been able to secure music clearances for the many songs that the cast skewered in those days, those shows are completely off-limits to being re-packaged.

Someday, my prince will come and take me away from all this conflict. Unfortunately, the most likely Prince to arrive is one who's among the most rabid about enforcing copyright restrictions. 

To which I reply: Unpronounceable-symbol you:P