Queen and the Chili Peppers in the News
Nov 20th, 2007 by Micah Tillman | 4 Comments |
I love this story:
Queen guitarist May named university chancellor
Seems that Brian May of Queen just completed his Ph.D. in astrophysics, and some university says he’d make a great “figurehead.” He had originally dropped his studies to play in Queen, evidently.
Queen is one of the greatest bands of all time. They were the height of the virtuosity that marked 70’s and 80’s rock. Fortunately for the rest of us, however, Nirvana and the Seatle gang took over in the 90’s with the return of folk music.
The history of rock-n-roll, you see, is a never-ending dialectic between the art approach and the folk approach. The 80’s was ,”Look how awesome I am, how many girls I have” and the 90’s was, “Look how much of a loser I am, how many girls I don’t have.” I have always more readily identified with the 90’s.
(I wonder which Nietzsche would have preferred. Hmmmm . . . .)
Oh, and the Red Hot Chili Peppers, another of the greatest bands of all time, are suing Showtime over the title of the show “Californication.” The title was stolen from one of the Chili Peppers most popular albums, say the Chilis, while the executive producer of the show claims he got it from an old bumpersticker complaining about people moving out of California into Oregon.
I trust this suit will go over better with the music-buying public than did Metallica’s (another of the greatest bands of all time) infamous actions against downloading.
Congrats to Brian. I had been reading about his studies, sounds like he finished his goal. As for Californication…..I have lived in two places in my life: CA and Oregon. I’ve never heard that word till The RHCP’s came out with it. I am on their side :)
Californication is simple word play. I’m certain the Peppers didn’t coin the term. Can they sue just because they popularized it? The word isn’t even copyrighted.
In one of my back issues of Thrasher (skateboard) Magazine, a letter to the editor mentions trying to popularize the term Going Postal. Can they get residuals?
It is undisputed, as far as I know, that the phrase was used on bumper stickers in Oregon back in the ’70s which read “Don’t Californicate Oregon.” However, the RHCP have a point. One of the characters of the show is apparently nicknamed “Dani California,” another RHCP reference. They might win a settlement; they certainly won’t get all “all profits derived” as they are currently asking.
Sweet sweet market share and whatnot.
It’s definitely true in the song world that many songs end up with the same title.