LucSulla

I'm not a lawyer, but I have written a bit about the history of copyright law in some of my published work, as it touches on some of my areas of scholarship. That's pretty much exactly what the German case was it seems. Copyright law is fairly similar among all the Berne Convention countries, of which the US and Germany are both signatories. That doesn't mean decisions one country is necessarily enforceable by all, but they are all working under similar rules. It's just as weird in Germany as it is in the US to pursue a copyright for design. I guess the argument goes something like thisL A. Fender lost a trademark case in 2009 due to the court ruling it never really policed the strat as trademark. B. Fender needed to try another area of intellectual property, and copyright was the only one left (the others being patents, trademarks, and trade secrets). C. Fender sued a AliExpress product in a German regional court with some history of ruling that later become precedent in the EU. D. Fender sued a product that was a clone. E. Fender thought that it would likely be a default judgement because the Chinese counterfeit company likely would not show up to defend itself. F. Fender has now backdoored its way into copyrighting the strat body in the EU without having to litigate if it was really something that could be copyrighted, which was the actual purpose from the start. The speculation is that they can now use this decision to begin building some kind of new case for owning the strat body style and that these threats may be as much about showing they are now working to protect their copyright, as to avoid same ruling as the 2009 case. What I don't know due to not being a lawyer is: To what end exactly? Do they want to establish the copyright here as well? Do they think they can revisit it as a trademark? Can you even do that again since there is a ruling? Would this stretch to use copyright for a guitar style by saying it's a "work of art" actually hold up if anyone showed up to defend themselves? And if any or all of these are true, can you effectively use an EU ruling as precedent here?

I chipped in to help fund LSL's lawsuit against Fender. https://www.gofundme.com/f/help-us-defend-s-style-guitars Seriously, fuck Fender for this. I know there are some great guitar builders who work there, but this is just everything I hate about business today.

The did it in Germany by going after copyright infringement vs. trademark infringement. They claimed the stratocaster body is a "work of art" based on the body of a woman. Annnnd they also brought it against a Chinese counterfeit product where the defendant didn't even present a defense, so they won basically by default.

I bought a "Bikini Sunset" Jackson Fusion from that guy back before the pandemic. Actually put a bid in that got accepted while playing a gig. I kept thinking about it while I was playing, and after a couple of drinks to make what was probably a bad decision seem like a good one, I started haggling between songs.

My favorite DAC story is actually Waylon's story about threatening to kick his ass back in the 70s.

I never hated on Gibson nearly as much as some. I thought they made some goofy shit, but being 100% honest, I've owned quite a few Henry-era Gibsons with 0 issues. I think I'm on my third SG, and I've owned six LPs from that era, two Explorers, one Flying V Pro, one 335 Studio, and one Firebird. One of the LPs kinda sucked, but all the rest were good guitars aside from the occasional garbage nut. A lot of them, I wish I still had (well, I do have four of them still), and those that I don't have anymore are really more a question of taste than there being a problem with them. And as cringe as the Firebird X was and similar guitars, I can't say that's really any worse than the "Play Authentic" crap and hammering smaller builders like Dean.

I didn't need to know that Gibson was capable of making a neck like this. It's definitely very non-traditional of them, but damn, does it work for metal.

This is such a slick cover.

Thanks! This will be my third one. I imagine it will mostly see the house because it isn't like anyone around Oxford is playing Down or COC covers. Good news is that I could absolutely murder someone with this aluminum case though.

Before (seller's pic): After:

All of this Corrosion of Conformity talk on the thread a couple of weeks back made me take another shot at an SG. I need a dedicated guitar for tuning to D standard. Found a pretty good deal on a 2016 SG HP someone had thoughtfully improve, i.e., removing the G-Force tuner. I thought the titanium nut and the sculpted heel were cool ideas. I like the thought of easily being able to raise and lower the nut, particularly for something I am going to set up for DOOM. What I was not prepared for was the "soloist" neck. Gibson wasn't joking around by calling it a "soloist" neck because it feels exactly like my 98 Jackson Soloist. You may like or hate that depending on preference, but I think it is pretty cool. Maybe I will actually keep an SG for once. I also have swapped some pups on a tobacco burst LP traditional and threw in some Gravelin pups he made for me awhile back. I sold the guitar they were in, but kept the pickups. Proof positive that modern LPs have a more pronounce arch than the Norlin era LPC they came out of. The treble pickup ring cracked IMMEDIATELY. Should have thought of that before I thought of that!

I like that they have the Alex Skolnick guy (Russ) and a Kerry King guy (not-Russ).

The Strat has sold. Ibby - $575: More pics here. I bought the Ibanez Q54 to be a travel guitar last summer. It fit that bill perfectly! In case you're like me and are at least in part looking at these because you want the option to take a full size guitar on trips that will fit in an overhead bin, this one absolutely does it. The roasted maple neck feels great, and the sounds available through the stock electronics cover a lot of ground. The won't absolutely slam the front in of an amp, so if you are into metal, it needs a boost I feel to really beef up, but otherwise, does everything else well. This is an earlier version that has the jumbo Jescar EVO gold frets rather than stainless. They are still in great shape. The main cosmetic issues with the guitar, and the only reason I didn't mark it as very good, is first that it has a textbook example of a neck pocket finish crack. Ibanez must really lay the poly on these guitars. I have included pics of the neck pocket with the neck off to show that this is only in the finish. The neck pocket itself is clean as can be. The other issue is some scratches and minor discoloration in the belly cut on the back of the guitar. Overall, this is an absolutely gigable little workhorse that works well for travel, for any time you want to save some room when carrying gear, or just if you straight up love headless guitars.

Thanks for the correction. For some reason, I just blotted the facts that Nirvana had two guitarists and that Chad Channing was the original drummer from my memory. I imagine there credited him because he did pay the $600 for Bleach to get made (at least remembered that much correctly).

Sold. Say a prayer to the shipping gods to me.

Coachella started in 1993 when Pearl Jam was boycotting Ticketmaster. They booked Empire Polo Club in Indio, and thus Coachella was born. Kinda. The notion to make it a festival didn't roll around until 1997 when the promoter who did the original show was inspired by the success of Glastonbury despite the shitty weather that festival often dealt with. The first actual festival was in 1999. Good lineup (at least as far as being representative of alt rock and electronic music at the time), but it didn't make money. The original owners got involved with AEG after another year off and brought it back in 2001. It stayed relatively true to its roots initially but gradually became the influencer, overpriced* shitshow it is today over the course of 2010s. Starting in 2010 I think, single day tickets were eliminated, and enshitification commenced. Here are the line-ups up to 2019. *I swore off festivals after Ozzfest 2000, so, in my opinion, they are never worth it. However, I can see how, if you liked festivals and a broad swath of indie, alt, electronica, and harder stuff, this would have been very appealing. At $65 a day, I'm sure it would have been a pretty cool scene. I'm not exactly defending it as much as saying there was a time where I would look at it and think, "That seems an all right thing if you're in that audience. I shan't yuck someone's yum." However, for much of the last ten years, I've come to think nuking it would objectively be a net win for humanity by most any metric.

https://www.sweetwater.com/store/detail/GLXD16p--shure-glxd16-digital-wireless-guitar-pedal-system Bought that back in November. 15-20 shows later and no issues. Battery life is absurdly long.

Le bump with pics!

I kinda got into them about a year ago. Their video for "Wizard" popped up on my YouTube algo. I thought it was absolutely absurd but actually liked the song the more I listened. Almost went to see them last October in Atlanta and kinda regret not going.

Still wild to me that not only did Gibby get a degree in accounting from Trinity in San Antonio, but he was awarded "Accounting Student of the Year" while there. I deeply miss that flavor of Texan and am really happy that a few were still knocking around Austin in 2005 when I got there, kinda the wierdo lifers in the punk, metal, alternative scene and the bars they inhabited. They were mostly gone when I moved back in 2014 because in the four years I was at UF, they got priced out of town along with most of the legit dives. Would have never guessed I got there just in time to see the sunset on all this legitimate transgressive weirdness that had been going on out there for decades. But that is another post.

This sound absurdly good and does just about everything from classic country to Mastodon. You do have to watch the brightness a little, but overall, muy impressed. My Hamer Studio with the DiMarzio 36th Anniversary pups in it sounds thunderous, even through this Avatar 1x12. Best part is I can go out of the XLR in the back of the tone king and so it all through IEMs and do a quiet stage. But you could absolutely push this through a 4x12 too and sterilize the front row. I'm mostly designing this to have an option to monitor via cabinet if I want to.

I think the beauty of the Butthole Surfers back in the days is that it seemed like everything from an orgy to a mass casualty event was legitimately on the table at their shows.

No, but that song is about a suicidal veteran. The liner notes finish wish a phone number to call if you're a vet in distress or know one. The bit Everman does is a spoken word thing about deciding not to die.

Random fact - Jason Everman, the original drummer for Nirvana who ended up a Green Beret and Ranger, does the spoken word stuff at the end of "Run for your Life." It's spooky as hell.

Huge COC fan. Best thing they've done since In the Arms of God. That's not how I walked away from spinning it all yesterday, personally. This album has some of the most aggressive stuff they've done since the title track of the above (that outro riff on ITAOG is still one of the heaviest things put down on tape, IMO). It's also got some of the most classic rock stuff since America's Volume Dealer. They haven't really done anything like crossover hardcore since Technocracy, which was almost 40 years ago. There's a little bit of Thrash still around on Blind, but that was pretty much gone by Deliverance. "Albatross" was about how they didn't feel there was much hardcore about the hardcore scene any more and wanting to get away from it. That was eight albums back. If you told me either one of these were tracked between Blind and Deliverance, I don't think I'd bat an eye. But I will admit I'm biased. Pepper is on my shortlist of favorite Mississippi musicians ever.