Blood Moon Updates: BOTB Results & Newsday Rhyme

(Image from NASA)

Hopefully you don't take this as yet another sign of the impending apocalypse, but I'm actually posting something on my blog besides a Battle of the Bands (BOTB) post!

Today was a Blood Moon -- a total lunar eclipse, the second of the tetrad of 2014-2015.  It was thankfully very clear where I live and I was up early and got to see it this morning.  It was absolutely gorgeous and very cool.  I took several photos, but my iPhone either couldn't focus on it or focused on the foreground and left the moon as a small dot in the picture.  Not too impressive, so I hope you don't mind that I borrowed an image from NASA.

I've been wanting to try and be a little more active on my blog (a familiar refrain), so while I don't really have anything of major significance to share, I'm going to use the occasion of this lunar eclipse to at least give the results of last week's BOTB post.  Plus I'll also offer a teensy morsel of "the creative outlet of StratPlayer" by including a rhyming Newsday piece.

Battle of the Bands Results

In my last BOTB post, I shared two versions of The Last Time, with the second one done by a band that was attempting to rip off the Rolling Stones with unoriginal material before lawyers managed to save the trampled rights of the holders of the original copyrights.  OR -- I shared two completely different songs, with the second of them done by a band who was bullied into surrendering its rights to entirely original material by zealous lawyers unleashed by the greedy owners of the first song.  It depends on your perspective, I suppose.

In the end, regardless of the intents of those involved, the Verve agreed out-of-court to relinquishing all the rights to Bitter Sweet Symphony, and these became 'the same song' for all intents and purposes.

Personally, I think it's clear that the Verve relied heavily on the sample of the symphonic production of The Last Time done by the Oldham Orchestra.  But the issues gets murky as to what, if any, agreement was in place for using that sample, "how much" of the sample was OK to use, and who exactly owned the rights to that sample.  I also think if the Verve had only used the sample as a small part of a larger composition that was clearly "different" from the sampled work, there might not have been as much of a fight,  Or -- unfortunately -- if the song had not been a successful hit, likely no-one would have cared as much. Money tends to affect perspectives.

In the voting from the BOTB post, the results are a 5-5 tie as to which song is the favorite "version" (with the esteemed Mr. McCarthy voting for the Oldham Orchestra). So it's my job to break the tie.  I was a bit surprised by how many people didn't really care for either version, with the Verve song called "boring." I find myself liking both versions for different reasons. But I think that while it's a bit repetitive and relied entirely too much on the original sample, Bitter Sweet Symphony is the better song. It's deeper lyrically, has very interesting production (this is one of those 'headphone songs' where you hear a ton of cool snippets in the background), and an infectious groove.  I like the guitar riff in The Last Time, but that damn sample used in Bitter Sweet Symphony will plant itself in my brain for days. ;)

So I break the tie by going with The Verve, making the final vote:

The Verve 6, The Stones 5, Oldham Orchestra 1

Rhyming Newsday

Back in August, was the last time I posted a "Newsday" item.  I originally did these as "Tuesday Newsday 200" stories, where I'd write a 200-word story based on a recent news item that I'd found.  The last time I did it, I went for a different approach.  I took the headline and created a short rhyming piece based on the words in that headline.  It was fun to do, so I'm doing it again for today.

Here's the headline I'm using with a link to the story itself:

"Woman says she dug up dad's grave 'with respect'"

This headline has nine words, so I'm going to use those as the basis for a nine-line piece where each line has exactly nine words, and where each line also uses the words from the headline in the proper order.  Oh -- and there has to be a rhyme scheme, too.   

See what you think:

=====

Woman omitted in the will still wanted her share;
 

She says her dad really meant to be fair,

but that she was cheated by her sister's neglect.

And so she dug up a plan to finally uncover,

what had been closed up, and she would recover

the real copy of her dad's will to inspect.

 

Yet she got nothing from the grave but regrets;

It wasn't a will -- he'd been buried with cigarettes!
 

Desperate, she rummaged his casket, but still with respect.

=====

Thanks for reading!

I'll be back on the 15th with another BOTB post, and maybe even sooner.  And now you can't say I only post once in a blue moon -- blood moons work, too.