Yeah any song before 1923 is totally public. I wonder if I could take one of those quick courses to get a Private Investigator certification and just loiter at a Chuck E Cheese all day, busting families who sing "happy birthday." Sorry Dakota that Bratz doll's gonna have to go back, your parents now owe 0-0,000 dollars.

The Dutch national anthem is still a tribute to Philip of Spain.
I think people just made up national anthems because they thought they were supposed to.

The NJ state assembly, in it's infinite wisdom, declared Bruce Springsteen's "Born to run" as the State anthem. When it was pointed out that lyrics such as "Baby this town rips the bones from your back, it's a death trap, it's a suicide rap, we better get out while we're young" weren't a ringing endorsement of the state and it's potential for economic and social advancement, they took it in stride. Bruce mumbles alot, and nobody pays much heed to that stuff anyway.

Just like how many times Creedence's Fortunate Son has been used in commercials and films with a Patriotic context. Its like nobody listens to any lyrics past "OOOH" That red, white, and blue!".

But "wrap your legs round these velvet rims and strap your hands cross my engines" is a ringing endorsement, for me anyway..

I think my favorite is Iggy Pop's Lust For Life appearing in orange juice ads and cruiseship commercials. "With the liquor and drugs and the flesh machine, he's gonna do another striptease man where'd you get that lotion?" Those are the first lyrics in the song!

Personally I like Devo's "Swiff It" because they managed to simultaneously troll their fans, troll Swiffer, deconstruct the relationship between art and image, satirize marketing and make some easy money. Classic Devo move.

IZ, your Chuck E Cheese's idea isn't as far fetched as you think, there's a whole shameful little cottage industry of lawyers using CA's unusually strict and comprehensive accessibility laws to essentially blackmail small business into paying cash settlements to avoid being sued and/or forced out of business because of minor infractions (such as, and this was a real-life example on the NPR show where I first learned about this years ago, facing somewhere between 00 and 00 in fines for having a paper towel dispenser less than 12" higher than the state mandated position).

I can't speak to it myself, but I do know that one of my best friends, who has been paralyzed from the waist down for a decade, finds the whole thing completely offensive and exploitative OF THE DISABLED INDIVIDUALS ON WHOSE BEHALF THE LAWYERS ARE ACTING, despite the fact that they also make money on it.

So yeah, you probably could do that and really the only difference between that and what the RIAA does is that you (probably) wouldn't have the resources to back it up if they called your bluff and went to court.

ACtually, that's not even necessarily true, since it would be down to the interest and finances of whoever it is that has the copyright (I forget).

Hehe.. I wouldn't really do it, but it would make for a cool premise for a novel or movie. The twist is that the P.I. isn't really doing it for the money, he just wants the most expensive prize at that particular chuck e cheese so he exchanges thousands of dollars in settlements for tokens so he can get the tickets and get that prize.

The twist? This P.I. has no arms. So after a year or so one of the employees notices him and she becomes his arms. He learns a lesson that the true prize in this world is not what's behind the counter at the chuck e cheese but what's in your heart. Then he gets grounded.

The Dutch anthem has FIFTEEN STANZAS.

All other nations can shut the fuck up already.

>>Yes, and God Bless America is the Britsh national anthem.

God Bless America was written by Irving Berlin. The song you're thinking of begins with "My country Tis of Thee", and I think the title is simply "America"

Some years back, there was a commercial for Target that used Devo's Beautiful World I loved that one.

Because of this conversation, I learned that the Japanese national anthem, considered the oldest in the world though not having been put to music until relatively recently, is a poem dating to the 9th century:

May your reign
Continue for a thousand, eight thousand generations,
Until the pebbles
Grow into boulders
Lush with moss



(This dream will come to fruition in the year 198,785 A.D.)

>>The NJ state assembly, in it's infinite wisdom, declared Bruce Springsteen's "Born to run" as the State anthem. When it was pointed out that lyrics such as "Baby this town rips the bones from your back, it's a death trap, it's a suicide rap, we better get out while we're young" weren't a ringing endorsement of the state and it's potential for economic and social advancement, they took it in stride. Bruce mumbles alot, and nobody pays much heed to that stuff anyway.

See "BORN in the USA", which one critic called "The world's most misunderstood anti-war song", because it was embraced by conservatives as some kind of patriotic anthem.

But look at the iconic cover art for the album, especially the back, with Bruce leaping heroically mid-chord, in front of an American flag backdrop. You can call it what you will: irony, complexity, nuance, a mixed message, having your cake and eating it, too: It's in there.

And "Born to Run", in my opinion, celebrates the modern Jersey landscape, even if it uses it as backdrop for the narrator's youthful wanderlust. STILL my favorite Springsteen song!

Everybody needs to escape their hometown, if only to return a few years later. Or at least I did.

IZ: Write that novel. Or screenplay or whatever.

JHM I always saw a very weary Boss on the front, but the one I had was just Springsteen with his back turned to the camera (it was the 30th anniversary edition though so there may have been others.) But I agree: my favorite song about Portland is the Wipers' "Doom Town" which paints my hometown as a desolate rainy depressed hellhole. It never made me want to leave, it's just a different state of mind that I embraced.

But I think my overall favorite Springsteen song is "I'm on fire", maybe "Atlantic City.." good ol songs about pedophilia and domestic abuse.. USA!