I am writing today to announce the closure of the New Mexico Independent. After three and a half years of operation in New Mexico, the board of the American Independent News Network, has decided to shift publication of its news…
While environmental activists played their part yesterday during demonstrations at the capitol building, going so far as to dress up as solar panels and to sing the tune of “You Are My Sunshine,” their counterparts, the anti-cap-and-trade contingency who has…
Roughly one quarter of University of New Mexico students are unimpressed with the state’s flagship public school, according to a survey that questioned college students about their higher education experiences.
First it was John Mellencamp, Jackson Browne and Heart, now it’s the Foo Fighters telling the McCain campaign to stop using a song of theirs on the campaign trail.
The song in question for the six-time Grammy award winners is “My Hero” from their second album, “The Colour and The Shape.” The song reached number six on the Hot Modern Rock Charts in 1998, when it was released as a single.
The band released a press statement that says in part:
This isn’t the first time the McCain campaign has used a song without making any attempt to get approval or permission from the artist. It’s frustrating and infuriating that someone who claims to speak for the American people would repeatedly show such little respect for creativity and intellectual property. The saddest thing about this is that ‘My Hero’ was written as a celebration of the common man and his extraordinary potential. To have it appropriated without our knowledge and used in a manner that perverts the original sentiment of the lyric just tarnishes the song. We hope that the McCain campaign will do the right thing and stop using our song — and start asking artists’ permission in general!
In 2004, Foo Fighters founder Dave Grohl famously reunited with Krist Novoselic at a John Kerry campaign rally. Grohl was the drummer and Novoselic the bassist of the extremely influential Seattle band Nirvana.
It was the first time the two had been with each other in public in a decade, according to media reports.
Grohl announced a candidacy for president as an independent earlier this year in Harp magazine. It was the final issue of Harp before the music magazine was forced to shut down because of bankruptcy.
And we may soon see Grohl out on the campaign trail on behalf of Barack Obama because of the use of his song by the McCain campaign. From the Harp article:
I went out with John Kerry not only to support him, but because Bush was evidently using some of our music at his rallies. I was personally offended that he would take a song like “Times Like These” so far out of context. He was running on a platform of fear and war, and it’s a song about love and hope! So I met Kerry’s family at a fundraiser and said, “if there’s anything you need me to do” and it wasn’t long before they asked me to come out and support his campaign in a motorcade.
Obama had his own run-in with this type of issue. Obama was asked to stop using “Soul Man” by Sam and Dave by Sam Moore, the lead vocalist in Sam and Dave. Dave Prater, the other part of the duo, died in 1988.
