Bye Bye Miss American Pie...Again

Bye, bye Miss American Pie
Drove my Chevy to the levee but the levee was dry
And them good ole boys were drinking whiskey and rye
Singin' this'll be the day that I die
This'll be the day that I die

Don McLean wrote that song, and most people

believe it refers to the day Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens and the Big Bopper died in a plane crash near Clear Lake, IOWA in 1959.

Some think it refers to Elvis' untimely death.

Whatever, McLean has remained elusive about it, and said around 1971 or so soon after the record was released that he  will reveal the mystery in April of 2015. That's next month!

Whoop De Doo!

Talk about bad timing. Who cares now.

Marvin Gaye's Daughter and wife

Anyone who's been paying attention realizes that the music actually died last Wednesday, March 11, 2015 when a jury of 12 clueless (citizens who are too dumb to get out of jury duty) awarded the late Marvin Gaye's family 7 million dollars for recording a song that they concluded sounded like one of Marvin Gaye's hits.

Duh!

Almost ALL pop songs are related and sound similar to other pop songs. After all, there are only 8 notes in the scale and usually only 4 or 5 chords that are pleasing to Westerners ears, so songwriters are rather limited to beat, tempo and a few other "tricks." A good lawyer would have no trouble finding enough common notes and beats to convince a brain dead jury that plagiarism has been committed. 

Country music writers and musicians have never even bothered much with thinking up tricks. They just shuffle around a few words like, Mamma, Drunk, Jail, Honky Tonk, Wanna, Oh Ohhhhh, Baby,Yeah and Girl, and paste it over the same four chords.

The worst "borrowers" of others songs are (were) the classical composers. They thought nothing of outright thievery of melodies, especially folk songs. If you compare the final bars of 90 percent of those big, showy,  symphonies....you'll notice that they are so similar that they've become cliches....."Da DUM.....DUM...DUMM......DUMM,TA DUMMNNNNNNNNNNN!

But fortunately,  music composers of that day never made enough money to attract the attention of  lawyers.

If the Marvin Gaye verdict is allowed to stand...any musician, writer or performer, who ever writes another song is either insane or stoned out of his mind.

Not with that seven million dollar  judgement hanging over his head. 

Bye Bye again Miss American Pie

I mean it this time. The good old boys and I were drinking whiskey and rye and  I drove my Chevy off the levee.

Tell my baby not to wait for me at the honky tonk because the news today is heavy

The verdict is in, and seven mil it was so I can't write songs no more, even if I wanna...

For music, today was the final nail.

Record another song, and I'll go to jail.

Ohhhh Baby, Ohhhh girl, Ohhhhh Mamma... 

"Da DUM.....DUM...DUMM......DUMM,TA DUMMNNNNNNNNNNN!

Music and Lyrics by 

-Ed