Why not Chickenfoot?

As long as we’re talking modern-day supergroups, why not Chickenfoot?

...which seems to be exactly the attitude that pervades the latest major-league musical mash-up, consisting of Red Hot Chili Peppers drummer Chad Smith, ex-Van Halen bassist Michael Anthony, guitarist extraordinaire Joe Satriani and ol’ shaggy himself, Sammy Hagar. I mean, if you put together a group with that much amperage, wouldn’t you call it… Chickenfoot?

Fine, maybe not. But as you can see for yourself on their recently-unveiled Web site, these guys are pretty determined not to take this (or at least themselves) too seriously. The samples on the site and their MySpace page sound pretty much like you’d expect – jet-fueled old-school hard rock with Satriani and Hagar dueling for space and Anthony’s serially undervalued background vocals helping with the melodic side. (Just for the record, this makes four of the era’s sharpest rock guitarists Hagar has teamed with – Ronnie Montrose, Neal Schon, Eddie Van Halen, and Satriani. Makes you wonder who’s next…)

The album is out June 7 in the US and European tour dates are popping up for the summer. Chickenfoot – making tracks in the sawdust near you soon.

Satriani v. Coldplay: the YouTube case

Among the many interesting effects of the Net 2.0 environment, add this -- it just got that much harder to defend yourself from a plagiarism suit.

Sure, I read about Joe Satriani suing Coldplay, saying the 2008 Coldplay song "Viva La Vida" copied the melody and chord progression from Satriani's 2004 composition "If I Could Fly." But let's face it, there are only so many melodies and chord combinations in the world and similarities are bound to crop up. My attitude toward this sort of thing is that the plagiarism has to be pretty blatant to justify a public accusation and lawsuit.

Then I came across the YouTube clip embedded below, which first plays clips from the two songs back to back, and then plays a mash-up of the two songs together -- and after watching it, all I could think was "Dude, get out the checkbook."



It's of course possible or even probable that this was purely unintentional, as George Harrison claimed in the infamous "My Sweet Lord"/"He's So Fine" case, but the result should be the same, i.e. the original songwriter is compensated.