Singing a song in the Morning : A Syd Barrett / Kevin Ayers thread.

Wouldn't he have automatically renounced the right to subsequently make any such claim if / when he accepted "a few bob from Mr Ayres [sic] for services" (in effect) as a session musician?

In any case, I'm certainly not aware of any guitarist ever having won a disputed claim to part authorship of a song just because they wrote the lead-break.

If one ever did, surely that would open the floodgates to thousands of session musicians claiming rights on all sorts of things; and where would you then draw the line?

Would the drummer also be able to claim part authorship because he'd contributed a roll or fill?

I meant it more as a moral issue rather than an actual legal one.

It was more the supposed kudos of having Syd on your record oh I dunno.

I suppose morally it would depend on how much Kevin had been trading on the fact that Syd appeared on it.

If he sold 300 times more copies of that album than any of his others and the only or main reason for that was because there was a fuckin' great banner on the front proclaiming "FEATURING SYD BARRETT" then obviously there would be something of an issue.... but by the same token I think that's the sort of evidence the courts would look at anyway!

The non-Syd guitar break on the final version is certainly "inspired by" - but I wouldn't go so far as to say it was "composed by". It's tidier, more economic, more focussed, and works much better as a psychedlic-wig-out counterpoint to the bubblegum pop of the rest of the single (original title "Religious Experience"). The Syd versions are a bit of a rambling mess (though certainly of interest), and I can see why they were wiped from the eventual release.

The track had only appeared previously on the (fantastic) Ayers singles-and-rarities compilation "Odd Ditties" (1976) - which was never released on CD outside Japan, I think. However, if you aggregate the bonus tracks on last year's CD reissues of the first 4 Ayers albums, you end up with a full CD version of "Odd Ditties". Good job that Fopp were flogging them off cheap for a while, then...

Yeah, I got "Whatevershebringswesing" there.

Oddly, I got "Joy of a Toy" at Boudisque in Amsterdam, for a similar price (euros). Why odd, was that That one has the Copy Protection software drag. Since then, I have seen other copies in the UK and none of them have the copy prot.

The other day in CD warehouse, two copies of "Let it be - Naked" one with copyprot, one without. Now, the beatles I can see would have a large production run. Less so K.Ayers. What's EMI's policy here?

every, from Cecil Taylor blue note reissues to Pet Shop Boys, EMI related (virgin, etc.) Cd issued in continental europe is FUCKINGCOPYPROTECTED. The same Cd printed in UK is not. Thats why I bought the Kevin Ayers and a Waterboys cd at Amazon UK and i'm buyng the Eno reissues from Japan. I can't fucking stand the COPYPROTECTED shit, since i have seen every copyprotected CD copied in flea market and you can find the songs in the internet... so it's only to annoy the stupid buyers like me, not the pirates or the internet.