In the interest of fairness I’d like to put out a call to all Jewish Music types who have been accused of stealing songs to e-mail me. I will give you a chance to tell your side of the story. We’re all about fairness right? So, e-mail me and let’s get some things straight. Yesterday my blog received over 400 individual visitors and over 700 individual page views. This comment thread got 50 comments alone. Since I took my 6 week vacation my numbers dropped considerably. So I know that for those numbers to be back up - closer to what they were before I took my break - people came here directly because of the stealing songs and those videos posts. I know for certain that someone mass e-mailed my video post. I’m thinking it’s more then likely it was an insider.

I know for an absolute fact that many Jewish artists and music industry types read this (and other Jewish Music blogs.) I know because many of them have personally contacted me. Some to thank me for a review. Some to thank me for talking about their album at all and some who were a little upset about what I wrote. All understandable and regardless of the content of the e-mails I’ve always been appreciate of these e-mails. There are a couple industry people who e-mail me just to say hi and that they enjoy the blog. I’ve received behind the scenes info and scoops and again I’ve always appreciated that.

So now I’m putting out the call. If you have been accused of something or know someone who has and want to pass this into to them, please do. E-mail me and explain the story as you see it. I will only post what you tell me I can post based on any conversations we have via e-mail. I’m a very fair person and I’m not just looking to attack. I’ve been blogging for a few years now. I think I’ve said and written just as much positive as I have negative. Some of my reviews have been embarrassingly glowing - and not just the Jewish rock stuff. Go read my Avraham Fried review and then tell me all I do is attack.

I’ve been accused of being unfair by not speaking about every single allegation of song stealing but I can’t possibly take the time to personally investigate every claim. I also don’t have all your phone numbers and e-mail addresses. So since I know many of you music insiders read this blog, e-mail me or tell anyone of your friends that I’m here anytime and willing and ready to talk to you. I’ll be fair and polite.

One final word, just a warning. I know what PR Spin is. This isn’t an open invitation to spin a story. I’ll be fair and open to listening, but I’m not gonna swallow a BS story, you be honest with me and I’ll be very fair and sympathetic in return, just don’t take me for a fool. I may be a lot of things, but mama didn’t raise no fool? Capice? Good. I’m honestly looking forward to someone taking me up on this offer.

Maybe if there was more of an open dialogue with the Jewish music world and the listening public it would benefit everyone in the long run.

Someone e-mailed me that they think the Yizkerem onYaacov Shwekey’s last CD sounds very similiar to the Yizkerem on Coby’s 1999 release. Can anyone attest to this?

Does anyone HAVE the CD? If so do you have the credits, can you see who composed the song? Please e-mail me (email listed above) or leave a comment below.

Oh My.

(To the tune of: Who let the dogs out …, but you know that anyway, right?)
Who Let the Kollel Out? Who? Who? Who?
Who Let the Kollel Out? Who? Who? Who?

Here are some more things this poster might be saying, if it could speak!

- “We’re Not Small, It’s Just that Shwekey is Really, Really Big!”
- The Newest Reality TV Shows: “So You Think You Can Sing!”
and “Who Wants to Marry A Jewish Music Star!“
- 100% Male Vocals! (No really!, We’re Serious!)
- Help! We Got Too Old for the Miami Boys Choir!
- The Yeshiva Boys Mens Choir.
- This Poster Can also Double as an Ad for Ultimatum or Emporio.
- “G-d I hope they don’t have a third concert planned for this night”
- The New New New Chevra
- The Only Place to Hear Niggun’s Nevo, Numa & Neshama the RIGHT Way!
- Guranteed to Hear Racheim, Mama Rochel & Hu Klal or Your Money Back!
- This is a Strawberry Free, Filtered Water Only, No Indian Shaitels Production!

Feel free to add some more in the comment section ….

UPDATED: Scroll to bottom. More videos added.

UPDATED II: 3 more videos added 6/28/07 (scroll down)

UPDATED III: (scroll down) I added the Lipa/LevTahor/More Dedi/Tzlil Vezemer. Someone also mentioned on another blog a song called Joey that sounds similar to an Eli Gertner song called Mein Olam Haba. Can anyone confirm this? I don’t recall the original song.

MBD’s Lichteger Shabbos

another version … MBD couldn’t make it for the duet though, he had other appointments.

Here it is in Hebrew!!

MBD’s Daddy Dear

MBD’s Yidden

The Piamenta’s Asher Bara

The Piamenta’s Kol Hasameach

Dedi’s Shomer Yisroel from his Bitchu album.

Dedi’s Ani Maamin

@3:30 aprox. Raya Mehemna A

Lipa’s Abi Meleibt from HASC 18

(Lipa version)

Tzlil Vezemer’s Shma B’ni

Lev Tahor’s Intro to Ashar Bara

Dedi’s Zoyche

Twenty-year-old Eliyahu Haim Fayzakov, a young and talented singer from Netanya, recorded his first album this year and released several singles, which were initially warmly accepted by haredi radio stations.

However, Fayzakov recently noticed that his songs had disappeared from the airwaves and were no longer being played by the stations. “At first they played my songs frequently and an interview with me was even held on one of the stations.

“But suddenly I noticed that they stopped playing me… I approached the stations to find out what’s going on, and received the answer I feared most, ‘Your voice is too feminine’.”

According to Fayzakov, radio station directors explained to him that his songs prompted angry calls from listeners who complained of the stations playing women singing. (Link)

Two things came immediately to mind.

1) Don’t tell them about this guy or any of the Jewish choirs.
2) This sure adds a lot to that Sefirah/Acappella discussion huh?

(HT A Simple Jew)

I received an email from someone concerning yesterday’s post. In the very politely written e-mail the following claims are made. The claims are in the bold/underline and my responses are right after.

I’m Picking on MBD - I don’t consider this picking. I really believe there is something genuinely wrong with what he has done. Until now no one has spoken out because one voice carries no weight. But with blogs becoming so big, more and more Jewish bloggers are calling out hypocrisies and unethical behavior amongst artists and producers. I hope it will force the people in the music industry to realize they can’t get away with everything anymore. People arent stupid sheep that just buy whatever the big “superstars” put out anymore.

Other artists take from other artists also - I really don’t think it’s as prevalent as you claim it is. Regardless, if I see it, I’ll call them out on it. I think there has been a culture of deceit and underhandedness in the industry for decades and the worst part of it is, it seems to have just been accepted as the norm. That is very sad. Again, people aren’t stupid and when something isn’t right, they know and word spreads much faster in 2007.

ShlockRock/Veroba/Dedi/LevTahor etc also do it - It’s a completely different issue. Whether or not it’s considered “parody” and therefore free from royalties is not really the issue here, although many will claim that is the main difference. I’ll go a step further and say that it’s the deception that’s the difference. When Shlock Rock and Gershon Veroba take a well known non Jewish song and put inspirational Jewish lyrics to it they fully expect that the listener will know it’s not their song.

That’s the reason they take well known songs to begin with. So people can sing along to a popular tune, but with altered Jewish lyrics. Secondly, those albums are usually geared for the more modern crowd and the non frum, as an alternative to the more heimish music and made in hopes of making them learn something about yiddishkeit and drawing them closer to a frum life.

MBD on the other hand uses obscure non Jewish songs, with the assumed intention that no one will pick up on them. They include ambiguous liner notes making it seem he himself or yossi green created the tunes. It’s not so much the legality of it for me, but the intention of hoping no one notices it’s not a jewish song. When MBD starts taking Green Day and Billy Joel tunes for his next album, like Shlock/Veroba, then maybe I’ll rethink this position.

I don’t know what Dedi’s deal is, that Men At Work song was a popular song, I can’t imagine he didn’t think anyone would notice. Maye he did, I don’t know. Lev Tahor is a little more on the fence because it wasn’t the entire song, and they have shown in future songs that they like adding little riffs from POPULAR non Jewish songs. I don’t think they think anyone won’t notice, in fact based on an email I once received, I think they were davka expecting people to notice it and they are homages to the music that has influenced them. It could be that it’s still wrong, but I don’t see the same intentions there as using an obscure 1979 Eurovision entry from Germany.

Just because he made that video doesn’t make him more of a hypocrite then anyone else preaching Jewish values and not living up to it - Well, this is true and not true. Since it seems he is one of the worst offenders of stealing other peoples music I think it’s very odd that HE was the one that made that video. The only thing I conclude based on both his making that video and him CONTINUING to add the stolen songs to BRAND NEW RELEASES is that he doesn’t think he did anything wrong at all. This makes it even worse. As I wrote yesterday, if taking these songs was something he did way back when, and since then he realizes he shouldn’t have, but would rather just leave the issue alone, I would almost understand that. Although I would still think what he did was wrong. But by making this video, suing Gal Paz for the same thing he has done and then adding these two songs to a brand new release. I have to assume he feels he did nothing wrong by stealing those songs in the first place.

One thing is certain, whenever I hear something or see something wrong I call people on it. It’s not just MBD, you can read my blog and reviews for the past two years and you will see I take everything equally to task.

So tragic, every single soldier whose life is taken in Iraq is tragic. Of course it hits even closer to home when it’s someone that we might know, or a person within our own group or network.

“With sadness we inform you of the tragic passing of Daniel Aghami HYD, who was killed by a roadside bomb in Baghdad, Iraq late last week, while serving on active duty. He was only 25 years old.

Daniel graduated with highest honors from Hebrew Academy-Lubavitch in Margate, FL and his parents Yiabdlu Lechaim Tovim, Beth and Itzack are members of Chabad of Boynton Beach, FL.

The Aghami family has requested that all donations in memory of Daniel be made to;

Hebrew Academy-Lubavitch
1500 North State Road 7
Margate, Florida 33063
Earmarked for; The Daniel Aghami Scholarship Fund.

Hamokom Yenachem eschem Besoch Shaar Avaylay Tzion VeYerushalayim. Vehukeetzu Veranenu Shochnay Ufur vehu besochom!” (link)

All politics aside, I wish the troops all the success possible so that they can do what they are there to do and finally come home and leave that place. I wish our troops wouldn’t even have to be there, I wish these chaya ra would appriciate the value of life and stop killing in the name of religion.

MBD’s newest filler album was released yesterday. It’s a collection of past Yiddish songs. I have been so turned off by MBD during the last couple years I can’t see myself ever buying another CD from him again.

What really gets my blood going is that even though the Yidden song has become the poster child for stolen music from non Jewish sources. MBD still has the nerve to put it on yet another brand new CD.

Is he paying the group royalties from this brand new CD?? He’s still ganv’eing after all these years!

It’s one thing to say he learned his lesson, he had a different mindset back then, etc, etc. But this is a brand new CD. What a giant chutzpah!!! It’s a STOLEN SONG which I PERSONALLY confirmed was never recorded with permission and not a penny was ever given to the original artists.

This is one hundred percent pure genaivah.

[Update: 5:50PM 6/26/07 - Two people emailed me that I forgot that song #10 - Lichtiger Shabbos is also a stolen tune. That song was "borrowed" without credit & attribution from Andrew Lloyd Webber's Musical "Jospeh", so there are actually two stolen songs on the new disc. END UPDATE ]

MoChassid has been writing about this concept lately.

There are a few separate issues here.

- Artists that steal from Goyish sources and either try to hide it or just don’t think anyone will care or comment.

- Artists that steal from other Jewish artists and think it’s ok because they it’s just common practice to “borrow” other peoples hits for their own CD’s.

- Artists that play by the rules and their tunes are stolen, but don’t do anything about it.

Here is my comment from his last post.

“Chaim said…

I personally don’t care WHO has been stolen from, if they themselves also take without permission. Then they are wrong.

I have two side comments to make.

1) You should ALWAYS ask permission and just out of respect for another artist, at least offer some form of royalties/payment. If you yourself don’t ask permission, then you have no right to be upset if someone takes your own tune.

2) If you don’t GO AFTER the people taking your tunes I also don’t feel bad. I know that might not be a popular stance to some, but if you aren’t planning on doing something about it then your just wasting your breath.

No one will learn unless they are punished. Otherwise it will keep happening. I’m sure after the first wave of lawsuits thing would change real fast.“

I have a post for tomorrow morning on MBD’s newest Yiddish CD. As well as comments on MoChassid’s royalty/attribution posts. Before you read those, prepare yourself by re-reading this old, but very crucial post.

My Conversation with Dschinghis-Kahn about Yidden.

This is interesting. Here is a story from the NY Times about a Supermarket that has adopted Bank style lines for grocery store checkouts. Whole Foods is the one trying this and I would love to see it in action. For me the problem is usually that there are 15 registers but only 3 or 4 people working them.

I don’t see how this would speed up the line at all. But instead of there being 4 or 5 lines, everyone gets into one line and they are called upon with their cart similar to a Bank. I’ve waited pretty long in bank lines too, so again, the problem always comes down to how many people are manning the checkouts/tellers not how the line is formed. Am I right? What do you think?

It seems that JRants is now working again. I’m very happy to see that. While I use my RSS feed manager to see when my favorite blogs have been updated. I find that without Jrants I don’t see anything else. It’s good to see it back and I look forward to seeing new blogs which arent in my RSS feed reader.

Niiccee. One of my favorite Niggunim.