Tuesday, July 18, 2006
The Ballad of Rockridge

This is a great song with lyrics by Mel Brooks. It stars in my favourite movie, Blazing Saddles (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0071230/). TRying to remember the last two lines of the song I turned to the web and googled my way to various lyrics sites which have never let me down in the past. For instance http://www.lyricsondemand.com/m/melbrookslyrics/. But it showed only one song. Not a bad one, 'To be or not to be (the Hitler rap)' which begins:

I used to run a little joint called Germany.
I was number one
the people's choice
And everybody listened to my mighty voice.
My name is Adolf
I'm on the mike.
I'm gonna hip you to the story of the New Third Reich.
It all began down in Munich town and pretty soon
The word started gettin' around.
So I said to Martin Boorman
I said
Hey Marty, why don't we throw a little nazi party?

But no more? Eventually I found http://artists.letssingit.com/mel-brooks-wwr3q/discography which carried the apparently endearing words:

 Some artists don't want all or particular lyrics to be posted on the internet. We respect this decision and have removed these lyrics.

And then a glorious one at http://lyrics.duble.com/lyrics/Y/yello-lyrics/yello-blazing-saddles-lyrics.htm:

Yello Blazing Saddles lyrics are the property and copyright of Yello.
Yello lyrics provided for educational purposes and personal use only.

I wonder whether Mel Brooks is aware that the lyrics of Blazing Saddles are the property and copyright of Yello? But it must be okay because it's for educational purposes and personal use only.

And there are those who say that publishers are over-reacting when they insist  that organisations need to ask permission before lifting our authors' copyrights for their own ends.  I wish the music industry all the very best in their fight to protect copyright.  The publishing industry must fight equally hard on all fronts.

Incidentally, can anyone remember the last two lines of the Ballad of Rockridge?
#    |  Comments [7]  | 
7/18/2006 4:34:45 PM (GMT Standard Time, UTC+00:00)
is Blazing Saddles better than The Magnificent Seven ?
SUSAN HILL
7/18/2006 4:36:41 PM (GMT Standard Time, UTC+00:00)
The Ballad Of Rockridge lyrics
by Blazing Saddles Singers

There was a peaceful town called Rockridge
Where people lived in harmony
They never had no kind of trouble
There was no hint of misery

The town saloon was always lively
But never nasty or obscene
Behind the bar stood Anal Johnson
He always kept things nice and clean

Then all at once the trouble started
A pack of murderers and thieves
Like swarms of locusts they descended
Their aim to make the townfolk flee

(Have you ever seen such cruelty?)

Now it is time of great decision
Are we to stay or up and quit?
There's no avoiding this conclusion
Our town is turning into shit
Howard Scott
7/18/2006 10:24:56 PM (GMT Standard Time, UTC+00:00)
The righteous indignation of publishers and music distributors with regard to modern copyright issues is amusing given that publishers themselves have never been above a bit of copyright snatching themselves. I don't know what Macmillan's policy on electronic rights is but there are plenty of large publishers that have felt free to at least attempt to appropriate authors' rights which were never assigned to them, and there are plenty of authors' estates out there which are being denied control over properties assigned to publishers in days when the niceties of modern licensing arrangements hadn't really been thought through. We might have more respect for your whining about these issues if you had a better record yourself, dear publisher.

Incidentally why do you require that I accept cookies to post on your blog? Poor usability on your part but also no privacy statement? Wise up.
Derek
7/19/2006 9:22:10 AM (GMT Standard Time, UTC+00:00)
Derek: By extension, its perfectly fine to steal the car of someone who lives in a street notorious for car thieves?
Sodoshi
7/19/2006 9:38:51 AM (GMT Standard Time, UTC+00:00)
Hi Derek,

As the Web Service Manager, I've been asked to address your concern about cookies.

The short answer is that the cookies here are used to hold temporary data (as Session cookies) while the anti-robot checks are done. Cookies are only stored on your PC (non-session - file) if you tick 'Remember Me'.

Is this bad code? Possibly - Although personally I think this is more due to the way Microsoft handles communication in .Net code.

The blog software we use here is dasBlog, an Open Source application. More information on this software can found at this site:
http://sourceforge.net/projects/dasblogce

Macillan's privacy policy is available at:
http://www.macmillan.com/privacy.asp

And covers all Macmillan microsites and subdomains.

If you have any further queries or concerns about this, or any of the other Macmillan websites, please contact websupport@macmillan.co.uk and we will be happy to address them.

Best Regards,

Chris Benton,
Service Delivery Manager,
Macmillan IT.

Chris Benton
7/19/2006 2:43:57 PM (GMT Standard Time, UTC+00:00)
Derek,

We stopped watching you about 4 years ago. You're boring.

Alan Kellogg
7/19/2006 9:18:45 PM (GMT Standard Time, UTC+00:00)
Sodoshi: no, that analogy is incorrect - it's more that the person complaining their car has been stolen is an established and wealthy car thief. It's wrong to steal but it's difficult to sympathise with some victims.

Chris: thanks for that however I assure you that if I set my software to accept session cookies from macmillan.com it still doesn't allow me to post. It only allows me to post if I accept non session cookies (albeit the cookies themself may be session cookies, I can't be bothered to check). The usability is poor.

Alan: great that you put so much thought into your posts, well done.
Derek