With another year rapidly drawing to a close, many fans were wondering if 2014 would bring another round of “copyright extension collections,” i.e. releases designed to circumvent recent European Union copyright law. The answer, of course, is “yes.” To greatly simplify, E.U. law now holds that a recording is protected for 75 years under copyright in the E.U. (the period previously was 50 years) but only if that recording has been released. As a result of this change in law, the past
Archives for December 3, 2014
Spend the Night in Bangkok: "Chess" Reissued for 30th Anniversary
Tim Rice had been thinking about writing a musical about the Cold War for some time in the late 1970s. Fascinated by the Soviet-U.S. chess rivalry of the time, the lyricist-librettist approached his longtime collaborator Andrew Lloyd Webber with the idea. Lloyd Webber, however, was not available, as he was too busy developing a little show known as Cats. A suggestion from a producer put Rice in touch with songwriters Benny Andersson and Bjorn Ulvaeus of ABBA. Looking to pursue some projects