27 June 2007

Meatbee"Transforming" the airwaves

| Ntp
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Awful pun I know but I received this as an email yesterday:

Hey all,

104.7FM in Canberra have started playing a Meatbee track today. It’s the cover of the Transformers theme song (movie comes out next week). If you wanna hear it text “Transformers” to 1990 1047 and they will play it for you!

Cheers,
Kate

MEATBEE have sent in their own MASSIVE DIATRIBE/PROMO entitled “CINEMA ACTIVISM: SPIELBERG REJECTS MEATBEE SO DAMMIT JUST PUT OUR THEME ON YOUR I-POD AND PLAY IT OVER THE OPENING CREDITS” which I found quite funny and have added below

In 2004, MEATBEE played an acoustic cover version of the theme song from the cartoon Transformers on 104.7FM. It was just a joke, mostly to keep Dave Kelly amused on his long drive shift…

Anyhoo, Triple J played it a couple of times, Transformers geeks seemed to really like it. Then American podcasters started playing it and they laughed a lot at stoopid Aussies who record stoopid songs. YouTube enthusiasts picked it up and have been using the song and cutting it to their own versions of movie trailers in anticipation of the upcoming Hollywood motion picture.

This year – with the assistance of Vacant Lot Management in Sydney and the Australian Government’s Austrade office in Los Angeles – MEATBEE managed to get the track to the ears of the music supervisor on the Transformers movie. He liked it a lot and sent it to the production team including Michael Bay and Steven Spielberg. They liked it too, but they wanted it to be more hard rock like Linkin Park or Metallica. Ben tried to grow his hair long like Kirk, but Charlie’s hair won’t grow at all so he was no chance of becoming Lars.

So MEATBEE went back into the studio and Kate bought a gold lamé jumpsuit just in case there was going to be a trip to the Oscars, or a party hosted by Paris Hilton, but also just so she could wear it around the house whilst vacuuming. Ben bought hot pants, Charlie got a cape and Chris bought a top hat. I digress….

MEATBEE re-recorded a hard rock version of the track at Velvet Sound studios in Sydney over two days in April this year then re-submitted it to Dreamworks for consideration. Unfortunately for us, Dave Jordan emailed us four weeks later and said that although they liked it, Warner Music in the USA had won the rights to the soundtrack, so there was no wiggle room for little old us. We are a little bit sad, but we’ve packed our Oscars outfits in tissue paper just in case we need them later…

So anyway, our version of the theme song is out now! Available at Landspeed Records and Songland. If you wanna hear it on 104, text “Transformers” to 19901047. We’re encouraging all supporters of Aussie music to put it on their iPods and take it into the cinema to listen to while the opening credits roll. The second track on the disc is from our latest EP and we hope you like it too!!!!

www.meatbee.com

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Hey all, the track is now on our Myspace if you want to check it out. The video will be on youtube on monday.
http://www.myspace.com/meatbee

… more than “meats” the eye.

Kate of Meat3:04 pm 27 Jun 07

Ben is a fartbot.

Kate of Meat3:03 pm 27 Jun 07

Don’t know about the fiance comment, but she was right about the beer nuts. Please pass them to me once she’s done…

Does this mean that Meatbee are robots in disguise?

Cheers for clearing that up Meat – did not wanna see you gusy get in financile trouble.

For what its worth – I saw this song live at stage 88 and thought….. hangon… is….that….oh. my. god. it is……

I said to Mrs Danman this song is sweet – Mrs Danman said “Fiancees, you can’t live with them……pass the beer nuts.”

Kate of Meat1:39 pm 27 Jun 07

Hey Danman and Caf,

You’re kind of both right. You do need authority to cover a song. So you need to get an Audio Manufacture licence from AMCOS and they distribute royalties to the copyright owner based on sale price of your CD (even if it’s not for sale, they go by the price if you were selling it) and the amount of CDs you want to produce.

Then when you give your CD to a radio station/website/whoever, they need a licence from APRA to broadcast it (their licence fees distributed by APRA to copyright owner).

Cheers.

It sounded like an awesome theme when I heard it a few weeks back. I was impressed.

Oh ok – Ill admit I was in the wrong.

Just thought – if they release an album with this on it… would they then need authority – as I woul dhave thought they would if making a commercial gain from material that was not originally theirs…

You don’t need “authority” to cover a song. The radio stations that play it just need to pay royalties to the original songwriter (that’s all handled by blanket licenses issued by companies like ASCAP).

Over on Justbands Ben form Meatbee has stated in the comments (which for some reason I can’t link to) that a “video for the song online on Monday”

I wonder if they got appropriate authority to cover and play this song on a commercial radio station.

Could prove to be quite costly if they have not.

Just food for thought.

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