Music Forum Writing Contest!

Special Judge!


I'm thrilled to announce that Bruce Pollock has graciously agreed to be a special judge for our Music Forum Contest! In addition to our other prizes, a special prize (details below) will be awarded to the entry which Bruce selects.

Here's a little info about Bruce Pollock:

After a highly successful career as an award winning journalist,
lyricist, novelist, humorist, essayist, and columnist, contributing to such
publications as The New York Times, Saturday Review, TV Guide,
Cosmopolitian, Entertainment Weekly, Musician, Family Weekly,
USA Today, Playboy, The Gannett Westchester Newspapers,
The Village Voice, in 1983, Bruce Pollock was given the dream
assignment of creating a rock magazine. GUITAR: For The Practicing
Musician would go on to become the most popular new music magazine
launched in the 1980s, eventually rivaling Spin and Rolling Stone.

After leaving GUITAR in the early nineties, Pollock went on
another dream job, that of compilation producer and music historian at
BMG Special Products in New York City. There, to this day, he gets to sit
in a semi-darkened room in front of a computer, video tape machine, DVD
player, CD player, twin cassette deck, and turntable and put together
30 track programs based on the entire history of music, from folk to
polkas, blues to bluegrass, death metal to gospel music, jazz to opera,
show tunes to alternative rock, and from Elvis to Odetta to Pink to N-Sync.
While on the one hand researching and editing huge volumes cataloguing
the BMG contribution to a century of Popular, Gospel, and Christmas music,
on the other he suggests songs for movies, TV shows, commercials and
various corporate premiums.

With anywhere from eleven to thirteen books to his credit by now,
and hundreds of essays and articles--at one point he published at least an
article a month from 1977 through 1992--Pollock is currently enticed by the
prospect of bringing some if not all of these offbeat reminiscences back to
print, through the miracle of the Internet. Especially now, with the acclaimed
movie Pollock bringing new recognition to the correct spelling of his name,
the timing couldn't be better. To that end, he has resurrected his lyric writing
career. Earlier this year, a song he wrote more than 20 years ago entitled
"Rosemaria" appeared on the new Paul Evans album, inspiring him to
immediately pen a half a dozen others.

ETA:
Since the year 2000, BMG merged with Sony where Bruce worked for several years. About a year ago, he left Sony BMG to return to independent writing. Bruce recently finished a comic novel about the music industry which his agent will begin to shop in January and is currently working on several non-fiction book projects.

The special prize (besides the obvious honor) will be a copy of Bruce's book Working Musicians.

Book description from Amazon:

What it's like to make a living making music, from the people who know best: more than a hundred of the biggest names in rock, jazz and hip-hop.

Life in the world of professional music requires incredible devotion but pays big rewards. Your body clock is skewed toward night-time; touring is an endless parade of sound checks, hotel rooms and road food; success for most is a long incremental climb. But you're doing what you love most in the whole world - and there's no substitute for the reception from a room full of people who love it too.

Based on interviews with more than a hundred working musicians conducted over more than twenty years, this book covers every aspect of the music life: starting out, playing the first gig, making a record, living on the road, crafting the perfect set, writing great songs, and much more. Among the musicians who share their thoughts are: Harry Connick Jr., Gene Simmons, Tim Rice, Bruce Springsteen, Leo Kottke, Phil Everly, Jerry Garcia, Robbie Robertson, Paul Simon, Donald Fagen, John Lee Hooker, Jim Webb, Frank Zappa, Keith Richards, Carole King, Randy Newman, Neil Sedaka, Brenda Lee, John Sebastian, Bruce Hornsby, George Thorogood, Leonard Cohen, and many more. The result is a lifetime's worth of wisdom and experience that will open the eyes of fans and musicians alike.

Thank you, Bruce!!!!

Quoting Lyrics

The question has come up around quoting lyrics in this contest. I've pasted an explanation below, but basically the idea is you can quote passages, but not the entire song, and please credit the writer, either within your essay or as a footnote at the end.

Explanation:

Fair Use covers it. The user isn't making money from the intended work and the prizes have a marginal monetary value. There also isn't a question of malice or intent (i.e., is the user excerpting the lyrics to make a profit). In the short story question, that would be intent. The malice would come in if it got published without permission. If the writer of the lyrics is credited in the essay, then that portion is covered. If that's not the band mentioned, then somewhere the lyrics' writer's name should pop up, albeit a footnote or something.

Finally, there's the issue of reprinting the lyrics as a whole. That would be a no-no because it's redistribution without permission of a an entire body of work. The DMCA would frown upon this. However, after excerpting a few (wholly legal), the author might want to point to the songwriter's Web site.


*Thanks Jason & Mac!*

Entries are up and voting is open

The entries are now up and voting is now open. Voting instructions are on the entry thread. The password to get into the Music Lab and view the entries is andante. Please make sure you change the links in your sig line to the new link in my sig line below (you can also click on it to get to the entries). You can discuss the entries in this thread. Remember, you can vote through December 19th.