ALICE VS. KISS
Six Palms Music Corp., the publishers of Alice Cooper's hit song, "Eighteen," have filed a lawsuit against Paul Stanley of KISS, former KISSer Bruce Kulick and Polygram Publishing, claiming that "Dreamin'" - from KISS's new "Psycho Circus" album is "substantially similar" to the classic Cooper tune.
We heard the similarity, but wouldn't have called the two songs "substantially similar." Rough Edge readers, however, thought differently.
We received literally hundreds of responses to our KISS vs. ALICE COOPER poll and - after all the ballots were counted - the voting broke down like this:
OH, YEAH. ALICE SHOULD SUE THE SPANDEX PANTS OFF THESE GUYS
55% of Rough Edge Readers said that "Eighteen" and "Dreamin'" were "substantially similar" and, hence, that Six Palms had a case. Of course, the vast majority of these votes were last minute ballots cast by Alice Cooper sympathizers. How do we know? If your e-mail address contains "Alice," "Nightmare" or "Coop" anywhere within, it's kind of a dead giveaway.
OKAY, THERE'S A SIMILARITY. BUT IT'S NOT "SUBSTANTIALLY SIMILAR"
This is where we would have cast our vote. And 35% of those who voted agreed with us. Interestingly, this is where it seemed most of the KISS sympathizers cast their votes. Again, it was pretty easy to tell who were the KISS fans: The words "Kiss," "Starchild," and "Demon" were pretty prevalent in the e-mail addresses here.
THE ONLY THING SIMILAR ABOUT THESE SONGS IS THAT THEY'RE PLAYED WITH GUITARS
Only 11% of those who voted said that "Eighteen" and "Dreamin'" were completely different tunes. Which tells us that 89% of those voting heard something similar.
Of course, our poll was anything but scientific and we deleted all the responses the moment after we calculated them. (Sorry, Six Palms, you'll have to conduct your own poll). Now, only time and a court of law will tell us if "Dreamin'" is really "Eighteen."
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Copyright © 1999 by R. Scott Bolton. All rights reserved.
Revised: 06 Oct 2019 11:48:50 -0400.
