Originally Posted By: Notes Norton
Even The Beatles "Twist And Shout", "'Till There Was You", "You Really Got A Hold On Me", "Rock And Roll Music", "Roll Over Beethoven" and others were covers or reinterpretations of previous versions.


Do you know how many people thought 'Til There Was You was a Beatles original because they had never been exposed to theater and never saw The Music Man? I wonder if Meredith Willson made any money on that? He was only 60 something when the Beatles cover came out in 1963. The Beatles made no bones about being huge Chuck Berry and Little Richard fans. And Harrison loved the rockabilly guys like Carl Perkins. They did a lot of cover music early on. I never cared about this until college when I started taking some songwriting classes. That was when I developed the attitude that I would never be fulfilled playing only other people's songs any more than I would sit at my (then) typewriter and type in A Tale Of Two Cities verbatim. It's someone else's thoughts, and I feel like a much more complete musician when I can express my own thoughts. Now, I haven't done that much if that yet (I wrote 15 songs for that first CD and used 9) as for my whole playing career I played copy music. (I retired from that in 1994.) But that's just my opinion. I am aware that 99% of the players out there don't agree, and I have heard every opposing point of view. "Clubs don't want you to play originals." "People don't want to hear originals." "The crowd wants to be able to sing along." And all the similar yada yada. My reply to that is always "Then book clubs that promote local songwriters and be willing to accept that your money will come from CD sales IF your songs are good enough. The singer from the band I play reunion shows with (who is a user here) wrote all of the 14 originals we play. The people have been listening to them for so long, and they all own the CD, that they sing along to every one of them and nobody throws empty bottles at us when we play them. That is because they are outstanding songs. Your average audience member doesn't want to hear BAD originals. In my area the songwriting circles are well attended and well received. A few clubs, one owned by an awesome woman, prefer original bands and won't book tribute acts. Of course on blues nights you head the Muddy Waters and Robert Johnson stuff, but even those bands pull out maybe 40% of their own stuff. I just don't go see copy bands because they all play the same 50 songs, and why would I drive to hear somebody play stuff that I own on CDs performed by the real band? I won't even go see Journey sing Don't Stop Believin' because Journey is now a tribute band to themselves. But again, that's me. I prefer to hear songwriters.

I am using the new 1040XTRAEZ form this year. It has just 2 lines.

1. How much did you make in 2023?
2. Send it to us.