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April 24, 2006  There's a fairly amazing trademark battle going on between songwriter/producer Jim Steinman and Meat Loaf about whether Meat Loaf has the right to call his next album Bat Out of Hell III. The story goes something like this: A few years ago they were going to do the album together, Steinman gave Meat Loaf a few songs, then Steinman decided he didn't want to produce it and/or finish writing it. So last year Meat went ahead and started recording the songs anyway in L.A. with producer Desmond Child. Steinman got mad and decided he didn't want to be involved at all, even though there are theoretically some new Steinman tracks on the record, which is now nearly finished and due for release later this year. Steinman registered the trademark to Bat Out of Hell in 1996, and seems to have the stronger legal arguments here ... If you wade through Meat Loaf's summary judgment motion, he makes a few questionable arguments about his contributions to the Bat Out of Hell franchise, including a claim that he came up with repeating the end section of "Bat Out of Hell" and provided the storyline for "Paradise by the Dashboard Light," neither of which would probably even rise to the level of a songwriting credit. Meat's only good argument is that Steinman always intended and acted like they co-owned the trademark, not requiring Meat to get permission for various things even after the trademark was registered. But his biggest problem is that he didn't pursue his opposition of the trademark in 1996, when he apparently wrote a letter against it but then didn't oppose the final registration. In the legal world this would prove that he knew about it and should have pursued his arguments then, which make his proceedings now unlikely to succeed because of a legal doctrine called laches, which is similar to a statute of limitations. This is all detailed in Steinman's response and motion for summary judgment. All of this leaves Bat Out of Hell III somewhat in limbo. Numerous unconfirmed reports say that there are 8 Steinman songs on it and 3 or 4 non-Steinman tracks. And although there is rampant speculation among fans about what the 8 "new" Steinman tracks are, my guess is that Steinman and Meat Loaf came to some agreement about these original songs for Bat III a while ago--including "Only When I Feel," which Meat sang on his last tour--and Steinman can't prevent Meat from using them. My other guess is that the trademark action is a sideshow, that Meat will release the album as Bat III anyway, Steinman will sue, and the whole thing will be stuck in courts for a long time. One can only hope there's something worthwhile on the album. In other news, there was a wonderful article in the Times over the weekend about the rise and fall of New Orleans hip-hop. When I did Teach for America in 1998, I was lucky enough to witness the peak of this interesting musical episode ... What I loved about it was the way the best bits of New Orleans rap cobbled together urban dance beats, so-called "bounce" rap music, and more serious gangsta rap music into something more palatable than all three individually. Tracks like Juvenile's "Back That Azz Up" and Master P's "Make 'Em Say Uhhh!"--along with more obscure artists like DJ Jubilee--captured some sort of collective moment with their unmistakably southern rhymes and attitude. (I even got into the action a little bit myself.) |