This Weekend's shows. Free pony giveaway. Campout East Tickets This Weekend's shows. Free pony giveaway. Campout East Tickets

You realize I'm joking right?  No free pony giveaway.  I mean we were really ready to do it.  Give away a free pony to everyone that came to this weekend's shows.  But apparently there are problems with doing something like that.  ASPCA and ASCAP both had a problem with pony giveaways.  I mean I understand that the ASPCA having a problem with the free pony giveaway.  But ASCAP?

Apparently The American Society of Composers and Publishers wants us to pay a performance royalty of 2 cents for every whinny that each "free" pony emits over it's estimated lifetime of 27 years.  They have that calculated at approximately 571,590 whinnies per pony over it's lifetime.  This comes to $11,431.80 for each pony.  Given the fact that we are expecting over 250,000 people at each show this weekend  this would come to a grand total of $8,573,850,000  (perhaps a little lower as people who attend more than one show might refuse a second or third free pony).

Now Cracker and Camper Van Beethoven are wildly succesful groups. Especially multi-einsteinium selling camper van beethoven! And i suppose we could borrow this 8 bilion dollars from our pension plans since through our pension plan we own majority stakes in Pandora, Facebook, Zynga, Groupon, Jewpon, Gaypon, Linkedin, Twitter, Plaxo, Friendster, ADM and Lockheed Martin.  But that seems a little rich even for the super rich members of Camper Van Beethoven.

Although you can't put a price on it we know that the joy we bring to our fans as musicians is more valuable than 8 billion dollars,  more pleasing than 750,000 whinnying ponies. I'm sure you are all comforted by this knowledge.

Some of you may be wondering exactly how did ASCAP come to control the rights to a pony's whinny?  It's a long and interesting story.  Apparently most pony's whinnies are more than 8 notes long.  This means they can be copyrighted and "published" as a melody.  It turns out that in the early 1990s when Michael Jackson bought the rights to The Beatles catalogue  he also had a team of UCLA musicologists catalogue, notate and publish every known horse whinny including the rare greenlandic horse's "Ed McMahon" whinny.  As this was a work "for hire"  Michael Jackson's estate now controls the rights to every public performance of a horse whinny.  Michael Jackson's estate then assigned these rights to ASCAP to administer.

Although your gift horse's whinny in your own home might seem like a private performance it is not!  Because the horse was gifted to you at a public concert all subsequent  whinnying is considered the "fruit" of the original public performance.  This has been challenged twice in the US supreme court and each time the Supreme court upheld it in an 8-1 ruling.  Justice Ginsburg dissented both times.  (see The Osmonds vs Sony/ATV 1996 and Mattel vs Sony/ATV 2004).


June 4th  Indie Fest at the Ventura County Fairgrounds.  Ventura California.  Cracker and Camper Van Beethoven.  Cracker at 4:45  Camper Van Beethoven at 3:15.

June 5th Camper Van Beethoven.  5pm  Henry Miller Library Big Sur Ca.  Weather permitting! (reschedule would be following weekend).

June 6th  David Lowery at Cafe Du Nord  San Francisco  8:00pm



Finally Campout East Tickets are on sale here.  Individual friday/sat tickets now available.

Cracker, Camper Van Beethoven, Sons of Bill, Futurebirds, Those Darlin's and many more  Jun 17th and 18th.

**final note.  That nearly soundless a-a-a-a-a-ack-ack ack that your cat makes while looking at birds through a window is also controlled by the Michael Jackson estate.  Our attorneys have advised us not give away free kittens either.