As Stephen King first reported, the Old 97’s will drop their new album, American Primitive, on April 4. Yesterday the band released a video for the single “Where the Road Goes.” It’s either a sappy, overly sentimental tour down memory lane, or it’s a touching reminiscence of the band’s early days, a meditation on the passage of time that anyone with a mortgage can appreciate. Or, you know, it’s a music video with old clips in it.
Whatever the case, there is one major problem with this video. And that problem is an egregious copyright violation that will be met with the most strongly worded of cease-and-desist letters. At the 3:28 mark of the video, captured above, an image of the cover of The Met appears for less than a second. I believe this was the first lengthy profile of the band ever published. This would have been in 1994.
I don’t need to tell you what The Met was. It was the most significant, influential, free weekly magapaper ever to come out of Dallas and focus an entire issue on gratuitously using the word “monkey” in all its forms (e.g., “monkeyshine,” “monkey wrench,” etc.). Also, it was bound with staples. The parent company of the Dallas Observer, New Times Inc., flush with cash from sex ads, bought The Met and shuttered it in 2000. Then New Times became Village Voice Media; the original founders, Mike Lacey and Steve Larkin, went their own way by splitting off the Backpage.com sex business; Larkin killed himself; and, finally, Lacey is now facing another trial on dozens of prostitution facilitation and money laundering charges.
Where was I? Oh, yeah. Soon as we can find a lawyer who knows where The Met paperwork is, the Old 97’s are in deep trouble.
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