end of January, 2008


  Well, today Dave Soroka passed Go.

  Somewhere there's an outfit that makes TV shows, TV commercials, stuff like that. And apparently, somewhere along the line, they used a whole bunch of songs without asking permission.

  And, apparently, one of those songs was mine.

  Well, a bunch of lawyers in Seattle decided to launch a class action suit, and last summer they sent me some papers to fill out and a long list of song titles that might have been mine and they were asking me for verification. So I filled out the forms and listed out the titles, 64 of them, that did indeed match titles of songs I've written.

  Understand, this is not to say these songs of mine are the songs that had been used illegally, but just that they had the same titles as songs that had been used illegally.

  The lawyers took that list and did with it whatever it is lawyers do with such things, and I went back to work.

  You know: the working life. You work. You work, you pay your taxes, now and then you land on Marvin Gardens with a house, maybe take a ride on the Reading Railroad, if you're lucky you might win second prize in a beauty contest.

  Then about a month ago, around the first of the year, I got a letter asking for further verification on one of those titles, a song called "So". It took me a minute to remember it. I couldn't believe, of all the songs I've written and recorded, someone would bother to steal this one. It's not a very good song, the recording sucks, it was done on a ghetto blaster in someone's kitchen...I wrote on the back of that letter that I had indeed written a song called "So" in about 1983 and that it was registered with SOCAN, but that I doubted this was the song they were looking for.

  Well, Nora and I went to check the mail this evening and in amongst the usual junk and bills there was an envelope.

  It was from these lawyers, and it a clear plastic window on the front, looked kinda like...

  well it was a...

  hell, it was a damn cheque.

  It said, "Give Dave Soroka six grand."

  It said, "Dave Soroka, pass Go, collect six grand."

  It said, "Dave Soroka, the next time you land on Boardwalk with a hotel, you don't have to sweat it."

  I still don't know for sure if it was my song, "So", that got used illegally. I'm not sure I'll ever find out. All I can tell you is, I got paid for a song, and if my publisher, Dusty Stable Music, didn't also recieve a cheque, then the payment I recieved was for a song Dusty never published. "So" is such a song, and it's the one they specifically asked me about.

  My guess is that none of my songs actually did get used, but I just happen to be one of the musicians who, despite suspicions that this was all just some kind of scam, went ahead and filled in the forms, took the trouble to do the work, and happened to get a match on a song title that didn't get otherwise claimed.

  I honestly can't see anyone in major media being interested in that old recording, even IF there was some way they could get their hands on it. It's recorded on a cassette tape that's sitting in a vault in some basement underneath SOCAN (you used to have to send in a tape of the songs you wanted to register). There are songs I registered years, decades ago, that I've forgotten and would like to hear again, but I've tried to get my old tapes back from SOCAN, and it's a brick wall.

  But sometimes I kept the originals and sent in copies for registration, and that is the case with this song. It was one of ten or twenty songs I recorded on a ghetto blaster in a friend's kitchen in 1983. It was a double-cassette machine, so I was able to record on a tape, then play that tape back, recording it and adding another vocal to a second tape.

  I've made a digital copy and I've cleaned it up just a little, so what you're about to hear, while pretty rough, is still not as bad as the copy someone in major media, I'm talking like MTV, supposedly heard and decided to use, without permission.

  Anyway, I passed Go today, so friends won't you raise your glasses to one lucky stiff, and let's give the song a spin. Ladies and gentlemen, the Six Thousand Dollar Song:

So