How Did That Old Song Go? Find Out on the Web

“Can anyone help me? There’s an old song, I think it was used in Dr Pepper commercials a few years ago . . . all I can remember is . . . something . . . feeling ‘bout half past dead,” writes one poor stumped sod at alt.music.lyrics.

The best way that I know to get a song out of your head that is relentlessly playing and replaying across the synapses of your brain is to hunt down that song, determine who and what it is. Identifying the culprit generally puts an end to the madness. One sure-fire way to combat repeat brain attacks by bad songs is to log on to the International Lyrics Server, determine that, say, David Soul sang “Don’t Give Up On Us” in 1976 and set yourself free.

Not so fast. For the past five months, the International Lyrics Server, widely acknowledged as the zenith in lyrics transcription, has been forced to suspend operation. On Jan. 14, Swiss police confiscated the servers of the Web site, following a complaint filed by the Harry Fox Agency, the licensing arm of the National Music Publishers’ Assn., a trade group in New York representing more than 600 American music publishers.

Since it first launched in February 1997, the International Lyrics Server has satiated thousands of frustrated music lovers desperate to unlock the mystery of the Kingsmen’s “Louie Louie” or to comprehend the many mumbles of Michael Stipe. And while hazy song-hummers have been decidedly bummed out all winter, the International Lyrics Server, which boasts some 100,000 pop songs, is back up.

The problem started last year when the National Music Publishers’ Assn. got wind of the faint smell of money being made at https://www.lyrics.ch. The server, owned and operated by Swiss hobbyist Pascal de Vries, featured banner ads and the association saw fit to snag De Vries for unauthorized reproductions of copyrighted material, and indirectly earning money through banner advertisements.

“They think that they have lost millions through our server,” De Vries told the New York Times in January. Instead, he said, the ad revenue only covered the cost of keeping the server up. “I think the main goal is not to get money, because I don’t have too much of that, but to have something of an example. They want [to use this episode] to tell other sites that it’s really clear you don’t have any chance.”

While some musicians such as Prince have been active in shutting down fan sites that post his lyrics, other bands like Negativeland and Echo and the Bunnymen are stridently in favor of fans’ rights. The Bunnymen state their beliefs on their own Web site, explaining “we feel that in almost every instance, a fan’s Web site devoted to an artist that they admire is protected speech under the auspices of what is commonly called ‘fair use.’ This is not too different from cutting the band’s pictures out of magazines and pasting them on your bedroom wall, except that you’re basically inviting the entire world into your bedroom.”

De Vries, a 30-year-old network consultant with a rock band called First of May, established the site as a hobby when he was unable to find the lyrics for a song the group wanted to cover (Deep Purple’s “Smoke on the Water”). “We do cover songs and I was always in need of song lyrics but I didn’t find a good resource on the Internet. So I started one of my own,” De Vries explained by e-mail from Switzerland. While he set up the lyrics search engine, the lyrics were mostly supplied by fans who submitted some 200 to 300 new songs a day.

“It’s not as if these lyrics will be ‘stolen’ in some way,” said Don Joyce of the band Negativeland. “Are the ‘owners’ of these lyrics selling transcriptions of these lyrics themselves? Does this in any actual way impinge upon the sale of sheet music with lyrics? Can’t anyone easily listen to the original work and transcribe them themselves? The need to keep them unavailable, inconvenient or secret escapes me. It seems to be another case of the over-reaching proprietary paranoia and lack of cultural generosity that the present state of copyright law promotes in its subscribers generally.”

While De Vries cannot comment on the nature of the dispute or its resolution due to a nondisclosure agreement, he has confirmed that he has entered into a partnership with the National Music Publishers’ Assn. and that his site will be linked to the organization’s new Web site at https://www.songfile.com.

So the next time you need to know just what, on God’s green Earth, Sam the Sham & the Pharaohs were singing between choruses of “Wooly Bully,” you’ll be well aware of all the legalese and economic hoo-ha that has transpired to serve up your lyrics.

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Erika Milvy writes about arts and entertainment from her home in San Francisco. She can be reached at erika@well.com.