Fooled Me

Like Starbucks but not. Unfortunately, they will be using Starbucks coffee.

From the Phnom Penh Post:

Cafe to cash in on intl brand
Written by Michael Fox
Wednesday, 25 March 2009

A COFFEE shop sporting the Starbucks logo is scheduled to open on April 1 in Phnom Penh, despite having failed to secure a Starbucks licence, the store manager said on Tuesday.

Called The Cafe and situated in The Place on Sihanouk Boulevard, it is closely modelled on the American coffee giant.
The logo displayed on the window is a replica of the Starbucks logo, but a ring of text around the outside states: "The Place does not possess Starbucks licence".

Cafe manager Joshua Jones admitted they are not a licensed Starbucks store but said they would sell Starbucks coffee and products as well as use the logo.

Jones said he had not been involved in the legal proceedings around the design of the label, but was confident they were not infringing on Starbucks's trademark.

"Whatever we have done we have done within the law, and whatever repercussions that it might have, have been covered," he said, adding that the wording around the logo clarified this.

Previous applications for a Starbucks licence had been rebuffed. "We have applied for one a number of times, and each time we have been denied," he said.

"They're not interested in coming to Cambodia."
Starbucks is a US-based coffee giant with over 4,500 stores in 47 countries around the world, according to its website.
After a prolonged period of rapid expansion, the coffee giant is currently axing a number of its outlets around the world.

Since July last year it has announced the closure of over 900 stores worldwide. Its profits dropped by almost 70 percent in the final quarter of last year.

The company has been known to vigorously protect its intellectual property, though this appeared to be only in countries where it was already operating.

Starbucks has successfully sued outlets in the past for trademark infringement, including a Chinese chain that used a green and white logo with a similar sounding Chinese name.

It also prevented a US artist from profiting from a parody of the Starbucks logo which featured the words "consumer whore" around the outside.

Jones said his target market was 20-to 30-year-old unmarried professionals. He added that he expected foreigners who were familiar with the brand to be his major customers to begin with.

Lawyer Matthew Rendall, a partner at Sciaroni and Associates, said that unless The Cafe had permission from Starbucks, it appeared to be a blatant copyright violation.

"You can't go and use somebody else's logo to promote your own product or service without their permission, so unless they've got permission from Starbucks you'd have to assume that was a trademark violation," he said.

Rendall added that the Ministry of Commerce was very vigilant about protecting trademarks, on the basis that that business might try and enter the country one day.

"You've got to assume that at the very least it's false and misleading," he said.

Carrickfergus: The Ballad of Peter O'Toole and Richard Harris

Peter O'Toole and Richard Harris were best mates for more than 50 years. Richard passed away in 2002 and to read interviews with O'Toole from the time, he greatly missed his friend. The two were rugby mates, which was well known but they both shared an interest in music as well, folk music of the Isles in particular. Until today I really had no idea of Peter O'Toole's interest in that regard, and for me and I imagine most Americans when you say Richard Harris I think "McArthur Park." Which is unfortunate because Harris and O'Toole ought to be remembered for the role they played in the evolution of one of the most beautiful songs in the Irish traditional music repertoire, "Carrickfergus".

My grandfather, my mother's father, had in his musical collection maybe 50 LP's, all of which seemed to date from the early 60's when he bought his console stereo. Eventually I picked through those LP's and came to know and appreciate a few. Some Portugese Fado, the Limeliters, the Weavers, Joe and Eddie, and the Clancy Brothers being the ones that come to mind.

The song "Carrickfergus" thus entered my consciousness via the Clancy Brothers' 1964 LP The First Hurrah that Grandpa had in his collection. That LP is a great one, the best Clancy Brothers record I've heard, and their version of "Carrickfergus" was the one most people knew until Van Morrison recorded the song with the Chieftains on his 1988 Irish Heartbeat album. In between some others had covered it, including an appropriately understated version by Bryan Ferry on his 1978 The Bride Stripped Bare LP.

As sung by Van, the song goes:

I wished I had you in Carrickfergus,
Only for nights in Ballygrand,
I would swim over the deepest ocean,
The deepest ocean to be by your side.

But the sea is wide and I can’t swim over
And neither have I wings to fly.
I wish I could find me a handy boatman
To ferry me over to my love and die.

My childhood days bring back sad reflections
Of happy days so long ago.
My boyhood friends and my own relations.
Have all passed on like the melting snow.

So I’ll spend my days in endless roving,
Soft is the grass and my bed is free.
Oh to be home now in Carrickfergus,
On the long road down to the salty sea.

And in Kilkenny it is reported
On marble stone there as black as ink,
With gold and silver I did support her
But I’ll sing no more now till I get a drink.

I’m drunk today and I’m rarely sober,
A handsome rover from town to town.
Oh but I am sick now and my days are numbered
Come all ye young men and lay me down.

The melody, hauntingly beautiful, is much the same as another well known folk tune "The Water is Wide", a song I also came to know from Grandpa's collection as performed by Joe and Eddie. I've heard quite a few versions of "The Water is Wide" and there's none I prefer to that Joe and Eddie version -- the Dylan-Baez version being paticularly terrible, though John Gorka has done a lovely version as well.

Digging into the history of these tunes today I stumbled upon an old discussion board about the origins of "Carrickfergus".

I'll summarize.

The melodies for "Water is Wide" and "Carrickfergus" probably go back to an 18th century Irish air. "Carrickfergus" seems to have first appeared as a ballad usually called "The Young Sick Lover", published in 1830 but with perhaps earlier origins. Two of the verses are recognizable but a number of additional English verses have been added over the years. The words for "Water is Wide" are clearly American in origin but there is one early version that retains the "I'm drunk today and rarely sober" now associated with Carrickfergus but not WIW.

Where did the Clancy Brothers get "Carrickfergus"? Well it had been recorded three earlier as "The Kerry Boatman" by Dominic Behan on his album The Irish Rover (definitely OOP). And Behan? The legend had it that it had been "collected" by Behan from Peter O'Toole. Forty years later someone thought to ask O'Toole about this, and he confirmed the story with a twist. O'Toole's agent reported to the inquiring music scholar that that the actor had first heard the song in 1946 with the English lyrics approximating the song we know. In 1957 his mate Richard Harris related to O'Toole a more fullsome version with which he was familiar, and it was this Harris-O'Toole hybrid version which Peter O'Toole sung from memory to Dominic Behan. We think. It gets confusing because Sean O` Riada is sometimes credited with the melody (it would clearly be a different melody that Peter O'Toole heard in 1946 if he did write one). I guess I need to find that Dominic Behan album. Unfortunately, that discussion forum gave up resolving the apparently contradictory stories surrounding the origins of the melody.

Peter O'Toole said "Carrickfergus" was his favorite song. It may be mine too. I bought another copy of the First Hurrah LP on Ebay today.

Happy St. Patrick's Day.



Thursday Postscript: News of The Quest -- as luck would have it a copy of the rare 1961 Dominic Behan LP The Irish Rover, featuring "The Kerry Boat Song" surfaced in the U.K. on eBay. It's mine now. The truth may win out but it doesn't come cheap when rare LP's are involved apparently. $24 + shipping for this baby. That's five Guinnesses I'll have to do without. I'll have to wait 'til I'm back in the States to listen to the thing but it will help close the loop on the "who wrote Carrickfergus" mystery.

Concerts For Kampuchea

Seemingly all but forgotten, thirty years ago this December a series of concerts were held at London's Hammersmith Odeon, the Concerts for the People of Kampuchea. Over a period of a week The Clash, The Who, The Pretenders, Queen, Elvis Costello, Paul McCartney and Wings, Rockpile and Ian Dury performed shows that were filmed and recorded for release, yet curiously, the only legitimate release of any of these performances has been a double LP vinyl release in 1981, and a short film of concert highlights not available on DVD.

Of greatest interest to me is the set by the Clash, who performed 16 songs of which only one, "Armageddon Time" has seen official release. A vinyl bootleg of the Clash set appeared, and more recently a CD release surfaced. And this my friends is the Clash at their peak. The set list:

Clash City Rockers
Brand New Cadillac
Safe European Home
Jimmy Jazz
Clampdown
The Guns Of Brixton
Train In Vain
Wrong ‘Em Boyo
Koka Kola
White Man In Hammersmith Palais
Stay Free
Bankrobber
Janie Jones
Complete Control
Armageddon Time
London Calling

Vinyl rip - check. Concert video - check. Clash bootleg CD release - check. Thank god for the internet.

You'll find a good discussion of the Clash set here.

Kind of Blu, But Not - The Latest Insanity from Sony

Sony, having kicked HD-DVD into oblivion, is hard at work at creating more ways to extract dollars from the CD/DVD buying public. And so we now have Blu-Spec CD's, 60 titles for which have been announced. Despite the suggestive name, unlike SACD or DVD-Audio these are not high-definition audio CD's at all, merely standard Redbook spec CD's using Blu-Ray related technologies in the manufacturing process. But guess what, they will sound better and you should be happy to fork over $35-$45 for another copy of Kind of Blue or Time Out.

WTF??

I've already bought the above referenced titles in three formats -- vinyl, CD, and SACD and I feel quite happy with what I've got. I don't have an SACD player here in Cambodia, but for $169 -- the price of four Blu-Spec CD's -- I can get a slim new OPPO 980H player to fill that gap and enjoy a fairly large cataglogue of SACD and DVD-Audio releases which will indeed sound better than their CD counterparts (Amazon lists 5,000 titles in SACD/DVD-Audio formats). High definition Blu-Ray audio discs, well that would be a different story but I guess Sony isn't selling enough Blu-Ray player to justify that move.

Thanks Sony, I believe you've lost your corporate mind. I'll pass.

Here's the list of Blu-Spec titles available on Amazon: Linky*

You can buy the SACD version of Kind of Blue for $14.99

* Cable trestles available at additional cost.

Sleepwalking DVD: Available for Pre-Order

It's on Amazon, so it must really be happening. Sleepwalking Through the Mekong, the DVD of Dengue Fever's 2005 Cambodia tour, is now available for pre-order here. Release date April 14.

Rithy Panh's "The Sea Wall"

Internationally acclaimed Cambodian director Rithy Panh's latest film "The Sea Wall", premiered at the Toronto Film Festival last fall, has its first local screenings at the French Cultural Center beginning tomorrow. The Wednesday premiere is sold-out, but tickets are still available at Bophana Audio-Visual Center for Friday's screening which I'll be attending.

An interview with Rithy Panh talking about the film appeared on Twitch in September:

UN BARRAGE CONTRE LE PACIFIQUE (THE SEA WALL)—Interview With Rithy Panh

With his fourth narrative feature Un Barrage Contre Le Pacifique (The Sea Wall) boasting its world premiere at the 33rd Toronto International Film Festival, Rithy Panh adapts the eponymously-entitled 1950 novel by Marguerite Duras—a classic work of French literature—to make a compelling, sumptuous, yet politically astute film about his native country. The legendary Isabelle Huppert stars as the widowed matriarch of a small land-owning family in 1930s French Indochina (now Cambodia), who eke out a living from rice fields located perilously close to the ocean. The mother realizes that the departure of her two grown children—Joseph 20 and Suzanne 16—is ineluctable. Deceived by the colonial administration, she has invested all of her savings in worthless, regularly flooded farmland. Driven to fight against both nature and the corrupt bureaucrats who conned her and threaten expropriation, and refusing to accept the triumphant injustice of the system, she devises an imaginative scheme to build a dam against the sea with the help of the villagers.

As Panh has expressed in his director’s statement, “beyond time and cultural differences” he feels a “particular and mysterious connection” with “Marguerite Duras’s eye, a very typical oriental compassion, beyond the usual judgments and simplications, an almost ‘inner’ outlook about my country and people, an eye that doesn’t judge, an eye that says, ‘We are all alike.’ “

In his review for Screen Daily (faithfully replicated by Andy Brouwer), Howard Feinstein finds Panh’s adaptation “potent” and draws insightful comparisons with Régis Wargnier’s 1992 Academy Award-winning Indochine. By contrast, he writes, Wargnier’s film—which starred Catherine Deneuve as a glamorous landowner—“was overblown, brushed with a varnish that disguised the realities of imperialism in tropical climes.” He commends Panh’s fearlessness in revealing “the worms in a gorgeous world of lush palms and attractive rice paddies in what might otherwise be construed as paradise.”

Rithy Panh was born in Phnom Pehn, Cambodia. Imprisoned by the Khmer Rouge in 1975, he escaped in 1979, moving first to the Mairut refugee camp in Thailand, then to Paris, where he studied at L’Institut des Hautes Études Cinématographiques. His work includes the documentaries S21, la Machine de mort Khmère Rouge (03), Les Gens d’Angkor (03) and Le Papier ne peut pas envelopper la braise (07), the docudrama Les Artistes du Théâtre Brûlé (05), and the features Rice People (94), Un Soir après la guerre (97), Que la barque se brise, que la jonque s’entrouvre (01) and Un Barrage contre le Pacifique (08). My heartfelt thanks to uniFrance for arranging an interview with Rithy Panh and to Isabelle Dupuis for her interpretive assistance.

The interview continues here. The Bophana Center is located at #64 Street 200. Tickets are free.