You FUCKING Bastard!

The BBQ Pit
1

I’m up way too late, and I decide to dial in some internet radio via iTunes to have some background noise, while I try to take care of a couple of things for work. As I’m typing away, I find one of the tunes that’s playing sounds interesting, so I pull up iTunes to see if there’s any information on the piece. Sure enough there is, and the name looks familiar to me, since it’s the same name as a guy I went to college with. A quick google search confirms that it is the guy I went to college with, and leads me to an interview with him.

Now, “the composer” is a bit of a pretenious fuck, and all of us who went to school with him have distanced ourselves from him over the years because of his “I’m the greatest” attitude, amongst other things. In scanning the interview with him, I find that not much has changed in his life, since I last spoke with him, but what I find most galling is that he doesn’t give any credit to a mutual friend of ours, who taught this asshole everything that he knows.

To make matters worse, this friend, Jim Irwin, died of AIDS nearly ten years ago, and “the composer” made off with some of Jim’s recordings after Jim died. I cannot believe what a weasel shit the composer is being! The best recordings that he ever made were with Jim being intimately involved in every step of the way. “The composer”, however, being the bastard that he is, screwed Jim out of everything. When I related to Jim that “the composer” had been offered a record deal after being on a local radio program, but turned it down because he didn’t like the terms of the deal, Jim was livid. It seems “the composer” never bothered to tell Jim about this (odd that, since Jim composed or helped compose the works that were played).

Of course, one could make the argument that Jim was just bullshitting, but having been present at several of the recording sessions with Jim and “the composer” and “the composer” always talked about how important it was that Jim was there. (I am somewhat musically inclined, and having been at the sessions, I can tell you that Jim played a vital role in every element of those sessions.)

Fuck you, you sonofabitch. Jim died impovershed, almost alone, and in the grips of AIDS dementia, and you’re getting fat off of his corpse. If I can help it, I’m going to find a way to fuck you back. Jim deserves better.

2

I have nothing to add except:

What an asshole.

3

Who is it? Come on! You WANT to tell us, I know you do.

4

Actually, I don’t. Since “the composer” is an egotistical bastard, not naming him is a stab at him. I’m also going to try and take another stab at infuriating him tonight. The piece that I heard last night was recorded when he was in college, and I’m going to be having dinner tonight with a couple of folks who’d probably like to have some royalties from their work on the piece. Even if there’s no way they can’t get royalties out of the prick, they’ll enjoy making his life hell.

5

Fry 'em, Tuck!
:slight_smile:

6

Can you at least tell us if we’ve heard him on the radio?

7

Sounds like he needs the bat to the shins.

Give him hell Tucker!

8

The guy is dead, probably ought to give it a rest.

9

Doubtful. He’s a new agey (and oh, how he’d hate that I applied that term to his music) type composer, and whilst some of his work is shockingly beautiful, he is, a non-existant element in the music world. I’ve never spotted one of his albums in a store (and a search of Amazon under his name turns up zero hits). I suspect that the only “airplay” he’s gotten (no doubt that he’ll claim otherwise) is on Magnatune.com (I note, with some satisfaction, that he is not listed in their best selling albums.).

At dinner tonight, one of the guys said that he’d like to have his lawyer send “the composer” a letter demanding royalties just for the hell of it, since he knows that it’d send “the composer” into screaming fits. :smiley:

10

The right brain here says that sticking it to the weasel bastard is the way to go.

The left brain here says to follow the; “if you die first, the team splits your gear” doctrine.

I dunno, county makes a fair DA here, but if the case is strong enough that a lawyer could make some decent headway with it, then said headway ought to be made.

Still, no matter what happens, Karma will catch up with this cat, it always does.

11

It probably already has…guy knows what he did/can do and what he stole and is probably thinking about that on a daily basis.

12

Oh, I dunno. People like this usually have incredible powers of denial.

13

It’s the guy from Creed, isn’t it?

14

Is it Janet Reno?

15

Indeed. Years ago, I casually mentioned a magazine that I thought “the composer” might find interesting, he called it a rag and spent several minutes berating it. The next time I saw him, he was raving about how wonderful a particular band was (I thought it a bit odd, since it was the kind of music he despised.) and went on about how fantastic it was. A day or so later, I noticed that the band happened to be a feature story in the latest issue of the magazine I’d told him about. After that, I noticed that he still claimed to hate the magazine, but always seemed to praise whatever happened to be their coverstory, it didn’t take me too long to figure out that he’d actually started subscribing to the magazine, and since the subscribers got the issue before it hit the newsstand, he could pretend to be “ahead of the curve.”

Oh, and he’s not the guy from Creed, nor Janet Reno, but he does look a hell of a lot like Phil Collins (he literally gets spitting mad when people point out the resemblance).