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Accept no substitutes when it comes to music
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Rep. Joe Atkins was miffed last year when he thought about buying tickets to a concert featuring several rock 'n' roll bands from the 1950s.
"It turned out to be a bunch of fakes," he said.
So Atkins, DFL-Inver Grove Heights, renewed his fight for the Truth in Music Advertising Act, which eventually passed and takes effect today. The law makes it illegal for a performing group to be represented as the original recording group unless it has at least one original member or legal permission to use the name. The law excludes so-called tribute bands.
Backers said the law is an attempt to stop an increasing music industry phenomenon, particularly with bands from the early days of rock 'n' roll now 50 years old and many of the original members are either deceased or no longer performing.
Atkins said that some groups, trying to make it appear they include original members, simply put elderly musicians on stage. "They don't even mike him up," he said. "They give him a mike, but they don't plug it in."
Atkins pushed his legislation with the help of Jon (Bowzer) Bauman, a former member of Sha Na Na, the rock 'n' roll nostalgia band, who testified at the Legislature the past two years.
MIKE KASZUBA
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