You never can tell how things will work out in the cut-throat entertainment industry. One day, you're a moderately successful US rock band minding your own business, and entertaining thoughts of imminent world domination. The next, you're getting legal letters claiming you have written a song that breaks copyright laws.
At first, you think perhaps the song bears a striking similarity to a Michael Jackson tune you just can't remember. But, as you listen to the song once more and read over the hand-delivered envelopes, you realise the legal missives don't concern themselves with melody lines or lyrics. Instead, they point out that the title of your song includes the first name of their client and that, if you continue to play the song live and/or refuse to delete it from the record shops (and the Billboard charts, where it remains a medium-sized hit), your band will be given a thorough legal thrashing.
The band in question is the curiously named (and deliberately misspelled) Blessid Union Of Souls. The client is Leonardo Di Caprio. Welcome, dear readers, to the world of outsize egos and rock star conceits.
Talking from New York's Lower East Side, where, he tells me, there are more Irishmen than there are in Dublin, C.P. Roth, keyboard player and co-producer and a man who once played backstage at Feile '93, refuses to answer to his birth name. Blanking my introductory, avuncular probing ("So, tell me, Charles"), he answers instead to his chosen abbreviated moniker of C.P. "It's my one little rock star conceit," he says good-naturedly. "Everyone should have one rock star conceit - it's good for society."
C.P. has been with the five-piece Cincinnati-based Blessid Union of Souls for several years. He started as a musician 15 years ago, working with the likes of Ozzie Osbourne and Suzanne Vega. Clearly, here is a man who can dance with devil and shake hands with an angel simultaneously.
With an optimistic, spiritual outlook and song-oriented mix of pop, R&B, and folk (so-called "rural soul"), Blessid Union of Souls quickly became one of the most popular US bands in the post-Hootie And The Blowfish adult alternative radio format in the mid-1990s.
Taking their name from a line in an episode of M*A*S*H ("Be with me tonight, Margaret," Frank implores Hot Lips Hoolihan. "I need to feel the blessid union of our souls or I'm going to break out in hives." Beats Upwardly Mobile hands down, doesn't it?), Blessid Union of Souls recorded a demo tape in 1992 that found its way to EMI who immediately offered a contract.
Their debut album, Home, was an immediate success, thanks to Cincinnati DJs who had already begun playing the then-unreleased lead single, I Believe, and spread the word about the band. The single eventually reached No 8 on the Billboard singles chart and became one of the most played songs of the year. The follow-up, Let Me Be the One, also reached the Top 40. But it's the new single, Hey Leonardo (She Likes Me For Me) that is causing Titanic's King of the World to wobble furiously on the fo'c's'le.
Apparently, the prettiest film star in Hollywood has applied to the US Department of Commerce to make his name a registered trademark. According to the latest reports, Di Caprio has already had preliminary approval. Should he be granted full approval, no one could use his name for promotion, advertising or entertainment without his consent.
"Yea, how do you like that," snorts C.P. "We did a morning radio show and one of the DJs had downloaded from the Internet the actual court papers Di Caprio filed . . . in the middle of the second page there is a barcode with the name Leonardo Di Caprio inset in it. It's been a long time since I read the Bible, but I think that's the first sign of the Apocalypse.
"We didn't write the song or name it to take the piss out of the guy," says C.P. "If you look at the lyrical content it's pretty much a friendly shot at just about everybody we mention in the song. Cindy Crawford is mentioned - she's been a fan since day one. She wrote us a lovely note - not a barcode in sight."
Hey Leonardo (She Likes Me For Me) has just been released. Walking Off The Buzz is due for release on October 15th.