I was actually going to lay off the New Zealand stuff for a bit. Cultural history, localism and identity are going to be major themes in the book, but I planned to mix it up a bit in the blog. However, a good case study has pretty much fallen into my lap in the last few days, and it would be a shame to let it pass.

This story – just to lay all the cards on the table (and underline just how small New Zealand is) – comes from within my own family. Mark Loveys (pictured left, with the Dr Who look going on) is my sister’s partner. He was in a band called Satellite Spies who had a major NZ pop hit in the mid 80s called Destiny in Motion, which Mark wrote.

Throughout May, for New Zealand Music Month, I put one NZ music clip a day up on my personal blog, and I thought it would be cool to put Destiny in Motion up there – far and away Mark’s biggest hit (but far from his only single).

However… when it came time for the video to go live on my site, it disappeared from YouTube. Mark picks up the story…

Mark: You might recall that Satellite Spies was initially a 2-man band consisting of myself and Deane Sutherland. I was the singer, songwriter & bass player. Deane was the guitarist and did backing vocals. All the songs on the Destiny in Motion album and all the songs that we played at that time were written by me – mostly during the time of my previous band – Blasé.

During the peak of Satellite Spies’s time in the spotlight in NZ (following strong airplay of Destiny in Motion and being support act for the nationwide Dire Straits’ concert tour in 1986), the excitement of being popular went to Deane’s head in a destructive sort of way. Without getting in to details, this led to all sorts of conflict with fellow musicians, band management, the record company and general music industry people etc.

Eventually I had to sit him down and give him the hard word to sort his behavior out. Deane immediately took the “stuff you” approach and quit the band.

That left me in the lurch a bit, because we had an extensive nationwide tour booked to go in a couple of weeks which was too close to cancel (and too expensive to cancel, given the advertising already spent). Fortunately I was able to hire Brett Adams (of the Mockers) to join the band for a while, along with Tim Wedde (also Mockers) for keyboards. Gordon Joll was by that time a full member of the band as our drummer. The tour (suitably named “Living in a Minefield”) went reasonably well and the audience hardly noticed Deane missing – mainly because Brett looked very much like him with the black curly hair and leather jacket look etc.

After this, Deane disappeared and we lost contact completely. Satellite Spies went through a further few line-up changes (due to the fact that we were borrowing people from the Mockers & DD Smash etc) and then settled long term on the combination of Gordon Joll on Drums, David Curtis on keyboards, Eddie Pausma on guitar and myself on bass & lead vocals. We continued touring, recording and playing live around NZ until around 1989, when I got caught up in software development and decided to give music a rest for a while…

A few years later, (I think around 1993) I started getting calls from people saying they heard my band was playing again. Furthermore I started getting the story from friends that they went to a “Satellite Spies” gig and it was a totally different band to what they were expecting. Basically, Deane had appeared on the scene with a new band he was calling Satellite Spies. When I called him about it, he said that he’s registered the trade mark of “Satellite Spies” in NZ and Australia and it was now legally his property.

At the time, I thought that what he was doing was too ridiculous to get away with and that it couldn’t last long. I also received advice that fighting the trade marks would be expensive and difficult, especially since he was now using the name and I wasn’t.

In hindsight I should have fought the trade marks back then, because he kept on doing the Satellite Spies thing for many years since then. He got constantly ridiculed in the music industry and people who realized what he was doing – but he’s thick skinned and carried on regardless. Satellite Spies under Deane reverted to a covers band from what I’ve been told. He did release a single called “it must be love” and managed to buy up enough records to put it on the charts – but it never got much airplay, thankfully.

Over time I realized that after all the damage done to the name Satellite Spies by Deane would prevent Gordon, Dave, Eddie and myself from being able to use it again – which is a pain.

Recently I heard that someone had uploaded Destiny in Motion onto YouTube. The kids and friends at work thought it was cool (perhaps funny and interesting etc), so I got enthusiastic about the idea and loaded another 6 videos of our other singles up there. I also set up a little web site called http://www.satellitespies.net.nz with some photos and links to the videos and MP3s etc.

Deane has obviously noticed these and realizes that most of the videos don’t include him – which negates the story that he has been perpetuating that I quit Satellite Spies and he was the one that kept it going, not me. He’s continued running his version of Satellite Spies over the last 20 years and lies that it is the original band that I quit. Rather embarrassing for him to have the evidence on show, so he has sent a letter to YouTube claiming Copyright violation and spooked them into removing all the Satellite Spies videos. Trying to shut down history in my opinion.

I have since lodged a counter claim letter to YouTube and they say they will reinstate the videos within 14 days unless Deane (through his company SERL Science Research Trust Ltd) files a court order against me. This will be interesting. I will gladly go to court and overturn his fraudulent trade marks if pushed any further.

In the meantime I’ve loaded the Satellite Spies videos onto http://www.metacafe.com and linked these back to my little website http://www.satellitespies.net.nz. I wonder how long it will take for Deane to try and remove those?

Deane’s lawyer has also sent me a legal letter demanding that I close down my little web site too – but I have written back saying that his trademarks won’t stand up in court and so I will ignore his demands.

Deleting media to construct fake memory
And that’s where things stand at the moment. Mark’s not trying to make money out of the music, but he takes issue with the idea that part of New Zealand’s pop culture history can simply be deleted or hidden away for the sake of commercial gain. Deane may be trying to rewrite history, but the ‘inconvenience’ of media sharing sites makes it all very difficult.

For reference – here’s the song, and the video. See if you can work out whose band this is – or, to put it another way, which one’s Hall and which one’s Oates:

Satellite Spies (the ‘trademarked’ Deane version) seem to be planning to release and tour in 2010, and in order to build on the story of being a classic kiwi pop band, are eradicating all evidence that actually, Mark ran the original Satellite Spies, and variations on it for some years after Deane quit.

But, most importantly, Mark owns the copyright on the song ‘Destiny in Motion’ and has permission from the owner of the sound recording and video (Glyn Tucker Jr., who released it on his Reaction Records) to use the material however he sees fit.

The only really contentious bit is the trademark, which Mark’s lawyer believes can be overturned fairly promptly. It’ll be interesting to see what happens.

But while NZ Music historians are reluctant to give the song or the band any significant role in the canon of kiwi popular music, there’s no denying that the song forms part of our collective memory and culture.

Deleting reference to it on sites like YouTube in order to tell a different version of events is, I would hope, an ultimately fruitless endeavour – even if they remove clips on the merest breath of legal murmurings.

I’ve interviewed Mark about this via Skype and will be keeping an eye on it. It’ll make an interesting case study for the book.