KEY POINTS:
The recall of John Key's "getting-to-know-me" DVD is a huge embarrassment for the National Party leader.
The music on it is not Coldplay's Clocks but sounds enough like ColdPlay's Clocks to have attracted a letter of concern from EMI.
And that was enough for National to pull the DVD, get the music removed, and send a fresh batch out to the heartland provinces for distribution.
That's a move which could cost the party conservatively $30,000 at $3 a pop.
But it's the political cost that will hurt Key most.
After his October blunders (no cap on GP fees, the War is Over) Key has laid low, carefully planning his next big political foray. This was it. A heartland tour that would give him plenty of practise at politics to regain confidence, and harden him up for next year's battle out of the gaze of political opponents and nit-pickers in the Press Gallery.
The DVD was the centre-piece of the tour. So it is a little more than a silly error by a production house. There are some consolations for National. It is not in the middle of an election campaign and it is still well ahead of Labour in the polls.
ColdPlay, for the uninitiated, is a British band from Devon, not unknown to Key - he chose Clocks to accompany him into the National Party conference in Auckland in August for his keynote speech (the one in which the poor beggar talked about leading a "Labour Government" and couldn't work out why the hall started to murmur.).
My colleague Claire Trevett wrote about the DVD last week and it was the subject of the Weekend Herald billboard. Claire talked to Otago University musicologist Graeme Downes (he is in the Verlaines) for her story.
He said music on the DVD and in Clocks were both in F minor - perhaps that should be a major F (up).
"If I were approached by a lawyer to furnish a report for a prosecution of copyright infringement against the music on the DVD I would happily do so. If approached by a lawyer to furnish a report in
its defence I would decline."
And for the music specialists, this is what he said about the similarities of the two tunes.
Similarities
Harmony-VII-iv-iv-i) same in both.
Key - both in the same key (F minor) which draws even greater attention to the harmonic similarity.
Rhythmic characteristics - both share a rumba rhythm or a 123, 123, 12 quaver pulse.
Drums enter in a similar fashion and both follow the established rumba pattern accentuating the downbeat of each 3+3+2 rhythmic components of said rumba rhythm.
