I'm pretty sure the problem is laid out flat in the letter.

"still evolving..."

lol

since he left my band over a quarter century ago

How is his reasoning 'awful'?

But people can relate Boston to Huckabee, something that Boston does not want. They are right, people should not misuse other their work. I think you are missing the picture, people hear the song the radio, then things of Huckabee, and an association is made.

No it is not, or turn it the other way around. You see his clip, hear the song and think that's Boston, another association.

Im with Spat Out Sexy Men

Not to mention that Scholz is basically masturbating to himself throughout the entire letter.

@Spat, now you are taking things out of context. Which is a shame, I say you will associate the song with the person, what you are doing in your example. And now you are doing exactly what Boston stated, you think he is a cool guy because of Boston's song, and they do not like him.

So there is an association and because you did it in your example why don't you agree with me? I never said the association would be: ''Boston must be wingnut evangelicals''.

That is yes, that's why I said BUT people can, something like a contradiction, that is not true, however ...

it seems Mr. Scholz doesn't complain because Huckabee plays the song as part of his musical set (or a even as a recording at campaign events). The problem seems to be that Barry Goudreau has appeared for Huckabee as "Barry Goudreau of Boston" (instead of, say, "Barry Gourdeau of RTZ" which has been his band for decades). In the letter, it is the campaign's use of Goudreau combined with the emphasis on his links to the wold-famous (though dated) band that Scholz complains about.

Goudreau has his own band (RTZ) and almost a dozen ablums of his own original work. It seems that if Huckabee wanted to emphasise the personal endorsement, he would learn one of Goudreau's original songs and they would play it together - thus trading on Mr. Goudreau's fame. The only problem is that none of Goudreau's other work has been even remotely popular.

And that's the point - in order to get maximum(any?) value from Goudreau's endorsement, Huckabee's campaign needed to associate him with great things. Sadly, the only thing great that Goudreau has been associated with is playing Tom Scholz' music in Tom Scholz' band - so they traded on that band's popularity. I'd imagine that they didn't really even think about it much.

It is impossible to deny that now these performances/endorsements have been distributed through mass media to a large audience for political (read: commercial) benefit. He didn't say: "don't cover my song", he said "stop trading on my success".

"if Tom Scholz is so terrified of other people playing his songs, he should probably withdraw from ASCAP."

....Uuuuh..... that wouldn't stop people from playing his songs, it would keep him from getting paid when they did.