Damon Albarn might want to avoid Electric Avenue until the heat dies down. NME.com has received a stern sounding email from one pissed-off Eddy Grant accusing Gorillaz of knowingly lifting the keyboards from his 1982 "Time Warp" jam to use on "Stylo".

Intriguingly, Grant comes across something like The Shadow in the email - seemingly capable of reading men's minds, writing...

"Damon Albarn knows in his heart of hearts – it's unfortunate that we can't get into people's hearts – he knows that this is a song that he's loved, in his club days…I don't know the guy…but he knows this is a song he loves."

Grant knows this about Albarn even though he apparently admitted to NME that he wasn't actually aware the Blur frontman was also behind Gorillaz. But no matter, this is just one more problem for beleaguered label EMI who, luck has it, handles publishing for both artists...

"It has to go back to the beginning, where it should have started with a phone call from Damon to my publisher... My publisher would have contacted me – the publisher being of course the same EMI that looks after his [music]... In a properly configured relationship I would have gotten a call from EMI to say, 'Damon wants to use "Time Warp". What arrangement can you guys come to? Would you claim 100 per cent, would you claim 60 per cent, or 70 per cent of whatever it is?'"

Then the conspiracy bit...

"That phone call never came. Instead what happened is somebody went straight to a musicologist, implying that there was some kind of pre-knowledge of some kind of infringement."
Unlike this commercial, of course, where Eddy granted permission for one of his songs to be adapted...




We'll probably never know, of course, if Eddy gets 100% or less because the terms of such settlements are kept hush-hush, like the one agreed on by Albarn's ex-girlfriend Justine Frischmann when her band Elastica were accused of lifting whole chunks from Wire and The Stranglers back in the mid 90's, or the one reached by Florence & The Machine and Gang Gang Dance more recently.

There's only one way to decide on a suitable figure. Yup, it's compare and contrast time...








"Time Warp" originally appeared in 1982 as the flip-side to the mighty "Electric Avenue" on a 12" double A-side. That, ladies and gentlemen, is value for money. Last year it appeared on a rather lovely Horsemeat Disco mixtape that you could download for free. Maybe keep that to yourself though.

Until this is sorted out, amicably we hope, let's take this opportunity to revisit an old friend...