WordPress driven website
In time for the long awaited release of Brad and Elliot Mason’s debut album “Two Sides, One Story” (Archival Records, 2010), their website received a gentle visual refresh to bring it inline with the design of the album. As things go, once the sleeves are rolled up and a certain amount of code edits are being tackled, other optimisations are suddenly on the radar. The tour calendar is now being maintained through GigPress, a fantastic WordPress plugin for artists and agencies. A more major addition to the site is the new web store – a simple solution to sell “Two Sides, One Story” as CD or download directly through the website.
As brothers, both sporting the same surname Mason, you would think the obvious name for their collaborative musical projects would be “Mason Brothers”. But law and behold – and this is where it loses me and I cannot for the life of me understand how this is even possible – the name “Mason Brothers” had indeed been trademarked already. Not by an artistic mega team, a big name, a successful act on the music scene. No, by a complete bunch of nobodies. Purely to create the biggest possible disruption to two highly talented and promising brass players by the same name, these other Masons obsessively launched into an unnecessary law suite and claimed their laughable rights to exclusivity over the use of a capital “B”. “Mason Brothers” belongs to them and them alone. Nobody else, brothers or not, Masons or not, shall ever put those two words together again and put it onto a commercial or artistic (or both) piece of work – be it at least for the capitalised “Brothers”. Unbelievable.
Since then, a 2,000 copies album release had to be withdrawn and reprinted with a borderline acceptable “Mason brothers Quintet” on its cover. Website, its code and all visual creative assets had to be amended accordingly. A drag.
To me though, the real Mason Brothers are Brad and Elliot Mason. Amazing musicians, great friends, true artists.
