The story about our connection to Bad Brains and Artist Shepard Fairey

In this clip from the art podcast I do on my personal website. I was talking to a photographer out in California named Thann Clark. 

We were discussing copyright, creative commons and sharing your work online. And it reminded me of the time when Shepard Fairey created artwork for a Bad Brains album that was similar to the artwork on our first EP from years earlier.

Shepard Fairey story in a webcomic by Tom Ray via tomrayswebsite.com

I put all of my artwork and music under a creative commons license so it's free to use and share as long as they give credit. And as we talk I share a story about a time that Shepard Fairey was accused of stealing my artwork.

Back in the '90s, one of the first album covers my band Lorenzo's Music did, was designed by the wife of a member who used to be in the band. She was a graphic designer. We were doing our first EP and she found this 1930s space-themed world's fair artwork from Chicago.

Vintage 1933 Chicago World's Fair Poster

It was a picture of a planet with a ring that swooped around it. And she was like, I want to design the album just like this! And I was like, that's fantastic! So she did.

Years went by, and then in the mid-2000s the band Bad Brains had Shepard Fairy do the artwork for the cover of their album "Into The Future".

"And I'm looking at it going holy crap! Did they use our album artwork? That's awesome!"

I was listening to the album and looking at the cover and all of a sudden I'm like, wait a minute?! I turned it upside down and realized that's the design on our first album!

Bad Brains and Lorenzo's Music Album Artwork

And I'm looking at it going holy crap! Did they use our album artwork? That's awesome! I thought it was cool and I posted it on the band's website.

Next thing you know, it got picked up on Reddit and then a bunch of music and tabloid outlets started posting the story. All of a sudden these headlines were saying, "Did Bad Brains steal this artwork?" and all this kind of stuff. And I was like, I didn't say that. I just pointed out it was the same artwork.

Lorenzo's Music/Bad Brains news article

All of a sudden all of the people who like Bad Brains came out and they're just like hating on us!

And also this is what I didn't know. Shepard Fairey was actually going through the court case for the Obama hope artwork at the time and I had no concept that he was literally being sued for appropriating someone's photography and here I said this about him using our artwork. And everybody's like he's doing it again!

So Shepard Fairey actually called me on the phone! We had a really nice conversation about it and I said I just thought it was cool that Bad Brains had the same artwork as us. But yeah, we got bashed online because of that.

But also our listenership went up tons because of the exposure! We still got new band email list signups. So with the hating also brought people going, oh check out this band that's really cool! sort of thing.

- Tom