Here's an interesting headline from Rolling Stone which I spotted the other day. Nothing so weird about that one, you'll probably be saying, it's just confirming that Steve Howe really did sue someone (it's not clear who) for some sort of copyright infringement over a song.
The key to smelling a rat and subsequently the real meaning of the headline here is actually knowing who Steve Howe is, something which probably divides sharply along lines of musical preference and, depressingly, age. Anyway, Howe is the guitarist with British progressive rock band Yes, who, rather remarkably, are still a going concern, albeit with only Howe as an "original" member. I say "original" as even Howe wasn't in the very early incarnations of the group, only coming on board for the making of their breakthrough album The Yes Album in 1970. I suppose what I mean is he's the only member from their "classic" period which ran from about 1970 to about 1974.
Anyway, despite what the surface reading of the headline might suggest, it is in fact Howe and the current incarnation of Yes who are being sued for copyright infringement by a guy called Riz Story. To be fair the sub-headline makes that reasonably clear.
Have I heard any of the songs in question? No. Do I, in fact, give a fuck? Not really. The point is the headline, and some odd American conventions regarding headline structure, in particular the use of a comma to splice words together in place of the word "and". This is jarring to the uninitiated and highly satirisable even to the presumably initiated (both the fictional headlines below are from The Onion).
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