Saturday, July 11, 2009

United Breaks Guitars

Could be that the best thing that ever happened to the Sons of Maxwell was that United Airlines refused to pay for breaking singer Dave Carroll's guitar last year, when the band was on its way to Nebraska. The Halifax-based Carroll wrote a song, called United Breaks Guitars, about the long compensation dispute - and it "went viral," as they say, on YouTube.

"In the spring of 2008, Sons of Maxwell were traveling to Nebraska for a one-week tour and my Taylor guitar was witnessed being thrown by United Airlines baggage handlers in Chicago. I discovered later that the $3500 guitar was severely damaged. They didnt deny the experience occurred but for nine months the various people I communicated with put the responsibility for dealing with the damage on everyone other than themselves and finally said they would do nothing to compensate me for my loss. So I promised the last person to finally say no to compensation (Ms. Irlweg) that I would write and produce three songs about my experience with United Airlines and make videos for each to be viewed online by anyone in the world. United: Song 1 is the first of those songs. United: Song 2 has been written and video production is underway. United: Song 3 is coming." ~ Dave Carroll



It also seems that Loudon Wainwright III has had his own similar "Unfriendly Skies" experience.

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