Another great article

No new news: we're still waiting for the Third Circuit Court of Appeals to issue a briefing order so we can get on with the appeal after the voluntary mediation process yielded no results. But there's a great new article on house concerts that includes an interview with me as well as with several other house concert hosts. Check it out at Musician's Atlas

More goodies available

For those of you who are hosting house concerts and setting out a basket for donations to the Music Right Next Door Legal Fund, I've created a couple of things to make your lives a little easier. First, here's a little poster you can set next to the basket. And here are some business cards you can print and stack next to the basket or even carry with you and hand out to anyone you speak to about our civil rights complaint. And here's the donation form you can use to send a donation to the fund yourself, or to send whatever the basket collects at your house concert.

Thanks again for all the help! Let me know if anything interesting happens as a result of your activities or if you set a link to this site or to the Music Right Next Door Legal Fund.

New article discusses house concert issues

The current issue of .::dragonfire::. has an extensive article describing the situation faced by Greg and Debbie Ching and their Boulder-based Aspen Meadows House Concerts. I was also interviewed for this article, as were other house concert hosts, and our perspective is included in the article.

Visible means of support

I've had some great responses to the opening of the Music Right Next Door Legal Fund, and I thank all of you who have been so supportive. Financial support is wonderful, of course, but now there's another way you can help: you can tell other people about this attempt to restrict our Constitutional rights and encourage them to read up on the details and support our efforts. My wonderfully creative friend Ivan Stiles has created the great icon you see here and donated its use to us. What we'd love is if you'd take that graphic, add it to your own web site or blog, and link to this blog or to the MRNDLF site at http://livingroommusic.googlepages.com . You can copy the icon from this page, or download it from http://pages.prodigy.net/cah/concert/graphics/MusicNextDoor200.jpg . And if you do that, please drop me a note to let me know that you're on board, and I'll periodically put up a list of all our friends with backlinks.

On the news front, no new news from our recent mediation session with O'Hara Township. But there's now another family that's running into very similar unconstitutional restriction of their rights to host parties with live music in the Boulder, Colorado area. Greg and Debbie Ching recently lost their appeal of a cease and desist order that prevents them from hosting a party with live music if and only if people chip in to help pay for the music. Greg tells me that the commissioners have determined that it's perfectly ok for them to host a Valentine's Day party or a Halloween party that has live music, but if people chip in for the party, it's no longer legal. I'm still scratching my head and wondering exactly how the commissioners expect to enforce such a restriction. Suppose the Chings host a May Day party with live music, don't set out a basket or ask for donations, but individuals who attend the party privately stuff cash into the refrigerator, the sugar bowl, or Greg's jacket pocket when he's not looking. Then a neighbor complains about the party and an officer shows up asking "Excuse me, where did you get the money to pay your performer?" If Greg says "From my checkbook" (because he wrote a check) is he telling the truth? If he says "I found it in my pocket and my sugar bowl" has he violated the cease and desist order? And (most important) do the local authorties even have the right to ask that question if there's no search warrant or any reason to expect that the money came from an "illegal" source? Check out Greg and Debbie's web site and read some of the linked articles -- it would be pretty funny stuff if it wasn't so sad.

Music Right Next Door Legal Fund

I'm going to skip a few chapters here and note that our Federal Civil Rights complaint against O'Hara Township is currently on appeal to the Third Circuit Court of Appeals. As you might imagine, we've spent quite a bit on lawyers and are anticipating that this will continue for some time. So now we're asking for help from you. We've established the "Music Right Next Door Legal Fund" to collect contributions from the general public to support the ongoing litigation. The web site contains detailed information about the fund including the agreement that details how the funds will be administered. We've registered the name of the fund as a fictitious name, hired an independent accountant to collect and administer the funds, and a voluntary filing with the Pennsylvania Bureau of Charitable Organizations is pending. This is serious business, and we want to make sure that everyone who contributes knows exactly how their contributions are going to be used.

We would appreciate it if everyone who cares about ensuring that local zoning laws respect our Constitutional rights at least enough to permit a citizen to host a party with live music in his/her home would contribute. Thanks again for your support up to this point, and in advance for your future support.