tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5913752433926766420.post7621842343081108690..comments2024-03-26T19:32:01.151-07:00Comments on Bobby Owsinski's Big Picture Music Production Blog: Gibson Celebrates The Government Raid The Best Way It Knows HowUnknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger1125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5913752433926766420.post-31504802760578326392014-02-10T13:19:28.551-08:002014-02-10T13:19:28.551-08:00While US government representatives are reported i...While US government representatives are reported in this video to insist that individual musicians are not the focus of enforcement efforts, I must disagree. As an individual musician, I was subjected to similar treatment, not under the Lacey Act, but under the CITES convention (Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species) when attempting to bring a 1917 William Knabe baby grand piano across the US-Canada border during a household move back in 1999. At issue was the ivory used in manufacturing the piano keys.<br /><br />Unable to cross the border with that piano, I had either to abandon it at the border, or retrace my steps (after repacking the moving truck) to store it in a suitable facility. I was fortunate to find a DeLorean auto storage warehouse in Buffalo at 5 pm on a Friday afternon, and there the piano sat for several years while I negotiated the labyrinthine application process with the US Fish and Wildlife Service for an export permit. <br /><br />My eventual success can be chalked up less to my painstaking research showing that the keys in pianos from that era were likely to have been made from African elephant ivory, as opposed to the more protected Indian elephant variety, than to the fact that Canadian authorities had quietly modified their end of the CITES convention during the years the piano sat in storage to allow importation of such pianos into Canada under a personal effects exemption.<br /><br />As the border agent advised me during my initial attempt at crossing with the piano, if I were to remove the keyboard and throw it off the bridge into the Niagara River, there would have been no problem in exporting the rest of the instrument from the US. And there were times during those years when I wished I had done just that!<br /><br />One other thing: in addition to the storage fees, there was a $95 "inspection fee" and a $25 application fee.<br /><br />As Gibson's Henry Juszkiewicz says in the video, how is a musician supposed to know the origin of all the material components in a vintage instrument? It gets that much more difficult when the manufacturer is no longer in business, as is the case with my William Knabe piano.Alan Hardimanhttp://www.abcbuzz.comnoreply@blogger.com