I just finished reading Simon Reynolds’ Rip It Up, which documents the Postpunk movement. In the afterword, Mr. Reynolds says, “What changed in the mideighties was that bands increasingly soundposted their reference points and that spotting these allusions became an integral part of the listener’s aesthetic response and enjoyment.” He goes on to discuss the C86 movement, REM, Husker Du, and The Smiths as bands that clearly reference back to the “guitar chimes and folk-styled vocals” of the ’60s.
Today’s bands also seem to be very transparent about their sonic influences. Fleet Foxes has been posting videos of older songs (mostly from the ’60s and ’70s) and commenting on how these songs or bands direct their current sound. I think the clearest recent example is LCD Soundsystem. Their most recent album, This Is Happening, is very overt about it’s Berlin-era Bowie references. But I think the best example is an earlier LCD Soundsystem’s song, “Losing My Edge,” which includes a long rant/list of the bands James Murphy considers to be the foundation of his sound.
Which other bands or artists are very clear about their musical influences?
Interpol (Joy Division) and Radio 4 (Gang of Four) were the first to spring to mind.
I struggle with bands that try so hard to ape others, even or maybe especially if I’m a big fan of the aped. I dig the LCD but I’m skeptical of the new one because of the apparent ode to Berlin Bowie. I bought it when it came out but haven’t listened yet.
The new LCD is very good and not all Bowie-eque. As he mentions in Losing My Edge, there are shades of Human League, Thomas Dolby and Depeche Mode. My favorite tracks are “I Can Change” and “Pow Pow.”
As I had mentioned during the waning days of the Wee Three Team Scotland Football team, Orange Juice loved the Buzzcocks and directly referenced them in the song “Rip It Up.”
I agree that the practice of spotting influences has grown since the ’80s, but I’m not sure that artists do this any more or less, rather that it’s become more of critics’ and fans’ perspectives on artists. I mean, there’s a great story on one of the gazillion Beatles bios I’ve read in which McCartney says the band listened to an acetate of some new Who song one night and then, feeling challenged, McCartney went home and wrote his own power pop rocker, “Paperback Writer.” Musicians have been conscious about their allusions for lord knows how long. Audiences seemed to be conscious of these things earlier than the ’80s, but sure, spotting such allusions took off in the ’80s.
I enjoy this practice as much as anyone, and probably more than most. Noting threads and influences is half my enjoyment of listening to music. I love when artists do interviews or publish liner notes in reissues of classic albums in which they cite the songs by other artists that fed into their own works. Costello freely admits taking bits of some Richard Hell song as his starting point for “Pump it Up.” Early on he credited an ABBA greatest hits album the band listened to on tour with unlocking new arrangement ideas for their third album. One of the CD reissues of The dB’s’ first two albums had such detail from the songwriters, if memory serves.
Costello is one of my faves for doing this, because for every song he’s copped to alluding to or being influenced in his own songs, there seems to be a song he’s never commented on. For instance, the break in “This Year’s Girl” must be heavily influenced by the break in the Rolling Stones’ “Stupid Girl.” That one never comes up in EC’s songwriting tales. I wonder if he’s aware of the lift.
Great examples, Mod.
I guess for me the big question is when does it seem to be “referencing” someone’s song, and when is it stealing? Is imitation the sincerest form of flattery? Or are artists irritated when another band makes allusions, direct or otherwise? Is it better when the artist directly states, “I was listening to….and really liked it, so…”
The Hold Steady and The Gaslight Anthem have been doing quite a bit of Bruce Springsteen worship lately — playing with him and/or doing Bruce covers. Both their new albums are full of Springsteen-like numbers.
Beastie Boys.
Mod- How about when a band bases their entire oeuvre on another band? Not just a song.
Shawnkilroy, rap on. Tell us more…
I sometimes say things like, “Owl City is great. I liked them back when they were called The Postal Service.”
well, on Licensed to Ill, they let us know that even though they were a rap group, they were WAY into Zeppelin, Sabbath, and Steve Miller via samples and actual lyrical appropriation, as in “sittin round the house, gettin high, and watch the tube…”
On their sophomore LP, the post-modern masterpiece, Paul’s Boutique, the boys sample a MASSIVE array of artists. All of the following artists are sampled on this album:
Ramones
Beatles
Eagles
The Clash
David Bromberg
Idris Muhammed
The Sugarhill Gang
Rose Royce
Pink Floyd
Sly and the Family Stone
Kool & The Gang
Bernard Herman
Curtis Mayfield
and dozens if not hundreds of others.
as it got harder and more $$$ to use samples, The Beastie Boys shifted gears a bit and started playing their own loops and grooves. They also started to expand the repatoire a bit and branched out into jazz, funk, hardcore, lounge music, and some other types of shit in meandering instrumentals as well as full blown non-rap songs on their 3rd album, Check Your Head and beyond.
It is around this time that they started to use a simile type device in a lot of their rhymes that’s soul purpose is a big fat name drop. Here’s the structure: “…and I’ve got more (blank) than (blank)’s got (blank)”
as in:
I’ve got more stories than J.D.’s got Salinger
I’ve got more money than Phillip Rizuto
(a reference to his 2nd career as a shill for The Money Store)
I’ve got more rhymes than Carl Sagan’s got turtlenecks
and on and on with this reference shit until frankly, it got predictable and i got sick of them.
first 3 and a half albums are brilliant though.
watch this video for a full on homage to Pink Floyd’s Live at Pompeii
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZdJ5e70Q8mw
sammy asked:
Usually, I suppose, that’s boring! I would think that since the ’60s there have been many bands that base their entire act on a popular band. It’s bound to happen. What I think is a more significant change than how fans perceive these allusions and even rip-offs if how many more bands aim lower than bands used to aim. Bands used to set their sights on the heavy hitters, be it The Beatles, The Stones, Zeppelin, Pink Floyd, or even bands like U2 in more recent years. Although there are still bands aping heavy hitters like The Boss and U2, there are a lot of young bands that come out of the gates aping fun but third-rate bands, be they cult-level garage, power pop, psych, or what-have-you bands. THAT’S what I find most different in the last 15 or so years. Thirty-five years ago no one entered the scene wanting to be Badfinger or The Thirteenth Floor Elevators.
Do revival bands, such as the Two-Tone bands and ’80s rockabilly artists, fit into this? I’ll have to say that I enjoy the first two Specials albums – as albums – more than any single album I’ve heard by an actual ska artist. Maybe it’s because the original stuff was so singles oriented and bands like The Specials got to pay homage across a range of favorite singles/artists.
Yet another side-track on this fine topic: bands that compare themselves with a certain artist (and/or are compared to a certain artist by critics who have swallowed their publicity whole) who don’t sound – to me – that much like the artist to which they’re always compared. There are a lot of new bands, for instance, who get compared to The Beach Boys, but despite the fact that they occasionally employ some similar harmonies, I don’t think their music sounds much like The Beach Boys at all! I wish I could remember all these artists – there’s some newer techno band that gets compared with them, some Japanese guy with one name, The High Llamas (?)…
Stereolab constantly gets compared to a few artists that, granted, I don’t know too well, but I can never hear as clear a connection as I’m led to believe I’ll hear when I hear the music of Stereolab.
Mr Mod, I believe you’re thinking of the “Echo and the Bunnymen are like The Doors” reference.
Yes, machinery, that’s one of the hard-to-trace comparisons I would cite. Thanks.
I’m embarrassed that I know this but the first song on the first Bare Naked Ladies album ends with the guy singing Happy Hour by the Housemartins. When I first heard them I thought “Man, this guy really sounds like the Housemantins guy” and they apparently realized it too.
i think Vampire weekend is a complete ripoff of Graceland era Paul Simon, with a tiny bit of clash/police in there.
lame.
Teenage Fanclub were very upfront about their influences. Bandwagonesque sound like graduates of the Big Star School of Songwriting. Later records named their heroes more directly but it seemed to be a game to them by that point. “Gene Clark” sounds like Neil Young but “Niel Jung” just sounds like Fanclub.
I don’t come up with too many of these examples before the 90’s except for 1 hit copycats like the Knickerbockers and Mouse and the Traps (thanks, Nuggets!).
Speaking of LCD Soundsystem, the first song I remember hearing by them a few years ago is a complete rip-off of Pete Shelley’s “Homosapiens,” not that there’s anything wrong with that. Have they copped to that one?
Years ago, I was the assistant engineer on an album with a band that sounded just like Oasis. They even had a photo of Oasis sitting atop one of the speakers that was in front of our faces every moment of the session.
So when their record company sent somebody to interview them for a press release, the question was, “who are your influences” and they said, “oh, we listen to a lot of jazz.”
Mod – the asian guy who sounds like the Beach Boys – Cornelius perhaps? And he appropriated his name from Planet of the Apes! By the way, for all you JAMC fans out there (besides me), Cornelius sites the band as an influence.
Thanks for the elucidation, shawnkilroy!
I guess the reason I started this thread is that it seems to me that earlier bands, like Led Zep, “ripped off” the songs from other musicians (and sometimes credited themselves to the find), whereas some bands now are more open about their imitation or influence. I would hate to think it’s solely a litigation thing that is forcing this.
And, I agree that there are some bands out there who are basing their oevre on anothers, but as long as they credit it, is their harm? Maybe they will assist newer fans in digging up the earlier material? I know I’ve worked backwards in that way before, looking for United States of America because Broadcast had cited them.
And then there is cherguevara’s story. To me, not being honest about the music you love or are imitating is really lame.
As for rap, a canon built on this formula, how about Girltalk? He doesn’t even rap, he just samples songs, some combinations are pretty funny.
By the way, have any of you seen Pete Frame’s Rock Family Trees?
Here’s one Mr. Royal and I like for Creation Records:
http://www.familyofrock.com/browse/creation/
The trees are really obsession-producing, at least for me. These are mostly documenting the changes in lineup and musicians playing in multiple bands.
Cher, that Oasis shit is FUNNY! Post of the day!
I can follow up that story by telling you that when the project was over, I never got a copy (usually somebody would send one over). Years later, I was walking down Houston street and there were two dozen CDs strewn all over the sidewalk. Trashed, picked-over, left for dead. Lo and behold, I look down, and there is that band’s CD, so that’s how I finally got a copy.
The Smithereens’ I Don’t Want To Lose You lifted the out chorus from the Byrds’ I’ll Feel A Whole Lot Better directly.
The Knickerbockers’ rode the trends, and because Buddy Randell sounded a lot like John Lennon that song was a minor hit. They had a few other good tunes, but the bad ones, particularly with Jimmy Walker doing falsetto, sound more like the Four Seasons than anything else.
Usually it’s a dead giveaway now that some bands take a song or an album name as their band name. One of my favorites, The Shazam, named for the Move album, owes a lot more of their sound to Cheap Trick, although there’s an acoustic cover they do with Carl Wayne and Bev Bevan at Abbey Road on youtube from 10 years ago.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=umEhgsziq1A