C&L's Late Nite Music Club - Friday Night Ripoffs (?) with The Raconteurs and Joe Jackson
By MaxMarginal Friday Jul 17, 2009 7:00pmThis is the second post in a series called Friday Night Ripoffs(?). Here's the deal: every Friday, two songs, where one of them might very well be a gigantic ripoff of the other.
Commenter PLH225 came up with tonight's in the discussion of last week's thread. Did Jack White borrow a little too gratuitously from Joe Jackson for The Raconteurs' "Steady As She Goes," or is it just a coincidence?
Tell us what you think, and leave some suggestions for next week's plagiarism investigation in the comments.
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How could You? :)
Walter Cronkite dead at 92. I hope he gets at least 5% of the coverage that Michael Jackson got.
Music is all the same; really. Nothing is original guys. That is OK.
Miley Cyrus is so much like Balmorhea which is so much like Napalm Death which totally reminds me of Dolly Parton.
I would have said Cannibal Corpse instead of Napalm Death, but that's just me!
But for my listening pleasure I prefer Napalm Death.
Especially middle period (Fear, Emptiess Despair through Inside The Torn Apart.) Saw them at CBGB in 96, incredible.
You can't get what you want, till you know what you want.
Joe.
That's one of Joe's best songs. Thanks for putting that up, mudshark!
The guitar riff is the same but both songs are different overall
They seem to have borrowed the rhythm.
Notice the white shoe tapping in the beginning of the Raconteurs vid? Check out the cover of Jackson's debut album, Look Sharp! which contains Is She Really Going Out With Him.
...to be found on Look Sharp. Also love I'm the Man, but Jumpin' Jive is a personal fave, with the same rhythm section as the punkish stuff.
I'm The Man is my favorite, followed by Jumpin' Jive, then Look Sharp!.
From I'm the Man:
Friday
I should add that I credit Jackson for giving me an appreciation for Jump and Swing music that turned into a real love of the genres.
Didn't realize that Anthrax covers Joe Jackson (Got the Time) and has an original with the same title as one of his (I'm the Man.)
Anthrax's cover of Got the Time is great. Video directed by Parris Mayhew, guitarist of the hardest band ever, The Cro-mags.
but my favorite album (can't pick a favorite song from it, too many great ones) is Steppin' Out. I just came upon a re-issued CD at the library with a thick booklet inside with a lot of info about his music, and how that album was revolutionary (as any of us who rushed to buy it when it came out knew well).
I think there's too much similarity between the tunes, as noted above, to be coincidental.
joe jackson looks strange. handsome but strange. big ears. really big.
i dont think that the songs are all that similar. but i am not a musician.
i love the raconteurs video. somebody got to chase cows around with a video camera. run cows run! we used to chase them with our motorcycles. surprisingly fast, those 1200 pound cows are.
Joe looks like one of my best high school friends. I think Paul, for Halloween one year, dressed as Joe Jackson circa I'm The Man, pencil thin moustache penciled in.
of Wayne Kramer and Klaus Nomi.
Steppin Out.
Hey, I just luv the hell outta Joe Jacksons music.
The shitty part is, now that MJ has died. His dad keeps popping up.
And he's an asshole.
I hear ya, mudshark. We haven't heard the last of MJ's dad. He's gonna keep in the spotlight (and raking in the dough) by pitching one batshit crazy conspiracy theory after another
(MJ/JJ) And poor me MISSING OUT on all of it, over here. Hee he he.
I like both songs, and I'm not really a music aficianado (I just listen to it), so I'm not too bothered by some copying, as long as the end product is good, which it is.
How about...
"What a Fool Believes" Doobie Brothers
"Steal Away" Robbie Dupree
Robbie should have called it "Steal from the Doobie Brothers"
Too obvious?
One More Time!
The bass has a similar groove, other than that - not very similar to my ears.
Be my #2
A Slow Song.
It's Different For Girls
BTW, for those of you not old enough, or those of you who weren't paying attention at the time, A&M did some really cool things packaging Look Sharp! and I'm The Man: The latter was available in the standard 12" format as well as a two-10"-disc package, with a little "Look Sharp!" pin in one corner; the latter as a 12", two 10" and a box of singles.
You'll never see that kind of creative packaging with cd's, Andy!
But I'll take the packaging on a CD over MP3 any day. Dying are the days of album art.
A&M and it's subsidiary, IRS, were both great for packaging, but you'll never see it again.
I loved The Clash records for the messages etched in the space between the labels and the groove. IIRC, it was the 12" extended mix of Radio Clash that had "Save Us" etched on side A, and "Not The Whales" on side B.
The Magnificent Seven
That bass line- like so many in the early years of Hip-Hop- is heavily influenced by Chic's Good Times.
Is that you could listen to before MP3s?
GET THE HELL OFF MY LAWN!
Damned teenagers....
MP3 is very handy if you're moving around and divesting yourself of material goods, like I am right now. I have a stack of CDs and I'm leaving them all.
This will be my second time doing so.
1TB external hard drives and am starting to transfer all my CDs to them.
I don't know what all that would entail. I could get a few USBs and transfer my favourites. I have never been without Pink Floyd, Dark Side of the Moon, in my life. That's just not done. Big PF fan!!
See, the other thing is, I don't plan on moving my stereo either, but will buy killer speakers for my computer, once I move. I'm just taking two suitcases and my notebook.
I rip all my CDs, but keep the discs in storage. You never know what's going to happen to your drives, and it's conceivable that you could lose your main drives and the backups in the same event.
Spiritualized's "Ladies and gentlemen we are floating in space" [sic] was released in a box made to look like prescription medication with the CD itself inside a pill blister pack.
You clearly haven't seen the packaging of every CD ever released, so why make generalizations? I also found it funny that you ruled out the possibility of creative CD packaging in the future, apparently because a CD is a different size to an LP. If humanity can't think of ways to be creative with packaging within the relative limitations of different audio recording formats we might as well just give up now, dude. ;)
The Invisible Man. From his last effort. Which I was fortunate enough to be able to catch. 20th row. It wasn't close enough. The man is in a league all of his own.
Jackson's "Big World" was a 3 side LP.
The Clash's Sandinista...But the band took the hit on the profits by insisting it be sold at the same price as a double lp.
I just love that tune, Andy!
Remember way back when you posted another one of my faves, The Girl From Ipanema?
I listened to it many times, and then suddenly it disappeared due to copyright reasons or something. I'm just wondering, do you have another clip? I would love to hear that song again ...
The Girl From Ipanema
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G9U6URQSF6U
That's the one! Thank you, dondiago!
IIRC, I linked the original version off of the Stan Getz album, but I can't find that on YouTube or Dailymotion. The latter does have this, though, which gets yanked off of YouTube all the time.
Move
Some pretty crazy shit there.
Blue Train
Beautiful .... just beautiful .... :)
"Child of the Moon"- The Rolling Stones
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2CevL07oZrc
"Rain" - The Beatles
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V8NQRKxs2ko
Where?
Love it that no matter when or where Joe plays that song, the audience knows what to do.
I've seen Joe several times over the last two decades. Man is he great.
Similar base line, that's it.
Besides, if the copyright trolls didn't have a stranglehold on Congress, this song would have passed into the public domain two years ago. We should return to the original copyright terms -- 14 years, plus a single 14 year renewal. And that renewal should be really, really expensive.
And own the rights.
I hate the RIAA, but if an artist owns the rights to a song, he or she should get the money generated from said song should that song continue to generate money.
My objection to the essentially indefinite extension of copyright terms goes far, far beyond just the RIAA's attempts to prop up its dead business model.
The idea that copyright is a form of property is a vile inversion of the history and purpose of copyright. Coipyright is a package of special rights given to creators for the purpose of encouraging creativity. It should last only so long as further marginal extensions of copyright do not degrade future creativity, and not one second longer. Our current system (authors life + 95 years) is so absurdly beyond that point as to represent a serious net drag on creative production.
The verses are different but the chorus of Zoot Suit Riot is basically Stray Cat Strut with the tempo jacked up.
Stray Cat Strut:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CZ4omla_kRc
Zoot Suit Riot
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1IqH3uliwJY&fe...
slightly similar sounding chorus when you just sort of listen (as the genre is similar, of course) but SCS goes from the 3 to the 1 and ZSR goes from the 1 to the 5.
In a jazzy kinda way. The Uptown Train
I love that song!
But it sure as hell was super cool.
Don't get around much anymore.
It strikes me as being more of an homage than a ripoff, and I feel that way MAINLY because of the white shoes (see Joe Jackson's "Look Sharp" album cover art)in the beginning of the second video. Someone else here pointed it out, but I did notice it right away. As others have stated, it's mostly the riff, and the bass line. I'm reminded of the beginning of Steely Dan's "Rikki, Don't Lose That Number," which has an opening piano riff lifted directly from Horace Silver's "Song For My Father." Donald Fagen and Walter Becker have proudly stated that they lifted that riff, not to rip off, but to honor. I think the same MIGHT be true here. Of course, the Joe Jackson tune is WAAAAAAAAAY better!
25 or 6 to 4
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=soLIZ4W0rZw
brain stew
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AfagKd-UkeI
the hook is the same, theme of the songs are the same
But you could put "While My Guitar Gently Weeps" or "Last Resort" by Papa Roach in there too.
Outside of the four notes that make up the bass line, the two songs sound nothing alike. Joe Jackson is all slick uptown cocaine and The Raconteurs is Pabst drenched beer rock.
If we are use distant riffs as rip offs and call them as such is Nirvana's 'Come As You Are' a rip off Killing Joke's 'Living In the Eighties'?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3I5nINMSemU
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bOL5cpwTkes
A different version that melts into For Your Love
Yummy ;)
Wild West.
If you look close at the bass player.In the new and old vids, it's the same guy.
Have a nice night folks.
Good night.
Be well.
"Mr. Soul" - Buffalo Springfield
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h12dZlaB1ws
"Satisfaction" - Rolling Stones
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MejtR81RzCo
Chord progressions and rhythms are not copyrightable. If they were there would be many fewer songs on the planet. How many songs are there that are C Am F & G7?
The two melodies are different enough that even thought the rhythm structure is awfully close to Joe Jackson's it's not the same melody.
The melody is nothing alike.
Never saw the movie, but I bought the soundtrack to get Joe Jackson's tune "Memphis". I love the song, but the swirling keyboard makes me think of Spencer Davis Group's "Gimme Some Lovin".
King's Lead Hat - Brian Eno
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HGOC4Hib4OM
Shake it Up - The Cars
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eq-yoorI7lo
I win this game :-)
F(or) T(he) W(in): FTW!
Now you are closer to being familiar with all of the internet traditions.
Abba - Dancing Queen
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ctzIEjjOfd4
Orleans - Dance with Me
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_-IXJLgRnvs
It may not be a pure ripoff, but the rifts do sound the same in parts of both choruses.
It's not worth listening to this --Orleans - Dance with Me-- to find out. I'd (happily) forgotten about that song. Thx. ;)
.
Uncontrollable Urge
I'd add that one, maybe, too. Also(another internet tradition, albeit a very recent one).
I've never heard that Eno tune before....I can totally hear it going into the chorus of "Shake It Up". It sounds like a combo of The Cars and The Talking Heads.
Kings Lead Hat
anagram of
The Talking Heads
Which eno produced for
ah...that explains it.
n/t
Level 42
But your comment that Joe Jackson is some kind of slick uptown cocaine rock is beyond ridiculous.
Out of a 586 song "New Wave" playlist, Itunes decided to play that one right now.
American Tune
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ujm6gnbRcUw
AMERICAN TUNE by Paul Simon/September 5, 1974
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l_sl4r0eGVY
Bach borrowed this melody for his St. Matthew's Passion from an earlier composer, Hans leo Hassler.
Chuck Berry ’s “Sweet Little Sixteen.”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kxDPUEpLVsE&fe...
The Beach Boys - Surfin' USA
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k1FaflUn4Co
True, though I think The Beach Boys credited the song to Chuck Berry or at least gave him a co-credit.
Plagiarism is basic to all cultures!
Or maybe it's not plagiarism at all, but collective unconciousness. The Hero With A Thousand Faces and all that.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vpAcQrt8-SE
George Harrison - My sweet lord
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fQkylt8PX5g&fe...
Can't Touch This by M.C. Hammer stolen almost verbatum off of Superfreak by Rick James
sampling?
Around the same time, however, Vanilla Ice's Ice Ice Baby completely ripped off Queen's Under Pressure.
Those were different cases.
Hammer did acknowledge that he sampled "Superfreak". However, Van Winkle tried to push that Ice Ice Baby was solely his work and that he didn't sample.
There's an extra note in Van Winkle's version. IIRC, it got him off the hook...but it's still a rippoff.
Ok. There was actually some controversy over this rip-off in the 70's, but I don't know if the ripper-off ever fessed up.
The original song:
Jorge Ben "Taj Mahal": http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RGHA4gWYRTg
The rip-off:
Rod Stewart "Do You Think Im Sexy" http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OIlHt_syoSE
NOW...you can clearly hear the resemblance. But what makes it worse is that Jorge Ben actually worked as a session man for Rod after the Faces broke up. Theres plenty of info on the net about it, but I dont know that Rod ever admitted to nabbing the chorus.
The proper song to accompany Is She Really Going Out With Him? is Kenesaw Mountain Landis by Jonathan Coulton.
But I really like Coulton's song, even though I love both baseball and history.
One that's been annoying me for years now, every time I hear Santana f. Michelle Branch and *think* I'm going to get to enjoy Style Council:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7yoGTVzgow8
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JMLoUTBy47U&fe...
No No No, we reflect our influences....tribute respect personalization love and passion....the new folk.....like blues and western becoming rock....please C&L don't persue this line....you can debunk any musician if you know what they grew up listening to. REALLY, don't make this a regular column. It is demeaning to all musicians, down to our solos we are all guilty and honored at the same time.......
Jason Loveall
Because Max (formerly of The Actual, currently of Max and The Marginalized) has opened himself up to these sorts of comparisons.
And I'm sure that when he came up with the title for the feature, his tongue was planted firmly in his cheek. Okay, it might have been in someone else's cheek, but that would have been an odd time for him to be thinking of titles for blog posts.
I like the feature precisely because it allows the discussion of the influences of musicians on other musicians.
Max and the Marginalized - Weeknights at Six
The Jam - In the City
With 95 year copyright extensions and classifying music sharing as "stealing", the music industry has worked hard to equate music with physical property. A lot of people now think that music is more like cars and shoes than folktales.
Music, stories, and newer media are folk culture. People modify them and transform them because that's what the human species does.
The current title creeps me out in the same way as it does cometczar. The concept that cultural artifacts are property is pervasive enough that I suspect a lot of people aren't going to pick up the tongue-in-cheek. And the concept of culture as property is really harmful.
So I'd love this meme if it was about finding influences, and highlighting when they're cool and vs. when really seems that an artist is crossing a line with a clone not a tribute.
America? "Horse With No Name":
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k0KKGdb4qUY
And here is Michael's "new" song..."A Place With No Name":
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QVWDNG_i-HM
You all tell me. Rip off, or no rip off???
And don't ask me why the hell I'm up at 4 a.m EST. (Fell asleep during a "Ma and Pa Kettle movie...just woke up. Missed the end.)
Someone actually made a mashup of the two. It wasn't very well done, but it showed
how very similar the songs were. The Raconteurs were also very craftily mashed up
with Gnarls Barkley by The Legion Of Doom - and it's most excellent. Listen here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=31QmxN0bP2w&fe...
But speaking of butterface Miley Cyrus, check these out:
Corey Hart - Sunglasses At Night - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zKh2ur4qj0Q
Miley Cyrus - See You Again - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3tXJSey-57s
It's mainly only a few verses that flat out steal Corey's melody, but it's BLATANT!
Then of course, there's THIS:
Kraftwerk - Computer Love - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EEBPzD3MPWE
Coldplay - Talk - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pZMFVo69kGw
It's rumored that Chris Martin from Coldplay cited/credited Kraftwerk,
but I think it was only AFTER the fact, once he got busted.
I know I'll come up with more ;^)
So much so, that a brilliant mashup album - Dean Gray, "American Edit" - was
released in 2005. It mashed the entire Green Day "American Idiot" with all the artists
who "inspired" it - everyone from Bryan Adams to Smokey Robinson to Bryan Ferry
to Queen to Johnny Cash. It was made by Party Ben in SF, and Team 9 in Australia.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Edit
Green Day vs. __________
"Holiday" vs. The Dr. Who Theme vs. Gary Glitter
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1-hccbTCq0g
"Homecoming" vs. U2's "Bad"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e8LITZEmnms
"Give Me Novacaine" vs. Queen's "Bohemian Rhapsody"
+ U2 drumbeat ("Bullet The Blue Sky")
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o_kI1Gmr9PA
And the most famous mashup, that even got some worldwide radio play & exploded:
"Boulevard Of Broken Songs" - see if you can spot the many songs they rip off:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eEGcz6KYxcM
Real MP3 is here - http://www.mediafire.com/?jdvz4z3weu4
Party Ben also showed how close THESE two songs are:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7O3Z00jn47M
Say what you want about mashups, but the really well made ones are pretty amazing!
And "American Edit" blew "The Grey Album" out of the water! Sorry, Dangermouse...
U2 used to start playing One and then sing the lyrics to Walking Away.
U2: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xnXQS6oetQk
Craig David: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xnXQS6oetQk
Peace Frog
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3KlVZ9CLg3E
v.
I'm Free
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZVGf3ePIO04
Some friends of mine have been saying for years that the main riff in Pearl Jam's "Given To Fly" is far too close to Page's main riff in "Going To California".
Check it out.
Well just about every song Led Zepplin has ever done is a complete rip off, they are the biggest fraud ever.
The beginning of "Soul Meets Body" vs. "Santa Can You Hear Me."
Death Cab: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s9JB2ETgatI
Britney: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YJzi4j7Ohh0
I recently finished ripping several hundred LP's (think frisbees, children) to computer files and am dreading doing the same for a thousand or so 45's. CD's are easy compared to these suckahs. After those, of course, are the old blues and jazz 78's, if any of them are still intact after being moved a few hundred miles.
If you fear digital disaster, keep a computer, portable hard drive, and DVD backups. Three sets of backup should be sufficient redundancy.
But--what I really want is to download it all to memory cards as soon as Apple figures out how to install a card reader in their beloved but expensive little gadgets.
Would a white-trash White steal from Joe Jackson? Is Phoenix hot in the summer?
Bob Dylan's latest, "Beyond Here Lies Nothin'" (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hPpCxY05dqs) sounds a whole lot like Leonard Cohen's "Everybody Knows" (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wh9AC0jCGjY).
When I first saw Joe Jackson's name, I thought this would be a comparison of his song "Breaking Us in Two" to the Badfinger song "Day After Day." They both have strikingly similar melodies for the first two lines of the verse. In "Day After Day," the lines in question, in the first verse, are, "I remember finding out about you./Every day, my mind is all around you." The corresponding lines in the Joe Jackson song are "Don't you feel like trying something new?/Don't you feel like breaking out or breaking us in two?"
I give Joe the benefit of the doubt, seeing as he's generally a fine songsmith, but it appears he might have subconsciously, inadvertently cribbed a substantial chunk of melody for this, which was a hit single for him.
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