C&L's Late Nite Music Club: Friday Night Ripoffs with The Kinks and Green Day
By MaxMarginal Friday Aug 28, 2009 7:00pmWe're not trying to start any lawsuits here, but let's face it; some songs just sound too much like other songs to be a coincidences. Or do they? Music doesn't usually come with footnotes or bibliographies, so on Friday nights we engage in wild speculation about where our favorite songwriters might have owed someone a hat tip. Welcome to Friday Night Ripoffs (?) at the LNMC.
"Warning" (the title track from your DJ's favorite Green Day album) sure sounds a helluva lot like The Kinks' "Picture Book". Green Day are clearly no stranger to the creative lift (See: "Boulevard of Broken Dreams/Summer of 69 or Brain Stew/25 or 6 to 4) and to me, this sounds too close for chance. What do you think? Coincidence or theft? What other songs pose that same question to you?
(h/t to Dylan for the heads up on this one.)
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You want a lawsuit...
And if you say otherwise, you're lying.
...c'mon, we all know different artists rip off each other. It's very common so I don't think LNMC is trying to start a lawsuit.
The main riff of Green Day's tune is extremely close to the Kinks' song. I'd have to agree that it's a direct lift.
those ingenius HP commericals that used the song as the jingle.
Just git down.
Louie,Louie.
Toots and the Maytals
The Kinks
The Kingsmen.
I know because I worked with them and the drummer/singer broke a graphite drum stick during the song, (yeah, the un-breakable kind) while playing it/singing it. I have the 2 pieces on my lab desk.
Lynn Easton sang lead when I worked with them and he said he and Ely were ... umm ... not at their best, when it was recorded and they didn't know/sing any particular lyrics.
Anyone who says their lyrics were obscene probably believe in backwards masking.
I just wanted to post those.
I wonder if the Clash ever did that tune?
Well, It looks like they Did.
The little riff is similar (V-I-IV-bVII , kinks versus V-I-IV-I for the other) but there is no similarity (in as much as I could listen to) of the melody. The Kinks piece is more involved and more interesting melodically, if you want to use that word.
The copyright is on the melody.
Charlie Parker and a host of beboppers after him took the changes of tune after tune and wrote new melodies, the tunes were theirs. The joke by the society crowd at the time was that the beboppers had antennae that warned them anytime they were getting too close to the melody.
I don't want to go off script too much but these guys must have antennae to tell them if they are getting too close to the pitch. They don't put two notes back to back in tune.
Speaking of your Brain Stew/25 or 6 to 4 example, you had an ELO tune (there were people playing and singing more in tune, for a change) that had the same harmony.
It is a limited vocabulary.
What tunes for me? Debussy's string quartet versus Ravel's string quartet. Clone city.
Iggy Pop
.
Or, this version.
i hate when you music theorists get into these discussions
for pop songs to become hits...they need a hook...and green day has a habit of lifting popular hooks from other songs
never mind that the themes to brain stew and 25 or 6 to 4 are exactly the same...what grabs you is the opening rift
and has anyone heard green days latest? i could swear ive heard the song somewhere before...and not done by greenday...and not with the same lyrics
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gNjiqygkBDw
kinda sounds like neil youngs heart of gold...dont it?
...morphs into "If You're Going to San Francisco"...
cuz the first time i heard it...i was able to immediatly sing along
these guys are scandalous
and popular
what do you expect?
everyone steals riffs and strumming patterns.
change the key, write some new lyrics.
how many rock songs are nothing but 12 bar blues?
Led Zeppelin made a whole career out of that with their own spin.
just the way it is..
only so many ways to sing the blues
Green Day professes to being geniuses?
They're a loud pop band with fun, catchy songs.
I've seen them a few times live, including this tour (as one of the oldest in the audience) and it's a good time.
Also, there are a lot of ways to sing the blues. Guys and gals have been putting their twist on them forever. And rightly so, the blues are everything. Without them, there is nothing.
Two of the newest fellas in the last few years doing their own thing in and around the blues are Derek Trucks (who is a fucking freak of nature on guitar) and Joe Bonamassa. Both are killer live, BTW..
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ceBtBHsHTCo&fe...
Uncle Joe, listened to "21 Guns". I get the "Heart of Gold" allusion, but it also sounded like a steal from Scott McKenzie's "San Francisco".
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SB2tYYYlwMc
I agree with Alice X, the initial chord changes sound very similar but nothing that couldn't happen by chance. There was a video on YouTube (which unfortunately was taken down due to the C word) that showed how a Coldplay song was a ripoff on a song by Joe Satriani. Now that was a real rip off, the person that made the video played the two songs one after the other and then to top it off played both songs AT THE SAME TIME and they fit perfectly. That's one of the few cases of musical plagarism that I found compelling.
Eerily identical...
satriani actually filed a lawsuit over this recently...
Satriani would sue anyone over copying riffs!?
it's the whole song, just in a different key.
the harmony and melody are pretty much identical.
Cat Stevens: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5GqBn8hP-QQ
Enanitos Verdes: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KLt_Hu8bHFc
Creaky Boards: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eUhFLiw6h6s
Still, I was kinda' rooting for Satriani to win, just 'cause Coldplay annoys the crap outta me.
it also sounds a bit like "World Shut Your Mouth" by Julian Cope.
It's not plaigarism, it's just weirdly conjunctive, like Rick Astley's Never Gonna Give You Up and Nirvana's Smells Like Teen Spirit.
Seriously - check it out. It causes brain damage. Ricky comes off like some obsessive freak, and Nirvana comes off like a bunch of clowns. distressing and wonderful on so many levels, and a perfect demonstration of why copyright laws are bullcrap.
Vanilla Ice and and Queen&Bowie, now there's a (successful) lawsuit.
HAHAHAHA! That's great.
I know there are quite a few KISS fans here. And I just do not get that band or what draws people to them/ But I found this video that demonstrates exactly what my ears here whenever a KISS song comes on.
Plus it's freaking hilarious.
face it...the man is a genius
while his contemporaries were snorting their profits up their noses, the man was creating an empire
my god...you can now be buried in a kiss coffin
and while he built a persona as a womanizer, he has been with the same woman over 20 years
gene simmons laffs at donald trump
When I hear a KISS song, I hear the music that's in the video linked above. I have no idea how a KISS fan's ears interpret their music for them. Feel free to like their business model. I'm just saying that video is 100% awesome.
cuz it freaked my parents out
they had a great stage show...but their albums sucked
what is really funny, is that now, both my parents really respect and admire simmons
and check out this clip from a concert in australia
they have an entire orchestra dressed in kiss makeup
you dont think they are in on their own joke?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q7fxN3g5sLw&fe...
I guess it was a simpler time when being shocking was easier. But I understand that music was the vector to get people to the show. Why have an orchestra at that performance if the music isn't relevant? I just don't get the music, but I get that hilarious video.
Never got KISS either and that video was great!
It makes me think of their song "On the Radio".
ABBA - Gimme Gimme Gimme (A Man After Midnight) and Madonna - Hung Up
Um - that would be an actual bought and paid for sample of the
ABBA song, used inside Madonna's "Hung Up"....big difference, boo
that's interesting...thanks.
on the sad side of music news, ellie greenwich, co-writer of every great song of the early 60's, has passed.
they DO rip off the riff. it's exactly the same, no ifs ands or buts about it. but their melody is different (and not nearly as good), so i guess they're off the hook (hehehe) legally...green day never met a riff they didn't like - to steal that is...then again, the kinks never met a riff they didn't like to steal - from themselves.
Ray Davies wrote so much great, plunder-able stuff that he can self-plagiarize through eternity. That's what happens when your creative skills and the band you play with are world class - unlike Green Day.
...but unfortunately, well-intended as they are, Billie Joe (I mean, c'mon...a grownup with a name like Billie Joe?) and his boys couldn't steal Davies' lyrical brilliance and little musical twists and turns that make "Picture Book" a classic and "Warning" something you won't even remember this time next year.
Sounds more like the Kinks' tune than George Harrison's "My Sweet Lord" sounded like "He's So Fine"--- and George got taken to the cleaners over that one!
it's a universal language. Was until lawyers got in the business anyway.
... but ripping it off and passing it as your own is another.
And yes, that counts for hooks as well as melody.
BTW, wtf is 'Billy Joe'!?
Copyright law is very clouded in this area, just ask George Harrison, oh, my bad, we can't.
(No disrespect to Mr. Harrison intended, I really don't understand why he lost the suit, it was just an e.g.)
And I disagree about there being a finite number of melodies, there are almost as many notes in the scale as there are letters in the alphabet. Yet authors manage to come up with original works every day.
It's up to the creator of the music to take advantage of it.
.
is a memory bias whereby a person falsely recalls generating a thought, an idea, a song, or a joke, when the thought was actually generated by someone else.[1] In these cases, the person is not deliberately engaging in plagiarism, but is rather experiencing a memory as if it were a new inspiration.
I've had that happen on a few occasions. So have my bandmates.
Luckily, we generally have enough knowledge of others body of work to catch each other on it. Green Day should no better... it's the Kinks after all. Either way it doesn't cast them in a good light...
Beck - Timebomb, and Hey Mickey are pretty reminiscent of each other, but not nearly as identical. Besides I think Beck was doing it on purpose - for effect.
Green Day should *know* better...
I haven't had my coffee yet. =)
.The Specials
Ganite folks. Be well.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0KUckQd0qBI&fe...
The reason these songs all sound alike is because you have guys who only know how to write with open chords (plus F barre) and 4/4 time with steady, lazy strumming. I don't think Green Day is consciously ripping off other bands (though, it's not impossible), but rather that they're just pulling from the same shallow musical well as those other bands.
What a great way to start the weekend! I've/we've got so many real things happening in our lives that it's just refreshing to discuss things that are inconsequential.
p.s. andrewjc, you're wrong. Totally wrong. Incredibly wrong. And I expect you to meet me with pistols at dawn. My second will contact your second,(unless either or both oversleep), and I expect you to stand fast and deliver! Or at least touch your foot on the barre.
10cc - Une Nuit A Paris (One Night In Paris)
I'm not crazy about the "ripoff" term, but here's another Green Day song that has a very similar hook to a Kinks song:
Green Day - Walking Contradiction
vs
Kinks - Do It Again
And just for fun, here's Green Day doing a proper Kinks cover:
Green Day - Tired of Waiting
and the original
Kinks - Tired of Waiting
When everyone else was going ape poop over the Beatles I was drooling over Ray Davies. Most people don't know he also wrote a couple of hits for other artist. Herman's Hermits, Van Halen and The Pretenders just to name a few.
So ... Coincidence or theft?
I'd say "Imitation is the most sincere form of flattery"
Jewel
If George Harrison's "My Sweet Lord" got nailed as a "He's So Fine" ripoff, Green Day's "Warning" is dead in the water. Guilty as charged.
My choice is Springsteen's "Radio Nowhere" vis-a-vis Tommy Tutone's "867-5309". Identical chord structure. Tommy's deserving of some royalties.
Listening to Green Day would get you a firm beating.
"It's worse than stealing your song, man, it's stealing your lick!" Total rip-off Green Day. You aren't good enough to wash the Kinks guitar straps.
I've long been aware of them, going all the way back to the '60s, but I'm only just now digging deep into their catalog. Great stuff! What are the essential albums? I'm leaning toward "Arthur," "Lola," "Muswell Hillbillies," "Schoolboys in Disgrace" and " "Sleepwalker." Also love the single "Do It Again," which has a great video. Dog bless the Kinks!
There's so much variance in what they did over the years that lots of fans have radically different ideas of what's essential. IMO you really can't go wrong with anything they did between '66 - '72. Even though I'm a Schoolboys defender I'd put it off until you're sure you're ready. "Arthur" is a must. "Lola" is a must. "Muswell Hillbillies" is a must... But the mustiest must of all must be "Village Green Preservation Society" (the album that hosts "Picture Book") -- if there's a consensus on what album is their masterpiece, it'd be VGPS.
Obviously, Ray Davies is a magnificent songwriter, and his brother Dave wields a mean guitar. Quite the sibling duo.
and have been since early 1966. It is essential that you get yourself a copy of 'Kinks Kronikles', BigIslandDave. That came out in 1972. Also, try and pick up a copy of the deluxe version of 1966's 'Face To Face' that includes their 'Deadend Street'/'Big Black Smoke' single. Top drawer all the way. You've chosen an excellent band to get into. Ray Davies wrote an alternate universe for himself that is peopled with his quirky character-studies. Without him and the wonderful Kinks, the "British Invasion" would have been a waste of time. Happy listening!
Village Green Preservation Society is a great one. I'd also recommend the greatest-hits collection The Kinks Kronickles, which is entirely made up of material from the 66-72 era, and includes many great non-album tracks. That's the one that turned me into a huge Kinks fan.
It's as if Green Day used the Picture Book karaoke track for their song.
First of all -- get the obtrusive ads out of the site. Secondly, the Kinks Village Green album is better than anything the Beatles ever did. Thirdly, what's Green Day?
I like the Kinks. But better than The Beatles? Get outta town... No Way.
I think I suggested this one to LNMC back when the series was starting.
Here's another: Blues Traveler's "Hook" uses the chord progression from Pachelbel's Cannon.
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