Plagiarism Spotting Thread Options

[Nowhereman437]

A song by Bombay bicycle club called Leave it totally rips off Jason and the argonauts. I heard it on the radio today.
Also the other day I came across this for the first time youtube link

[Mr Tein]

as an avid fan of BBC I must say I never noticed any direct links to xtc. I will check out the song later

[Jeff Truzzi]

A song by Bombay bicycle club called Leave it totally rips off Jason and the argonauts. I heard it on the radio today.
Also the other day I came across this for the first time youtube link

Just watched/heard both.

The Bob Marley/Let It Be mashup isn't a ripoff. You can harmonize melodies to many different chord progressions, and the melody and lyric are what you copyright - NOT chord progressions. Otherwise, Chuck Berry (actually someone even older) would own the world.

The Bombay tune isn't a "total ripoff" of Jason, either - although it is OBVIOUSLY heavily influenced by it, and borrows its muted pitz guitar intro arrangement element from it. But not the notes: even though they both ascend and descend, they are different notes. Other ARRANGEMENT elements may borrow from Jason, but nothing in the SONG is specifically close enough to warrant Andy filing a lawsuit. (IMHO.)

The Beatles were successfully sued by Chuck for "Come Together" being too close to "You Can't Catch Me." Chuck wouldn't have won except for Lennon borrowing the line "Here come old flat top" from it. And Lennon's comment about George Harrison being successfully sued for "My Sweet Lord" plagiarizing "He's So Fine" was: "George could have changed one note, and they couldn't have touched him." And he was right.

Simp & I 'borrowed' from "Jason" as well, in our 1982 song "Jealous Guy" with its chorus moving bass pattern under a familiar drum figure.
And just this year we wrote one featuring the same verse starting chord as "Scarecrow People," but took it in a completely different direction.
Andy mentions how "Books Are Burning" was derived from 'messing around' with the chord progression to the Beach Boys "I Get Around",
and that "Knights In Shining Karma" was influenced by The Beatles "Blackbird."
In all cases, the source song was absolutely an influence,
but none of them are plagiarized because they involve chords and arrangement elements, NOT melody & lyrics.

Despite the quote "Good writers borrow, great writers steal", I would never lift chunks verbatim from an existing song - but I know someone who does. A friend & I, when hearing Led Zep's "In Through The Out Door" album for the first time, exclaimed to each other: "Man, that's two of Jim's songs right there!"

[Mr Tein]

if you trawl you tube - you will find it hard to belive Zep actually wrote an original song!

[Spastic Minnow]

There's an episode of the absurd Adult Swim cartoon Harvey Birdman, Attorney at Law about a Japanese pop band, Shoyu Weenie, having a song plagiarized by Jabberjaw and The Neptunes. Great episode. But I wonder how often this happens? If you're an American/western pop artist, or write for the ones that don't write their own stuff, doesn't it make sense to steal from someone your audience would probably never hear, but are proven melody makers in another country? It's happened to me a couple times that I've heard some pop song in supermarket or from some new act on my local station that seems really familiar, so I hum it to keep it in my head, only to eventually realize it's an anime theme song. I can never go back and check on them though, because I never note who the US act was.

[Nowhereman437]

Just watched/heard both.

T"George could have changed one note, and they couldn't have touched him." And he was right.

Then it wouldn't have been a hit! (IMG:style_emoticons/default/laugh.gif)

[Mr Tein]

actually Nowwhere, i went and checked the album and remember thinking... " Ah somebody's been lsitening to XTC. " further on in the album is a track called STILL. After that I thought, Ah somebody's been lsitening to Joni Mitchells River!

[Nowhereman437]

Radiohead ripped off a chopin prelude for Exit music.
There's a morrissey b-side called There speaks a true friend which blatantly uses the same chords as Ball & chain.

[Mr Tein]

hey there lonely Girl bears a startlign simialrity to We let the stars go by prefab sprout. its the chords i think...

[donavan]

There's a song kicking around from years ago that sounds almost identical to Super Tuff. I was in a pub one lunch time and heard it on the radio. Thought it was an odd XTc song to play. Anyway no idea who that was. But that most certainly was a rip off.

[foghorn]

This is not a suggestion of plagiarism, but I don't know if there's a better place to post this.

Basically, I just want to say that I love Ariel Pink's Haunted Graffiti's "Only In My Dreams", and I think it doth sound a mite like XTC.

Here's a video to it that I haven't watched, so I apologize if it is in any way offensive. I should add that I had nothing to do with the production of the video, so I am not apologizing for its content in the sense of me having produced something that a normal person might construe as inappropriate, but only in the sense of hoping that I haven't pointed you in the direction of something that doesn't float your pope.

Here's the link anyway.

Here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ta46M5rksBk

[Mr Tein]

Areil Pinks new album ha some corking songs on it ...

[foghorn]

Areil Pinks new album ha some corking songs on it ...

Agreed, but there's a problem. The first four songs are so awesome that I can't get past them! Are you an Ariel Pink aficionado, Mr Tein? I was toying with buying his previous album (can't remember the name) which gets great reviews, but opted for Mature Themes because I loved the title track straight off. So - is the last album cool too?

[Mr Tein]

I have the last Ariel Pink album too which is pretty good, its certianly worth digging out - very inventive

[Dr Hugbine]

Heard "Only In My Dreams" on Radcliffe and Maconie - is this representative?

[foghorn]

Heard "Only In My Dreams" on Radcliffe and Maconie - is this representative?

Hmm. At this stage I would say "approach with caution". As I say, the first four tracks are great. After that it gets quite a bit darker and quite a bit weirder and quite a bit lo-fi-er. That's not to say that it won't reward repeated listening... just that it's not all as immediate as Only In My Dreams etc. I find AP quite an intriguing proposition, and intend to give them every opportunity to seduce me. In a musical sense, that is.

[foghorn]

PS In making that last post, I've just realized that Ariel Pink and Andy Partridge have EXACTLY the same initials! How weird is that????? (answer - only slightly weird. Possibly not weird at all, in fact).

[Dr Hugbine]

676:1 is how weird.