Balthazor
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Everything posted by Balthazor
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You're exactly right, and the same argument was made in regards to the Robin Thicke Blurred Lines case, although the Stairway case does I think take it to a new level. If "feel" or "style" become elements of plagiarism, then like I've said before, couldn't Led Zeppelin sue virtually every hard rock band that came after? Couldn't Black Sabbath sue every heavy metal band that ever existed? Couldn't the Beatles sue practically every British Invasion band? In any other artistic pursuit, this isn't even a thing. Directors are openly talking about their desire to capture the "look" or "feel" of someone else's movie. An entire genre of fiction literature tries to capture the "feel" of Lord of the Rings. The old Battlestar Galactica TV show was obviously trying to dovetail off the Star Wars phenomenon. But in music, this is something we're going to call plagiarism? I strongly hope that Spirit and their scuzzy lawyer lose this one, not just for the sake of Zeppelin and Stairway, but because it establishes what is really an unhealthy precedent. Music, and in fact really any creative endeavor, has always been about taking what's been done before and expanding it, building on it, and making something new out of it. But now we're going to say that musicians are legally prohibited from doing so? Might as well kiss the music business goodbye, although it's not like it's much of a loss given what passes for popular music nowadays.
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I couldn't disagree more. Everyone, outside of Spirit's scuzzy lawyer and apparently the judge, can tell that Stairway is NOT the same song as Taurus. And even if the opening of Stairway was inspired by Taurus, which itself is highly questionable, that hardly constitutes plagiarism. An artist shouldn't be expected to roll over and hand away writing credits every time someone else pops up to say hey, part of your song sounds a teeny tiny bit like part of my song! I totally think Page did the right thing in standing firm on this one, despite my fear that his lawyers may be incompetent and the jurors may well be idiotic enough to make a stupid decision. If it goes that way, I'm sure Page is likely to appeal, as well he should.
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What's the Next Concert You're Attending?
Balthazor replied to Jahfin's topic in Other Bands / Music
It appears likely that the next concert I will be attending will be Billy Idol at Summerfest in Milwaukee. I saw him way back during his Rebel Yell tour, so it'll be interesting to see him as an old coot. -
Yeah that or badgeholders or something equally bizarre. Then again, if he decided to proclaim himself a golden god, that probably wouldn't play well with a jury.
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Well I'd like to assume their lawyers are smarter and more knowledgeable than either of us, but still it seems like there's risk in putting Page on the stand. Plant I'm not worried about, what could he say? And besides, Plant could carry on for six minutes and nobody in the jury would have any idea what the hell he'd said.
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That's the kind of stuff that worries me about Page appearing in person at the trial. If he insists on the stand that he has no memory of Spirit, there's just a ton of stuff out there that could be used to discredit him there. If the scummy plaintiff lawyer starts pulling this stuff out and puts Page on the spot, it could go bad real quick.
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You're making some rather unfounded assertions there, "such limited knowledge", "listening to as little of his music as possible", "not understanding the context". All I've said is " I'm not a huge Hendrix fan and so have not listened to his material as extensively as I have Zeppelin's." I've listened to most of what he's done enough times to be entitled to an opinion. And nobody is "discrediting" anyone. All I've done is challenge assertions which I considered to be, well, questionable. Such as that he "invented" rock guitar, or that he was the first to use distortion and effects (although in that case, as I mentioned above, I think it was more of a misunderstanding). People sometimes talk as though the electric guitar wasn't even a thing until Hendrix came a long and showed it to everyone, like Moses descending Mount Sinai with the tablets, which if anything discredits the work and innovation of all those who came before him. Certainly his work was massively innovative and influential, that's indisputable, but there were plenty of innovative and influential guitarists before him as well as during his time, some of which Hendrix was influenced by himself. It's well established that Hendrix admired and was influenced by the work Clapton and Beck were doing in the 60's, just as it's well established that Clapton and Beck admired him and were likely influenced by him as well. Nothing exists in a vacuum, but there's this odd attitude that before Hendrix there was this great void of nothing, then Hendrix came along and we had rock guitar, which I just think is bunk.
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Ok that makes sense. The way you phrased it originally I think led me to take a different interpretation than you'd meant.
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Well that sounds like a real stretch to me. Certainly guitarists had been using distortion and effects long before Hendrix came along, and Dave Davies' guitar tone in "You Really Got Me" practically set the standard for the rock guitar distortion sound, not to mention the pioneering guitar effects and technique utilized by The Ventures in the early 60's. You could argue that he pushed the envelope in this respect, but to say he was the first, that's grasping at straws.
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This is all pointless anyhow. The defense should not depend on whether or not Plant was where or whether Page did or didn't own a Spirit record. Even if they did hear Taurus and go "hey that guitar part sounds cool, let's do something like that," who cares? That's not plagiarism. That's a total redefinition of plagiarism. Not only are they obviously very different songs, but the guitar part in question is even different. Heart admits to swiping the riff from Achilles Last Stand for Barracuda, but nobody cares, they're totally different songs. That should be the defense, not this piddly crap. I hope Zeppelin's lawyers don't get bogged down with this piddly crap.
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I just listened to both twice each, and I guess it's just a matter of taste, but they just don't do much for me. Hendrix often comes off to me as noise and slop. But perhaps it's like Picasso, some people look at a Picasso and see genius, others see noise and slop.
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Admittedly, I'm not a huge Hendrix fan and so have not listened to his material as extensively as I have Zeppelin's, but I just have never been all that blown away by him. Personally I think Jeff Beck was a much more inventive and influential guitarist than he gets credit for, probably since he never had quite as high a profile as Hendrix or Clapton or Page. But I also think that, to a certain extent, Page gets shorted as well. Everyone knows what he did with Zeppelin and the influence that had on everyone that came after, but few people know or think much about what he was doing during his studio years, helping to shape the sound of British rock from "behind the scenes" as it were. And it's also clear that Hendrix was himself influenced by what some of the British guitarists were doing during the 60's. Maybe I'm just a fanboy, but I think if we're going to say that Hendrix "reinvented" rock guitar in his time, then I think Page "reinvented" it again in his. Totally agree with you on Clapton though. He does what he does well, but that's ALL he does. Dude bores me to tears.
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I don't know why people keep saying Hendrix "invented" electric guitar. Seems to me like Hendrix took a lot of inspiration from both Clapton and Beck, and besides that, how can one say that Hendrix "invented" electric guitar when there's guys like Chuck Berry. Seems like a wild overstatement to me.
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If Zeppelin wins this, which they absolutely should, then I'd love to see them turn around and sue Spirit for defamation. I doubt it'll happen, but I'd enjoy it immensely.
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I recall reading that Stanley Kubrick had the cast and crew of The Shining watch David Lynch's film Eraserhead to "put them in the mood" because he wanted to achieve the same kind of feel for his film. As you and others have said, the implications for this could potentially be huge. Imagine George Lucas suing anyone who made a movie which involved spaceships, or Steven Spielberg suing any movie which depicted dinosaurs. It sounds ridiculous, but that is essentially what's being said here in this suit. The music scene is in bad enough shape as it is, but a ruling like this one could all but kill it.
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If ambiguous notions like "concept" and "feel" are going to be the determining factors in musical copyright cases, rather than the actual notes, chords, and structure, then I see no reason for Led Zeppelin to NOT sue practically every hard rock band that came after them.
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That is my understanding of it, that they would only be able to go after royalties that fall within the statute of limitations, such as the 2014 re-release. I'm no legal expert, but that's what I'd read.
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Here's a pic where I used some silly app to merge a picture of myself with one of Mr. Plant.
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I've been watching the Hulu miniseries 11.22.63, which so far has been decent, and I've been on a second watch-through of Archer, which is one of the funniest damn shows I've ever seen.
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I was probably around 13, in the mid-80's, and I knew I enjoyed music but I wasn't sure exactly what. I'd heard Stairway of course, they'd play it three times at every middle school dance, but I didn't really know who played it. Anyhow, my parents had bought me some Beatles albums, and they were cool, but not really my thing. I spent some time listening to Billy Joel, and again, while it was cool, it just wasn't what I was looking for. I ran through a few other bands but nothing really grabbed me. Then I was at a friend's house looking at his older brother's record collection. He had Led Zeppelin, AC\DC, Ozzy, all that stuff. I asked him to recommend something good, and he gave me Led Zeppelin IV. That really hit the spot. Afterwards I went from Zeppelin to Black Sabbath, Rush, Aerosmith, Ozzy, Dio, then onto Metallica, Megadeth, and the other late 80's metal bands, then onto all kinds of modern metal like Opeth and Devin Townsend. I spent a few decades listening to practically everything I could get my hands on. But in the end I came back around to Led Zeppelin, because no matter what I listened to, whether it was thrash metal or prog metal or whatever, in the back of my mind I'd still be hearing hints of Led Zeppelin buried deep within. Like yeah this is cool...but Zeppelin already did this.
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Ok, I understand what you're saying there. It's probably a factor of Rush's 70's albums not really seeing much commercial success until well after the 70's. As to the other thing, I'm sure there's people who love those albums, and even those who prefer them to the 70's hard rock sound. And maybe there's some really good stuff there, but I think it's fair to say that the majority of Rush fans...well let's just say that if they were asked to list their top 5 albums I doubt Roll the Bones or Test for Echo would appear on that list.
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I'm a big Rush fan myself, at least of their older, better albums; but I think it's absurd to say Rush is underrated today. If anything Rush is somewhat overrated today. They're great musicians, no doubt about that. And they did have a string of excellent records. But that string ended with Moving Pictures, or arguably SIgnals, and they've been largely irrelevant ever since. Oh I'm sure there's a few fans who go to Rush concerts really hoping they'll rock some Time Stand Still, but the thousands of fans surrounding them are hoping for some 2112. Few other rock bands could release decades worth of mediocre albums and still be regarded as a premier rock band. Even the mighty Black Sabbath, who was indisputably more successful and influential during their heyday than Rush could ever dream of, is largely considered a second-tier band these days after a similar span of mediocre and irrelevant albums. While I wouldn't call Rush a cult band, their following is definitely a rabid one. I will however suggest that Alex Lifeson is underrated. People always genuflect over Lee and Peart and don't seem to even know Lifeson's name. I think Alex Lifeson and John Paul Jones should start a band and call it The Forgotten Ones.
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I think part of the problem is that rock music has subdivided into a million little genres with very little cross-pollination among their fans. They're like warring clans in Game of Thrones. So collectively, there's probably more fans of rock and metal than there were back in the 70's and 80's, but they're split into such small groups with their favored niche style that no one band can ever amass a large enough following to catch the attention of the record industry. Opeth, for example, are huge within their niche, but yet they seem lucky to scare up a few hundred fans for a concert. It's like during the 80's when you had the metal heads at war with the hair bands, only now instead of two genres at war, it's two hundred genres at war. Back then we could still have Metallica or Guns n Roses drawing huge crowds, but today's "premier" rock and metal bands can barely fill a bar. And as long as that's the case, the recording industry will continue to ignore rock and metal. So it's kind of a catch-22 there. Without demonstrating an ability to draw more than a few hundred fans, rock and metal bands are ignored by the industry; yet without the promotion and support of the industry, some excellent rock and metal bands go completely unnoticed by the mainstream audiences. It seems possible that a rock or metal band could break out of that trap and achieve big success, but there'd almost have to be a perfect storm of circumstances in order for that to happen. They'd need to have a style which is unique enough to not sound like a copycat of something else, but not so unique as to be inaccessible to the mainstream audience. A huge hit single would definitely help, as would at least one or two attractive members. Pop culture is shallow and fickle, and ugly bands seldom go anywhere. They'd need to have members that can actually work together, unlike the aforementioned Guns n Roses. When I think of all that would have to happen for a rock band to reach a Led Zeppelin level of success and influence in today's pop culture climate, it seems like a pretty tall order.
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I know opinions are like assholes, but mine is that Nirvana was quite possibly the most overrated band in the history of popular music. But I realize I'm probably in the minority on that one. However, as an aside, I did find this interesting quote on Wikipedia: Nirvana used dynamic shifts that went from quiet to loud. Cobain had sought to mix heavy and pop musical sounds; he commented, "I wanted to be totally Led Zeppelin in a way and then be totally extreme punk rock and then do real wimpy pop songs".
