Clips:
Spirit – “Taurus” (1968)
The Chocolate Watchband – “And She’s Lonely” (1969)
Led Zeppelin – “Stairway to Heaven” (1971)
More about Page and his borrowing activities here.
Update, 5/21/14: Spirit will now be taking Zeppelin to court over this, which is a shame. A descending guitar figure is not substantial creative property and the two songs are otherwise very different. Time and money will be wasted and the beautiful “Taurus” will be tainted, regardless of the outcome.
The musical “appropriating” habits of Led Zeppelin’s Jimmy Page are no big secret. And although pop music depends on and celebrates such practice, the apparent unwillingness of Page and co. to consistently give credit where it was due casts a bit of a pall over their safely monolithic legacy. A Perfect Sound Forever article called “The Thieving Magpies” catalogs the most egregious examples.
The article doesn’t mention the case of “The Immigrant Song,” though, which finds the band turning to “Bali Ha’i” from the Rodgers and Hammerstein South Pacific soundtrack for that exotic, iconic opening caterwaul. Or, depending on the actual release date of the self-titled debut album by Lucifer’s Friend, Led Zeppelin perhaps nicked that group’s use of “Bali Ha’i” for their album-opener, “Ride in the Sky.” The Lucifer’s Friend album came out sometime in 1970 on the Vertigo label, and it’s a release LZ would surely have been hip to. “The Immigrant Song” showed up on Led Zeppelin III in October 1970…
None of this is in the category of “egregious,” but it’s amusing to think about. That fun club called Abba, after all, paid tribute to the whole lot of ’em in 1975.
Update: This write-up of mysterious origin says the following: “The self-titled Lucifer’s Friend 1970 debut album, released by Vertigo Records in Europe and Billingsgate Records in the USA, sparked controversy through the track ‘Ride The Sky’, as critics voiced concern that the song was too close to Led Zeppelin’s ‘Immigrant Song’ for comfort. However, these assertions were quashed when it was revealed [that] ‘Ride The Sky’ had been composed much earlier.” Again, the LF album’s actual release date is important here if anyone can actually find it…
Clips:
South Pacific soundtrack – “Bali Ha’i” (1949)
Led Zeppelin – “The Immigrant Song” (1970)
Lucifer’s Friend – “Ride in the Sky” (1970)
Abba – “So Long” (1975)
Another Update: I’ve realized that Rodgers and Hammerstein may well have borrowed from Harold Arlen.
And here’s a playlist of some of my favorite pastoral tracks from the Vertigo label that I aired on my KOOP Radio International Folk Bazaar show this week. Above: Magna Carta.
Playlist:
Dr. Strangely Strange – “When Adam Delved”
Magna Carta – “The Bridge at Knaresborough Town”
Juicy Lucy – “That Woman’s Got Something”
Thomas F. Browne – “Poor Man’s Smile”
Fairfield Parlour – “Monkey”
Tudor Lodge – “It All Comes Back to Me”
Rod Stewart – “Only a Hobo”
Magna Carta – “Sponge”
Jade Warrior – “Yellow Eyes”
Black Sabbath – “Fluff”
Ian Matthews – “Little Known”
Jimmy Campbell – “In My Room”
Hokus Poke – “Big World Small Girl“
Here’s a playlist of some of my favorite heavy Vertigo tracks that I aired as a guest host on KOOP Radio’s Rock N Roll Pest Control this week. Above: Hokus Poke.
Playlist:
Colosseum – “The Kettle” (1969)
Flied Egg – “Burning Fever” (1972)
Black Sabbath – “NIB” (1970)
Sensational Alex Harvey Band – “Midnight Moses” (1972)
Freedom – “Through The Years” (1971)
May Blitz – “For Madmen Only” (1971)
Uriah Heep – “Real Turned On” (1970)
Black Sabbath – “St Vitus Dance” (1972)
Status Quo – “Drifting Away” (1974)
Jade Warrior – “The Demon Trucker” (1972)
Gravy Train – “Can Anybody Hear Me” (1971)
Ronno – “Powers of Darkness” (1971)
Warhorse – “Standing Right Behind You” (1972)
Hokus Poke – “Hag Rag” (1972)
Clear Blue Sky – “I’m Comin’ Home” (1971)
Lucifer’s Friend – “Ride In The Sky” (1970)
Status Quo – “Big Fat Mama” (1972)
Black Sabbath – “Lord Of This World” (1971)
When I dropped by the Austin Central Library last Wednesday to check out a copy of Jon Savage’s Teenage, it wasn’t on the shelf. Right in front of where it should have been, though, was a freshly written call number slip (bottom, upward optimistic scrawl) that matched mine (top, downward pessimistic scrawl).
I watched Medium Cool again, one of those classic bummer films of the late sixties. It’s about dispassionate journalism and the end of the sixties and is famous for being filmed in the midst of the real-life mayhem at the ’68 Democratic National Convention in Chicago. The car crash at the end, though, uses the standard-issue sound effect first made famous by Nervous Norvus in his “Transfusion” single from 1956 and subsequently used in a number of records and TV shows. There’s a high-pitched male-voiced squeal at the end of this sound, and I always figured it was the voice of Nervous. Whatever the case, that goofy, familiar sound clashes with the somber, cinema verite vibe of the film, serving as a sort of buzzer handshake. Was this intentional? If so, it’s a better film than I thought. Update 6/10: Just watched It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World (1963) and heard the “Norvus squeal” in Jimmy Durante’s opening car crash.
Clips:
Nervous Norvus – “Transfusion” (1956)
Scatman Crothers – “Transfusion” (1956)
The Cadets – “Car Crash” (1960)
Jan and Dean – “Dead Man’s Curve” (1963)
The Shangri-Las – “Leader of the Pack” (1964)
Medium Cool (1968)
Debut single by Howard Devoto’s post-Buzzcocks quintet built on a menacing ascending guitar riff that would work well as a US cop show TV theme. The single version strikes harder than the version on their Real Life LP.
In his Heart of Rock and Soul, Dave Marsh points to Bruce Springsteen’s opening riff for “Roulette” (recorded in 1979 and released as a 1988 B-side) as a “Shot By Both Sides” mimic, but it’s really just vaguely similar.
Magazine – “Shot By Both Sides” (single version) (1978)
A book idea I have is to take a quasi familiar, cultural wallpaper song like this and interview 500 people to get quick vignettes or anecdotes about what they were doing when they first heard it. “Celebration,” for me, long before it became a wedding standard or Erik Estrada strutted to it on CHiPs, was this:
In Salt Lake City, during the first two seasons after the New Orleans Jazz had relocated, you could get courtside tickets at the Salt Palace for $12. I saw more live basketball during 1979-81 than I would for the rest of my life. My friends and I would go early and watch the teams warm up before introductions. Before a Jazz-Pacers game in November 1980, we observed Rickey Green and John “Bay Bay” Duren doing ad lib dance steps to it as it thumped from the speakers and we had no idea what it was. Then we noticed two of the Pacers (Kenny Natt? Johnny Davis?) doing the same thing. The scene reinforces itself every time I hear this song, decades-running.
Was thinking about a long deceased friend of mine and one of my central memories of him: the two of us, six years old, sitting at his kitchen table and his mom serving both of us slices of bread with banana/peanut Koogle. He took a bite and pretended like his lips were stuck together. Then I took a bite and realized he might not have been pretending.
Here’s a 51-plus-minute audio jigsaw tribute to the Bay City Rollers, whose records I listened to as a kid and who I also dressed up as for the Jackling Elementary Halloween Parade in Oct. ’78 (see above). I call it “Rollerdream.” Cirque du Soleil will please contact me in private about using this for a Las Vegas Beatles Love-style extravaganza.
Why are there snippets of songs by other artists? 1) The station I aired it on (KOOP) had rules about not playing the same artist more than 3 times in a row 2) They serve as context and commentary, from a personal view, about the Rollers’ influences and times.
“Rollerdream” by DJ Kim
The “Rollerdream” roadmap:
00:00 Tartan Horde – “Bay City Rollers We Love You”
00:30 Bay City Rollers – “Shang a Lang” + with fangirls singing and screaming.
02:00 Bay City Rollers – “Remember (Sha La La La)” (w/ “All of Me Loves All of You” guitar)
02:37 Bay City Rollers – “All of Me Loves All of You”
02:52 (interlude) The Ronettes – “Baby I Love You”
03:00 Bay City Rollers – “Summer Love Sensation”
03:35 Bay City Rollers – “All of Me Loves All of You” + “Saturday Night”
03:50 Bay City Rollers – “Saturday Night”
04:58 (interlude) Gary Glitter – “I Didn’t Know I Loved You Til I Saw You Rock and Roll” (+ “Saturday Night”)
05:28 Bay City Rollers – “Keep on Dancing”
05:52 Bay City Rollers – “Rock and Roll Honeymoon” (+ “Saturday Night”)
07:08 Bay City Rollers – “Let’s Go (A Huggin’ and A Kissin’ in the Moonlight)”
07:48 (interlude) Tim Moore – “Rock ‘N Roll Love Letter”
07:55 Bay City Rollers – “Rock ‘N Roll Love Letter”
09:11 Bay City Rollers – “Dedication”
11:10 Bay City Rollers – “Eagles Fly”
12:10 (interlude) Kiss – “Hard Luck Woman” (+ Bay City Rollers – Marlena”)
12:25 Bay City Rollers – “Shanghai’d in Love” (+ “Eagles Fly”)
12:53 Bay City Rollers – “Beautiful Dreamer” (+ “Dedication” + Slade – “Cum on Feel the Noize”)
14:01 Bay City Rollers – “Wouldn’t You Like It”
17:04 Bay City Rollers – “Yesterday’s Hero” (+ Cliff Richard + fangirls)
19:18 Bay City Rollers – “Too Young to Rock and Roll”
21:28 Bay City Rollers – “I Only Wanna Dance with You”
21:50 (interlude) Dusty Springfield – “I Only Want to Be with You”
21:57 Bay City Rollers – “I Only Wanna Be with You”
24:04 Bay City Rollers – “Rock and Roller”
25:44 Bay City Rollers – “Money Honey”
28:14 (interlude) Stevie Wonder – “Superstition”
28:24 Bay City Rollers – “The Disco Kid”
29:50 Bay City Rollers – “Love Fever” (+ “Are You Cuckoo”)
30:37 The Rollers – “Life on the Radio”
30:50 Bay City Rollers – “You Made Me Believe in Magic”
31:59 Bay City Rollers – “Inside a Broken Dream”
33:17 Bay City Rollers – “The Way I Feel Tonight”
35:59 Bay City Rollers – “It’s a Game” (+ BCR radio ad)
36:18 (interlude) David Bowie – “Rebel Rebel”
36:26 Bay City Rollers – “Rebel Rebel”
37:54 (interlude) Sid & Marty Krofft Bay City Rollers Show intro
38:00 Bay City Rollers – “When I Say I Love You (The Pie)” + “All of the World Is Falling in Love” + “Saturday Night”
39:02 Rollers – “Stoned Houses #2” + Roller TV voices
39:29 Rollers – “Stoned Houses #1” + Roller TV voices
40:14 Rollers – “Elevator”
41:38 Rollers – “Who’ll Be My Keeper”
42:39 Bay City Rollers – “You’re a Woman”
42:47 Rollers – “Instant Relay”
44:18 Rollers – “Turn on Your Radio” (+ Bay City Rollers – “The Bump”)
46:00 Rollers – “Roxy Lady” (+ TV documentary voice + fangirls)
47:07 Rollers – “God Save Rock and Roll” (+ “Saturday Night” + fangirls)
49:19 Rollers – “Life on the Radio”
49:52 Tartan Horde – “Rollers Show” (+ Rollers – “I Was Eleven”)
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