CAKE AND EAT IT
On another post here people have been commenting on the Kid Rock single "All Summer Long". The main disagreement with this song is that it samples Warren Zevon's "Werewolves of London" and Lynyrd Skynyrd's "Sweet Home Alabahma". Now the sampling argument has been done to death but i want to ask one question,albeit a long one.
If taking a piece of "Old Music" and Re-interpreting or using it in another way is wrong.Don't we have to take a look at the likes of Bob Dylan and RT( Not a dig ,only added to guarantee mass response) and hundreds more who take old Folk songs and give them new lyrics or do them in a modern way ?
What's the difference ? or is it Rock snobbery that people like to protect these sacred Cows.
Taking old music and "re-doing" it is considered genius in some quarters but the lowest of the low in others.
Would love to here David Hepworth's point of view on this and everyone else's of course.
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There's a vast gulf of a difference. . .
between adapting a snatch of an old folk tune for a melody (hi, Beethoven!) and swiping several seconds of a recorded performance and passing it off as your own work.
Unauthorised sampling is still very widespread and, to my mind, it's "killing music" far more than file-copying and sharing is. And the big record companies are largely responsible for it having become so prevalent.
Back to the old school
To me, in creative rather than business terms, the worst crime of all is to do a completely unimaginative cover version of an old song. Westlife: guilty.
The imaginative use of an unexpected sample can be every bit as creative as a completely new composition - the sample is just another instrument.
But one of the many things that irritates me about hip hop at the moment is the use of big and/or recent hits almost wholesale as samples - for example, Jay-Z using Amy Winehouse or U2. That seems to be leeching off other's work for a fast buck, and is exactly what hip hop's detractors have always said it was.
Of course, "back in the day" the most respect went to the DJs who would use the most obscure breaks they could find in an exciting way that would pack the dancefloor. Mainstream hip hop's become such a fat, rich, egotistical, overindulged and obnoxious brat nowadays that it's forgotten the skills and freshness it once brought to the wonderful world of music. If anything is killing music, surely it's laziness.
I'm no fan of Kid Rock, but relatively speaking I don't mind the song - there is at least an idea there, and two riffs are merged together seamlessly, even if they are two of the most brilliantly basic and obviously compatible riffs in rock history (D, C, G, bingo!). And it acknowledges the main song in its lyrics, and shows the Skynyrd prominently in the video. Only the dimmest youngster would come away from it thinking it was totally a Kid Rock original. (I suppose I should go and post this bit in the other thread).
I beg to differ,
"Of course, "back in the day" the most respect went to the DJs who would use the most obscure breaks they could find in an exciting way that would pack the dancefloor."
Ahem, no.
The early rappers used clearly identifiable and popular samples just as much as hip hop producers do today. The most obvious example of this is Grandmaster Flash On the Wheels of Steel, one of the most infleuntial peices of music in early hip hop which utilised Another One Bites the Dust, Rapture by Blondie and Good Times by Chic, all massive selling pop singles of the day.
Hip hop is dead(?)
Ahem, no, I still stand by my argument, Niks!
I know there are early examples of big-name samples that helped to get rap into the public eye, and you name probably the best known one. But that track beautifully does the potentially tricky job of mixing up at least three samples, rather than just hiding behind one.
And with just those big-sample tracks rap would have been a one-summer craze, a Jive Bunny prototype that would have died out long ago.
I think hip hop developed and grew because a) there was an art to it (two arts in fact - MCing and DJing), and b) because there was the excitement amongst DJs of uncovering hidden treasures - like "Apache" by Michael Viner's Incredible Bongo Band, which got overused in the end by the (ahem) sucker MCs. The good DJs would go all out to protect the identity of the breaks they used, and originality was what got you your rep at the block parties.
Jay-Z's rapping is excellent, but his use of samples is increasingly dull and seemingly going for the easy option of just one big/recent/already popular sample per song. Even if Grandmaster Flash had used Rehab, I think he'd have mixed it with something else and done something more interesting with it. Perhaps an old school/new school collaboration between the two of them would help hip hop renew itself?
(This is a debate that the more thoughtful hip hop artists themselves have been having for a while - see "Hip Hop is Dead" by Nas and "Concrete Schoolyard" by Jurassic 5.)
I'm not saying...
... that DJs don't pride themselves on finding obscure samples but the idea that they used to do it 'back in the day' and don't anymore because they're too lazy just isn't true. There's just as many hip hop artists uncovering new stuff now as there ever was and there's just as many who rely on more obvious sources. You'll rarely find an instantly recognisable sample on any track released by Stones Throw records over the past five years.
Nas hasn't got a leg to stand on, his best album (and probably my personal favourite hip hop album) was Illmatic which featured samples dug out from left, right and centre, some obscure, some well known, which worked perfectly. Despite managing to regain some form on Stillmatic that album does include Rule which is essentially a kareoke hip hop version of Everybody Wants to Rule the World by Tears for Fears.
Hip hop is poorly(?)
I take your point, Niks, and I admit that my frustration with modern, "commercial" American hip hop led me to overgeneralise and become oversentimental about the past.
But I was aiming my criticism at the current big-time leaders of rap (supposedly in measures of quality as well as sales), with Jay-Z at the front of my mind. I just expect better from him in terms of imagination, and I do think there's a cash-seeking laziness to some of his samples nowadays. I'm worried that it'll seep through to the rest and kill off hip hop once and for all, at least for my taste.
I agree that there's tons of good hip hop around if you dig deeper - and with obscure samples intact. (I also think British rap is possibly gearing up for a golden age.)
Can you recommend any recent tunes by Jay-Z/Kanye West/any other major league rapper to quell my disillusionment? I'd like to have my mind changed. I don't own any Jay-Z later than "The Blueprint".
(By the way, I gave up on Nas after "Illmatic". I quite liked the track "Hip Hop Is Dead", but perhaps it was the "Apache" sample that got me again.
And I should reassure you that I only use the phrase "back in the day" in the context of a Westwood impression (hence the inverted commas). If I used that phrase seriously I would rightly be punished. As should (as was?) Westwood).
The Black Album
By Jay Z is a masterpeice, it may be played to death but 99 Problems is one of the finest hip hop tracks of the decade. As for Kanye West, I don't think there's a single weak track on his first album, but they have started to creep in as he progresses. If you enjoy Kanye then try Common and Talib Kweli - they're in a similarly intelligent yet still commercial vein.
Stillmatic is worth buying for the tracks Ether, One Mic and Rewind alone and proves that if he put his mind to it Nas could easily be the finest rapper on the planet. Street's Disciple was pretty disappointing but it did have Bridging the Gap on which is a collaboration with his dad, the jazz musician Olu Dara, and samples Muddy Waters - it's fantastic.
Other than that most of the other mainstream rap coming out of the US is pretty weak (Lil Wayne? Jesus, how did this guy get so rich so quickly?) - however I do have a soft spot for The Documentary by The Game.
Long live hip hop
Thanks, Niks. I'm a fan of Talib Kweli, and I like Common too. I'll try the Black Album (I've only got Danger Mouse's Grey Album, which I know is no substitute).
I've got Kanye West's first album and it didn't grab me at the time, to the bewilderment of friends of mine who loved it. I'll try it again.
Samples cost money
"Jay-Z's rapping is excellent, but his use of samples is increasingly dull and seemingly going for the easy option of just one big/recent/already popular sample per song."
I don't listen to him so I can't comment, but I have read about sampling.
In the 80's it was a grey area legally. In the 90s the legal situation became clearer. If you use a sample, you have to pay for it in publishing royalties. So using one sample means you lose 50% (I don't know the real numbers) of the publishing. Use two samples, no matter how short, and you lose 66%. Record like they did in the 80s and you could have publishing as small as 1%. Beck was quoted as saying that even using a half second parp from one trumpet could cost you a big chunk of your publishing. I also read that The Go Team technically gave away more than 100% of their publishing on some songs. So economically sampling lots of records is not a good idea. This is why rap is not as good as it used to be.
But......
They only have to come up with something original. End of problem. If the only way they can make decent records is to purloin bits of other records then they should pay, as clearly that is the interesting bit. Harsh but fair.
You think...
...Dylan ever paid any royalties to Blind Willie Whoever when he nicked all those tunes and arrangements back in the 60s? of course not and we'de all be poorer if their release was blocked by penny pinching record execs.
Fair point
Everyone should make some effort to check if there is someone who should be credited and credit them, regardless of whether it is a sample or a cover/copy (part or full). Is this a good time to mention Led Zeppelin?
"See you in court!"
The Avalanches' album "Since I Left You" (2000) was made up from an estimated 3500 vinyl samples. I don't know of any legal aftershocks.
I caught the video on TV
First time I had heard or seen it. I'm not that familiar with Sweet Home Alabama (I don't listen to the radio, so this is not some insane lie) so I did think it was a new music video for the original song. I was surprised when it said at the end that it was by Kid Rock (I'm not that familiar with him either). I just thought they'd made a new video because they were either releasing a new compilation or that it was a remix.
Is it lazy? I don't think it's evil, but it is lazy. It's a easy way to get a hit single if you piggy-back on a well known song. And in the American south Sweet Home Alabama is almost the national anthem.
Is the song any good. I liked it. I wouldn't buy it, but I enjoyed what I heard.
Slightly off topic
As the wonderful Zero Punctuation computer game reviews once pointed out it doesn't seem unreasonable to eat a cake that you have. What else can you really be expected to do with a cake, except perhaps jump out of it if you happen to be stripper.
As you were.
The phrase works better
when said the other way round - one cannot eat their cake and still have it.
Another memo
I put the Warren Zevon video up as I was so absolutely heartsick of hearing the crappy Kid Rock thing on Radio 2. I have no problem with sampling, "Three Feet High and Rising" is one of my favourite ever albums, so long as it is imaginative. "All Summer Long" just sounds like it was made up by a commitee to appeal to a particular demographic. At this point possibly David Hepworth should come in stage left and mock my naiveity, but I'm under no illusion that this is how the music industry works. Like all great art though, if you can see the strings, the magic goes.
Repetition
I don't punish myself by listening to any chart radio at all - even those Radio 2 shows that dip their toe into it. I've heard the Kid Rock song twice. If I get sick of a song it's because I've overplayed it myself.
I don't have any problem with sampling
I don't think anyone passes anything off as their own because sampling is so common nowadays that you have to make sure everyone gets paid otherwise you're going to end up like The Verve.
I don't think anyone apart from old gits like me cares where something came from, any more than I cared that the Beatles copped the arrangement to "Please Mr Postman" from the Marvelettes, who probably copped it from some Detroit group we've never heard of.
What I am affected by is my strong feeling that Kid Rock is a charmless nurk.
Passing off
At what point does a rent-a-house beat laid over the top of a loop of the first eight bars of "I Won't Hold You Back" cease to be a minor remix of a forgotten old Toto album track and become a new song with a new title by a new artist? Answer: when it's "Another Chance" by Roger Sanchez.
Did Toto get paid for that No. 1 record? Yes, I'm sure they were paid something. Probably quite a little windfall even. But did they get paid as much as if it had been labelled as a Roger Sanchez remix of a Toto song when it went to No. 1? I somehow doubt it.
Then there's the legal-versus-moral angle. I know of one quite recent case of a Top Five hit by a certain world megastar that featured as its riff a hefty wodge of a certain legendary horn section's playing from a Sixties soul record. When those horn players - all of whom are still working and, for a price, would have been available to play on the megastar's session - called foul, the megastar's mega-record company's megalawyers came back with "Oops, sorry, the use has been cleared with the holders of the original artist's mechanical rights."
Ah, OK. No harm done then.
And the people who pull stuff like that are the very same people who treat us like thieves by booby-trapping records and suing e-Mulers for millions. A funny old world, isn't it.
Although ...
presumably those horn players had been paid for the original session by the artist or the record company. If the original record had charted again 30 years later - say on the back of a jeans commercial - the horn section wouldn't have expected another cheque in the post.
That's why I called it a "legal versus moral" issue
The snatch of music in question was a horn break, arranged and played by those players. The original artist had absolutely nothing to do with it, other than to say "Yeah, that'll work".
It's the backstabbing pettiness of it that gets me. We're talking about a huge megastar here, not some struggling indie hip-hop producer. The megastar's people could have hired anybody they wanted to play the session, but no. Instead they bunged a couple of grand in cash to the original artist to get his signature so that all would be "legal and above board".
The original artist later told the horn players that he didn't remember signing anything. He probably wasn't lying.
I take your point about the moral aspect
but where do you draw the line?
If the megastar had brought in new horn players, or even gone out and tracked down the original players, to repeat the riff they would not have expected to get paid anything other than a standard session fee. If the original horn players had contributed a key part of the original track then in an ideal world they would have secured a writers' credit and got paid a percentage both on the original track and the sample.
I appreciate a lot of these guys did and do still get ripped off for what they bring to a session, but that's a whole other can of worms. Should George have got a writer's credit for contributing distinctive guitar solos on all those Lennon / McCartney tracks?
I forgot to mention
that the original recording was itself a (fully credited) cover version, so getting writer's credits for a horn break wasn't an option.
It's one for
Michael Burke on the Moral Maze.
As I have long since abandoned the charts, I have to ask what is this song?
I'm being deliberately coy because
I was told the story a few years ago in confidence by the manager of one of the parties involved, so I'd feel more comfortable getting a green light before revealing the names involved. Although the actual names are really pretty irrelevant, sadly. This sort of thing is far from a rare occurrence.
No worries
Get clearance and you can give me the word over a pint at the Christmas do!
It's just a fairly heavy handed attempt
to evoke a particular time and place by referencing songs that supposedly have meaning to the singer and his audience. In the olden days you recorded a cover version. Now its a sample or a lift from a lyric or a melody - everybody gets a credit and everybody gets paid. The best example of the latter that I can think of is Joni Mitchell's "Chinese Cafe".
The Beatles' "Please Mister Postman" & "You Really Got A Hold On Me" steered me towards Motown and beyond. If the Kid Rock song sends someone back to the originals here, that's a result.
P.S. Do you really think at 17 he actually knew women like that - several of them look as if they would be quite at home jumping out of a cake.
And here's the writing credit
King, E./Marinell, L./Ritchie, R.J./Rossington, G./Shafer, M./Vanzant, R./Wachtel, R./Zevon, W.
not to mention, (he said opening a can of worms),
the potential (depending, i guess on the deal with the original record companies) for some people to *also* get a performance royalty as there's actual usage of the original song, as opposed to Kid Rock getting in a new bunch of musicians to do a 'cover'.
I've got that right, haven't I? That where a sample is used, a royalty is paid to the writer(s) *and* to the performer (or at least the owner of the original sound recording - who may or may not pass on a few bob to the original performer?)
Wait for the writ
Vast chunks of the lyrics and lyrical ideas are lifted straight from Matraca Berg's "Strawberry Wine" which was a mega hit for Deanna Carter amongst others....
I have nothing but contempt for these talentless wankers who paste together other people's ideas wholesale to create a hit-by-collage. Even samples used "Creatively" - the only example I can think of being the Howlin' Wolf sample in the Sopranos theme - I find quite irritating a lot of the time, though I suppose there is meant to be some sort of clever built in cross reference at which we are expected to nod admiringly.
Who gets the income?
It would be nice to think that the Zevon and Van Zant families might be earning something out of this.
Waddy Wachtel seems to have had an awkward moment with his computer hard drive's contents but is still working on a small scale so he might like some money too.
Gary Rossington is presumably still doing Alabama on a regular basis so might not be hard up. E King left the Skynrd early, wonder what he is up to. Maybe he is a Southern Rock version of the Hugh Grant figure in About a Boy, interesting image.
Leroy Marinell has a Myspace page, he doesnt look that successful.
Anyone know who M Shafer is? One of Kid Rock's people?
Of course the business being what it is the money is probably going into the corporate coffers somewhere. The Man always wins!
Leroy's take on things, lifted from his MySpace blog
I keep reading/hearing about how Bob Richie, AKA Kid Rock, "stole" the music for "All Summer Long" from "Werewolves" and "Sweet Home Alabama".....And what a bad guy he is for doing so…..Well, I'm here to tell you that aint the case at all......Not even close……In fact, not only did he get licenses for those tunes, he was generous in the extreme…..By law he was entitled to 50 % of "All Summer Long" as the lyricist….He would have been well within his rights to have told all of us, us being the writers of "Werewolves" and "Sweet Home", to split the other 50% between us……But he didn't do that…..Instead, he offered to split the royalties equally amongst all of us…..Such honorable behavior is, virtually, unheard of in the music business…And, probably, in any other business….
As one of the writers of "Werewolves", I say, "Bravo, Bob…..You're a gentleman and a man of honor"……
GO, KID, GO!!!!
But
If people didn't think that a song which was heavily reliant on a sample brought anything new to the table that they would just get the original song and forget about the new track - that's pretty easy to do nowadays since music from all eras is much more readily available.
Kanye West recently released the track Touch the Sky which basically featured him rapping over a loop created from Curtis Mayfield's Move On Up. Now much as I love Kanye West I don't belive that his was a better song than Mayfield's however it did bring something slightly new and is therefore worth listening to as well as Mayfield's original, so I have both on my ipod.
The idea that artists nowadays rely on the fact that kids won't know the classic tracks their samples come from is rubbish, all it takes is a quick google search to find where a sample came from and another few clicks to download the original track.
So therefore perhaps we should conclude that these kids are simply comparing the two tracks on their relative merits without any of the emotional attachement to the old which older listeners invariably have.
niks...
as a matter of interest - are you referring to the track that Archie was coyly referring to a few posts up?
Nope, try again
A couple more clues: the megastar's record was released during this decade, was a No. 1 single in the UK and went platinum in the States. The income from it was therefore considerable. The original artist, who's now dead, green-lighted the megastar's use of the sample for peanuts. And it's a moot point (possibly one being argued in litigation - I'm not sure how the case was settled, if at all) whether those rights were even his to sign away.
That said, my lips are now sealed. It's an illustration of a point, not a HORA, so the actual names don't matter.
Great points from all
Brilliant,this is why i love WORD.
I don't think that Kid Rock is trying to pass off either song sampled as his own.As David pointed out.there are writing credits for both songs and Kid Rock is a Champion of Southern Rock and other forms of Music.
Sgt Puck-thanks for posting the video I hadn't heard it until today. You are Right it is a blatant attempt to have a hit but it's the summer and catchy tunes and Sing-a-Longs are what the punters want.reminds me of Word reader fave "Kill Your friends" by John Niven.Stelfox would Kill for this tune.
Also hope you don't mind me piggy-backing your thread.It inspired me and thanks for that.
The Kid Rock song is deeply annoying
because Radio 2 seems to have it on a permanent loop alongside that awful Scouting For Girls record.
Don’t have a problem with it being essentially a mash-up of two old songs. As long as that sort of thing’s credited, and paid for, what’s the problem, if it’s done well. Beyonce’s Crazy In Love is based on a Chi-Lites riff. One of my favourite singles of the last few years is by Janet Jackson - a combination of Erik Satie and America’s Ventura Highway, but done really well.
"Anon"
Perhaps the best author of traditionl music and possibly a shame there are not still more like him/her....
...and occasionally a classic needs an honourable update
General rule for..
.. borrowing/sampling/stealing songs is:
it's okay if you make the new one better and/or interesting.
Kid Rock does not do this.
I don't think...
...it has to be MORE interesting, it can still be less interesting but worthwhile in the same way that Knockin On Heaven's Door by Guns and Roses is not as great as Dylan's original but it's still worth listening to occaisionally.
I just meant interesting...
... not more so.
Sorry for my un-clarity, Niks.
[Btw, I don't like that G'n'R version of Knockin' at all].
Well it's better than...
Clapton's tawdry version any day.
Moot point.....
Does it not actually depend on whether you know or like the song sampled in question? I never knew Gangstas paradise was a sampled background and liked it, but that Valerie rip/rap off from a couple of summers ago was just vile. Then again, Gabrielles lift of Knockin On Heavens Door was fine.
Funny business where taste and inverted snobbery meet, even if never quite sure which I have the greater amount of.
Best imaginative use of samples is the Chumbawamba LP, Readymades, which has Lal Waterson, Dick Gaughan and Kate Rusby amongst others ethereally adding, rather than detracting to the mix, with the sample often acting as a template for the whole song and the melody line evolving therefrom.
Integral to the structure or just decoration
Here is how I look at it: if you took the sampled/ borrowed bits from the song would the bits left over have any merit on their own?
Personally I didn't like the Gabrielle thing which sampled Knockin' On Heaven's Door (but then I generally don't like Gabrielle), or the Janet Jackson one which borrowed Ventura Highway (I still hadn't forgiven her for sampling Big Yellow Taxi).
But Rufus Wainwright using Ravel's Bolero on Oh What A World was glorious.
Edit: and I'd add to that the works of DJ Shadow, UNKLE, RJD2 (especially Ghostwriter) and The Shortwave Set. All creative users of samples.
Beck
He sampled Them (covering Dylan 'It's All Over Now Baby Blue') on 'Jackass' from 'Odelay'. It's quite obvious if you know the original but it becomes a completely different song. I find that acceptable, in fact quite welcome. He uses lots of samples on that album, many of which I don't particularly notice. All are credited, where possible. All of the songs come over as original Beck songs regardless of sampling. That's how it should be. If not do a proper cover version I say, or it's just laziness.
Did I imagine it?
Did Morrissey use some Shostakovich on one of his less than stellar albums a few years back?
The problem with that damn Kid Rock song...
... is that Kid Rock rhymes "things" with "things" and I keep hearing it on radio 2.
I couldn't care less if you can recognize the samples easily enough, frankly once you have enough music that's always a danger and it's often a joy to hear something you love incorporated into something else.
Just make it good! And this is garbage.