slappyjenkins

I know what you guys are saying about sampling and chord progressions. It doesn't change the fact that Coldplay has lawsuitS, with an S, out against them. It also doesn't change the fact that Vanilla Ice sampling Under Pressure and then coming out and denying it became a bit of a scandal. I didn't make that MTV interview where he was basically forced to address the situation. I didn't make Milli Vanilli lip sync and accept a GRAMMY for it. What you are saying does not change the fact that these are controversies and scandals in the music industry. True these things happen and often nothing at all is said about it. We're concentrating on the events in music history that turned out to be scandalous. Milli Vanilli, Vanilla Ice, and Coldplay fall into that category.

Sampling IS a huge resource for hip hop music...hell artists are now sampling music that came out barely a year ago sometimes...but what added to Vanilla Ice's problem was HAMMER was confronted on his sampling and he came right out very quickly and said 'yeah this is sampled from Rick James'...didn't argue, didn't try to withhold credit....and RVWinkle comes out and says 'yeah we might have sampled queen, but really it aint the same, so we ain't gonna give them credit'. I believe this one fault cause the whole thing to even become a bit of controversy. If he had done like Hammer then we probably would have never said another word about it then, or now in this conversation.

EDIT: and about coldplay? they are doing this so much that it gets to a point where you feel like they are 'Intentional Re-offenders'...and that's hard to defend. Yeah one similar chord progression that kind of sounds like something from twenty years ago, ok whatever, but when you have 7 or 8 songs that are complete rip-offs....sorry its hard to defend you at that point Coldplay...stop steal other people's music

Freebase Dali

I agree. I just didn't think this discussion was about personal ethics, but rather legal ethics.

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slappyjenkins

Maybe it wasn't a big deal from a moral or personal opinion standpoint to a lot of us out here....but it was a HUGE controversy in 1990. The GRAMMY was the breaking point. I don't think anyone even cared about the lip syncing or the fact that they were not the vocalists. The fans and critics could not forgive them for accepting that Grammy while lying about who and what they were.

I saw a VH1 special where Rob said something to the effect of 'We sat there and prayed not to win that Grammy. And when we did, we knew it was over for us.'

He made another comment about the lip syncing track that got stuck, he said he was terrified to show up at their next sold out venue. And when they got out on stage everyone cheered. Nobody cared. They still loved Milli Vanilli.

For Vanilla Ice I think the controvery was only started because of HAMMER giving credit to Rick James so freely.

For Milli Vanilli I think it was the Grammy.

Other than that, yeah you're right...what's the big deal?

All I know is it's true music controversy and that's what I wanted to discuss.

Urban Hat€monger ?

I was watching this documentary a few weeks ago that was talking about the art school influence in British music and a lot of the bands in it said that in their experience American audiences and bands tend to be more primarily about what you can play and how you can play it, and if you can play it live. Whereas on the other hand British bands are more likely to have a member in the band just because they look good or they bring another dynamic to the band. And that British audiences are more about the product as a whole and what appears on the record, with playing live not being that much of a big deal.

That'll explain why you have people like Richie Edwards in the Manic Street Preachers who wrote all the lyrics yet would play live with his guitar unplugged because he couldn't play a note. Same sort of thing with Sid Vicious. Bez of the Happy Mondays would just dance with a pair of maracas. Chas Smash of Madness started off and a songwriter and a dancer for the band.

I guess that'll explain why the Milli Vanilli thing was such a big deal over there.

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Freebase Dali

@ Slappy:

The funny thing is nothing like that would even be considered a controversy in today's pop music. I mean, this is the sort of social environment that throws money at auto-tuned vocals because the horrid application of it has gotten so commonplace that consumers consider it to now be a desirable special effect.

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Freebase Dali

Seems a reasonable conclusion to me.
Not that I agree with there being some undying need for the band members absolutely being able to replicate their records live, else they're trash.
Good music is good music in whatever form it arrives. It doesn't have to go further than that.
But I know far too many people, even today, that would support the case made by that documentary you're referencing.

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slappyjenkins

Hey I agree with you guys totally! And I knew that 'put-together' bands have been common place FOREVER...ALL the boy bands(backstreet boys, N'sync, One Direction), hype men(flava flav, etc), the pardridge family, the monkees. And it's my understanding that Steven Adler was put in GNR simply because he was a 'pretty boy' and the band couldn't stomach the way he played drums.

And yeah by today's standards controversies are on a whole other level. We have 'leaked' sex tapes....yeah leaked 'wink wink' self promotion...we have murders(2-pac and Biggie), we have overdoses and suicides, our controversies today make the early 90s look incredibly tame. (Not that these things didn't exist back then, but they seem to be rampant nowadays.) It take a lot to turn our heads.

The most recent lip sync foul up that I could even mention is with Ashley Simpson on SNL and she danced that jig onstage because of the foul up. They TRIED to make that into a controversy and we were all like 'Meh, been there done that, we don't care about Ashley Simpson or her lip syncing, let her do it, in fact we demand she lip sync.'

OMG auto-tuning.....kill me now, kill me, I'm here do it, kill me.....run get to the choppa!

EDIT: I guess I was never arguing about if it should have been a controversy, only the fact that these things DID become controversies. I mean that Milli Vanilli thing was HUGE. It dominated the news at the time! They followed that thing all the way to the bitter end! Milli Vanilli was all over the place and then this happened and the bottom just fell out for them. They were over. They were destroyed forever. That's got to be huge right? The Vanilla Ice thing was blown out of proportion too. I guess I am just posting things that for whatever reason DID BECOME controversial.

slappyjenkins

Totally agree.

Urban Hat€monger ?

I think this song pretty much encapsulates everything being discussed. And was released around the same time as the whole Milli Vanilli thing...



It was originally made by an Italian DJ for the clubs, it picked up a lot of attention and was eventually put out by a record company who hired a French Model to 'front' the band and went on to top the charts in every country it was released in .... except for the U.S.

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slappyjenkins

Black Box and Milli Vanilla have several common links. The major one being Martha Wash

Here is a wiki on her...
Martha Wash - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Again I think the ONLY reason Milli Vanilli was 'thrown under the bus' on this one....was the GRAMMY.

Also you have to remember for some reason Lip Syncing in a live performance was being scrutinized in the late 80s and 90s. I have no idea why. But I do remember MTV interviews with Madonna, Cher, even Barbara Striesand and the topic was 'do you Lip Sync in a LIVE performance.' And Milli Vanilla comes along at the WORST time ever and gets one of their tracks STUCK during a live performance AND then wins a GRAMMY after the fact. All of these elements came together and brewed a perfect storm that came down on Milli Vanilli's ass. Nowadays we know these people lip sync. Hell we don't care! But back then they did care for whatever reason and made a huge deal out of it and Milli Vanilla got BUSTED.