The Official Led Zeppelin Thread (house, albums, fan, quote)

[boo boo]

Originally Posted by mr dave

i don't buy that at all. it's a cheap cop out for people who lack creativity and those who want to defend a lack of taste. if someone wants to cover, or pay tribute, or follow in other people's footsteps then whatever, that's fine - so long as you have the guts to be upfront about it before you get called out on it.

playing music, ESPECIALLY the blues, is about expressing the human condition through song. consider the social structure of the southern US almost 100 years ago, how were uneducated, segregated, oppressed people supposed to know about 'copyrights'? how were they supposed to have any idea of what contracts were about? the songs were written because it's what they did, they got 'stolen' because one guy heard it and decided to sing it to his friends, not to pad out a record made in a studio that cost more than the entire worth of their families.

Oh I get it, let's turn it into an argument about class.

Zep "insulted" a genre of music that is ALL ABOUT plagiarism, but the only reason they're at fault here is that they're not poor and black, and because they're a very popular band, obviously nobody gives a sh*t about the neverending plagiarism in metal and punk, bands who actually DO steal riffs and not just lyrics or a few guitar licks (and EVERYONE recycles guitar licks).

Seriously, if people want to put an end to racism people need to stop using "being black" as an excuse. Blues artists ripped each other off all the f*cking time and overall most blues songs are incredibly generic and indistinguishable. There's really not a lot of room for originality to begin with.

I've made this argument thousands of times, and everytime I argue with someone, they just copy and paste from some dumb website without checking the sources whatsoever and because I actually heard the f*cking songs I can tell these people what was stolen and what wasn't.

Except for one part from the Lemon Song I can't really think of a Page riff that was outright stolen, almost all of the alledged plagiarism involves lyrics or vocals.

It's also stupid to call some of their songs "uncredited covers" when all it is is a brief reference that's only a small portion of the song.

And a lot of it is just f*cking retarded. Wow, Communication Breakdown is an exact ripoff of Eddie Cochran's Nervous Breakdown, what did they steal? ONE WORD IN THE F*CKING TITLE.

You can call me a rabid fanboy making excuses for them, but really, I have yet to have anyone actually prove to me that they stole more than lyrics and vocal melodies and then make a valid argument as to why they're such reprehensable monsters for doing something that most blues musicians do all the time.

I mean sh*t, why are so many folk and blues songs "traditional", because people didn't credit the f*cking songwriters, that's why. And I'm sorry, you can't justify it in anyway if you think Zeppelin doing it is such a horrible offence, it's the same thing.

That's my rant, you can give me your argument so I can yell at you and tell you how wrong you are. Or we can agree to disagree because I hate that this discussion has come up again and I know I can't be the only one.