KVR Audio

ghettosynth · Post by **ghettosynth** » Thu Oct 23, 2014 6:35 pm

robojam wrote:There's a YouTube video of a Davey Graham song that predates either of them but has that same chord sequence and is picked the same way.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tWeejHJxGjs

ghettosynth · Post by **ghettosynth** » Thu Oct 23, 2014 7:00 pm

VariKusBrainZ wrote:Its pretty common knowledge that the Zeps "borrowed" from a lot of tunes and divine justice that hip hop "paid homage".
Everything is recycled, theres only so many atoms to go around

Borrowed?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JyvLsutfI5M

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zThdTAWQFAQ

No doubt, they were a great (cover) band, but there's no excuse for not crediting artists when you cover their tunes.

Hink · Post by **Hink** » Thu Oct 23, 2014 8:10 pm

ghettosynth wrote:
VariKusBrainZ wrote:Its pretty common knowledge that the Zeps "borrowed" from a lot of tunes and divine justice that hip hop "paid homage".
Everything is recycled, theres only so many atoms to go around
Borrowed?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JyvLsutfI5M

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zThdTAWQFAQ

No doubt, they were a great (cover) band, but there's no excuse for not crediting artists when you cover their tunes.

thanx for these GS, very interesting indeed. Somewhat ironic that zep is one of the most copied styles in R&R

robogone · Post by **robogone** » Thu Oct 23, 2014 8:13 pm

ghettosynth wrote:
robojam wrote:There's a YouTube video of a Davey Graham song that predates either of them but has that same chord sequence and is picked the same way.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tWeejHJxGjs

Yep. I was too lazy to search for it myself.

PurpleCatfishBettie · Post by **PurpleCatfishBettie** » Mon Oct 27, 2014 5:55 am

for albums 1-3 especially, i'd consider zep to be a sort of 'world's greatest cover band'. from 4 onwards they really got their creative legs beneath them though.

robogone · Post by **robogone** » Mon Oct 27, 2014 1:45 pm

While they borrowed a lot of stuff, I think it was the arrangement and the way they played that made those early albums. Don't care if they stole it or not, Led Zep and Led Zep II are pretty amazing albums.

PurpleCatfishBettie · Post by **PurpleCatfishBettie** » Mon Oct 27, 2014 5:08 pm

yeah, no one had ever previously presented music quite like that. lots of mind-blowing songs on those first two records alone.

ghettosynth · Post by **ghettosynth** » Mon Oct 27, 2014 6:12 pm

robojam wrote:While they borrowed a lot of stuff, I think it was the arrangement and the way they played that made those early albums. Don't care if they stole it or not, Led Zep and Led Zep II are pretty amazing albums.

That may be, I just think that borrowed is apologetic language. What is more accurate is that they infringed on copyright in order to keep greater profits for themselves rather than share royalties. If we were talking about the unauthorized use of some KVR dev's samples or patches they would be strung up by their toenails for a proper KVR lynching. Do you think that Roland would mind if I "borrowed" their D50 samples for my own instrument and claimed that they were my own? They have been sued multiple times and, in all cases that I'm aware of, the settlements have been made "out of court." Considering other successful copyright cases that were much more subtle, e.g. My Sweet Lord, I doubt very seriously that those "settlements" didn't involve money being paid to the original authors to satisfy the infringement claim. The fact that later releases changed the credits in some case is further evidence of this.

Of the infringements that they made, I think that this claim for Stairway is among the claims of least merit with respect to content similarity. That said, given their history of blatant infringement, I'm inclined to believe that they, in fact, did infringe. That is, I do believe that the riff itself isn't particularly innovative and could have been "created" independently, but, I don't think that's what happened. Given their history, I think that they heard it, copped it, used it, and claimed it as their own.

Personally, I never connected to those albums as "albums." I think that this helps to explain some of the reason why. I think that a lot of the albums that I connect to have some form of cohesiveness that happens when artists create their own material. I'm not saying that I don't like their songs, I do like some of them, I just never connected with them as albums. While there are exceptions, this is a common experience for me when the album is a collection of songs not written by, or even written for, the artist.

Like I said, I think that they were a great cover band and had an undeniably original sound, but I have almost no respect for them anymore as songwriters/artists, and, in the proper KVR tradition, think of them as content thieves no different from software pirates. I think that their infringement was blatant and, consequently, is of the worse kind, the kind that there can really be no apology for.

YMMV.

ghettosynth · Post by **ghettosynth** » Mon Oct 27, 2014 7:38 pm

BTW: Here is a great article, in two parts, with a lot of detail.

http://www.furious.com/perfect/jimmypage.html

Regarding Dazed and Confused

On August 25, 1967 the Yardbirds caught an acoustic act fronted by Jake Holmes at the Village Theatre in New York's Greenwich Village. Holmes and his two sidemen played a song about a love affair gone dreadfully wrong. The song was called "Dazed & Confused."
...
Asked whether he remembered opening for the Yardbirds, Holmes laughed.

"Yes. Yes. And that was the infamous moment of my life when 'Dazed & Confused' fell into the loving arms and hands of Jimmy Page," he said.

With its descending bass line, jittery lyrics and dramatic caesuras, the Yardbirds knew they were onto something. The very next day Jim McCarty bought Holmes' album, The Above Ground Sound of Jake Holmes.

"We played with Jake in New York and I was struck by the atmosphere of 'Dazed and Confused.' I went down to Greenwich Village and bought his album and we decided to do a version," McCarty said. "We worked it out together with Jimmy contributing the guitar riffs in the middle. Don't you think he's the riff-master?"

Apparently, Page also bought the album the same day. According to Yardbirds historian Greg Russo, a certain John Alusick witnessed Jimmy Page purchasing it at Bleecker Bob's Record Store on Bleecker Street. The Yardbirds quickly set about adapting the song that had captured their collective imagination.

When asked about the connection to Jake Holmes, Page responds:

MUSICIAN: I understand "Dazed and Confused" was originally a song by Jake Holmes. Is that true?

PAGE: [Sourly] I don't know. I don't know. [Inhaling] I don't know about all that.
MUSICIAN: Do you remember the process of writing that song?

PAGE: Well, I did that with the Yardbirds originally.... The Yardbirds were such a good band for a guitarist to play in that I came up with a lot of riffs and ideas out of that, and I employed quite a lot of those in the early Zeppelin stuff.

MUSICIAN: But Jake Holmes, a successful jingle writer in New York, claims (pdf) on his 1967 record that he wrote the original song.

PAGE: Hmm. Well, I don't know. I don't know about that. I'd rather not get into it because I don't know all the circumstances. What's he got, The riff or whatever? Because Robert wrote some of the lyrics for that on the album. But he was only listening to...we extended it from the one that we were playing with the Yardbirds.

MUSICIAN: Did you bring it into the Yardbirds?

PAGE: No, I think we played it 'round a sort of melody line or something that Keith [Relf] had. So I don't know. I haven't heard Jake Holmes so I don't know what it's all about anyway. Usually my riffs are pretty damn original [laughs] What can I say?

Jake Holmes original:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P1g7qFaWaLk

The Yardbirds on French TV from 1967

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rd_LmMpmWwM

RunBeerRun · Post by **RunBeerRun** » Mon Oct 27, 2014 7:58 pm

There was an album called Hairway to Steven, and various women have been named Sue.

Where's MY cut?

gaf_thit · Post by **gaf_thit** » Sat Nov 01, 2014 11:49 am

You get a free bob cut

jancivil · Post by **jancivil** » Wed Nov 05, 2014 11:34 pm

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bCZT-PY ... 5762BA843C

lectrixboogaloo · Post by **lectrixboogaloo** » Sun Nov 09, 2014 1:12 am

Well, mr. page is a very intuitive guy that ripped a lot of people off. Time he paid out. Won't hurt him, much.

nasenmann · Post by **nasenmann** » Sun Nov 09, 2014 9:56 am

Blue-eyed Blonde Ape wrote: Page once said: ‘I feel Aleister Crowley is a misunderstood genius of the 20th century because his whole thing was liberation of the person.’

not too far from the truth though...

i haven't even read much by crowley, but enough to see he's been completely utterly misunderstood. the instant link to satanism in most people's heads is especially laughable.

of course, the "do what thou wilt" stuff is exactly the stuff that's gonna make every moralist's blood boil.

that's the point

vurt · Post by **vurt** » Mon Nov 10, 2014 2:47 am

Crowley is the one person in the history of everything whose name I actually use a capital letter for(or two if I write out his full name)
do what thou wilt indeed!

zep getting sued over stairway?