10th album rumors and speculation

[epilogue]

Also, Jorge, sort of on this same topic, but not really, do you think Ament's Doubting Thomasina sounds at all like an Elvis Costello song? Not a specific song, just a song in the vein of Elvis Costello?

The verse riff on Marker in the Sand always reminds me of Elvis Costello, in a good way. Jagged, angular, angry - in the ballpark of (I Don't Want to Go to) Chelsea.

The first of his songs to make me realize what I'd been missing. Still one of my favs to this day.

Dude had one of the best 5 album runs in history brah.

Him and Tom Waits, mang.

[Kevin Davis]

I didn't say there was no similarity; I said there's not much similarity, which I maintain that there isn't. I don't hear it in the instrumental parts at all, which is why I agree with evenslow that Mike is talking out of his hole when he says there are "some influences he may have stolen"; if you can (or care enough to) point me to specific points in the song where you're hearing this, I will listen, but from years of memory I don't agree with you. There are some similarities in the vocal melody, sure, but they're simple similarities that I think could very easily have been stumbled upon independently, and certainly don't constitute the degree of "ripoff" that people imply when they comment on the two songs. I think, in all kinds of music, there are constantly fragments of melody, arrangements of chords, etc. that reoccur in varying degrees of frequency, and most of the time they're parts of the musical language that just make sense for artists, as composers, to repeat--instinctively, the brain just goes to sequences of notes that are logically pleasing to people who were raised on music with Western sensibilities. It's true that Led Zeppelin were probably responsible for shaping the members' of Pearl Jam's understanding of these sensibilities, so I think it's reasonable to view Pearl Jam's music as a logical descendent of Zep's, maybe sometimes in a sense that's as literal (i.e. specific note patterns) as it is aesthetic or ideological ("Zeppelin were a huge influence on us, man!"), but I think it ends there. I will buy that "Given to Fly" is a lineal descendent of Zeppelin ballads. I don't think it's a flat-out ripoff of the song. At least in popular music, I think flat-out ripoffs of other people's material, in the sense that someone is trying to pilfer someone else's material and pass it off as their own sans credit for their own profit, are extremely rare.

And I always felt like the thing at the show with Robert Plant was a joke--the band slyly acknowledging the well-known "controversy" surrounding the two songs, and consequently displaying how serious of a matter it was to them.

[epilogue]

I didn't say there was no similarity; I said there's not much similarity, which I maintain that there isn't. I don't hear it in the instrumental parts at all, which is why I agree with evenslow that Mike is talking out of his hole when he says there are "some influences he may have stolen"; if you can (or care enough to) point me to specific points in the song where you're hearing this, I will listen, but from years of memory I don't agree with you. There are some similarities in the vocal melody, sure, but they're simple similarities that I think could very easily have been stumbled upon independently, and certainly don't constitute the degree of "ripoff" that people imply when they comment on the two songs. I think, in all kinds of music, there are constantly fragments of melody, arrangements of chords, etc. that reoccur in varying degrees of frequency, and most of the time they're parts of the musical language that just make sense for artists, as composers, to repeat--instinctively, the brain just goes to sequences of notes that are logically pleasing to people who were raised on music with Western sensibilities. It's true that Led Zeppelin were probably responsible for shaping the members' of Pearl Jam's understanding of these sensibilities, so I think it's reasonable to view Pearl Jam's music as a logical descendent of Zep's, maybe sometimes in a sense that's as literal (i.e. specific note patterns) as it is aesthetic or ideological ("Zeppelin were a huge influence on us, man!"), but I think it ends there. I will buy that "Given to Fly" is a lineal descendent of Zeppelin ballads. I don't think it's a flat-out ripoff of the song. At least in popular music, I think flat-out ripoffs of other people's material, in the sense that someone is trying to pilfer someone else's material and pass it off as their own sans credit for their own profit, are extremely rare.

And I always felt like the thing at the show with Robert Plant was a joke--the band slyly acknowledging the well-known "controversy" surrounding the two songs, and consequently displaying how serious of a matter it was to them.

There's definitely "some" but not "much" similarity in the lead guitar and vocal melodies in the opening verse. By the time we hit the chorus it's gone (as far as I can tell). And like you're saying it's more accidental or coincidental, I think. But I think it's there. It's just not much and not a very big deal.

Same way most Tom Petty songs are derivative of and/or sound like some Bob Dylan song.

[Heathen]

The similarity strikes me as pretty obvious between GTF and GTC. I don't have, like, super-ears or anything, and I couldn't give details of what is similar to what but in this case I just hear it.

Am I the only one who hears A Horse With No Name in the Immortality verses? When I was learning this song I misplayed the strumming pattern a bit and after a while I realized I was playing AHWNN. Can't unhear it now.

[harmless]

I didn't say there was no similarity; I said there's not much similarity, which I maintain that there isn't. I don't hear it in the instrumental parts at all, which is why I agree with evenslow that Mike is talking out of his hole when he says there are "some influences he may have stolen"; if you can (or care enough to) point me to specific points in the song where you're hearing this, I will listen, but from years of memory I don't agree with you. There are some similarities in the vocal melody, sure, but they're simple similarities that I think could very easily have been stumbled upon independently, and certainly don't constitute the degree of "ripoff" that people imply when they comment on the two songs. I think, in all kinds of music, there are constantly fragments of melody, arrangements of chords, etc. that reoccur in varying degrees of frequency, and most of the time they're parts of the musical language that just make sense for artists, as composers, to repeat--instinctively, the brain just goes to sequences of notes that are logically pleasing to people who were raised on music with Western sensibilities. It's true that Led Zeppelin were probably responsible for shaping the members' of Pearl Jam's understanding of these sensibilities, so I think it's reasonable to view Pearl Jam's music as a logical descendent of Zep's, maybe sometimes in a sense that's as literal (i.e. specific note patterns) as it is aesthetic or ideological ("Zeppelin were a huge influence on us, man!"), but I think it ends there. I will buy that "Given to Fly" is a lineal descendent of Zeppelin ballads. I don't think it's a flat-out ripoff of the song. At least in popular music, I think flat-out ripoffs of other people's material, in the sense that someone is trying to pilfer someone else's material and pass it off as their own sans credit for their own profit, are extremely rare.

And I always felt like the thing at the show with Robert Plant was a joke--the band slyly acknowledging the well-known "controversy" surrounding the two songs, and consequently displaying how serious of a matter it was to them.

So things can't be called 'rip-offs' if they're not deliberately and slavishly copied? As you say, how often does that happen? That doesn't leave a lot of room for criticism of songs that sound far too similar to other songs for their own good. You might not be giving enough credit to having a modicum of originality. For example, they could have worked harder to make Severed Hand sound less similar to Porch, whether or not they decided to make a song which sounded totally like Porch because Porch is cool. Or Got Some, why does it sound so much like Devo? Deliberate homage? Maybe, but is that the only type of imitation one is allowed to call a 'rip-off'?

Wow, I sound like I really care about this.

[Kevin Davis]

That doesn't leave a lot of room for criticism of songs that sound far too similar to other songs for their own good.

Good! 99% of the time, this is simply not an interesting avenue of criticism. How often do read a post like this:

Severed Hand just sounds like The Unforgiven Porch 2. There's no ground covered there that hasn't been in an extended Porch jam from 1995.

and think, "Oh man, he totally exposed these guys! What frauds! And to drive the point home, he compared them to Metallica, which just illustrates how much lamer the whole thing is! This guy is really on the ball!"

My guess would be not often. Usually, it just sounds like the critic is stroking his own ego, and one's reaction (my reaction, anyway) is, "Great, you can point out two three-note patterns that sound similar--so fucking what?" There's just no meat to that kind of, as evenslow astutely calls it, "gotcha" type criticism. (And most of the time, the claims just don't hold up when you break them down. twoheadedboy's certainly doesn't.)

To answer your question, yes, I think the term "ripoff" is accusatory and insulting, and does not apply when there wasn't some kind of calculated intention on the part of the artist to deceive. An intentional note-for-note copy of someone else's song (or a reasonably large percentage of same) is a ripoff. (I wouldn't even say a "deliberate homage" would qualify as a ripoff, because an homage implies some desire on the artist's part for the audience to draw the connection between their work and the work they are attempting to link it to, which to me kind of derails the power of most "ripoff" accusations.) Most of what is being discussed here, in my view, is just common components of musical language naturally and logically recurring in multiple instances. I mean, you're a drummer, right? Are you going to cry ripoff every time someone uses a 4/4 rock beat?

I think part of why this irritates me so much is because there's just so much music out there where artists openly take chord progressions, entire song structures, even entire passages of lyric, from other artists, and present it to the world as something they've created, and it's just an accepted part of the way things are done. Rock music is relatively unique in that it seems like one of the only genres of music where its fans are standing by waiting to catch the artists they love in the act of plagiarism, as though it affords them (the listeners) some kind of superiority in doing so. Jazz artists were constantly borrowing music from each other; pretty much every jazz artist I listen to has some composition that was "based on the changes of" (i.e "uses the same chords as") "I Got Rhythm," or some standard of the like, and it's something which is always stated matter-of-factly in the liner notes as though no one should be alarmed by it. Folk music, needless to say, is rife with it. And it's not like the artists I'm referring to are the genre's formula-followers and C-list imitators--they're people like Bob Dylan, Miles Davis, Thelonious Monk, etc., people generally regarded as some of the most innovative artists in popular music. So you can think this kind of thing betrays a "modicum of originality" if you like, but history is not on your side. In all fields, creative and otherwise, it is not unusual for an individual to take the works of another and use them as building blocks to create something new. It's just not that big of a deal.

[verb_to_trust]

The guitar players in Perl Jam are not virtuoso level Steve Vai type players. If they play in the same rock band for 20 years they are going to repeat themselves a rip off their influences once in a while....

[harmless]

That doesn't leave a lot of room for criticism of songs that sound far too similar to other songs for their own good.

Good! 99% of the time, this is simply not an interesting avenue of criticism. How often do read a post like this:

Severed Hand just sounds like The Unforgiven Porch 2. There's no ground covered there that hasn't been in an extended Porch jam from 1995.

and think, "Oh man, he totally exposed these guys! What frauds! And to drive the point home, he compared them to Metallica, which just illustrates how much lamer the whole thing is! This guy is really on the ball!"

My guess would be not often. Usually, it just sounds like the critic is stroking his own ego, and one's reaction (my reaction, anyway) is, "Great, you can point out two three-note patterns that sound similar--so fucking what?" There's just no meat to that kind of, as evenslow astutely calls it, "gotcha" type criticism. (And most of the time, the claims just don't hold up when you break them down. twoheadedboy's certainly doesn't.)

To answer your question, yes, I think the term "ripoff" is accusatory and insulting, and does not apply when there wasn't some kind of calculated intention on the part of the artist to deceive. An intentional note-for-note copy of someone else's song (or a reasonably large percentage of same) is a ripoff. (I wouldn't even say a "deliberate homage" would qualify as a ripoff, because an homage implies some desire on the artist's part for the audience to draw the connection between their work and the work they are attempting to link it to, which to me kind of derails the power of most "ripoff" accusations.) Most of what is being discussed here, in my view, is just common components of musical language naturally and logically recurring in multiple instances. I mean, you're a drummer, right? Are you going to cry ripoff every time someone uses a 4/4 rock beat?

I think part of why this irritates me so much is because there's just so much music out there where artists openly take chord progressions, entire song structures, even entire passages of lyric, from other artists, and present it to the world as something they've created, and it's just an accepted part of the way things are done. Rock music is relatively unique in that it seems like one of the only genres of music where its fans are standing by waiting to catch the artists they love in the act of plagiarism, as though it affords them (the listeners) some kind of superiority in doing so. Jazz artists were constantly borrowing music from each other; pretty much every jazz artist I listen to has some composition that was "based on the changes of" (i.e "uses the same chords as") "I Got Rhythm," or some standard of the like, and it's something which is always stated matter-of-factly in the liner notes as though no one should be alarmed by it. Folk music, needless to say, is rife with it. And it's not like the artists I'm referring to are the genre's formula-followers and C-list imitators--they're people like Bob Dylan, Miles Davis, Thelonious Monk, etc., people generally regarded as some of the most innovative artists in popular music. So you can think this kind of thing betrays a "modicum of originality" if you like, but history is not on your side. In all fields, creative and otherwise, it is not unusual for an individual to take the works of another and use them as building blocks to create something new. It's just not that big of a deal.

I don't know man, I think you're throwing the baby out with the bathwater. 'X song is boring because it sounds too much like Y" is a perfectly valid criticism. There's no such thing as an objective criticism; sure, some get closer towards objectivity and everyone hates an "It's just MY OPINION MAN" type of criticism, but in the end, all criticisms are just opinions, no matter how highly people get paid for them.

Let me put this another way: Red Hot Chilli Peppers. Yawn. Why? They've been derivative and uninspired for a very long time. Do I not deserve this opinion because every new creation is valid, just because it's new, even if it's as bland as hell? I know a poet who thinks this way (said poet's opinion is 'Every poem is an experiment') and it's just plain not right, imo. Some poems are middle-of-the-road, bland and experiment with nothing at all. And so with songs.

Or are you saying that 'uninspired' and 'derivative' is a fine criticism as long as you don't come up with a specific song comparison?

[Got Some]

New album out September ???

[Got Some]

New album out September ???

[dimejinky99]

Source? Mike?

[Jorge]

I didn't say there was no similarity; I said there's not much similarity, which I maintain that there isn't. I don't hear it in the instrumental parts at all, which is why I agree with evenslow that Mike is talking out of his hole when he says there are "some influences he may have stolen"; if you can (or care enough to) point me to specific points in the song where you're hearing this, I will listen, but from years of memory I don't agree with you. There are some similarities in the vocal melody, sure, but they're simple similarities that I think could very easily have been stumbled upon independently, and certainly don't constitute the degree of "ripoff" that people imply when they comment on the two songs. I think, in all kinds of music, there are constantly fragments of melody, arrangements of chords, etc. that reoccur in varying degrees of frequency, and most of the time they're parts of the musical language that just make sense for artists, as composers, to repeat--instinctively, the brain just goes to sequences of notes that are logically pleasing to people who were raised on music with Western sensibilities. It's true that Led Zeppelin were probably responsible for shaping the members' of Pearl Jam's understanding of these sensibilities, so I think it's reasonable to view Pearl Jam's music as a logical descendent of Zep's, maybe sometimes in a sense that's as literal (i.e. specific note patterns) as it is aesthetic or ideological ("Zeppelin were a huge influence on us, man!"), but I think it ends there. I will buy that "Given to Fly" is a lineal descendent of Zeppelin ballads. I don't think it's a flat-out ripoff of the song. At least in popular music, I think flat-out ripoffs of other people's material, in the sense that someone is trying to pilfer someone else's material and pass it off as their own sans credit for their own profit, are extremely rare.

Then we're arguing about nothing at this point. You didn't say there's no similarity (that's fine, I was mostly addressing evenslow's comment that "it's not there") and I didn't say anything about it being a ripoff. I am in complete agreement that this was, in all likelihood, unintentional, and all the comments the band have made about the "theft" have been mostly in jest (like Stone's "well, Led Zeppelin has stolen from enough people, we can steal from them too"). Where we differ is how we perceive that similarity: to you it's barely there, to me it's pretty obvious, even distracting at times (in that I can hear Plant singing "all my wine" and "in my heart" when Mike does his fingerpicked D variation at the end of every verse line). If you were to boil the songs down to their main melody lines and transpose them to piano, the verses would be virtually indistinguishable. To me, acknowledging the very obvious melodic similarity doesn't diminish the song any more than acknowledging that it's being played on guitars and drums. It also doesn't necessarily constitute a serious accusation of plagiarism.

[epilogue]

To me, acknowledging the very obvious melodic similarity doesn't diminish the song any more than acknowledging that it's being played on guitars and drums. It also doesn't necessarily constitute a serious accusation of plagiarism.

Totally valid. And I agree. Well said.

[evenslow]

I didn't say there was no similarity; I said there's not much similarity, which I maintain that there isn't. I don't hear it in the instrumental parts at all, which is why I agree with evenslow that Mike is talking out of his hole when he says there are "some influences he may have stolen"; if you can (or care enough to) point me to specific points in the song where you're hearing this, I will listen, but from years of memory I don't agree with you. There are some similarities in the vocal melody, sure, but they're simple similarities that I think could very easily have been stumbled upon independently, and certainly don't constitute the degree of "ripoff" that people imply when they comment on the two songs. I think, in all kinds of music, there are constantly fragments of melody, arrangements of chords, etc. that reoccur in varying degrees of frequency, and most of the time they're parts of the musical language that just make sense for artists, as composers, to repeat--instinctively, the brain just goes to sequences of notes that are logically pleasing to people who were raised on music with Western sensibilities. It's true that Led Zeppelin were probably responsible for shaping the members' of Pearl Jam's understanding of these sensibilities, so I think it's reasonable to view Pearl Jam's music as a logical descendent of Zep's, maybe sometimes in a sense that's as literal (i.e. specific note patterns) as it is aesthetic or ideological ("Zeppelin were a huge influence on us, man!"), but I think it ends there. I will buy that "Given to Fly" is a lineal descendent of Zeppelin ballads. I don't think it's a flat-out ripoff of the song. At least in popular music, I think flat-out ripoffs of other people's material, in the sense that someone is trying to pilfer someone else's material and pass it off as their own sans credit for their own profit, are extremely rare.

Then we're arguing about nothing at this point. You didn't say there's no similarity (that's fine, I was mostly addressing evenslow's comment that "it's not there") and I didn't say anything about it being a ripoff. I am in complete agreement that this was, in all likelihood, unintentional, and all the comments the band have made about the "theft" have been mostly in jest (like Stone's "well, Led Zeppelin has stolen from enough people, we can steal from them too"). Where we differ is how we perceive that similarity: to you it's barely there, to me it's pretty obvious, even distracting at times (in that I can hear Plant singing "all my wine" and "in my heart" when Mike does his fingerpicked D variation at the end of every verse line). If you were to boil the songs down to their main melody lines and transpose them to piano, the verses would be virtually indistinguishable. To me, acknowledging the very obvious melodic similarity doesn't diminish the song any more than acknowledging that it's being played on guitars and drums. It also doesn't necessarily constitute a serious accusation of plagiarism.

For what it's worth (absolutely nothing) "it's not there" and "I don't hear it" are completely different things mr. platypus. i'd appreciate a full retraction and pinky swear that this doesn't happen again.

[Lament]

I think part of why this irritates me so much is because there's just so much music out there where artists openly take chord progressions, entire song structures, even entire passages of lyric, from other artists, and present it to the world as something they've created, and it's just an accepted part of the way things are done. Rock music is relatively unique in that it seems like one of the only genres of music where its fans are standing by waiting to catch the artists they love in the act of plagiarism, as though it affords them (the listeners) some kind of superiority in doing so.

I'm glad I'm not the only one who feels this way.

[harmless]

New album out September ???

So is this a thing?

[Birds in Hell]

New album out September ???

So is this a thing?

Given the tour dates being rumoured, it seems a reasonable guess.

[dimejinky99]

Paragraphs. Great name for a record.

[Kevin Davis]

Let me put this another way: Red Hot Chilli Peppers. Yawn. Why? They've been derivative and uninspired for a very long time. Do I not deserve this opinion because every new creation is valid, just because it's new, even if it's as bland as hell? I know a poet who thinks this way (said poet's opinion is 'Every poem is an experiment') and it's just plain not right, imo. Some poems are middle-of-the-road, bland and experiment with nothing at all. And so with songs.

Absolutely. I'm not trying to give a free pass to inherently dull music; I'm only saying that if the same musical idea works for multiple songs (to create not dull music), I don't think the fact that it has been used once necessarily should bar it from being used again. I agree with you about the Chili Peppers, who are definitely in a kind of comfort zone where everything sort of mixes the same ingredients and gives off the same general vibe, but if the net worth of that vibe is "blandness," I would be hesitant to blame that exclusively on their repeating themselves, because I listen to too many artists who've repeated themselves for their entire careers and never made a dull record. I would also differentiate that from the kind of "derivation" being discussed here.

But ultimately you're right: Yes, it's perfectly valid for an individual listener to be put off by something because to them it too closely resembles something else. I understand that, and certainly won't claim to be above it 100% of the time. Unfortunately most people are incapable of stating this position without sounding like a school hall monitor issuing a citation to someone for cruising the establishment's corridors without a bathroom pass, and I maintain that in more cases than not it reflects a self-satisfied smugness that's more irritating than the observation is enlightening.

[EJ]

Paragraphs. Great name for a record.

I'd prefer Wall of Text.