The Originality Question

I had a conversation with a friend about the state of music a few weeks ago, and it caused me to go into one of those phases where a question bugs me and bugs me. We were debating whether there's anything truly "new and original" out there musically, each blasting some bands for sounding the same over and over again. I even ended up blasting one of my own favorites, Blues Traveler, for the really sad act of putting out an album of cover songs of their own composition.

And the more I thought about it, the more convinced I am that there is actually nothing new under the sun. You can argue that there hasn't been since Grandmaster Flash took to the mike, and even that might be debatable. Every artist owes a debt to some musical influence to someone.

Take Vampire Weekend, one of the it bands of the moment. Their new album, which I love, gets praise for being fresh and original. But basically they're writing pop songs with African and Carribbean beats, something that Paul Simon did on Graceland 20-plus years ago. And Paul Simon wasn't exactly the first person to discover African music but he won a Grammy for it.

You can play this sort of musical Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon for just about every band. The Beatles built on Chuck Berry. The Rolling Stones and Led Zeppelin stole from every bluesman around, and Eddie Van Halen took many pages out of Jimmy Page's playbook.

I guess what matters is how you put all those influences together. Making it sound fresh becomes the challenge, or you'll end up like the Red Hot Chili Peppers, ripping entire songs right out from under Tom Petty's nose.

As long as an artist acknowledges and embraces those influences rather than ignoring them, I say go for it. Most musicians understand the history involved. Nothing though bugs me more than listening to some self-described genius act as if their album sprang forth from their amplifiers and changed the face of music by the sheer virtue of their own brilliant originality. Usually its in an interview on some "modern rock station" that seems to think everything produced after 1991 just magically happened.

Embrace the past, use it to build the future. Play the good shit. No matter when it came out.