The record “Let My Song Through” was released by the former Van Morrison vehicle Them in 1971. The Irish band had recently been pared down to a trio and now included Americans, as befit their new Los Angeles homebase. The song was included in the album Them in Reality, an album which followed no particular concept, but rocked in an agreeably non-pretentious way. Think Grand Funk. Think Cream before Clapton's blues fixation went over big live and turned into drug-fueled PG-13 rated circle jerks (in other words, check out the first album (Amazon hyperlink underscored)). The world wouldn't change if you listened to this album while in a transcendent state of mind, but the party would very likely be better.
In 1974, Southern Rock tentpoles Lynyrd Skynyrd released the album Second Helping. A song exists on this record that nakedly copies the main riff from the aforementioned Them composition. According to the latter piece's appointed Wikipedia entry (found catty-corner to one concerned with an eponymous movie), at practice the bass guy switched to guitar (likely his natural instrument) and found inspiration in something the other guitarist handy was playing. This is likely how the cross-pollination occurred. Successful businessmen (of the multi-platinum Skynyrd variety, in this case) know how to transform artifacts that embody current cultural cachet (moderately old-fashioned British blues rock, in this case) into product that will keep the originators wage slaves of theirs for a very long time. On-hand Producer Al Kooper, whose star had first shone as the guest star on keyboards for Bob Dylan's epochal “Like a Rolling Stone”, likely had learned a thing or two about this over the years.
Books have been written about “Like a Rolling Stone.” Entire books. Granted, they're by guys like Greill Marcus (aka the singular target viewing audience for Dylan's impenetrable 2003 film Masked and Anonymous), but that's not the point. The point is that when things like “Sweet Home Alabama” happen, things like Kid Rock happen. He laid this naked when he rapped over the same Them riff he re-contextualized (directly this time! through sampling!) from the previous copiers, and seemingly all of Middle America rocked right along with him.
It's hysterical to think that at one point, the “rawkers” of the high school music critic world found “creative bankruptcy” in keyboard/electronic/sample-based music the same way hipsters now are so quick to condescend to the emo kids that are becoming them. If you're creative, you find any fucking way you can to express it. In this author's case, you will sabotage your pristine, relatively easy, professionally laid-out life to follow this passion and later run around in circles, claiming that it's somebody else's fault.
The internet is starting to make it abundantly clear what possibilities exist when people as fucked up as the aforementioned writer (and perhaps you, the heretofore unmentioned reader, as well!) have access to the means of production, not to mention the eyes of others. If you're creative, you see that and you chase that, holding on by the stubs of bitten nails. And being a good soldier, trying to finance whatever beautiful personal figurative jewel it is that you happen to treasure at the moment, means compromise. Sastifaction can't be found working day after day for the man. Or in anything else for that matter.
Rather, as we kindly look back to our authenticity aficionados, we ask them instead to hate the fuckers who steal once-warmed-over material. Even if it is guys like Led Zeppelin who are sometimes guilty of this. They already probably have everything they ever wanted. Some subsection of the population somewhere is no doubt enraptured by their story; they probably just want more of whatever it is they fancy. Allegedly, these types are quick to send out the cyber police when people are discovering their second-hand music for free. At least I think that's what I learned about “rock stars” and “business men” and “selling out” from the Kurt Cobain Memorial Hipster Book Club and University.
Have you ever been there? What a place. The football team always loses and is made up of “cool guys.”
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