de=da=duh=D'OH/ bloooooze and thievery

[Paul Mather]

On Thu, 7 Oct 1999, Carl Edlund Anderson wrote:

=> I emphasize that I'm not discussing whether Zeppelin did with the blues
=> songs they ripped off was legally or morally correct, I'm simply suggesting
=> that it was probably pretty similar to the sorts of things pre-recording
=> blues performers did all the time. I think it's an interesting example of
=> how our society's views have changed.

I see what you're getting at, now.  But the important thing to note is
that Zeppelin were *not* "pre-recording blues performers," so it is
unfair to judge them by those societal norms, which had---by your own
admission---drastically changed by then.  So I don't see how they can
adopt this cultural defence, because when they were ripping off songs,
eveybody played by different rules and knew the game.

Hell, their manager, Peter Grant, was a notorious protector of
Zeppelin's own "intellectual property," so it's not as if this was a
foreign milieu to them.

Maybe (being extra generous) they didn't *think* they were plagiarising
anyone (just "borrowing" instead), but I think that is unlikely, and
sheer hubris on their part.

Cheers,

Paul.

NP: Howlin' Wolf, _The Chess Box_

e-mail: paul at gromit.dlib.vt.edu

"I don't live today; maybe tomorrow..."
        --- James Marshall Hendrix