You know the new iPod Nano commercial? The one for the one with video and a really catchy song? (At first I thought it was one of the female singers from Squirrel Nut Zippers singing backup - it sounds a bit like her - but no, it's a couple of Swedish indie rockers). (The song is called "Bourgeois Shangri-la")
Anyway, the tune kept bugging me - the tinkly intro, and all that. I had heard something like that before.
Yup:
I wouldn't call it a "rip off" but it's certainly an "inspired by" I think.
(And you know? Gary Lewis does look like his dad. I guess I never really saw video of him before.)
I have a very good "auditory memory" - to the point where sometimes tunes used in commercials strike me funny because they are so out of context. Three I remember:
"House of the Rising Sun" used for some sports drink (IIRC), showing runners "burning out" on the road. (The song is itself about a guy in a New Orleans brothel, or at least the version I know is)
"La Goulante du Pauvre Jean" used for Dove shampoo (It's a French song, essentially about a guy who turns to crime because girls won't fall in love with him. And he winds up being hanged in the end.)
and, most ridiculously, "Little Bitty Pretty One" turned into a sort of Zen chant for a green tea beverage.
I could probably serve as a detective or expert witness in cases where one artist is accused of plagiarizing another artist's song. If I've heard it more than once, I remember it.
(Sadly, that memory does not seem to be able to extend - at least yet - to playing piano "by ear.")
2 comments:
Whether "House of the Rising Sun" is about a boy or a girl in a New Orleans brothel depends on whom you ask, really; both men and women have recorded it over the years, with only minor variations in the lyrics. (And some bend the genders; Bob Dylan's version takes the female point of view.)
I am, of course, greatly impressed that one so young recalls anything about Gary Lewis and the Playboys, as synthetic a band as existed outside the Monkee house, yet which put out some spiffy sides with the help of some serious pros: "This Diamond Ring," their biggest hit, was co-written by Blood, Sweat & Tears founder Al Kooper, and Tulsa keyboardist Leon Russell plays on it. (I think it's Glen D. Hardin, though, on "Count Me In"; he wrote it, after all.) Gary also does a wicked Jerry impression, as we found out when we turned over the single of "Everybody Loves a Clown" and found "Time Stands Still."
Trini and I are constantly looking out for songs that seem to borrow bits of other songs, a habit which started with Local H's "24 Hour Breakup Session," which is heavily based on the Doors' "Hello I Love You," which in turn is perilously close to the Kinks' "All Day and All of the Night." You can't keep a good riff down, I always say.
"Pauvre Jean," in the States, was released as a sprightly instrumental by Les Baxter and his orchestra under the title "Poor People of Paris." It was many years before I discovered what it was really about.
Re: House of the Rising Sun, you might find this interesting.
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