Kraftwerk More Influential Than the Beatles

Here's an idea then: Using only samples, you try putting together a song that other people will actually want to listen to more than once. Should be no problem for you right, unless you're "lazy" and/or "a thief"?

This experiment should provide you with all the "incontrovertible evidence" you need. Good luck. And please post your result in this thread.

 

So, let me get this straight. Are you saying Kraftwerk influenced every artist who looks related to a family known internationally for their hotel & golf coarse investment properties among other things?


Cat

 

Looking forward to hearing your sample-based number one hit. I can't wait!


Ninja

 

Sorry, my friend, I'm an artist good and true, but not in the music industry. That said, by way of analogy, I'd never borrow someone else's artistic creation, either in whole or piecemeal fashion, rework it and try to pass it off as my own. Maybe that is an acceptable practice in the music business for certain types of contemporary music and the artists who produce it, but it has never appealed to me. In literature, such endeavors are usually described as plagiarism.


Cat

 

Right, so in other words you have no idea what it takes to create a listenable track from samples. And yet, you call those who do "lazy" and "thieves". Why am I not surprised...

I suppose you never actually opened a book before you started writing either. That none of your ideas have come from reading other authors, and that all your work is original.

The thing is, nothing comes from a vacuum, and in real life the best artists borrow and steal from others without shame. At least the guys using samples have the spine to admit to that simple fact.

 

Well, let's not forget the Beatles are guilty of "plagiarism" as well.

 

Like I've already said, any truly worthwile artist(s) are guilty of "plagiarism".

If you live under a rock, completely isolated from any sort of outside influence, you are not going to emerge one day with a masterpiece that will be loved by all. Things just don't work like that.

 

Major modern artists who sample like this almost always credit their sources. If you read the liner notes to Beck's Odelay, you can see all the stuff he samples, but he takes those inspirations and makes something fresh with them, IMO. His samples of two Them tracks ultimately led me back to appreciate the classic originals, though I think Beck succeeds in making them his own. That's just to name one example off the top of my head. We can debate the validity of sampling, a creative practice that has been going on in music since the 60s and 70s, but I don't think it's fair to equate it with plagiarism if they note the sources, any more than a credited cover.

 

I guess Coltrane "plagiarised" the The Sound Of Music soundtrack every time he played My Favorite Things with his band. What a lazy thief he was.

 

So lazy.

 

That's why you are no Picasso.

As he said: "When there's anything to steal , I steal". And: "Good artists copy, great artists steal."

 

Ignorance is a bless. Very popular in some parts of the world. I'm told you can even be president of the US with that attitude! Go for it!

 

No, but it was funny to notice how far influence can go. The members of Kraftwerk were five years ahead in fashion (and still the maestros in being best dressed). That (unintentional) influence was just for a short period of time, more or less the first half of the eighties.

Take your avatar, that guy was clearly influenced by the cavemen. Fashion ideas can travel sometimes also for a long time

 

My ideas come from many years of experience and education. I'm assuming your's do as well, although I have a predisposition for thinking the best of people barring overwhelming evidence to the contrary.

Not if you never use it or empty it.

Those who borrow or steal without shame used to be called con artists. I suppose the definition could've changed over the years. Yes, there are many fine performers who've borrowed or taken other artist's work and made money off of it. Led Zeppelin is notorious for it, but they've also spent a lot of time in court.

The shameless part is where ethics are involved; that's real life. It can lead to legal entanglements if original artists aren't credited & paid for their unsolicited contributions. I suspect this is when spines start to weaken.

You have a point, they were years ahead, but it's not surprising that the punk movement came to prominence first.

Cavemen still trump fashion nerds in some places.


Cat

 

That's definitely abstract thinking.


Cat

 

Hate to break the news to you but Bob Dylan's just won the Nobel Prize for Literature. Even his acceptance speech was 'borrowed' from other sources.

 

Sampling artists don't try to pass off the elements they use as their own. They never have.

 

The biggest influence on Dylan from the UK was not the Beatles but another act from the North of England:

 

Sampling and tape loops both existed in music long before the Beatles, but I think that what Bartos meant was that they were the first to introduce them into pop music.

As for 'Tomorrow Never Knows', as far as I know it was the first merging of tape loops, sampling, drones, raga, etc, and it definitely cast a large shadow over the 90's 'Big Beat' scene'.

 

I've no idea what any of that actually means.

I'm not the least bit interested in your spelling woes. I was querying what may have been the only point in your post pertinent to Kraftwerk – use of a mellotron.

 

Ha! I literally watch 'The Day Today' or 'Brasseye' every few weeks; I have always loved that Formby part.

 

to me, kraftwerk were far more influential out of the gate than the beatles. let's face it...the beatles were just another cute pop band when they started. as they went along they certainly began to experiment, using others' influence and inspiration, but I wouldn't say they invented anything. it was all there already and they just rolled with it.

 

the beatles were very popular, so they could get away with more. there were undoubtedly others doing the same things, but they didn't have the commercial pull to get away with it.

 

I disagree; they were nothing like the pop bands who already existed (Motown acts, Beach Boys, Four Seasons, etc), and even Dylan had this to say about their early work:

"They were doing things nobody was doing. Their chords were outrageous, just outrageous, and their harmonies made it all valid. They were pointing the direction music had to go.''

As for not inventing anything, can you point to a song like 'Within You Without You' or 'Tomorrow Never Knows' by another act before them? Those songs were unique, merging different forms of music that no-one else in pop ever had in that way. The recent BBC 'Pepper' documentary goes into detail regarding how 'Within You Without You' was unlike all previous pop songs or raga, even including previous pop songs that showed a raga influence.

As for 'Tomorrow Never Knows', just watch this from minute 41/42 :



There is no need to downplay the Beatles achievements merely to big up Kraftwerk. Both acts were hugely groundbreaking and influential.

 

A bold claim indeed. Where were these other bands then? What are the pop songs that use those techniques?

The Beatles had paved the way for the other British invasion groups, and Brian Wilson was given studio freedom when making 'Pet Sounds'; where are their tape loop/raga mergings before 'Tomorrow Never Knows'?

The fact that the Beatles were popular makes their willingness to experiment and take risks even more fantastic; look how easily they could have isolated their fanbase and ended up unpopular and ignored?

One Direction were huge, as were the Bay City Rollers; where are their groundbreaking experiments?