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Re: covers in general



}Date: Tue, 21 Nov 1995 22:11:26 -0500 (EST)
}From: Ian Derby <csc2imd@cabell.vcu.edu>...responding to an unnamed person...
}Subject: Re: covers in general
}
}> > >
}> > >Well since Townshend lifted things from the Kinks in his early
}> > >writing, I would agree and yet disagree. 
}> > 
}> > I don't know of anything that Townshend "lifted" other than the chord
}> > structure for I Can't Explain (which is no more than The Kinks did to The
}> > Beatles with their version of Long Tall Sally, their first single). You

There's a big difference--neither the Beatles nor the Kinks wrote "Long Tall
Sally".  You might want to use a different analogy...


}> > could say the same about Polly being lifted from Happy Jack...
}> 
}> Polly = Happy Jack?  I have to listen to Polly again.  In Marsh's
}> "Before I Get Old" book he mentions Pete's two upward key changes in
}> My Generation being "pinched" from the Kinks.  There is nothing
}> wrong with any of this, it's just that Pete did build on the Kinks
}> early singles and made them better.  

That is most definitely a matter of opinion, which I do NOT share.  In my
opinion, neither "I Can't Explain" nor "My Generation" had anywhere *near*
the influence that "You Really Got Me" and "All Day and All of the Night"
had on rock music.  It's an easily supported case that the Kinks, with
those two singles, "invented" hard rock.  (You know, guitar-based, heavy
chorded fuzz-box-turn-it-up-loud-thrash-punk unh-unh-unh-unh...  But I
digress. :-)  As much as I like MG & ICE (and I do, I do), I don't think
either of them are better than YRGM and ADAAOTN.  As far as I can recall,
neither of the Who singles made as much impact as the two Kinks hits, not
in North America, anyway.  For anyone who was listening to their transistor
radios back then, if they were like me, those first awesome chords of "You
Really Got Me" and/or "All Day and All of the Night" were truly eye-opening
and mind-blowing...

> Mike <