Tunes that Spawned a Thousand Imitators

Corpsey

bandz ahoy
Doesn't have to be a thousand FYI, I ain't Malcolm Gladwell. Any genre is acceptable. I was thinking of rap music, when a beat gets made and is either so good or used in such a successful tune that it gives birth to a thousand/million bedroom imitators.

I'm pretty sure this is a good example:


Examples, please, of this type of choon and also of its imitators, successful and unsuccessful.

BTW, this can extend to styles of singing/rapping as well as instrumentation.
 

Corpsey

bandz ahoy

thousands is no overstatement

Yessir!

Care to name/post some imitator tunes that did a good job?

It strikes me even this early that you're gonna get a lot of tunes on this thread where it's not so much the tune as A SOUND that got mimicked. Like to name another obvious one:


People mimicked this tune but the 303 allowed them to go anywhere they liked from this starting point. Although, as with MENTASM, ACID TRACKS is so fucking good that it might have been the quality of the tune which made the SOUND go over.
 

Benny Bunter

Well-known member
Been listening to a lot of bo diddley recently so its a good excuse to post this foundational riddim


Not the very 1st example of that rhythm, but this is the one that got ripped off a million times by elvis, buddy holly, the stones etc and a million 60s garage rock bands. Still the best imo.

That incredible tremelo guitar sound too, i could listen to that one chord all day if bo's playing it.
 
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PiLhead

Well-known member
Dominator is the best Mentasm rip off, so good that it became ripped off itself and possibly even more influential than Mentasm
 

sadmanbarty

Well-known member
Distortion+Power Chords+Staccato Riff=


Angus Young says the track was an influence on him. AC/DC repeated the formula several times:




The Kinks copied You Really Got Me with their follow-up single:


Which was very directly ripped off on a couple of notable occasions:



The Doors lost a a law suit and Lydon's also confessed that the riff was indeed borrowed.

Pete Townshend says Can't Explain was an attempt to copy All Day and All of the Night

 

Corpsey

bandz ahoy
That's interesting - it predated '(I Can't Get No) Satisfaction', which was the tune I somehow assumed gave birth to that whole riff-heavy rock sound. In fact, it looks to me like prior to 1965 the Stones were generally doing blues covers. (Someone will shout me down here I guess.)

An interesting idea for another thread would be 'Tunes that you WISH had been influential'.
 

Corpsey

bandz ahoy
Always used to decry imitators but actually I'm quite into the idea of a sound or technique or whatever that is just so effective and appealing to people that they want to hear more of it, or create more of it. Shows you've really hit paydirt when that happens eh?
 

Benny Bunter

Well-known member
i was thinking of you really got me as well, good example. You could argue that the kingsmens version of louie louie is the real root of this, but the kinks is tighter, faster and punchier. Then later you've got troggs wild thing (covered by hendrix of course) taking it in the other direction by slowing it down sleazing it out.
 

sadmanbarty

Well-known member
Always used to decry imitators but actually I'm quite into the idea of a sound or technique or whatever that is just so effective and appealing to people that they want to hear more of it, or create more of it. Shows you've really hit paydirt when that happens eh?

Arguably the difference between novelty and innovation is whether people copy it or not.
 

baboon2004

Darned cockwombles.

obvs. pulse x and acid tracks genre-creating equivalent, i suppose. (no idea if there is an even more foundational tune to digital dancehall in reality - but if you inspire king tubby to do something different, then odds on that you've created something pretty new)
 
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Mr. Tea

Let's Talk About Ceps
That's a very good idea. On the other end of the spectrum you could have 'Music you love that left a terrible legacy'

Sad to say that if Nirvana had never existed, the net impact on the total quality of music in the world would probably be positive, on the basis that Silverchair and Nickleback would presumably never have existed, either. :(
 

Corpsey

bandz ahoy

obvs. pulse x and acid tracks genre-creating equivalent, i suppose. (no idea if there is an even more foundational tune to digital dancehall in reality - but if you inspire king tubby to do something different, then odds on that you've created something pretty new)

http://www.clashmusic.com/features/under-mi-sleng-teng-the-birth-of-digital-dancehall

'Not the first digital track in JA history – Lee ‘Scratch’ Perry began those experiments in the early 70s – the astonishing success of ‘(Under Mi) Sleng Teng’ marked a line in the sand. The usual coteries of studio musicians were out, and digital technology was in.

It’s perhaps overstepping the mark to suggest that without the ‘Sleng Teng’ riddim digital dancehall wouldn’t exist. The movement was already in its primordial stage, and simply needed a spark, an ignition point – Wayne Smith supplied it, and in doing so lit a trail which extends beyond ragga, beyond jungle and into grime and dubstep.'
 

baboon2004

Darned cockwombles.
interesting, thanks

Certainly can't have been popular among many session musicians in Jamaica. I remember reading all about the backlash at the time, but frustratingly I can't find the link now...
 

Corpsey

bandz ahoy
I thought you were making a sort of philosophical point there, droid.

I can't imagine Sleng Ting ever losing its power to spark a dance.
 
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