Musical Pet Peeve

[ewalling]

Originally Posted by Ed-in-Ohio

Performers who record public domain songs (this especially happens with old Delta Blues stuff), and claim a songwriting credit.

I absolutely love Led Zeppelin, but I will never forgive them for claiming songwriting credit for several Delta Blues classics they recorded throughout their career. This is terrible for two reasons:

• 1. Most importantly, it fails to recognize the talent and effort of the original Delta Blues pioneering musicians, and
• 2. It deprives listeners who love these songs exposure to the early artists. It was not for several years after hearing these songs that I knew to research back to find their origin.

Weak Led Zeppelin...Weak.

Oh, not this again ...

Do you think the early blues artists acknowledged their peers from whom they 'borrowed' riffs, lines and tunes? The practice was rife, and these manoeuvers were far less shameless than Led Zep's highly imaginative use of the material. At least Led Zep turned these pieces into something so different that they could legitimately call them their own; the early blues artists did very little to adapt others' stuff before slapping their own names on it.

[Acousticado]

Originally Posted by A-Mac

I must say I get irritated at acts who call themselves something like X and the Ys where no one is actually named X, but they get honked off when people assume the lead singer is X. Or they choose a name that could be an individual like Jethro Tull or Lynyrd Skynyrd. I recently saw an interview in which Hillary Scott of Lady Antebellum was expressing annoyance that people thought that she was Lady Antebellum. Hey kid, what did you think was going to happen when you chose that name for the group?

An example of a twist on this, Alice Cooper started out as the band name before Vincent Furnier, the outrageous singer/frontman, assumed the Alice identity and ran with it. If I recall correctly, this caused a major riff when Vince won the right to use the name as a solo artist.