And so, out of the ether and into a server comes my fancy new weblog. I refuse to call it a 'blog' as it sounds just too -uh- for words. I'm pretty excited about it, really, and hope I don't lose interest in it. I lose interest in things so quickly. Always have. Let us hope, then, that interest herein remains !

Right now I'm listening to a magazine sampler CD from some wacky German music mag. It's all dark/mystic electronica, so, I suppose I could call it 'gothic' music, or something, but let's not limit ourselves, hm? I like the album a lot, and it has some good stuff on it by artists like Front Line Assembly (I'd forgotten all about them for a while) and Icekalt. The thing is, though, it's got these three songs on it that have based their melodies entirely on songs already in existence. Now, I realise that there is a long history of people using different words to someone else's music, take, for instance, Christmas Carols: Carols are only the words, music didn't come into it, which is why you find so many carols based on music already in existence, or even sharing the same melody as another carol. Anyway, digression !

I will give examples of the songs I mean. First there is this song entitled "Shared Creation" by a band named Garden of Delight (great name, by the way, conjuring up images of 16th century Dutch and German allagorical works of art...), and it's a good song. The thing is, it is very much based on a song by The Cure. Sadly, my memory for names is worse than my attention span, and I don't remember exactly which song it is. But if you listen to "Shared Creation" and are at least familiar with the more commonly played Cure pieces, it will come to you, and you'll end up humming it in harmony. Really ! The second song to 'borrow' from previously published music on this very same album is "Do You Dream in Colours" by Tors of Dartmoor. Of all the odd places to find gothic inspiration... Nirvana? Anyway, it is based in "Smells Like Teen Spirit". Not kidding. And finally, the third song to be someone else's on the album, at least as far as I can tell, is actually 'borrowing' from two different songs. Not just a little bit different, a LOT. There's a story behind it, so let me tell you.

The song in question, "Everything is Broken" by a band called Second Sight, is the last track on this particular album, and it therefore lingers in one's head. This proved to be very irritating. I was at work and I was listening to the album and as "Everything is Broken" started playing, I began to hum along. It took me a moment to realise this, and I put the song on repeat in order to figure out what I had been humming, because it wasn't the song. The first bit was easy to figure out. The song's intro is unmistakably "With or Without You" by U2, yes, even the bassline, though having differing lyrics.

For the second bit, once the song picked up, it was the lyric melody that began to drive me batty. I could hum it. I would hum it and think I almost remembered what it was. When my employer came into the store, I made her listen and it drove her crazy too. She said, "It's 80s, definitely... I'm thinking maybe Depeche Mode." I disagreed. I would know. I live Mode. "A-ha, maybe?" she asked. I thought maybe, but not quite, though there was something about the straining upper register of a male voice singing two octaves too high that seemed right. Rick came in a while later, and I was more frustrated and still confused, and I made him listen. He got a blank look on his face and nodded at the familiarity, but he, too, could not place it.

Sometime later, back at home, I made Adina, my housemate's girlfriend listen to it too, and it kept her from doing her biology homework, poor girl. And she so dearly loves her biology homework. I was talking to my mother on the phone sometime later than that, in lieu of me doing MY homework, and the stupid melody was still cycling its way through my head. As we talked, images from way back when I was in grade eight kept circling through my head. Now, I didn't much love grade eight, and certainly not the people that kept popping into my brain, and they did it in time to the tune. I put down the phone and concentrated on the images. They were from the grad video I worked on (yes, I was an audio-visual nerd) and I realised they were a particular sequence that ran under one particular song. THE song.

You have to wonder about any dark electronic band that rips off Alphaville's "Forever Young", you know? Pretty wacky, I say, but mystery solved.