After my post a few days back about pilfering in pop a certain DC (½ of Drunk Country, the man responsible for this abomination) popped up in the comments and started slinging scurrilous accusations around… no well actually, that’s nonsense.  He just mentioned some rather striking similarities between Sonic Youth’s Silver Rocket and Supergrass’s superb Richard III.

Well I’ve listened to the songs and to be honest I can’t hear it.  I mean, as DC rightly points out, the similarities are obvious, but the riff in question is just not all that complicated. It’s effective, but it’s so simple that I personally find it highly plausible that they could have independently hit upon the same thing.  I would certainly be surprised to hear Gaz Coombes come out and admit to having pinched it.  Ultimately rock ‘n’ roll draws on enormously formulaic structures and very few combinations of notes.  The variations on these things must be pretty narrow, particularly when it comes to writing a basic rock riff, so actually I would be tempted to suggest that, if anything, it’s a surprise that this doesn’t happen more often.

DC’s response to my denial was as follows: “bleh” from which I think it is safe to extrapolate some sort of disagreement, but honestly, I just don’t think there’s enough there to warrant any sort of conclusions of pilfering.  Thoughts?

Supergrass – Richard III
Sonic Youth – Silver Rocket