Bowie's Approach

[awjoe]

There are plenty of artists who technically tick all the boxes for me to be a fan, but on a musical level I can't connect at all, and there are others who fall way outside of my musical comfort zone, but I love what they do anyway.

Well, you did that tune called 'Stars', right? Based on that, I'd like to hear some of the stuff outside your zone that you like anyway.

[Arpangel]

There are plenty of artists who technically tick all the boxes for me to be a fan, but on a musical level I can't connect at all, and there are others who fall way outside of my musical comfort zone, but I love what they do anyway.

Well, you did that tune called 'Stars', right? Based on that, I'd like to hear some of the stuff outside your zone that you like anyway.

Me too, how can you love what they do, if they fall out of your comfort zone?
I have friends who are musicians, but we never talk about music, I have friends who are builders and we talk about music all the time.

[tea for two]

He's one major artist that didn't mind sharing useful wisdom.

This is the thing I dig about Davie Jones. He was open about where he borrowed from.
Davie didn't reinvent the wheel. Davie mish mashed already existing music.

We don't need to reinvent the wheel. There's plenty already out there we can mish mash.

*60s70s rock musicians made a career from borrowing Black music.
*New Order Blue Monday was a mish mashup.
*Jamiroquai, Daft Punk made a career from mish mashing, sampling 70s Disco and Funk.
*The Verve Bitter Sweet Symphony riff probably one of the most famous examples (borrowing Orchestral The Rolling Stones' The Last Time, recorded in 1965 by the Andrew Oldham Orchestra and arranged by David Whitaker
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=9YrllfAMwHI
Resolved 22 years later only in 2019
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-48380600).

[awjoe]

You can borrow as much as you like, but that's not the main thing. The main thing is that it's coming out of your inside, that it's authentically you, that it's not copying. Borrowing okay, copying weak. Johnny Cash 'borrowed' a NIN tune, but he made it real when he did it. Not exactly what Bowie was talking about, but related.

But if you copy because you've got no spark or depth, then that's somewhere on a scale from negligible to despicable, depending on how judgemental the listener is feeling.