How about... Ghostmutt?

The plagiarism needs to stop. I'm not talking about ripping off a book report on Catcher in the Rye here. No. I'm talking about our unconscious stealing of ideas. After my experiences, I've learned that there's definitely some kind of ether surrounding the world which acts as a pool for all creative thought. Once you have an idea, it joins this pool and becomes part of a global, public domain... One that anyone can access. Problem is, a person can't pick and choose from that pool. He just gets hit, randomly. This ether has fucked me over on more than one occasion. Each having to do with music...

The year was 1997. Clinton was in the White house, and little did we know, Monica Lewinsky (that's gold, Jerry, gold!). Pop Music had begun to shift from grungy alternative to something a little less suicidal. The melodic, bubblegum sound of bands (I use the term loosely) like Hanson and the Backstreet Boys had started to replace Nirvana and Pearl Jams' heavy distortion. Some newcomers incorporated both styles into one crowd-pleasing sound. One such pioneer was Third Eye Blind.

I was making a transition of my own back then. I had just graduated from eighth grade and, in the fall, would begin my freshman year of high school. I had been very into learning to play the electric guitar, having received it as a Christmas present some months ago. I didn't know many songs or chords yet, so most of my practicing involved combining sounds I could actually play. In doing this, I came across a little riff I rather enjoyed. It was hard and fast, but catchy in a I-IV-V sort of way. I was hooked. I played until my fingers bled (as the song goes). I was becoming an artist.

Flash forward a month or two. My friend and I were out at his parent's camp on Lake Champlain in Mallet's Bay. It was a sunny day... we'd probably go water-skiing later on. But we were sitting there, with the radio on, playing cards on his porch, when, out of nowhere, I heard something shockingly familiar:

C C C D D D G G G G G G

The chords I had so joyfully created and played had been recorded, digitized and sent through the airwaves. I couldn't believe my ears.

The band went on to sing the verse and chorus, but that just disgusted me further. How dare they put these words to my masterpiece..? That is not how I would have handled things.

The song finished and DJ slid in with "That was Third Eye Blind with Semi-Charmed Life."
The thieves had a name.

And that was when I realized that there was something greater than just us in this world. It was like file-sharing for the earth, except replace 'file' with "brilliant idea" and 'sharing' with 'stealing'. I now know where Metallica is coming from.

The worst part was that is was the exact same phrase of music. Same rhythm, same intensity, same strumming. Even the fingering was duplicated. The C they played was actually a Cadd9: The very same chord to my song. Ugh.

Epilogue:
The reason I write this now was that it happened again. I was listening to Zox, and they copied the exact same chord progression I had thought up. I knew it was the same, because I've heard those chords so many times before... from my guitar.

Also, the opposite has happened. I was fiddling around one day when, I made up a neat little song. I found out later that I had invented "Superman" by Goldfinger... after the song had come out. Now, if I were to steal it, they'd call it plagiarism for real. Where's the justice?