Pop quiz: what do an anime from the late '80s and GaGaGa SP have in common?

On Monday, documentary filmmaker Kirby Ferguson released the third episode in his four-part documentary Everything is a Remix. If you haven’t been keeping up with this extremely well-produced series that takes a look at…well, just about everything to understand where ideas come from and how they evolve, you have some homework to do. Episode three, subtitled “The Elements of Creativity” begins by lifting the veil we call “inspiration” and facing a cold, hard fact: before we can create original ideas, we must copy.

“Put simply, copying is how we learn,” Ferguson says. “We can’t introduce anything new until we’re fluent in the language of our domain, and we do that through emulation.”

Musically speaking, this makes complete sense. Every band is (at least at one point in their career or another) derivative of another. The Beatles were heavily influenced by Chuck Berry and Elvis. With The Beatles even features a cover version of Chuck Berry’s “Roll Over Beethoven.” X Japan owes a debt of gratitude to Kiss, Loudness, and Frank Marino whose song ” The World Anthem” was adopted and used frequently by X Japan in their live performances. Without DEVO, there would be no Polysics. Without The Ramones there would be no Shonen Knife. If there is such a thing as musical inspiration, we may define it as the moment that the ideas of the old guard are held aloft by the new and allowed to evolve.

In the last post, I inserted a little more of myself than I would like when I introduced a personal J music favorite of mine: GaGaGa SP. I appreciate you indulging me. My personal bias for the band aside, I introduced them so I could talk to you about one of my favorite songs (really appreciate you indulging me): “My First Kiss.” You see, it’s not actually their song. It’s a cover; a cover that has been copied, altered, switched around, and played so many times by so many musicians that trying to track them all down could be nothing but an exercise in futility.

In short, “My First Kiss” is a song in the Japanese music consciousness that continues to evolve as it gets passed down from band to band through the generations. And like almost no stories about evolution, this one begins with a time-traveling robot.
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