Coldplagiarism

I’m not a fan of Coldplay.
I’m not a fan of Joe Satriani.
But the huge tadoo over the web right now is Hi-larious. And what makes it so funny is that Coldplay fans are so upset.
Let me backtrack. I will say that Coldplay’s “Clocks” is about as close to an “our song” as my wife and I have. Swear to God, I didn’t know who it was by, I only knew that when we were together it always seemed to be playing. Finally, one time when I heard that lilting piano pattern I asked her who did the song. She knew and I heard the name as one of those bands that I was supposed to hate. I didn’t mind it, but it sounded an awful lot like U2 and it struck me that even a band that can pull off sounding a lot like U2 can themselves make a career out of it.
When this new album….Livin’ La Vida Loca….came out, my wife wanted it. She hasn’t bought it, and I haven’t downloaded it, I figured that after the Apple commercials had run their course, she’d forget about it. For the most part she has, but somewhere someone was going “This song sounds an awful lot like a song Joe Satriani does.”
And sure as shit, it sounds exactly like that Joe Satriani song.
I joked about it at first, stating that Satriani should be paying Coldplay for suddenly becoming relevant again. But “relevance” is a subjective term, and among guitar fans, I’m sure his name is tossed around with the same reverence as it was when Surfing With The Alien came out. That’s the only Joe Satriani album I know of and I’ll be it’s the only one you can name check too.
He’s apparently shaved his head since then and recorded a few more albums that only regular shoppers at Guitar Center have purchased. It’s hard to imagine a band like Coldplay intentionally lifting a song by Joe Satriani, but it’s pretty obvious that they will absolutely lose the case that Satriani has lobbed at them.
It’s a valid lawsuit and they will pay him when it’s over.
Explanations? Who knows? Maybe a member of Coldplay was at a Guitar Center and some geek played that song over the PA. The melody lodged itself in the band member’s brain and a week or two later a song was created from those innocent synapses.
But I do know that the fallout is way more than what it needs to be and the artsy members of Coldplay need to show some humor about it and send an olive branch…and a paycheck…to Joe Satriani.
Next time, they should lift something from Blues Saraceno.