The Replacements are getting a lot of bloggy attention this week for their 1987 song about Alex Chilton ("Alex Chilton"):
Long before that song, though, they wrote a song about the band Husker Du:
It's not quite as good as "Alex Chilton".
This comes to mind thanks to Matt Yglesias who notes:
...I think it’s worth observing that the only reason I ever heard Big Star was because of The Replacements’ song “Alex Chilton”. And while the current generation will probably be exposed to The Replacements thanks to Rock Band 2, I was first introduced to the band thanks to the They Might Be Giants song “We’re The Replacements.”
So now my head is stuck on the task of finding songs who explicitly reference other bands in their lyrics - trying to find the longest chain of band-to-band references I can. I haven't come up with anything better than the two-link chain that Yglesias notes: TMBG -> Replacements -> Big Star. And I can't think of anyone who references TMBG, and I don't think Big Star made any references to other bands.
I've come up with a lot of other references:
Yo La Tengo references the band America in their song "Lewis", and the Stones (and The Beatles, I suppose) in "Paul Is Dead".
Robyn Hitchcock -> Eazy E in "Where Do You Go When You Die", David Byrne in "Freeze", Nick Drake in "I Saw Nick Drake", the Higsons in "Listening To The Higsons", and there are probably a dozen others.
Pavement -> REM in "Unseen Power Of The Picket Fence", Smashing Pumpkins and Stone Temple Pilots in "Range Life", Vanilla Ice (and Madonna, indirectly, I think) in "Summer Babe", Geddy Lee in "Stereo".
Fire"
Calexico -> Stevie Nicks in "Not Even Stevie Nicks"
Liz Phair -> Galaxie 500 in "Stratford On Guy".
Billy Joel -> Buddy Holly, The Beatles, Dylan in "We Didn't Start The
The Who -> T Rex in "You Better You Bet".
The Pixies -> Lou Reed in "I've Been Tired".
The Police -> James Brown in "When The World Is Running Down".
Miley Cyrus -> Britney and Jay-Z in "Party In The USA".
Sonic Youth -> Carpenters in "Tunic", Maddona in "Master-Dik".
Deep Purple -> Frank Zappa, Rolling Stones in "Smoke On The Water".
Gillian Welch -> Steve Miller in "My First Lover".
Led Zeppelin -> Roy Harper in "Hats Off To Harper".
Eddie Money -> Ronnie Spector, "Take Me Home Tonight".
Van Morrison -> Jackie Wilson in "Jackie Wilson Said".
Tom Tom Club -> James Brown in "Genius Of Love".
Golden Earring -> Brenda Lee in "Radar Love".
Juliana Hatfield -> Nirvana in "Nirvana"
Lynyrd Skynyrd -> Neil Young in "Sweet Home Alabama".
Vampire Weekend -> Peter Gabriel in "Cape Cod Kwassa Kwassa".
John Mellencamp went big with Frankie Lymon, Bobby Fuller, Mitch Ryder, Jackie Wilson, Shangrilas, Young Rascals, Martha Reeves, and let's don't forget James Brown in "R.O.C.K. In The USA".
The Dead Milkmen went all-out in "Instant Club Hit" and referenced Depeche Mode, The Smiths, The Communards, Book Of Love, Public Image Limited, Naked Truth, and Siouxsie And The Banshees.
But if we allow indirect references, nothing beats Don McLean's "American Pie": Buddy Holly, The Beatles, John Lennon, Rolling Stones, The Monotones, Lovin' Spoonful, Dylan, The Byrds, Janis Joplin, Ritchie Valens, The Big Bopper, and probably a couple of others.
There are a million "Elvis" references.
...but I can't come up with a two-step link. I know there must be others besides TMBG->Replacements->Big Star. Somebody must have a Zeppelin or Skynyrd reference; and I'd be surprised if Michael Stipe didn't mumble the name of some other band at one point. Just can't think of them...
This would be so easy as to be pointless if I stuck with hip-hop, since name-checks are a staple of the form. But it's much less prevalent in rock music.
Because content owners large and small use YouTube in so many different ways, determining a particular copyright holder’s preference or a particular uploader’s authority over a given video on YouTube is difficult at best. And in this case, it was made even harder by Viacom’s own practices.
For years, Viacom continuously and secretly uploaded its content to YouTube, even while publicly complaining about its presence there. It hired no fewer than 18 different marketing agencies to upload its content to the site. It deliberately "roughed up" the videos to make them look stolen or leaked. It opened YouTube accounts using phony email addresses. It even sent employees to Kinko's to upload clips from computers that couldn't be traced to Viacom. And in an effort to promote its own shows, as a matter of company policy Viacom routinely left up clips from shows that had been uploaded to YouTube by ordinary users. Executives as high up as the president of Comedy Central and the head of MTV Networks felt "very strongly" that clips from shows like The Daily Show and The Colbert Report should remain on YouTube.
Viacom's efforts to disguise its promotional use of YouTube worked so well that even its own employees could not keep track of everything it was posting or leaving up on the site. As a result, on countless occasions Viacom demanded the removal of clips that it had uploaded to YouTube, only to return later to sheepishly ask for their reinstatement. In fact, some of the very clips that Viacom is suing us over were actually uploaded by Viacom itself.
Given Viacom’s own actions, there is no way YouTube could ever have known which Viacom content was and was not authorized to be on the site. But Viacom thinks YouTube should somehow have figured it out. The legal rule that Viacom seeks would require YouTube -- and every Web platform -- to investigate and police all content users upload, and would subject those web sites to crushing liability if they get it wrong.
