The Great Train of Thought Robbery

March 15, 2005... As you may be able to tell, I have made peace with "classic rock." In doing so, I've come full circle since that fateful day in 1990 when I sold all my classic rock records -- except those by (The) Alice Cooper (Group) and Cheap Trick, of course. I haven't bought them all back, yet --I am fairly certain I can go happily to my grave without ever hearing Uriah Heep again-- but I have bought back quite a few. What's more, I have even learned to appreciate some classic rock bands I could never appreciate before; bands like The Doors and CCR, for example, whose images, for me, were forever bound up in the images of the dirtballs who listened to them in high school. (You know the type: long-haired, rear-derailleur-stealing sacks o' blue collar shit.)

Still, to this day, I will have neither truck nor trade with Rod Stewart.

Jorge Ben - Taj Mahal

Surely, you recognize the melody in today's song from Rod Stewart's 1978 hit, "Do Ya Think I'm Sexy?" Guess who's song came out first. Go ahead, guess. The Jorge Ben song was released first, in 1972, on the album Ben. The discolicious version I've posted today is from his 1976 album Africa Brasil.

Could've been an honest mistake on Stewart's part, I suppose. Maybe he overheard "Taj Mahal" while hob-nobbing with fugitive "Great Train Robber" Ronnie Biggs in Rio, internalized it, and later incorporated its melody into a song without even realizing it had been somebody else's first. Maybe Ronnie Biggs didn't realize the head of the railway engineer he smashed-in with an iron bar wasn't his to smash. It can be difficult to parse these things out sometimes.

In all seriousness, though, I "wrote" an awesome song a few years ago without even realizing that it was really just "Walk, Don't Run."

It happens.

Jorge Ben is still recording, although it is now under the name Jorge Ben Jor. Rumours abound as to why he changed his name, but the rumour I prefer to spread is that the artist believes in numerology and "the numbers work better for him" as Jorge Ben Jor. An excellent article about Ben (Jor), from Perfect Sound Forever, can be found here. Because the version of "Taj Mahal" posted above isn't one of his better performances, I thought I'd post a bonus track today. "Minha Teimosia, Uma Arma Pra Te Conquistar" is from Jorge Ben's very good, mostly acoustic, 1972 album A Tábua de Esmeralda. Enjoy.

Jorge Ben - Minha Teimosia, Uma Arma Pra Te Conquistar

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