It’s Only Rock and Roll

June 30, 2008  by in UnCategorized   

By Home Furnishings Business in on July 2008 Furniture design for the mainstream market sometimes reminds me of rock and roll music. The songs I grew up listening to generally were built around a set of familiar chord progressions culled from the blues masters of the early and middle 20th century.

While the basics they used were similar, sometimes even identical, musicians managed to get a wide variety of sounds out of those old, reliable structures. Likewise, for most of the furniture I see at markets, there really is nothing incredibly new. In furniture as in rock, it’s the recombinations and fresh takes that make the difference, and when I shop, I don’t feel slighted by the options I see—our industry often gets accused of providing consumers with a “sea of brown,” but I’ve always found enough variety to suit my preferences.

Here’s another similarity—knockoffs. While rock musicians and furniture vendors both tend to draw from respective common wells of inspiration, sometimes the similarity ends up too much to bear for another band in rock’s case, or a competing vendor in furniture’s.

Some of the events in our industry that are discussed in this issue got me thinking back on some musical dust-ups from years past.

I suppose the most famous knockoff case in rock and roll was in 1976 when former Beatle George Harrison had to give up royalties on his 1971 song “My Sweet Lord” after a judge ruled him guilty of “unconscious plagiarism” of The Chiffons’ “He’s So Fine” from 1963. For his part, Harrison claimed he’d been inspired by the Edwin Hawkins Singers’ “Oh Happy Day.” Go figure.

In 1985, Ray Parker Jr. had to settle out of court with Huey Lewis & the News after Parker’s theme song to “Ghostbusters” drew Huey and company’s ire over similarities to their own hit song “I Want a New Drug.” (How those guys could claim sole ownership of most of their hooks leaves me baffled.)

For years now, “sampling”—i.e. incorporating actual parts of songs, generally rock songs, into a track—has been standard operating procedure among some hip-hop artists. I remember the kick I got watching “Saturday Night Live” in 1991 when Dennis Miller’s “Weekend Update” segment led in with a snippet of “Under Pressure” from Queen and David Bowie—just after Vanilla Ice performed “Ice Ice Baby,” which sampled from the earlier song. Miller mused about how much he loved the Bowie/Queen collaboration and how great it would be if someone made another song with it.

And, like rock and roll, the furniture industry has seen its share of lemming-like behavior. I remember back around 10 years or so ago when my mentor at Furniture/Today, Brian Carroll, and I were prowling premarket showrooms in High Point. It was the season after Stanley had introduced a blond maple “lifestyle” collection with nickel hardware.

It seemed that in every showroom we entered, our hosts would say, “And here (insert drumroll) is our new collection.” We thought we were in a “Groundhog Day” of light-finish casual contemporary bedroom and dining room, and brushed metal hardware.

I call it furniture’s “Disco Era.” While the goods looked nice and weren’t so groan-inducing as disco music from the likes of Rod Stewart or the Rolling Stones, it was a little depressing to see that level of sameness in our industry.

In conclusion, I’d like to pose this question. Why the heck didn’t Foghat ever sue Aero-smith? Anyone here ever listen to “Honey Hush” and “Train Kept a Rollin’” back to back? No, wait a minute—both songs are covers of records from the 1950s. I’m confused.

Thanks for your time.