For some reason, people do not mind when a band like Elastica steals music from punk rock bands. They just continue to listen to the music as if Elastica was the band that created it. What has made people who listen to pop music feel like it is acceptable for a band to blatantly copy music from older bands and sell it as their own? This happened in 1995 when Elastica released their first, self-titled album. The first single on this album, "Connection", is a deliberate rip-off of Wire's "Three Girl Rhumba". And to make things worse, another song on the album, "Waking Up", has an unmistakably similar sound to the punk band The Stranglers' song "No More Heroes".
Additionally, Elastica credits Wire and The Stranglers as major influences on their sound. I remember when Elastica's album came out, and I was not happy with their thieving sound. But to my surprise, the people I went to school with did not care that this band was a bunch of crooks. Possibly this was because it was a few punk bands that they ripped-off and nobody from that generation had really heard of the older 70's bands anyway. I still do not feel that is a valid reason for condoning Elastica's album.
I don't understand why every sale of the album Elastica was not accompanied with Wire's Pink Flags and The Stranglers' No More Heroes albums. I have a feeling it's because the general public does not feel like punk rock bands are very important since they do not make up a substantial portion of the major music that is distributed. But I think this history lesson shows them otherwise since they enjoyed the music that a popular band put out even though it sounds exactly like the unpopular punk music. This is just a case of the media telling us who is important and who is not.
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