Ortho Stice commented on my post about Vampire Weekend:
Oh come on, Darren. Vampire Weekend are yet another group of privileged white kids stealing sweet beats from Africa. We all have heard this before on our Afro-Fusion compilation CDs.
One could also foolishly argue that all rock and roll comes from Africa, but does that mean Elvis shouldn’t have curled his lip and wiggled his hip? Influence and inspiration are good things. When you mix two or three or four different genres together you make something new. I’m not saying Vampire Weekend are particularly new, but at least they are trying to move outside the current trend of spiky guitar pop. The use of a mellotron also scores extra points.