In this week’s Origin of Samples-post a classic case of who’s stealing from who. In 1991 a relatively unknown Seattle band Pearl Jam released an album entitled ‘Ten‘. One track from that album would go on to be one of the anthems of its generation at the explosion of the grunge hype: ‘Alive‘.

Only a year later, on a proverbial attic, some guys got together and made hardcore gabber under the name Neophyte. Eventually a rock guitarist named Jarno Butter (whom I’ve shared some classes with in highschool, but that is a different story) joined their ranks to play with them during live sets. They released many tracks that gained international fame in an underground scene. One of the tracks, released in 1996 under their happy hardcore artist name Bodylotion, was entitled Always Harcore. Although in entirely different genre and not directly sampled from the original, it’s clear the vocal melody from Always Harcore comes directly from Alive.

It’s not uncommon in the hardcore gabber scene to use tons of samples from other music and film quotes (especially if they contain the word ‘fuck’). What isn’t very common however to sample from their own ranks. And that’s basically what German Europop-band Scooter did in 2004 when they ripped the chorus from Always Hardcore and crammed it into their own hit single One (Always Hardcore). Even though pretty much every Scooter song is based on another song, you can still wonder if they knew the original original.

To what extent Neophyte stole/were inspired by Pearl Jam and Scooter stole/were inspired by Neophyte or Pearl Jam, I leave you to judge. Here’s the original Alive: