At The Villa People versus Nalin & Kane
Back in 1996, I heard a track by At The Villa People called Open Your Eyes on a local radio station. I loved this track ever since then, and still do - I even play it regularly to this very day.
Skip forward three years, and all of a sudden Nalin & Kane release a track with the exact same title, which is exactly the same as the version by At The Villa People (ok, granted, it's 99% similar). Apparently since then, their version has been the only version to be included in compilations, and the only one to appear in mixes and remixes (or so it seems).
I never quite understood this. Via Discogs, I've attempted to find a link between them, so I started by checking the artists:
At The Villa People is a project by Bruno Quartier, David Delepierre and Etienne Vandewiele. Nalin & Kane are Andreas Bialek and Ralf Wolfgang Xaver Beck.
There is no link to be found between both - not between the projects or bands, not even between the bandmembers themselves.
So for more than ten years I've been bugged by the following question: how on earth is it possible for an artist to release an exact copy of a track? I can understand remixes or remakes of popular tracks, but a near-exact copy? On the other hand, plagiarism is out of the question - Nalin & Kane are fairly well-know, and given the appearances Open Your Eyes has had (and still gets) on compilation albums, I figure someone should have "found out" by now. If it was plagiarism, I would have heard about it. Still, nobody seems to remember the original track, which is a shame.
I know of a Dutch record label which went bust some years ago, though I cannot seem to recall the name, where they released a lot of 90% similar covers, in order to sell compilations of these similar sounding records. They even "created" bands with similar sounding names as the original bands! But then again, you'd be hard pressed to call Nalin & Kane "unknown artists", even back in 1999.
About a week ago, I've asked this same question on a forum called "GekkeSchijven" (which is Dutch for "crazy discs", an online DJ forum, but so far I have received a lot of views yet no answer.
If there is someone out there who knows the real deal, I'd be really, REALLY grateful to find out!
Thanks!
...and yes, I do wonder too much about these things :)