I was listening to my music library randomly today and heard a song from a band called “The Amps” that I’ve never listened to and it sounded so familiar I thought it was a cover version.
In 1989, New Model Army released “Inheritance” and it starts like this:
https://troyandgay.com/uploads/2010/01/Inheritance.mov
10 years later, in 1999, The Amps (formed by Kim Deal of the Pixies and The Breeders) released “Hoverin” and it starts like this:
https://troyandgay.com/uploads/2010/01/Hoverin.mov
That’s a blatant rip-off, in my opinion.
Troy & Gay 
“Good artists borrow, great artists steal.”–attributed to Picasso
Picasso never said that, although it’s often attributed to him. This explains it: http://nancyprager.wordpress.com/2007/05/08/good-poets-borrow-great-poets-steal/
It came from a paraphrasing of something T.S. Eliot said about poets:
“One of the surest tests [of the superiority or inferiority of a poet] is the way in which a poet borrows. Immature poets imitate; mature poets steal; bad poets deface what they take, and good poets make it into something better, or at least something different. The good poet welds his theft into a whole of feeling which is unique, utterly different than that from which it is torn; the bad poet throws it into something which has no cohesion. A good poet will usually borrow from authors remote in time, or alien in language, or diverse in interest.”
That doesn’t at all say that great poets/artists steal. They’re influenced, of course, but they should always change/improve it.
The Amps stole it and made it worse.