As is commonly the case,. I find myself in agreement with Jerry. The ointment is all the better with a fly in it.

What he said was pretty close to what I meant by saying of originality that "It happens and it's good that it happens, but it's not the object of the exercise".

There are two extremes - one is when we try to slavishly copy what has been done in a mechanical way, turn ourselves into tape recorders or player pianos; and the other is when we desperately alter things from the way we might naturally feel it right to do them, merely in order to be "original", "different".

And of course, over and above that, there are times when copying is done as a way of making some kind of comment, as a specific part of what we are trying to get across, as Paul Burke just pointed out. Which is what it appears to me Billy Bragg was doing in "The Lonesome Death of Rachel Corrie" - but I'd suggest that it'd be better to leave discussion about that in the appropriate thread rather than try to carry it on in two threads in parallel.