hehe, M. Ted, I'm not as irrate about all this as I probably sound! :)

In all music, there are a few originals and a lot of followers. You can't get mad a people for imitating and even copying sounds that they like (occasionally with, but usually without credit), because, like it or not, that's mostly what music is about.
Fair point, and fair do's to Santa's wife & daughetr too, I agree all that is part of the process and although my preference would be for people to credit their sources if they've pretty much learned somebody elses's version of a song, I can see why sometimes they don't.

But... maybe it's just me, but I rate the originality quite highly. that's kind of why I asked the question in the first place, to see if other people felt the same (and the answer, predictably enough seems to be 'some do, some don't!')

Most performers will understand the work it takes to come up with something new versus allowing yourself to be very heavily influenced by somebody else's version of the same song, but a lot of non-performing audience members don't know anything about it - and why should they? So they will end up thinking somebody's music is marvellous for its own sake and will rush off and buy the cd's and so on, while the person who originally did the leg work doesn't get a look in.