> Do you think these people really hear the strident trebles and excited > musicianship of 1970s music and think it stylistically obvious that the hard > 909 kickdrum and joyless trance arrangements of the 1990s are a more vintage > sound? Or has the word "original" become, for them, a euphemism for "version > most familiar to me"?
I think you are correct, in that "original" = "version most familiar to me". Several times now, I've played Stevie Wonder's "Pastime Paradise" (from Songs in the Key of Life), and had people ask me what kind of BAD cover this was of "Coolio".
