Controversial opinions

Geez Deez
Does this mean we can't trust what is put out by the media?

 

Only if it is confirmed by the internet because everything on the internet is true.

 

Sergeant Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band was the first major Progressive Rock/Prog-Rock album.

 

And a few songs thereon might have had something to do with mind-altering drugs. I’ve been told.

Nahhhhhh. Couldn’t be…

 

Re- Bungalow Bill (from the White Album):


Most People who hunt tigers are arseholes.

 

I am not the walrus

 

Glad to know you’re still alive, and not an imposter.

 

Of that era, I have always preferred the Stones for rock. For my lifetime, the single artist I most appreciate is Johnny Cash.

These days I look for Americana, Texas country (f Nashville's pop/country crap), and the like.

I look at the Beatles in the same way I looked at Michael Jackson, Madonna, and any number of other MTV era "entertainers". When their hype gets so overblown, and it becomes almost impossible to escape whatever screeching noise they produce, I go into "screw them" mode, and immediately turn the dial any time some DJ is banal enough to think people want to hear that crap - again.

 

Basically the 60s. The Who were virtuosos that should be obvious. The Beatles were pop like N Sync and K Pop. Zeppelin's first album came out in 69, after those other bands were already big. There is overlap in their "eras". But to me Zeppelin is like Rock 2.0.

Your claims are more coincidence than causal because the music style is much different and the source material was much different. The Rolling Stones, The Who, Yardbirds, and Zeppelin were all copying American roots music. They were playing elevated Blues. The Beatles weren't doing that. Like I said they were big commercially the same way the Back Street Boys were big.

Well yeah there was no competition. Jimi was miles better . He wasn't all that different though. He played elevated Blues like the other bands I listed. He added psychedelic and soul influences into his music but the foundation was Blues rock.

 

Here's their most controversial song of all time:

(some rather dark English humour...)

 

For true rock, I prefer the Stones as well. However, the Beatles were much more than a rock group. They had plenty of rock songs, but their best work wasn't particularly rock-oriented.

I've never been a fan of Johnny Cash or really any country group. Nothing against them. It's probably cultural. I grew up in the South, but I was raised by Californians. Northerners and Europeans think I talk like a redneck. Rednecks think I talk like a New York Jew. Either way, I've never been a fan of country.

I'm actually not unsympathetic to this sentiment. The music industry and the radio stations that did their dirty work largely sucked. They have always been driven by marketing rather than talent and largely averse to creativity. But there has been some historical revision on this by the industry - in reality they didn't want the Beatles and only accepted them after the public decisively and overwhelmingly showed their interest. The earliest Beatles music was released by an independent label called Vee-Jay after Capitol Records passed on them. Obviously Capitol later jumped on the bandwagon, but they had no initial interest in them.

The way I look at it, the industry is crap, and 98 percent of what it puts out is crap, including the stuff they think is great like Madonna and virtually everything they've crapped out in the last 20 years. (Though he was wildly overrated, I'm less of a Michael Jackson hater. I can at least name a couple of songs by him that weren't trash. I can't do the same with Madonna.) However, sometimes they do fall ***-backwards into music that is good, because virtually all music has to pass through them to reach the market (less true now but was definitely true back in the day). Keep in mind that it took big record labels to bring the Stones to the market as well.

 

Elaborate some on the musical connection between N Sync to the Beatles. (I've never heard of K Pop, but I've heard at least a few secons of some N Sync songs while reaching to turn off the radio.) What would be N Sync's equivalent to the music on the Revolver or Sgt. Pepper albums? I'm more than happy to give it a listen.

They copied American roots. I think that's an oversimplification of those groups, but I can go with it. However, the Beatles also copied American roots. It was less "bluesy," but it was pretty American. Their earliest stuff was heavily influenced by Little Richard, Carl Perkins, Buddy Holly, and of course, Elvis, but like the other groups you cite, they obviously took it a lot further.

When I say the Beatles led the way for the others, I'm not saying that from a musical standpoint (though one of the Rolling Stones's earliest hits was a cover of a Beatles song). I'm saying that the Beatles forced the record industry to go outside the box. Before they came along, the industry basically was interested in crap like Frankie Valli, Lesley Gore, Ricky Nelson, etc. (Black artists were a different ballgame.) They dabbled in some surfer music like Jan and Dean the Beach Boys, but nobody was interested in British music. (They had already rejected the Beatles.) It took the Beatles enjoying success with a small label (Vee Jay who frankly humiliated the hell out of Capitol Records) to wake the industry "experts" up enough to even be open to groups like the Stones, the Who, or the Yardbirds.

Of course, all of these artists became commercially big, so I'm not sure I understand the point here.

When I said there was no comparison, I meant with the Beatles specifically. Was there some overlap in their influences? I guess, but it was pretty limited. I think there is a much bigger connection to the groups you brought up in the roots (especially the Yardbirds and therefore Led Zeppelin), but I think where he took those roots was pretty unique. Kinda blows my mind to ponder where he would have gone with his sound had he lived longer.

 

Man, I am a man of simple tastes.

 

Frankie Valli is most definitely NOT crap.

 

Walk like a man but sing it like a woman? That's pretty hard to defend.

 

You are henceforth disqualified from opinioning

 

UH never should have been allowed into the SWC.

 

Okinawa sucks.

 

DKR is the only one that wanted them. He said if he had to recruit against them, he wanted them complying with SWC recruiting and academic rules, which they never did.

 

Looks to me like I win this thread.

 

They are all sucky pop music that are popular because the boys have cute hair cuts. If you don't believe me ask your mom.

Yeah, they didn't copy. They based their music on blues and innovated on it. The Beatles were influenced by roots, mainly folk, and early 50s rock'n'roll. The groups I mentioned followed roots music more completely, folk and blues basically.

That is like saying Pearl Jam or Soundgarden would have never been big without Nirvana. Nirvana did exist so they ended up opening up the market to grunge, but grunge was going to be huge whether or not Nirvana existed.

Good to see you agree with me on this. Jimi was originally a blues guitarist. He covered multiple blues staples. Then he added psychedelic influences because he lived in San Francisco (probably taught by Austinite Roky Erickson). Admitted the Beatles did that too, but it was much more bland! This is what I mean by ruined music. They followed the fads in a mediocre way. Then he started to add more funk elements in Band Of Gypsies right before he died. Which means he was way more important to music and its development than the Monkeys. I mean the Beatles.

 

Can you name a specific song we can point to for comparison?

Lol. My mom may have liked them because they had cute haircuts. She went to a few of their concerts in the Los Angeles area and was one of the screaming chicks you see in the video clips. However, my dad also liked the Beatles, and he's pretty straight, so I don't think it was the cute haircuts. Like most straight men, he also didn't particularly go for "sucky pop" music.

I actually think my parent's musical tastes illustrate my point here. My mom tended to go for earlier Beatles music - the stuff that was pop-oriented and aroused the screaming chicks. My dad tended to go for mid to late Beatles music which wasn't. If you want to claim that "I Wanna Hold Your Hand" or "She Loves You" (the stuff my mom liked) was pop, that's fine. I wouldn't disagree. However, if you argue that songs like "Rain," "She Said, She Said," "Eleanor Rigby," or "Strawberry Fields" (the stuff my dad liked) were pop-oriented, that's just crazy. There's nothing poppy about those songs or much of anything they made during that era. Definitely haven't heard anything by N Sync that was similar.

What I suspect is happening is that you're looking at the songs that made the Beatles initially famous and defining their entire careers on those songs. Well, that would be like me defining the Who by "My Generation" or Led Zeppelin by "Shapes of Things" (one of the earlier Yardbirds hits with Page, though that was a kick-*** song) when both groups obviously did far more impressive work than those initial songs.

The comparison doesn't hold up. First, Nirvana didn't really open the door. Lollapalooza did. (In other words, Jane's Addiction did.) Furthermore, Alice in Chains had found success before Nirvana did. Second, it's one thing to open the door from Seattle, a city that was on the rise at the time and that the music industry already followed. It's quite another to do it from a decaying port city on a continent that the industry was almost entirely ignoring.

Do I think there market would have eventually opened up to Brits? Yes, but it would have been much slower and more gradual, which means it very well could have missed groups like the Who or the Yardbirds and therefore Led Zeppelin.

I don't know what to tell you. Music evaluation is largely a matter of opinion, so I suppose someone could say Mozart followed the fads in a mediocre way because Bach came before he did and influenced him. However, I don't see what fad Revolver and Sgt. Pepper were following and I wouldn't call them mediocre. It was pretty impressive stuff and pretty original at the time it was made. Definitely not N Sync-style pop.

 

Without doubt.

 

He was there trolling for the girls who liked the cute haircuts.

 

It's not a bad strategy. There were 20,000 sexually aroused chicks at a given concert and only 4 members of the band. Assume that they're each leaving with at least one chick but presumably no more than 2. (After all, it was 4 scrawny British dudes, not Wilt Chamberlain.) If you're a guy hanging around the concert trying to skim off of the leftovers, those are still very good odds.

In all seriousness, my dad never went to a concert. He said he didn't particularly care to "see" them, and trying to listen over the screaming chicks would have annoyed him. When he was older, he did see Paul McCartney at Texas Stadium and said it was a pretty good show. Personally, I wouldn't mind seeing him. He still performs quite a bit here in the UK. However, I'm just not sure Deez, Jr. would appreciate it that much, and of course, it would cost my left nut to bring everybody.

 

I was sixteen when they came over to the states and the next ten years were a joy in pop music; all of the groups and individuals mentioned emerged and a lot of others who were very creative. I don't know how anybody could pick out one group to the exclusion of the others but many did. I loved them all.

At the same time, I was listening to equal amounts of country (I grew up rural) and the same explosion was going on there. Lots of spectacular talent around

And in Brazil, Caetano Veloso and the bossa nova related crowd.

 

Happiness is a Warm Gun
— John Lennon


Not a thing “candy store pop” about that one…

 

Hahahahaha, might as well said “why don’t we do it in the road”

 

Speaking of the White Album……….

The Charles Manson family killers actually set out to get the Beach Boys’ Dennis Wilson. He didn’t live in the house they went to. Wilson’s pal Melcher (who really didn’t like Manson) used to own it before Tate and Polanski.

 

I'm still just glad my opinion is the most controversial. The Beatles ruined music. I have thought that for a long time. I know I am in the minority, but that's okay I'm used to it.