[DavidMahler]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Drubbing /img/forum/go_quote.gif Wait til all the baby boomers are dead. Then maybe Britney will be the cultural watermark for the current millenium. You may all take a moment to shudder.

Britney will never ever hold a place similar to the Beatles. Nor will Elvis......

this is the thing about the Beatles that I've never seen acknowledged on head-fi and its about time that it is.....

this is the deal with them.....yes they were the most popular artist of their day, yes they were super commercial and yes they were marketed strategically with memorabilia and movies etc.....

BUT

They are the ONLY act of that fame to be accepted as artists and not entertainers. I've had the fortune of talking with numerous music professors, classical musicians, jazz musicians......Keith Jarrett, Anne Sophie Mutter, Alfred Brendel, Chick Corea, Herbie Hancock.....adn they've all acknowledged that the Beatles artistry is on the level of a genius and in the words of Mutter "Sgt Pepper is what Beethoven would have written had he been alive in the 1960s." So while they were famous like Sinatra, Elvis, Michael Jackson, Britney Spears.......their artistry is what sets them apart, their artistic growth is what makes their impact so different from all the others.......compare a song by Elvis from 1956 to one from 1974......it's not that different, compare a song from Sinatra's first capitol album to his last it's not distinctly different, compare something from off the wall to something from Dangerous...........then compare a song from please please me to a song from rubber soul and those two songs to a song from Sgt Pepper and those three songs to a song from The White Album and those 4 songs to a song from Abbey Road.......it is that growth which makes the BEatles separate from Britney screwin Spears........It's one thing to be a true artist of experimentation, and its one thing to commercial.....they hardly ever overlap.....in the case of the Beatles they overlapped entirely.

 

[KingStyles]

I cant say a group is overrated unless it is one that I known during its time of its releases. A group could be overrated now but at the time of its release it could have been groundbreaking , unique, or helped bring more attention to its genre. With that being said, beyonce, britney spears, black eyed peas, christina aguilera, daultry, and all the cookie cutter sounding rock bands that are out now. Please come up with a sound that is unique or at least different.

 

[Drubbing]

Quote:

Originally Posted by DavidMahler /img/forum/go_quote.gif Britney will never ever hold a place similar to the Beatles. Nor will Elvis......

Don't underestimate the capability of the mass market music industry to reach lower depths.

Quote:

Originally Posted by DavidMahler /img/forum/go_quote.gif They are the ONLY act of that fame to be accepted as artists and not entertainers...

You're halfway down the slippery slope of musical eltiism and you only just started

They were both. They started as a naive, pleasant pop act, and developed as musicians. Every band that stays together, that doesn't fit into the cookie cutter mould, pretty much does the same.

Radiohead morphed from guitar rock to electronica and musical imagery; losing and gaining different supporters along the way. I can see how people can be put off by their arty preciousness when talking about their music. Lennon and McCartney pretty much did the same when they got into drugs. Not comparing the two, only pointing out the similarities.

At present it's hard to envisage an artist having anything like the impact the Beatles had; it wasn't just the music, it was the the cultural revolution that was the 60s that was bound up in that. Society just hasn't shaken itself up in the same way since, and we've kind of beiged-out.

 

[DrBenway]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Drubbing /img/forum/go_quote.gif It's well known Zep's 1st album didn't credit the writers of the blues numbers they covered. But to say they were unoriginal as per that site, is petty;

The truth is somewhere in the middle. They were originators of metal, or proto-metal if you want to split hairs (or maybe just call it heavy rock), but they drew heavily on blues and R&B as primary sources. It's unfair to call them unoriginal, but it's quite fair to say that they did not give their obvious sources due credit.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Drubbing /img/forum/go_quote.gif Willie Dixon played those tunes with a guitar, harmonica and a shoe shuffle.

That's funny; I thought Willie Dixon was best known as a songwriter and bass player, working in the studios and clubs in and around Chicago. All of the recordings I've heard of him feature him in electric bands, playing either Chicago blues or rock (He in fact played bass on some of the cassic early Chuck Berry sides, when both of them were signed to Chess Records.)

Not all blues is the stereotype of the guy with the guitar and harp. In fact, I don't think he ever recorded on harmonica, or as a solo performer. He was a band musician.

 

[Calexico]

Musical influence =/= musical quality IMO. Just because music as we know it wouldn't exist without the Beatles doesn't mean the Beatles are better than all bands that were affected by them.

 

[tru blu]

Quote:

Originally Posted by DavidMahler /img/forum/go_quote.gif The thing is......The Beatles are kind of why we're all here investing our time and money in music and music equipment.

No interest in arguing about the Beatles, DMahler, but I'd just like to say that I absolutely, positively am not investing my time and money in music because of them. There was music before them—some of which they revamped quite brilliantly—and plenty of great music in the meantime has little to do with them. I'm just sayin'…

 

[Drubbing]

Quote:

Originally Posted by DrBenway /img/forum/go_quote.gif That's funny; I thought Willie Dixon was best known as a songwriter and bass player, working in the studios and clubs in and around Chicago. All of the recordings I've heard of him feature him in electric bands.

True, I sterotyped him in the Robert Johnson mould. But the point being, Zeppelin didn't do his stuff anything like he would have, or anybody else, for that matter - electric bandplayer or not.

 

[DrBenway]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Drubbing /img/forum/go_quote.gif True, I sterotyped him in the Robert Johnson mould. But the point being, Zeppelin didn't do his stuff anything like he would have, or anybody else, for that matter - electric bandplayer or not.

I see your point. And it's certainly true that Led Zep put a very original spin on even the most traditional source material they worked with. They were a heavy rock band using traditional material as a starting point, not a wannabe band trying to imitate their inspirations (believe me, I've heard enough wannabe bands to know the difference).

It's a separate issue, though, that Dixon was grossly ripped off in terms of composer credit and royalty payments by a variety of musicians in a number of markets, from rock to R&B. The Chess brothers paid him pathetically little money at a time when Black artists had little opportunity for redress of their grievances. There was period when he was writing hit after hit, not to mention arranging and playing on an amazing number of sessions. For this he was paid a flat $100 per week.

I do not point this out to bash Led Zep. I just wish that a knowledgeable musician like Jimmy Page would have given due credit.

 

[DrBenway]

Quote:

Originally Posted by DavidMahler /img/forum/go_quote.gif Britney will never ever hold a place similar to the Beatles.

Britney Spears can't be an overrated artist, because she is not any sort of artist at all. Rather, she is a product. Cynically manufactured, ruthlessly marketed, and completely devoid of any identifiable talent.

In short, the fondest fantasy of the corporate music industry, brought to drug-addled life.

 

[Drubbing]

Quote:

Originally Posted by DrBenway /img/forum/go_quote.gif I do not point this out to bash Led Zep. I just wish that a knowledgeable musician like Jimmy Page would have given due credit.

I've never defended what Zeppelin did. But Dixon has been credited on all reissues. My Zep I CD goes back to 91 and he's on there. Both disrespectful and remiss of Page to not do this from the outset. Too late for Willie, but I hope his family are benefitting from any redress.

 

[DavidMahler]

Quote:

Originally Posted by tru blu /img/forum/go_quote.gif No interest in arguing about the Beatles, DMahler, but I'd just like to say that I absolutely, positively am not investing my time and money in music because of them. There was music before them—some of which they revamped quite brilliantly—and plenty of great music in the meantime has little to do with them. I'm just sayin'…

Steve Anderson: The Beatles Changed Everything

 

[paaj]

Did they change everything, or where they there when things changed? That's the big Beatles question.

interesting article by the way.

That would make a band like the Arctic Monkeys highly influential for the next decades since they where some of the first to get attention through the internet.

 

[Drubbing]

Quote:

Originally Posted by paaj /img/forum/go_quote.gif Did they change everything, or where they there when things changed? That's the big Beatles question.

Both. They're inseparable. Big question. Small answer. And they didn't do it by themselves, whatever it was.

What was the question again?

 

[skeeder]

For this I break out the Nickleback band and all its trash.

 

[Mr_Owlow]

I have to agree that Springsteen is overrated, he made some good records 30 years ago but these last albums are very mediocre...

BTW, I think just about every rapper, modern RnB group and most of the top 40 pop drivel that seeps out of every radio is comercial crap that can't be called music by anyone with even a little bit of taste!