AHC: Keep Music Good
- Thread starter Armored Diplomacy
- Start date
I'm impressed with Blinde Willie McTell's "A to Z Blues" and Lucille Bogan's "Shave 'Em Dry" most of all. Damn, that's some profane stuff.Ofaloaf, GET OUT OF MY IPOD man lol
I wish modern radio stations were like that.
But seriously, that kind of stuff is far more mainstream today.
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Guys, I didn't say I hate all modern music, now did I? What was really upsetting to me, though, was the fact that her "Beez in the Trap" is actually considered music, and it got good reviews. That was really upsetting to me, and knowing that it would never have come out in the 1960s is part of the reason I prefer that era.
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I'm disappointed. There's hardly any discussion over how music could stay basically the same or evolve. Instead, there is an argument over tastes in music and whether 1960s music had more taboo subjects than today's. Suppose it's my fault for poor choice of a title, though.
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You keep saying that taste doesn't matter, this is a simple what-if without any of that going on, and then you say stuff like
Surely you can see that comments like that feed into the very arguments that you deplore?
Olaf, I gotta thank you. I started clicking on your links and I found this thing again. Husband guy owned a CD once, forgot what it was called (has no memory for lyrics or stuff like that) but for some reason kept coming back to it.
And now I rediscovered it and there was much rejoicing.
AH.com. Awesome stuff.
Look, everyone knows that music has been going downhill ever since the release of the greatest musical work of all time: Frankie Smith's Double Dutch Bus.
+ Mr Brian Epstein.
In order to sell records to
And this was the best band of the 1960s. A huge part of them, especially immediately on being signed, was manufactured purely to sell records to 'tweens'. They were a boy band.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jyDbfCbQnH8
The Beatles put on suits to get accepted. They bowed after a preformance to get accepted. Those two things were from the brain of Mr Epstein so that they could get promoted better. But the Beatles were an established group which did as it pleased. It wasn't cobbled together from session musicians by a studio. It was formed by Lennon, and then they made it big. It didn't pump out songs from a corporate typewriter. They wrote their own, and did covers and the Rock and Roll greats. They didn't just sing over background music preformed by other people. They played their own instruments. They were a Rock group, and not a boy band other than the gender. They did what they wanted to, grew out their hair when they wanted to, went Folk then Psychedelic when they wanted to, and so on, with oversight by Epstein only the same as you'd find in any other band.
And their records weren't for tweens. They were for teens, which was the demographic for aaaaaaaaall Rock n' Roll since Rock first began, and that young era of Rock includes when the Beatles first landed. The girls especially liked them because they were pretty boys from that mysterious British Isle. The women wanted them, and the men wanted to be them, and everyone without grey hair was listening to them.
Young whippersnappers. I tell yaa, musics been going downhill ever since js bach!
"These damned kids, with their hair and their clothes and the XXXX Music!"
Peter, honestly you sound just my my father complaining about the music I grew up on in the 70's and 80's.
Of course he was cranked up to eleven on the freakout meter by the fact that his little girl was mooning over Madonna and not getting why he was freaked out by that.
Peter, honestly you sound just my my father complaining about the music I grew up on in the 70's and 80's.
Of course he was cranked up to eleven on the freakout meter by the fact that his little girl was mooning over Madonna and not getting why he was freaked out by that.
Macragge1
Banned
In the 62-64 era, the Beatles were a boy band (prior to this they were, basically a very good - though far from the best - rock'n'roll covers band - there's barely any McCartney/Lennon being played even during the final Hamburg residence).They were an excellent boy band who wrote their own music, but they were aggressively marketed by Epstein in order to sell music to teenage girls; they were hugely popular with boys anyway because of their (sometimes) rock'n'roll music, but the suits and the photographs and even A Hard Day's Night placed them firmly in the boy band idiom. They had matching haircuts, for heavens sake. Bear in mind as well the level of influence that George Martin had during the production of their first few records (especially in relation to their later ones.) They were merchandised like nobodies' business - just look at how much money Seltaeb made during 1964 alone - and trotted out at all sorts of events just as the other teen idols had been (in this however, the Beatles were far and away more interesting and spontaneous with their answers than those who came before them.)
All of this makes it so much more impressive that around the era of Rubber Soul and certainly by Revolver, they managed to leave this all behind and become a 'Rock' (as opposed to rock'n'roll in the '50s sense) group, more or less inventing much of the genre as they went along. It takes little more than to listen to 'Misery' in the same sitting as 'I Want You (She's So Heavy)' to sense how far they'd come in every sense.
I'm not knocking the Fabs because in and of themselves there's nothing wrong with boy bands; just look at the early Beatles; most of the arguments against boy bands are just arguments against poor ones, who, granted, are commonplace. Lennon and Macartney were musical geniuses but they were also extremely canny; they wanted to make huge, huge amounts of money and become extremely famous; they were all too happy to be basically remade like Brian Epstein told them to in order to achieve that.
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You offend me in the way the bone's of Christ would offend a Christian, not in the form of revealing something truthful which goes against my previous understanding but in the form of something totally opposite the factualism of my concept of the universe which is the antithesis of it.
My short answer to everything you've mentioned for your examples is this: so what? A boy band is a vapid venture. It is something created by a company, without a soul, which is often cobbled together artificially. So what, that they were aggressively marketed to girls. Girls were a key demographic in Rock. They were also marketed to all teens, not just girls, because that was the demographic for Rock. The girls were just the ones that would fall in love with the members and scream. And don't call it sometimes Rock. It was always Rock, with perhaps the exception of "Till There Was You". And so what to the suits. That was how it was with all bands in that era, and was especially a staple the British Invasion ones. The Rolling Stones also wore matching suits for a stint, and they were not a boy band either. And so what to the matching hair? That was a style which I believe came from a style invented by Klaus Voorman's girlfriend for a gender universal hair style, which I believe was passed onto them from a friend they met in Hamburg who had that haircut, which they liked and had him cut their hair in that style. It was the style they liked for themselves as individuals, so they each (except for Pete Best) went with it as the way they wore their hair, and it became iconic when they made it big. And yes, George Martin did have a great level of influence in their production and was a great aid. But he didn't write the songs or tell them what to do. What he did was, when they needed help with something, they'd go to George Martin to get it down whether it be production issues or getting a sound right in the recording or whatever, and he'd give his opinion on things as well. That's a normal producer/band relationship, and it's simply that George Martin was a very, very good producer, as well as someone the band respected and looked up to and who helped them learn things about tinkering with audio that would help them as they learned more and evolved (the Beatles were fascinated by this type of thing). And so what that they were merchandised or promoted heavily. Good for them. They had a phenomenon on their hands and they capitalized on it. Marketing is superfluous to this concept. If a band is a boy band, then all they exist for is merchandising and to sell some quick records. If they are a band, then good for them, since they're popular and making money and gathering interest (KISS is the most overly merchandised group in history, and are decidedly not a boy band. They also wore a uniform outfit, makeup and hair style, for that matter).
The Beatles weren't a boy band, they were just a band. They were a band which formed in Liverpool out of the Rockabilly "Quarrymen" when Lennon reformed from Rockabilly to Rock n' Roll. They payed their dues, went head to head with the local biggies like Rory Storm and the Hurricanes, and became big in Liverpool, got tried by fire in Hamburg, then came back to Liverpool, and got signed by Brian Epstein. And he made it so that they would be big. He got them to wear matching suits. And he had them bow to show respect so that the audience would like them. And then they got signed to Parlophone and took off like a rocket. They were not a boy band. They weren't formed by a record label who wanted to make up a group on an assembly line out of people who never even met. They weren't dancing without playing instruments, singing songs written in a weekend by a professional pumping out a paint-by-numbers vapid song about girls or cars that would sell enough 45s to recoup costs. They weren't put on a label by Disney to promote a family, Christian values message. The three basic things about your thesis are that they wore suits and had matching hair, they were promoted, and that they were marketed, none of which make a boy band. And I'd say everything mentioned, where truthful, is just a normal band/management/production/whatever else relationship.
What the Beatles did give to boy bands were plans for marketability and targeting a demographic. The boy bands, as a corporate concept, stole the most capitalist parts of the Beatles due to their success and appeal in order to turn out the fastest dollar. These things were the targeting of teen girls, selling merchandise, and possibly getting into films and television.
But the only reason boy bands exist are as a corporate shill. And if they don't form a soul when the members decide they want to be more than cookie cutter crooners, then they remain soulless. The type of group that did evolve form their mold was the Monkees. But the Beatles were never such a thing. They did things that got them prosperity which were suggested by Brian Epstein, yes. But they never did anything they didn't want to do, and they always charted their own course which often had the opinion and suggestions of people they respected like Epstein and Martin, but always with their own self determination guiding. As artists, they preformed the songs they wanted to preform, went the direction they wanted to go, and did what they wanted to do, and they called the shots so far as any group can.
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Macragge1
Banned
After they got signed onto Parlophone they were a boy band. This isn't a value judgement, it's fact. They were, during this period, the best band in the world. You're looking at the idea of their being a boy band a posteriori, inferring from the term several characteristics of boy bands that came after The Beatles.
I'm not criticizing The Beatles at all.
I'm not criticizing The Beatles at all.
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