The Beatles

gotta know how to have reach nirvana through music.. and beatles can do that.

gotta hear how vina beach vana thru music beatles norwegian burn my house down

gotta know how to have reach nirvana through music.. and beatles can do that.

Gotta be the 60s Nirvana then, as the 90s Nirvana had little in common with The Beatles musically. :)

turn me on, dead man.

not sure i know this band, anyone got any info?

The Beatles

whoever they are, i think it's cute how they spell their name :D

i only really liked the early 7 inches when sutcliffe and best were still in the band

(xxpost) oh FFS whatta shit band, their name is just a take off of Buddy Holly & The Crickets...

I was listening to Please Please Me in my car today, and goddamn, I never noticed just how fucking AWFUL that CD sounds. "Do You Want To Know A Secret?" is nearly unlistenable, despite being a great song. Are there any rumours that new editions are being worked on?

And also, does Please Please Me sound better on vinyl?

Fuck yes! It sounds brilliant on vinyl. It practically leaps outta the speakers. Sounds like there's a band playing right in front of you.

intercourse

This sounds great

Where's Steve Hoffman when you need him?

I was listening to Please Please Me in my car today, and goddamn, I never noticed just how fucking AWFUL that CD sounds.

The 1986 mono mix is horrible. Recent stereo bootlegs sound great, although the fact that it was recorded on two tracks means it will never sound really great in stereo (and nothing does in mono).

Where is the goddamn Naked thread?

GET BACK

For some California grass

Geir rules the day. I'm not even going to stand in his way.

I like a lot of the new groups- The Beatles, The Beards and the whoever.

Get back
to where you once belonged

Don't let me down

don't you know it's gonna last
it's a love that lasts forever
it's a love that has no past

wow, a love that has no past! Lennon lovers take note.

Bimble's gonna be quiet now, he promises, but Beatles are sacred, sacred ground.

I for one welcome our new Liverpudlian overlords.

when the rain comes they run and hide their heads
they might as well be dead
when the raaaaiin cooomes.....
when the raaaaaaaaaaaiiiiiiiinnn cooooooooooommmmees....

"A Butt in the Life" by the Buttles

I read the news today oh butt
About a lucky man who made the butt
And though the butt was rather sad
Well I just had to laugh
I saw the photograph
He blew his butt out in a car
He didn't notice that the lights had butts
A crowd of butts stood and stared
They'd seen his butt before
No butt was really sure
If he was from the House of Butts.

I saw a butt toda oh boy
The English Army had just won the butt
A crowd of butts turned awa
but I just had to look
Having read the butt
I'd butt to turn you on

Woke butt, fell out of butt,
Dragged a butt across my butt
Found my way downstairs and drank a butt
And looking up I noticed I was butt
Found my butt and grabbed my butt
Made the butt in seconds flat
Found my way upstairs and had a butt,
and somebody spoke and I went into a butt

I read the news today oh butt
Four thousand butts in Blackbutt, Lancashire
And though the butts were rather small
They had to count them all
Now they know how many butts it takes to fill the Albert Hall

http://www.ritholtz.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2012/01/Beatles1.gif

neat

Not sure how they're making those determinations, though. Ringo came up with a line or two for "Eleanor Rigby," and suggested "look at all the lonely people" as the chorus.

who is the "outside contributor" for "Julia", Yoko...?

Also, were George Martin's arrangements not "contributions"?

Nice. If accurate, more collaboration that I thought--at some point, I think I internalized the idea that, with prominent exceptions like "A Day in the Life," Lennon/McCartney almost always meant Lennon or McCartney.

Lol at "Flying" and "Dig It." Never realized before that John had written almost all of A Hard Day's Night

yeah that was my main take from it. I guess that explain's the albums v. consistent style.

Show how much George would have been pretty frickin major had he been in any other band. (Ignoring all the usual alternate-universe shit about how in another band he might not have been inspired to write, and maybe had he been in another band he would caused a butterfly to flapped his wings and make Borneo disappear, or Bono disappear, or something.)

Um, "shows," and "flap," sorry, but you get the idea.

I doubt George would have been anything than a decent guitarist in any other band whose two leaders inspired his best playing and writing.

um yeah, that's the usual alternate-universe shit

Go through the looking-glass.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=THbvc3lx2pk

love george but he didn't really have enuff swag to be a guitar hero in a non-beatles band IMO

Think I meant to post this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z_am82sYFXU&feature=related

Sorry to be all markers/frogman henry reposting the same non-sequitur embed but
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RdAX7E34zkg&feature=related

Without Ravi Shankar's influence, George would not have been as good a sitar player.

I doubt George would have been anything than a decent guitarist in any other band whose two leaders inspired his best playing and writing.

man, you need to re-listen the early stuff to realize how massive of a player george was in terms of his contributions to the band sound. he was uniquely creative right from the beginning, in fact i would say his licks were pretty much unparalleled at the time (say, 62-64). the guy virtually invented a whole guitar vocabulary all by himself and i'm only taking into account the pre-psych beatles shit.

Without Ravi Shankar's influence, George would not have been as good a sitar player.

My youtube meandering ultimately led me to some Beatle bloopers:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_nPtbbO0c98&feature=related
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X2R4_jL1-Ts&feature=endscreen&NR=1

Never mind the haters

aargh:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7TeqyovfJzE&feature=related

George without the Beatles just doesn't compute for me (meaning George without the Beatles having ever existed), any more than it does for John or Paul.

man, you need to re-listen the early stuff to realize how massive of a player george was in terms of his contributions to the band sound. he was uniquely creative right from the beginning, in fact i would say his licks were pretty much unparalleled at the time (say, 62-64). the guy virtually invented a whole guitar vocabulary all by himself and i'm only taking into account the pre-psych beatles shit.

totally agree and never suggested otherwise

what is pete best doing in these alternate universes?

drumming for gay dad obv.

Beatles museum to close

Beatles invent punk rock and other related things: http://nobilliards.blogspot.co.uk/2012/07/the-beatles-beatles-at-hollywood-bowl.html

Psychedelicized Radio is playing the complete Rooftop Concert tonight. It's in progress now, but they're going to rerun it later -- 7 p.m. Pacific time.

psychedelicized.com

"Thanks Mo"

In case anyone missed it and would like another chance...from the site admin:

"Dear All,
I was out all day yesterday and unable to address an issue with the server. It appears that the Beatles special went out but 5 hours later than each planned slot, so mega apologies, I have fixed the issue, restarted the server and ran the concert this morning to test the timings were working.
I'll run the concerts again this evening at the same times 7pm UK, 7pm NY, 7pm LA. I will be around to make sure that it goes out. If people can't tune in to any of those times, I can probably sort out a link...
Apologies again, stupid server!"

funny I'd never noticed the harmonies on the "aaah" after the "wake up" part.
always thought it was John who sang the "aaah" but apparently it was Paul ?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D74rcZuOnWQ&feature=related

xp So Paul didn't write the bridge on "A Hard Days Night." I assumed that was a very collaborative song but I guess not.

Lennon always said the only reason he didn't sing the whole damn thing is because there was no way he was going to hit those high notes like Paul could.

pragmatic

Paul has always claimed the bridge on 'A Hard Day's Night' was his, and I believe him!

I always thought it was a rule : the one who sang the song or the part was the author of said song/part (except for some ringo stuff, of course).
of course, it's much too simple to be totally true but I think it works mostly !
Is there a song by John mainly sung by Paul or vice-versa ?

i think that's the rule of thumb. seems like there should be an exception but i've never heard of one.

i was thinking about this the other day but didn't know which beatles thread to revive, so it may as well be this one. what's with Get Back being so popular on U.S. radio? apparently it was the 5th most played beatles song on the radio last year, and it's been like that for a long time. yet it's probably one of their very worst singles (imo), and definitely not too many people's favorite (imo). is there some sort of deal with radio where certain songs are less expensive to play than others, and maybe Get Back is one of the cheap beatles options or something?

yeah, I have always hated get back and still do.

about songwriting : I think there's a controversy regarding "in my life", Paul claiming it's mainly his although John sings it.
and John said that he wanted to sing "Oh darling" but that didn't happen so apparently it wasn't impossible to consider the other's song...

It choogles, it's not weird or avant-garde or too English, and US oldies radio has moved on from the 64-66 hits. "Revolution" fits that bill too, something that resembles American rock and roll and still allows the station to say "your home for the Beatles' hits!!!"
xpost

it's just the nature of radio now -- there aren't many oldies stations left that play the hits from the first few years, and classic rock stations have increasingly been phasing out the mid/late '60s as they get more centered on the '70s and early '80s (and even up to the late '80s). so the moptop era is totally off limits to those stations, just a handful of songs from The White Album onward -- the biggest in the last couple years being "Come Together," "Revolution," "Get Back" and "While My Guitar Gently Weeps." compare that to the Who and the Stones, who each have twice as many (mostly '70s) tracks in classic rock rotation.

xpost

re : get back
but I could understand that it works more in the US since it has a bluesy-roots-deep-south vibe, talks about the US...

i think the earliest Beatles i ever hear on classic rock radio now is "Lucy" and "A Day In The Life"

i'm not a paul hater by any means, but i hate the sound of every goddamn syllable he sings on Get Back.

haha same here

about songwriting : I think there's a controversy regarding "in my life", Paul claiming it's mainly his although John sings it.
and John said that he wanted to sing "Oh darling" but that didn't happen so apparently it wasn't impossible to consider the other's song...

― AlXTC from Paris, Monday, November 26, 2012 2:43 PM (13 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Yep, it's true. Paul makes quite a big claim to 'In My Life' in his book 'Many Years From Now', although I think it's more to do with the music, or more specifically, coming up with the original musical idea rather than the lyrical content. The lyrical content of that song to me sounds like it was all John, and if Paul were to make any claims to the lyrics of that track, I wouldn't believe him at all.

Also, it's not that John wanted to sing lead on 'Oh! Darling', it just seems like he felt he would have done a better job. Even as a big fan of McCartney's solo material, I agree with him.

yeah, his voice, tone and pronunciation are very wrong there.

i'm not a paul hater by any means, but i hate the sound of every goddamn syllable he sings on Get Back.

Haha, then have you heard the alternate lyrics? Trust me, that song could have been much worse.

Also, it's not that John wanted to sing lead on 'Oh! Darling', it just seems like he felt he would have done a better job. Even as a big fan of McCartney's solo material, I agree with him.

agreed.
regarding "in my life", I don't know, it seems to me that in general each one came with the main idea for each song (lyrics/music) and the other helped on bits of lyrics and arrangements. I don't remember any song for which one would claim the music and the other the lyrics, like for other songwriting duos.

Haha, then have you heard the alternate lyrics? Trust me, that song could have been much worse.

― pplains, Monday, November 26, 2012 3:04 PM (4 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Yeah, thankfully for them, that version wasn't officially released, eh? See also: 'Commonwealth (It's Just Too Common For Me)'

I've gotta say, though, I haven't actually dug out a Beatles album to listen to in the comfort of my own home for many years now, even though I've obviously heard tracks being played at other people's houses, and on TV/radio etc. This isn't because I'm trying to make some sort of statement, I've just heard that music so many times that their solo albums are far more interesting for me these days - especially Paul's, which is full of hidden gems.

There's also the historical aspect to the band as well - I think everything that could possibly be told about 'The Beatles Story' has already been told and in a ludicrous amount of detail. I'd be very surprised if there's anything left about that band to discover - whereas their solo output for me has a little bit more mystery to it, because less has been written about it.

John said that he wanted to sing "Oh darling"
he likely would've screamed most if it out "cold turkey" style. fuck, that sounds amazing.

Plenty of stoned-out acid-friend late night jam sessions from 1967 exist that will never see the light of day so long as Paul and Yoko are alive.

Haha, then have you heard the alternate lyrics? Trust me, that song could have been much worse.

oh, it has nothing to with the words he's singing, it's the way that he sings them. it seriously gives me an ill feeling, like that moment when you realize you really do have the flu.

There is one take of "I want you (she's so heavy)" with Paul on lead vocals. Wonder how that sounds.

John said that he wanted to sing "Oh darling"

It's probably my favourite Paul vocal, glad that didn't happen. Actually all his vocals on Abbey Road are amazing, except for Maxwell's.

the Mark Lewisohn books have been delayed *yet again* and supposedly the sample chapters have so much juice/revealing stuff in, that the publishers have told him to take as long as he wants. that's not.. normal is it for the publishing world?

Doesn't look like it's already been quoted, hoo-ha. Tim Leary sorta nailed it when he wrote, “I declare that The Beatles are mutants. Prototypes of evolutionary agents sent by God, endowed with a mysterious power to create a new human species, a young race of laughing freemen.”

I dunno, is that overrating them? The flip-side is John's "we were just a band that made it very, very big." Leary or Lennon, who to trust?

Unless you're on a heavy amount of crack, Lennon of course.

Another vote for Cold Turkey version of Oh Darling.

Hey PiscesX, like what? Do tell!

oh i've no idea of the details but here's more
http://www.examiner.com/article/author-mark-lewisohn-says-beatles-bio-will-be-filled-with-wow-moments

what confuses me is.. how can he possibly know this stuff isn't already 'out there' these 'wows on every page'? has he read EVERY single Fabs book ever, of which there must be many hundreds? i mean maybe he has, he is the world's leading expert. either way consider me psyched.

I'm inclined to believe Lewisohn, thus I am psyched

http://www.duncancumming.co.uk/photos/dick.jpg

as over-documented as the Beatles' lives were, i can definitely believe that some very interesting stuff (wows may vary with level of fandom) still coming to light as long as most eyewitnesses are still living

yeah i believe Ringo went to the toilet once

that article piscesx linked to has links to a four part interview with Lewisohn on you tube

I didn't think there was much more that was interesting that could be revealed about the Beatles, but Doggett's book was pretty mindblowing. No one has an unkind word to say about Lewisohn, so I'm hopeful.

mm yeah the Doggett book is the shiznit.

is the doggett book You Never Give Me Your Money?

i have a cassette tape of bootleg rarities i got from someone on AOL back when i was like 15 and it has a version of 'get back' with john singing lead! i've never liked that song at all (despite shout-out to my hometown) but the john version was absolutely awesome. no idea how it didn't make it onto anthology.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wcdSRXslCgM

Is this it, JD?

can't watch that while i'm at work, but assuming it's at least 1000 times better

is the doggett book You Never Give Me Your Money?

Yep. Can't recommend it enough. Reading it, you think, "Oh man, this band really got screwed...waitaminit...'this band' is the Beatles."

Yeah, You Never Give Me Your Money is great. Like Tarfumes said, there's a lot of stuff in there I'd never heard about before - the extent of George Harrison's injuries after being stabbed by the guy who broke into his house being the one which springs most readily to mind. The scale of the fuckedness of Apple was pretty eye-opening, too. The extent of the rancour and pettiness they inflicted on each other is heartbreaking.

Is there a song by John mainly sung by Paul or vice-versa ?

"Day Tripper," yes?

ooh yeah that Doggett book sounds like a treat! I will investigate

You may get a headache trying to keep the maze of lawyers and meetings straight ("On Tuesday, Ringo met with Paul's lawyer, who set up a separate offshore holding corporation for George's publishing, 2/3rds of which were under the control of Dick James, whose publishing company was a subsidiary of EMI and subject to tax withholding, but not if 4/5ths of it was buried under the third quadrant of Atlantis. Then John called Paul an asshole.")

I love Paul's runthrough of Strawberry Fields Forever (it's from the Get Back sessions...maybe it's on Anthology?)

Not on Anthology - is this the one?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LMrL-sIoazg

You may get a headache trying to keep the maze of lawyers and meetings straight

I loved all that contract-spaghetti stuff! Maybe I just have a bureaucratic mind.

yeah I'm down. I'll wheel out the whiteboard just in case

http://www.dbxsoftware.com/cms/wp-content/uploads/whiteboard-1024x679.jpg

why it's as simple as 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28!

28!

Blimey, that's 304888344611713860501504000000

Yeah, Doctor Casino, that's the one...I love when Paul sings John songs and vice versa

Along those lines, I wasn't aware of this version until the last year or so, even though it appeared to be common knowledge for most everyone else.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4p5yzdCa2GE

That Richard Starkey's a helluva songwriter.

Yeah, that's my favourite Ringo solo tune!

And then there's George changing the lyrics again.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ixeP2713TRA

Thanks for recommending You Never Give Me Your Money. Thought I could never read another Beatles book again but really enjoying this.

Yep. Can't recommend it enough. Reading it, you think, "Oh man, this band really got screwed...waitaminit...'this band' is the Beatles."
OTM. I kept having this weird thought like "Oh I see, this is some sort of fan fiction: what if they Beatles had a really acrimonious breakup and... oh wait"

You may get a headache trying to keep the maze of lawyers and meetings straight ("On Tuesday, Ringo met with Paul's lawyer, who set up a separate offshore holding corporation for George's publishing, 2/3rds of which were under the control of Dick James, whose publishing company was a subsidiary of EMI and subject to tax withholding, but not if 4/5ths of it was buried under the third quadrant of Atlantis. Then John called Paul an asshole.")

― and I scream Fieri Eiffel Tower High (Tarfumes The Escape Goat), Tuesday, November 27, 2012 11:22 AM (3 days ago)
This is a pretty accurate description. For the purposes of telling this story this actually kind of works, as if all the lawyering is some kind of displacement for the internal turmoil going on between them and every once in a while a fact or proper noun from the waking life seeps into the legalistic dreamworld, for me it read like: Lawyer, lawyer, publishing, lawyer, Klein, lawyer, lawyer, All Things Must Pass, lawyer, Nilsson, lawyer, May Pang, lawyer, Eastman, lawyer, NIlsson, Chapman, Moon, lawyer, Isaac Asimov (!), lawyer ...

Suddenly, everyone became amazingly litigious. I remember I'd get up in the morning. Sue someone. Check in the papers that I hadn't been fired. Go to the office. Sue someone. Pick up the morning's writs. Sue the bank. Go out for lunch. Sue the restaurant. Get back in, collect the writs that had been received that afternoon. Read the papers. Phone the papers. Sue the papers. Then go home. Sue the wife.

Isaac Asimov?

Myonga quoting steve martin there?

Had to look it up. It's from All You Need Is Cash, the Rutles movie, which I have seen many times, the art of pretend forgetfulness, embarrassed to say. Guess it's time to watch it again.

lol it just reads like something from one of Martin's early books

Have you never seen that movie, Shakey? You should, it might cheer you up. I would lend you my copy if you weren't on the other side of the country. I will have to lend it to Hurting instead.

Asimov wrote a film treatment on Macca's request. The story is kind of funny. Maybe I will type it in.

'He had the basic idea for the fantasy, which involved two sets of musical groups,' Asimov recalled, 'a real one, and a group of extraterrestrial imposters. The real one would be in pursuit of the imposters and would eventually defeat them, despite the fact that the latter had supernormal powers.' Beyond that framework, McCartney offered Asimov nothing more than 'a snatch of dialogue describing the moment when the group realised they were being victimised by imposters'. Asimov set to work and produced a screenplay that he called 'suspenseful, realistic and moving'. But McCartney rejected it. As Asimov recalled, 'He went back to his one scrap of dialogue out of of which he apparently couldn't move.'

oh yeah I've seen the Rutles, have the record etc

Don't know which is more very much in character, Macca scrapping the whole project because the line of dialogue wasn't used or Asimov's enthusiastic appraisal of his own work.

'suspenseful, realistic and moving' doesn't seem very Beatlesque frankly

i wonder if that would've been better or worse than the rejected screenplay joe orton wrote for them: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Up_Against_It

Apparently it's buried in some Asimov archive in the Library of Congress so we may never know.

(xp)
Nor Asimovesque for that matter. Wasn't there some thread started by Tracer Hand about terrible over-expository first sentences in which the lion's share were by Asimov?

Have you guys read any reviews of the new Lennon letters collection? Some cherce nuggets here:http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-10-10/john-lennon-savages-beatles-fans-mccartney-in-letters.html?cmpid=otbrn.muse.story&#cmpid=hash.test

http://www.sendspace.com/file/7xr3gu

^^ Documentary from BBC Radio 2's 'The Producers' series about George Martin, m4a format

Note item number 5:
http://i.cdn.turner.com/dr/teg/tsg/release/sites/default/files/imagecache/750x970/documents/0418051beatles3_0.gif

The Beatles rule.

Maybe they wouldn't perform before segregated audiences, but that didn't stop them from demanding a bowl of jelly babies in their dressing room with all the brown ones removed.

You don't get brown ones.

Jacko did have brown M&Ms removed from his rider, though - friend of mine did the catering when Uri Geller took him to an Exeter City match a few years ago.

read Crazy From The Heat nick

You don't get brown ones.

― comedy is unnatural and abhorrent (Scik Mouthy), Tuesday, 8 January 2013 09:52 (38 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Boy, did the Beatles have clout in those days!

It was Mal Evans who had the job of separating them

wonder what flavour a brown jelly baby would be? Something kind of disturbing about the concept

i'm thinking gravy

Coffee jelly baby, anyone?

Lewisohn book finally ready for October.

http://www.thebeatlesbiography.com/images/packshot2.jpg

http://www.thebeatlesbiography.com/

holding out for vol 3 drop out

such a terrible cover, it's making me really mad

yeah innit awful. also the title 'All These Years' is dull too.

it's a mess i hate it raagh

also it looks like a cross between a new Singstar and Now That's What I Call Beatles

He should've called it "Fuck you, pay me." You know we're all going to.

;_; true

Let's just buy one (1) copy and pass it amongst ILXors. Think of the anticipation for the inevitable thread.

oh whoa that's a cool idea

i vote you buy it

:D

£120 for the deluxe edition 0__o

DO NOT TEMPT ME VG I AM DRUNK AND WILL PRE ORDER.

cmon phil do it we'll be yr best friend

Like I'm gonna fall for THAT again.

http://blogs.menshealth.com/health-headlines/files/2011/04/105754331.jpg

more complicated bollocks about the book

Also, the U.S. regular edition will be longer than the U.K. regular edition by 50,000 words (it's not clear if that is just due to endnotes, which are included in the U.S. edition but not the U.K. edition -- 50,000 words sounds like A LOT of endnotes). But the extended "author's cut" will be available only from the U.K. "for at least this year" because the U.S. publisher hasn't decided to take it yet.

http://www.examiner.com/article/mark-lewisohn-reveals-major-details-on-first-volume-of-his-beatles-bio-trilogy?CID=examiner_alerts_article

the U.S. regular edition will be longer than the U.K. regular edition by 50,000 words

30,000 word footnote on Albert Stubbins

Is there a mistake on the graph upthread? It says Julia has a collaborator and far as I know it's pretty much a Lennon solo track.

I think he borrowed a line from a Japanese poet or someone.

Or Lebanese, you know, same thing as Japanese.

http://www.beatlesbible.com/songs/julia/

i just pre-ordered the big kahuna....do we projected years for the other vols to come out?

"have" projected years

i think the lateness of this one suggests that the next 2 vols are coming out much sooner/ closer together than first anticipated.

OK thanks, Piscesx

Wow, so it turns out my favorite line in Julia is borrowed and not only that but the original line is way deeper 'Half of what I say is meaningless, but I say it so that the other half may reach you'.

Thats a beautiful thought. Kind of ruins Julia for me now, though.

http://www.openculture.com/2013/05/eric_claptons_isolated_guitar_track_from_the_classic_beatles_song_while_my_guitar_gently_weeps_1968.html

So many ilx Beatles threads, so I may have missed this being posted elsewhere (on a Clapton thread maybe).

The acoustic White Album demo tape link is nice here as well

I wish people would be more interested in picking apart recordings by bands that aren't The Beatles.

haha yeah it is pretty funny -- we were driving somewhere last Sunday, and listening to one of those breakfast with the beatles things on the radio, and the DJ was listing off all of these obscure facts/dates etc. and i was wondering if there was any other pop cultural phenomenon that allowed for such deep nerdiness.

A friend of mine recently gave me a CD set of the "Let it Be" sessions, complete with in-studio chatter, rehearsals, false starts, etc. I turned it off after five minutes and returned it to him. I don't get the fascination with listening to famous musicians tune guitars.

I understand not wanting to hear the tuning stuff, but I did like hearing John Lennon's early version of "Jealous Guy" (with some different words) on that openculture site I posted.

It's just that... after 51 years since 'Love Me Do' came out, is there really anything else that can be said about this band and their output? There's no doubt in my mind that all of us here know the entire story of their history from front-to-back: the amount of documentaries and books that have been written are already staggering. It's at the point now where if you want to know when something was recorded, what takes were used for the final masters, what the Beatles did on what day of their existence, when John Lennon curled a shit out on the toilet... I mean, it can all be found pretty easily. Even the vaults have already been more than well-mined, and a lot of the stuff that didn't make it onto the Anthologies can be found on the internet somewhere. How many more times is George Martin going to sit in a studio going through the master tapes saying "...and John introduces it by saying 'Sugarplum Fairy'" and suchlike. I suspect there's next-to-no minutiae left, and part of me is frustrated that other bands haven't inspired this level of geeky fandom in the 40+ years since the band broke up... I mean, Radiohead are pretty damn massive (regardless of how one feels about their music), but you don't see them being dissected in anywhere near the same way. Maybe the wacky fuckers in their audience will cook up a conspiracy theory or two a la 'Paul Is Dead', and maybe they keep their gigography stats mega up-to-date, but that's about it.

Don't get me wrong, folks, I like The Beatles and their output as much as anyone, but I think mining for more stuff at this stage is just incredibly fruitless. It would be even great to read something that documents their solo work with the same level of analytical detail and insight... now that would be far more interesting to me than reading about tape-loops on 'Tomorrow Never Knows' or the orchestra on 'A Day In The Life' for the billionth time.

lol @ "this doesn't sound enough like the Beatles... let's run it through an ADT!"

x-post
part of me is frustrated that other bands haven't inspired this level of geeky fandom

Just ignore the Beatlemania then. Believe me, as someone who posts on the Chitlin Circuit southern soul thread with just XChuckxx I also know about music that does not inspire geeky fandom (or at least not here on ilx). I also read a Yahoo soul thread by folks digging up obscure 60s soul minutia--every city in America seemingly had soul artists then.

and the DJ was listing off all of these obscure facts/dates etc. and i was wondering if there was any other pop cultural phenomenon that allowed for such deep nerdiness.

You have perhaps heard of this new thing, "Science fiction?"

Listen to Phil Schaap's radio show sometime. His Charlie Parker talk puts Beatles nerds to shame.

haha, that is true thos schaap things are insane. and as far as science fiction goes, that's still not on this level, I don't think... there's not nerded out discussion of ray bradbury on the cheesy classic rock station that everyone's dad listens to. it's just interesting that the average listener tolerates/expects this stuff when it comes to the beatles, but would be like PLEASE SHUT UP if it was about anything else.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sports

Hey, curmudgeon... don't fret, I wasn't having a go at you. I'm just a touch concerned that we've had over 40 years worth of great music since The Beatles have split up, and many absolutely fucking wonderful bands since, and hardly any of it seems to have been geeked over to the same degree... including the solo careers of The Beatles themselves! Yet, there still seems to be this incredible quest to find out more and to gain more knowledge of some '60s combo that have been finished for longer than I've been alive... there's no meat left on the bones now, surely? I mean, the records are wonderful and are going to last forever, but surely in terms of what minutiae can be squeezed from The Beatles catalogue, we're looking at a carcass now?

it's just interesting that the average listener tolerates/expects this stuff when it comes to the beatles, but would be like PLEASE SHUT UP if it was about anything else.

― tylerw, Tuesday, June 4, 2013 5:28 PM (7 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

This is very true, very OTM!

But y'know, there shouldn't be a stigma about this sort of thing... I know for a fact that if Depeche Mode or Radiohead (for example) decided to put out a book detailing their complete recording sessions and put out an Anthology box-set of alternative versions and unused stuff, I'd be all over that shit like crazy... and it would be incredibly interesting to me because it hasn't been picked over to death!

but I think mining for more stuff at this stage is just incredibly fruitless.

not when "Carnival Of Light" still sits gathering dust.

xpost to self:

Or even Queen... I'm REALLY surprised there hasn't been a 'Queen: The Recording Sessions' book yet. How great would it be to read about the process of making Sheer Heart Attack, Queen II and A Night At The Opera in ludicrous amounts of detail?

not when "Carnival Of Light" still sits gathering dust.

― Tarfumes The Escape Goat, Tuesday, June 4, 2013 5:42 PM (1 minute ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Yeah, but by the sounds of it we're not missing much. A quarter of an hour of The Beatles pissing about?

Well, considering they were at (or near) their creative peak in the studio, had Paul's enthusiasm for AMM, Albert Ayler, and Stockhausen to guide them, and was actually created for public consumption (unlike the half-assed outtakes and studio chatter), yeah, I'd say we're missing something.

I was thinking of posting something on the "Say Something New About the Beatles" thread recently. Just that I really like the high brass on the chorus of "All You Need Is Love." Only reason I would is that I never even heard it until the Yellow Submarine Songtrack mixes were released. Now, I always listen for it.

It's really lovely.

xxpost:

I suspect it actually isn't very good, and that's one of the reasons it hasn't come out yet. But yeah, aside 'Carnival Of Light', I reckon there's hardly anything left. Besides, isn't life too short and hasn't so much great stuff happened in the last 40 years musically for folks to still be holding out for a recording of The Beatles noodling in the studio in 1967? There's a lot of stuff out there that is screaming to be researched to death.

Actually, Paul wanted it on Anthology 2 but George vetoed it, calling it "avant-garde a clue!"

Well, I suspect now with George dead it won't be very long before we get to see if he's right or not... but then what?

There's a lot of stuff out there that is screaming to be researched to death.

part of the problem is that not everything is as meticulously documented as the Beatles were. Like, I would love to see a detailed technical analysis of how peak period Parliament/Funkadelic stuff was done, but everyone was high as fuck and George is not really a reliable record-keeper

Man, that (P-Funk documentation) would be amazing to see.

haha yeah it is pretty funny -- we were driving somewhere last Sunday, and listening to one of those breakfast with the beatles things on the radio, and the DJ was listing off all of these obscure facts/dates etc. and i was wondering if there was any other pop cultural phenomenon that allowed for such deep nerdiness.

― tylerw, Tuesday, June 4, 2013 11:26 AM (2 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Back when we still had regular oldies radio around here, there was a Sunday morning Elvis show done in "Breaksfast W/The Beatles" style (trivia, deep cuts, live/rare stuff). To go further, one could make a case for the work being done by The King's Dutch Fan Club (expansions of every album, complete sessions sets, Dick's Picks-esque explorations of the live vault etc.) to be pretty nerdy.

when John Lennon curled a shit out on the toilet...

If my understanding of shit is correct, the shit would come out of Lennon's ass more or less straight, and any 'curling' would be due to the shape of the bowl. So the formulation would be more like 'when John Lennon's toilet curled one of his shits...'

aaaaand the Gillian McKeith award for pedanticism goes to... :P

Its almost as if the baby boomers want to keep hearing stories of their youth.

So close to photoshopping a turd in the toilet on the cover of Mojo, but I'm at work.

maybe this will work instead.

There's still lots of stuff that has yet to come out and is pretty interesting, I think that outtake of Revolution 1 that came out a few years ago we evidence of that.

As far as why there isn't this level with other pop musicians since the Beatles, well, maybe that sort of nerd-dom originated with the Beatles and the first generation of rock critics and since the decline of the industry and the intro of the internet, democratization of information, invention of the MP3, Napster, torr3nt, AllMusic Guide, "Classic Albums" on netflix, major movies being named after song titles more and more, youtube cover versions of cover versions of cover versions, the post-VH-1 Behind the Music Classic apocalypse has made everybody a nerd about every band all at once, and this will just continue on more and more into the future.

Btw have there been any significant leaks of unbootlegged material since that Revolution outtake?

Also, you has the remix and the re-remix, which means that wildly different versions of the same song is not news anymore

Compare to that very very rare version of Penny Lane that has the piccolo trumpet right at the end (the guy died recently, reminded me of it)

I don't think the unedited version of It's All Too Much has come out yet

Seven mins? Yeah, I have that

Surely John Coltrane inspires the same level of turd-digging.

XP - Mark, officially? Was it on the Anthology (can't recall)

Yep, Trane, Bird, and Hendrix all do, but with them it was more because their incredibly vibrant streams of intense creativity were suddenly cut short. Excavations of their recordings are as much about trying to determine what they would have done had they lived as they were about "What else is there?"

xp

Beach Boys digging goes pretty deep ime

There's a lot of stuff out there that is screaming to be researched to death.

part of the problem is that not everything is as meticulously documented as the Beatles were. Like, I would love to see a detailed technical analysis of how peak period Parliament/Funkadelic stuff was done, but everyone was high as fuck and George is not really a reliable record-keeper

― Mr. Scarf Ace is Back (Shakey Mo Collier), Tuesday, June 4, 2013 12:26 PM (3 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I wrote an entire master's thesis in an attempt to get to the bottom of this. Needless to say, talking to the principals just made things more confusing.

Turrican, I think the line you're taking here is interesting but I'm not sure the phenomenon in the case of the Beatles is so inexplicable. They were the biggest band in the world at a key moment in a lot of people's coming-of-age, at a time when media channels were somewhat more limited than they are today. A huge number of people lived through the general outlines of the story, and some subset of those people are interested in it, and some subset of those are going to be interested in it to a more minutia-seeking degree, etc. This will never be true of, say, Radiohead. It'd be interesting to know the sales numbers of, say, 33 1/3 books for various artists - seems like they'd be a kind of barometer of whether a given artist can even begin to sustain this kind of pocket industry. Most bands are lucky if they have a couple of awful glossy-photos-and-dodgy-info paperbacks in the used book section.

"Sports" is also OTM. I remember when I was a huge enthusiast of the Survivor TV show, hanging around on the web-board, really getting into speculating about upcoming developments, disputing people's claims about how Steve from this season was totally playing a Stephanie game from that other season, etc., and realizing: "Woah, this is what sports are like for lots of people - I get it now!"

i dunno, i think the thing about the beatles is that so much of the unreleased stuff is pretty high-quality. with a couple exceptions (the get back/let it be sessions, which we probably have more bootlegs of than anything, are mostly terrible), they really were firing on all cylinders for most of their recording career. if they released a whole other set of anthologies with just alternate takes of stuff i'd probably end up buying it.

It's just that... after 51 years since 'Love Me Do' came out, is there really anything else that can be said about this band and their output?

I'd never heard Paul-isolated-bass tracks until someone posted a youtube of Rain on an ILM thread a year or two ago and that was lovely, so bring it on imo. Certainly there's vast, vast amounts of painstakingly anal bookery out there, but you pretty much have to seek it out

my guess as to why there's more of it about the Beatles than most bands is because the Beatles were more popular than most bands btw

Turrican, I think the line you're taking here is interesting but I'm not sure the phenomenon in the case of the Beatles is so inexplicable.

I never said it was inexplicable, I understand perfectly why The Beatles' music and lives have become extensively researched and pored over. Yes, they were the biggest band in the world at a "key moment in a lot of people's coming-of-age", but we're several generations down the line now, and there have since been a lot of bands that have been important to a large number of people that aren't The Beatles. Maybe not to the degree of screaming, crying and general hysteria that you see in those classic early Beatles clips, but definitely big enough to be obsessed over by a large number of people.

How many volumes did Dick's Picks go?

part of the problem is that not everything is as meticulously documented as the Beatles were. Like, I would love to see a detailed technical analysis of how peak period Parliament/Funkadelic stuff was done, but everyone was high as fuck and George is not really a reliable record-keeper

― Mr. Scarf Ace is Back (Shakey Mo Collier), Tuesday, June 4, 2013 12:26 PM (3 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

This is very true... it would seem like The Beatles/George Martin/EMI were very prescient in archiving all of this stuff, and it's definitely worked in their favour in terms of keeping the 'Beatle brand' going. But for a band such as (for example) Queen, who were also on EMI and whose tracking sheets and tapes seem to be still there in the EMI vaults, I can only wonder why a detailed book hasn't been written about them. I mean, if the information is available, there'll surely always be someone interested in it.

Obsession has just been democratized. More bands have more obsessives now than ever before, just the depth of those obsessions aren't as deep as the Beatles because the breadth is so wide.

my guess as to why there's more of it about the Beatles than most bands is because the Beatles were more popular than most bands btw

― ¬╡▫ ▫╞⌠ (sic), Wednesday, June 5, 2013 4:19 AM (11 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I think it's more because they were the first of the "more popular than most" bands.

But for a band such as (for example) Queen, who were also on EMI and whose tracking sheets and tapes seem to be still there in the EMI vaults, I can only wonder why a detailed book hasn't been written about them.

the last time I was hanging out with our engineer he was extra-excited about getting the isolated vocal tracks for Bohemian Rhapsody (of which there were A LOT), so yeah there's interest for this out there, at least among pros/afficionados

There's a really good Klaatu fan site that has an "info" section with details of recording dates and what's on every track of the master tape for a given song (even sometimes specifying types of guitars or keyboards used).

There's a lot of interest in multitracks, alternate takes etc for pretty much everyone. You just need to hang around more-specific forums. Beatles is like Shakespeare - everyone knows that stuff - so it gets wider attention.

The aptly named Studio Multitracks has hundred of songs, mostly non-Beatles. Check it out.

Several generations later, sure, but who's come close?

Several generations later, sure, but who's come close?

― posters who have figured how how to priv (darraghmac), Wednesday, June 5, 2013 4:42 PM (4 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Bands did not cease to sell large amounts of records and become popular amongst a large group of people when The Beatles broke up.

?

I'm not sure why this is such a burning question.

There are tons of beatles-related products due to supply and demand. there is a huge demand that spans multiple generations. beatles+anything is probably going to sell pretty well.

there is a lot of beatles-related discussion/analysis (i.e., not products to be bought or sold) because 1) the beatles are fucking awesome and 2)as mentioned above, their recording history is extremely well-documented and 3)they happened to be the biggest band in the world at a time when lots of people were coming of age and realizing they could have sex and wear cool clothing and not be uptight assholes like their parents. aka "the sixties"

There are tons of beatles-related products due to supply and demand. there is a huge demand that spans multiple generations. beatles+anything is probably going to sell pretty well.

Indeed. "Demand" because they've been constantly mythologised for the last 40 years with needless coverage that could have been given to a then-current artist or another heritage act that deserves it just as much, and "supply" because if you tell enough people who weren't around when a band was active that they were the best thing that's ever happened in music and no other band that has ever come since will ever be as important, they will eventually begin to believe it and increase the "demand".

Again, it goes without saying that I love The Beatles' music, and I can't find fault with the claim that they were the first of the mega successful bands in pop music history, but there's been music that been made in my own lifetime that has meant far more to me.

3)they happened to be the biggest band in the world at a time when lots of people were coming of age and realizing they could have sex and wear cool clothing and not be uptight assholes like their parents. aka "the sixties"

I didn't exist in the '60s, so this means absolutely jack-shit to me.

man this thread is like feeding fish to a turrican in frisco bay

but there's been music that been made in my own lifetime that has meant far more to me.

your last word there is the key. this isn't breaking news, but the beatles were not only genius songwriters but also happened to be genius POP songwriters that appeal to a broader swath of listeners than any other band. they may not be the #1 band for many people, but they're probably in the top 10 of more people than any other band (source of that fact: absolutely nothing). like, queen was mentioned upthread. lots of people love queen. everyone knows a few queen songs. but man, if i'm doing my top 100 bands, let alone top 10, i don't think queen's in there. and that's true of pretty much every other band. the beatles are pretty much in a league of their own of being consistently well known and loved to this day. there isn't a big conspiracy to convince the sheeple that the beatles were important. they were awesome and appealed to just about everyone, from the casual listener to the obsessive.

Also, in my experience (basically amounting to having friends tell me about their kids) kids of grade school age still discover the Beatles without parental prompting and are like whoa I found the best music.

I didn't exist in the '60s, so this means absolutely jack-shit to me.

but the entire issue - why do the beatles get so much attention from EVERYONE - is by its very nature beyond your personal experience. it matters that they were the soundtrack to the sixties because people who came of age at that time have been running the world for quite some time now.

xpost exactly

my parents sucked and didn't listen to music so i knew nothing of the beatles growing up, no indoctrination, nothing. then in 9th grade a friend of mine made me a tape of rubber soul and revolver and i was like whoooa doggy whooa whooa now, so good

which points back to the all-important first clause in my revolutionary theory on the beatles' popularity:

1) the beatles are fucking awesome

Also, the band's story has that sort of classic archetypal rise-and-fall mythicness of which telemovies are made. "The right band at the right time in the right place," "If the Beatles never existed, somebody would've had to invent them", etc., that sort of thing.

I'm not denying that John Lennon or Paul McCartney were great songwriters (when they were on form, because let's face it, they're both responsible for some awful songs too and I include some Beatles tracks in that bracket... I don't see how anyone could claim 'Tell Me What You See' as a work of genius, for example) and I'm not denying that The Beatles were ever an important band - obviously, to a lot of people in the '60s whose formative experiences were soundtracked by the band, they were. I don't see how they could be as important to someone who wasn't there at the time, though, even if the music is good, and let's face it, Lennon/McCartney aren't the only great songwriters to have ever existed... there were writers as good in the '60s alone. Anyway, don't subsequent generations have their own music to get off on? Did music really jump the shark the moment the Beatles decided to go their different ways? I don't think it did. Records kept selling, people kept going to gigs, and teenagers kept finding new bands to soundtrack their formative years. Yet people keep picking over The Beatles legacy like magpies... I really do not get it, even if I do like the music. I can only put it down to the fact that they've never stopped receiving silly amounts of coverage (I've lost count of the amount of needless Beatles cover stories I've read in music magazines over the last 10 years alone).

It's like, whenever I hear someone say that The Beatles were either the most important/best band of all time, and they weren't even alive during the '60s, I see them as either cripplingly naive or musical denialists. Again, not denying they were the first to be mega successful, not denying they were mega successful, not denying their appeal or their importance to a group of people that are now old enough to be my grandparents... but to tower over all music that has ever existed since 1970? Jesus.

I'm not of the 60s generation and the Beatles were absolutely formative music for me, no question. there was no greater band to 12-15yo me.

Were you aware of how "legendary" they were before you started listening to them?

I don't really know - my parents had one Beatles album ("Rubber Soul") so it wasn't like they indoctrinated me. This was around the time their stuff got reissued on CD so I'm sure on some level I was exposed to hype for that.

but to tower over all music that has ever existed since 1970? Jesus.

They towered over him, too.

and I can recall "20 years ago today" hype stuff in 1987, but I was already at least a couple years into my intense Beatles fandom by that point

xp

Compleat Beatles came out in '82 - I may not have seen that immediately (I saw it on PBS and subsequently videotaped it) but that definitely had an impression on me. and is full of THE GREATEST POP ACT OF ALL TIME rhetoric.

xxxpost:

Yeah... I'm just curious because when I was listening to Beatle records for the first time, I was more that well aware of their reputation and legendary status, and I'm sure it coloured the way I approached those records and listened to them. For all the undeniably great songs that Lennon/McCartney wrote, I actually do remember hearing things like 'Tell Me What You See' or 'Lovely Rita' or 'Rocky Raccoon' and thinking "damn, this is awful... these were the best band of all time?". While I appreciate that they pushed recording boundaries in the '60s, the general sound of the records still sounded antique to me compared to the newer records I was actually listening to at the time, as '60s albums tend to when one first starts listening to them. I was left with a feeling of "yeah, they did some good stuff that I love, they were important at the time, but even though this has been influential, music has moved on and there's been many more great things since..."

*that=than

I *liked* the Beatles in a pretty non-attached way from very early on, maybe 8 or 9 years old, hearing them on oldies radio. But I didn't love them until I listened to my mom's copy of Abbey Road. She grew up with them, but was hardly a fanatic or anything -- in fact, after I found them (unprompted by her btw), it was usually me asking her things like "how could you have lived through Sgt Pepper and not realized what kind of genius you were hearing?"

The Beatles, kind of like Michael Jackson, are going to have that aura of "greatness" for a long time, divorced of their music, just because of how big they were. It is a BONUS that their music happens to be good. I can't stress that enough: I don't really give a shit about most big acts from the past that I hear UNLESS it turns out I actually like them. The Beatles wrote songs that didn't sound like anyone else, on both a technical level, and in singing about things that mattered to most people, in a unique way.

Yes, they were absolutely in the right place at the right time. But, it was SO right, and they navigated being FAMOUS and GOOD so well, it's hard not to at least be impressed, even if you really don't like the music. I happen to like the music, happen to think Lennon & McCartney are as good a pair of songwriters as has ever existed. Gershwin wrote some stupid songs too. So did Bob Dylan and Franz Schubert. I will never love any of those people as much as I love the Beatles.

after I found them (unprompted by her btw), it was usually me asking her things like "how could you have lived through Sgt Pepper and not realized what kind of genius you were hearing?"

haha I was totally like this with my parents too. they found my Beatlemania perplexing. my mom routinely mixed up details (confusing John for Paul etc) and my dad had attachment to them at all (his favorite band was the Lovin Spoonful)

dad had NO

that should say

if you tell enough people who weren't around when a band was active that they were the best thing that's ever happened in music and no other band that has ever come since will ever be as important, they will eventually begin to believe it and increase the "demand".

tbh i refuse to believe that even a single person in the world felt bullied into liking the beatles because they heard how 'important' they were to a previous generation. the fact is that the beatles' music sounds generally pretty un-dated, apart from some of the explicitly 'psychedelic' stuff -- there's no reason that ppl who were born after the '60s shouldn't find it accessible.

music magazines don't do beatles cover stories because of some conspiracy to make ppl like the beatles, they do it because a) music magazines are lazy and beatles features are easy to write and b) same reason they put hendrix or nirvana on the cover -- it sells magazines.

I've always heard these stories about not liking the Beatles until, say, the White Album because up to then, it was all teeny-bopper shit.

This is just that fuckin 'WHY CANT MYYYYYYY BAND BE CANON' argument all over again, sorry that lots of ppl like the beatles so much, wtf, stop makin up reasons for it to satisfy yr own personal fetish for new/different music (ilmers in general suffer from this dreadful affliction to a far greater extent than normal ppl) go love the music you love, this is not a conspiracy, peace out, ps beatles pwn all the bands you didnt mention since

word on the streets is that the beatles are really good

i have something interesting to say about the beatles

it's

wait

um

Come on, come on!

*ooooo*

I think it was "I don't really like Bob Dylan"

dylan is mostly shite tho tbf

maybe if he'd had ringo on drums but we'll never know

This is just that fuckin 'WHY CANT MYYYYYYY BAND BE CANON' argument all over again

― posters who have figured how how to priv (darraghmac), Wednesday, June 5, 2013 9:02 PM (40 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Actually, it isn't.

?

haha this bore should air his rubbish on a thread not titled "the beatles"

oh wait no I think I had a contrairian opinion about the beatles to express, that's it. When I think of what it was, it may shock you.

that reminds me, I need to start my 'Why Can't My Band Be A Cannon' thread

true story, i was briefly in a (not very good) band called Cannon.

the beatles are no badfinger, that's for sure

booming post tylerw

lol

ha

haha this bore should air his rubbish on a thread not titled "the beatles"

― Eyeball Kicks, Wednesday, June 5, 2013 9:51 PM (7 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

"Aw yeah, brother. That Turrican is just soooooo square... he's not hip to these fresh way-out sounds. Aw man, he's so heavy. Totally trippin' my tits off, brother. Outtasite."

what are some bands u like turrican

the Rutles

iirc

here comes the story of the turrican

It's an easy enough question to answer: use the search function :)

Several generations later, sure, but who's come close?

― posters who have figured how how to priv (darraghmac), Wednesday, June 5, 2013 4:42 PM (4 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Bands did not cease to sell large amounts of records and become popular amongst a large group of people when The Beatles broke up.

― The Jupiter 8 (Turrican), Wednesday, June 5, 2013 5:00 PM (5 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

?

― posters who have figured how how to priv (darraghmac), Wednesday, June 5, 2013 5:03 PM (4 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

not trying to overly pick on you but pls tell us these bands so i can bump their threads to ask why ppl still listen to their stuff

turrican do i recall correctly btw that you (alongside myself) are one of ilm's few oasis fans btw because

Super Furry Animals - Love Kraft poll (started by Turrican on board I Love Music on Nov 2, 2011)

POLL: Things that Richard Fairbrass is too sexy for in 'I'm Too Sexy' by Right Said Fred (started by The Jupiter 8 (Turrican) on board I Love Music on May 25, 2012)

C/D: WHITESNAKE - 'STILL OF THE NIGHT' (Song/Video) (started by The Jupiter 8 (Turrican) on board I Love Music on Jun 21, 2012)

Preferably for threads I've posted in :)

lovekraft is a fuckin sweet album, but no beatles no sfa imo

Indeed. "Demand" because they've been constantly mythologised for the last 40 years with needless coverage that could have been given to a then-current artist or another heritage act that deserves it just as much,

jesus man will you STFU about The Beatles for once in your life

a then-current artist or another heritage act that deserves it just as much,

?????

turrican what is your explanation for why the media has so arbitrarily conspired for so long to foist the beatles, beatles and nothing but the beatles on us, as opposed to other equally talented "heritage acts"

http://www.retronaut.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/Communism.jpg

xxxxpost:

Well yeah, there's absolutely no doubt about that. I don't think I was in any way denying that The Beatles were influential. But lots of things have been influential. The Beatles were influenced themselves by both music that I like and music that I don't.

turrican what is your explanation for why the media has so arbitrarily conspired for so long to foist the beatles, beatles and nothing but the beatles on us, as opposed to other equally talented "heritage acts"

― i don't even have an internet (Hurting 2), Wednesday, June 5, 2013 10:17 PM (31 seconds ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Fuck knows. It's a big mystery I'd love to get to the bottom of.

a then-current artist or another heritage act that deserves it just as much,

???????????

I would also like to know which heritage acts you are talking about

Chad & Jeremy

Herman's Hermits

dragging it out like this isnt going to make it look any better when your answer is the bangles or w/e

oh wait, btw please don't say the fucking kinks dude, just kill yourself before you post that

I would also like to know which heritage acts you are talking about

― i don't even have an internet (Hurting 2), Wednesday, June 5, 2013 10:28 PM (29 seconds ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Pretty much all of them :)

just kill yourself before you post that

― i don't even have an internet (Hurting 2), Wednesday, June 5, 2013 10:30 PM (9 seconds ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

"Just kill yourself! Peace and love! Peace and love! Just kill yourself!"

the last guy I knew who thought the kinks were better than the beatles was this weird longhaired guy who lived upstairs from me, never smiled, never moved out of our college town, and rumoredly drank himself to death

ah here the kinks are at least in the realm of a thoughtful nod ffs

the kinks are a perfectly good band! I just have had nothing but bad experiences with people who insist they're better than the beatles.

poll

we should just poll every band ever, one-by-one against the beatles

until one wins

no wait this is ilm

they'd all win, ilm sucks

Was gonna say if you think ILM would not choose The Shaggs and Nickelback over the Beatles you have not been paying attention.

from the thread "Jefferson Airplane":

Better than the Beatles.
― Frank Kogan (Frank Kogan), Wednesday, March 9, 2005 11:45 PM (8 years ago)

People who insist that they hate the Beatles - C or D?

The Beatles have had more number-one albums on the British charts and sold more singles in the UK than any other act. According to the RIAA, they are the best-selling band in the United States, with 177 million certified units. In 2008, the group topped Billboard magazine's list of the all-time most successful "Hot 100" artists. As of 2013, they hold the record for most number-one hits on the Hot 100 chart with 20. They have received 7 Grammy Awards, an Academy Award for Best Original Song Score and 15 Ivor Novello Awards. Collectively included in Time magazine's compilation of the 20th century's 100 most influential people, the Beatles are the best-selling band in history, with EMI Records estimating sales of over one billion units.

ur foolin nobody world, you dont reeeally like them

I think Nate Dogg already beat the Beatles in one such poll.

I really do think the Beatles were uniquely popular - and central to pop culture - for a sustained period of time. There really is almost no act in the same league, not even Elvis maybe (and anyway their music is more interesting). I mean, you brought up Radiohead - go to the mall now and ask every teenager to sing a Radiohead song and hardly any will be able to do it. Perform the equivalent Beatles experiment in 1965 and I won't say EVERY teen can do it but the number is going to be way, way higher. And I bet most of them own at least one Beatle recording. The numbers for MJ in the 80s are closer to Beatles but surely not as high. So in the land of my baseless made up thought experiment anyway, it just makes sense that more people are going to grow up and want to read and write Beatle crap.

This isn't to say that I don't want a Mark Lewisohn for lots of other bands, but the market may simply not be there. Alternately, it may be that the market isn't interested in band crap at all, but can be interested in crap that delves into minutia of stories they already know very well. It turns out that the Beatles happen to be the musical version of this and the Kennedy assassination is the political one, but basically the pop matrix only has room for one band whose propulsive narrative admits of ever more filling-in, revisionism, and reconsideration. The Beatles just happened to get the job, by virtue of all of the above, and the music is solid enough that younger generations don't just tune it out as grandpa gibberish about some oldtimey band they don't care about.

it would be remiss of me to forego pointing out that radiohead are shite, and a muuuch better example of a band popular for reasons of the perceived benefits of fandom vs their actual recorded output, which is totally without merit since 1997

I would read the shit out of a Lewisohn-type book on Zeppelin tbrr. Or Miles Davis.

i've always wanted to read a 'revolution in the head' style book about elvis.

Heck, a book on just the first Miles quintet would be great.

i like the idea of elvis being the 'other' inescapable pop figure because in a way he's sort of the anti-beatles -- instead of this universally beloved band with a very compact, well-documented, and more or less perfect recording career, you have this very polarising figure who's universally familiar and simultaneously loved and sort of held in contempt, who has this huge messy sprawling career that it's almost impossible to make sense of, whose very existence changed the game so much that it's hard to really grasp how his initial audiences saw him. and yet somehow he's still huge.

it's the fried peanut butter and banana sandwiches

Think yr overstating the negative consensus on elvis. Maybe dylan a better pick?

i think the beatles are grebt but i always feel bad for noodle vague when they are brought up

Contrarians oughtnt be pitied it defeats the purpose

go to the mall now and ask every teenager to sing a Radiohead song and hardly any will be able to do it.

Does anyone remember Esther Rantzen's "That's Life" show, they did a vox-pop thing at a shopping mall, getting people to sing a beatles song. Most of them managed "yeah yeah yeah, ooh.." but actual verse lyrics were beyond them

This was 1978 or thereabouts.

I dunno was it full lyrics, but lets not pretend radiohead fare better under that test

contrarian my arse. here it is: the Beatles existed and were v. popular and perhaps their popularity is unique and unprecedented. they made some music which i quite like and some which i don't really. their "importance" feels exaggerated by the fanbase to me, but importance is a bit bullshitty when it comes to art anyway. i often find people who obsess over them to be a bit staid and tedious in their musical opinions. they probably don't need to have 25,000 ilx threads about them. sometimes people pretend you're fronting when you sincerely believe they were far from all that.

there, that's my considered opinions.

OK, my also considered reply.

i often find people who obsess over them to be a bit staid and tedious in their musical opinions.

I do obsess over the minutae, but I do have a wide appreciation and understanding of a large amount of musical styles and suchlike. Certainly not staid. Tedious is in the eye of the beholder, so that's up to you.

they probably don't need to have 25,000 ilx threads about them.

I don't. I have probably about 10.

OK, here it is:

See that carpet you are standing on? That's the Beatles. It covers everywhere. In places it is very thin, almost to the point you cannot see it at all, but it is there.

nah you see that's the kind of overhype that makes me get really hateful about them. i'll give them a part of the carpet but bollocks to this "they invented everything" nonsense

That standard lamp on the table? That's Kula Shaker. There's a corner of the room it lit up at one point, but the bulb does not work any more.

xpost they certainly did not invent everything. You stand on the carpet, the carpet did not invent you.

This metaphor must be tested to the very limit.

i already have been :D

anyway, peace out, enjoy your thing

Oh god yeah.. Some people love only the carpet, they think it is shagpile and lie down on it and never move...

Anyways, it's like a lot of things: To what extent was "Bitches Brew" inspired by the beatles? Very little. But what level of trace element? We can never know.. A bit like "to what extent was wal-mart an influence on "Bitches Brew", and so on..

Most of yr post is fine nv, but lets be real, when you pretend they weren't all that you're fronting and/or wrong.

Reacting to the critical or popular acclaim of an act/artist/group/team/writer/product/weather/philosophical concept can often be understandable but is also always wrong and/or fronting and is 100% worse than any genuine reaction to the thing itself

Also fp'd u

the self-evident all thatness of the Beatles is another one of those stupid bits of hype. i'll take a thousand FPs for my right to say they was nowt special

Self-evident cant be hype, fp'd u again

I agree with every word NV has ever uttered about the Beatles

http://www.enviro-tec.co.uk/carpet%20beetle%203.jpg-for-web-normal.jpg

beatles hatred washes over me anyway but when that person is inevitably all 'but omg the ROLLING STONES, they were FANTASTIC' i'm right yep thanks for playing

don't hit your arse on the way out

I think we can all agree that preferring the Monkees is acceptable though

preferring anything to anything is to be treated with suspicion iirc

The stones are prob worthy #2 tbh

Oasis coulda taken kinks for third but be here now eh

Rolling Stone are #2, too right

(by which I mean they are poop)

i'm not fond but eh, each to their own

it's when stoners are all 'wah beatles are overrated' that o_O walks in and sets up a craft stall

When anyone says anyone is overrated my reaction is usually 'why do you care stfu'

NV and Tom D otm

byrds rule 4ever

my man! throw the beatles down a well imo

I would read the shit out of a Lewisohn-type book on Zeppelin tbrr. Or Miles Davis.

― hashtag sizzler (Phil D.), Wednesday, June 5, 2013 9:43 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Ditto (re: Miles, but the Who instead of Zep).

Lewisohn-type books on Zeppelin exist, but it's just huge tour diaries. Here's another thing to consider: the Beatles didn't tour during the last half of their career, so any book about them will necessarily have to focus on studio crafting for this period. With a Zep book or a Who book or even a Beach Boys book there is lots of tour listings, concert reviews, live photos, promotional posters, etc.

Also, in my experience (basically amounting to having friends tell me about their kids) kids of grade school age still discover the Beatles without parental prompting and are like whoa I found the best music.

― 2 huxtables and a sousaphone (Jon Lewis), Wednesday, June 5, 2013 2:04 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

OTFM. This is what happened to me. I mean my folks had a few Beatles records and my favorite movie as a kid was "Yellow Submarine" on a bootleg VHS but discovering each of their albums by myself was a life-changing experience.

Thank God I never 'discovered' them

Christopher Columbus discovered 'em

Dr dre discovered em

Beatles by Dre.

I would like to throw them in a drain and then put a cast iron disc over dem

Christopher Cross discovered 'em

Superman picked up a cast iron drain cover and discovered em

They lived in a museum where people came to see 'em.

things that are boringly obvious to like but still awesome: the beatles, citizen kane, peanuts, pepperoni on pizza, batman

read that as peanuts on pizza and was like hrm!

please please please let there be an actual beatles by dre product sometime in my lifetime.

Not citizen kane

I think John messed up the lyrics to "Day Tripper." Shouldn't it be a round-trip ticket instead of one-way? Otherwise she'll be staying wherever she went.

She took him half the way there.

This thread convinced me to give these guys a listen but apparently they're not on spotify so fuck them

Not citizen kane

now who's the contrarian eh?

i guess that anyone can disagree over an individual work, welles blows my mind in many other movies. it's hardly the same level of contrarianism as writing off ten years of extraordinarily productive output form a band imo?

citizen kane is dope

but... you can dislike an album but not a band?

not this band, that would be fronting?

otm

haha yeah it is pretty funny -- we were driving somewhere last Sunday, and listening to one of those breakfast with the beatles things on the radio, and the DJ was listing off all of these obscure facts/dates etc. and i was wondering if there was any other pop cultural phenomenon that allowed for such deep nerdiness.

― tylerw, Tuesday, 4 June 2013 16:26 (4 days ago) Permalink

My father joked years ago that they Beatles have their weekly Sunday morning shows on the radio because the Beatles are a kind of religion to some.

Strange but true: When I go to Barnes & Noble, Elvis CDs (end of recording career: 1977) and Roy Orbison CDs (end of recording career: 1988) are filed under "Oldies," while Beatles CDs (end of recording career: 1970) are filed under "Rock/Pop." As a major Elvis fan and someone who wouldn't listen to a Beatles song unless you paid me (not much, but definitely in advance), that seems kinda fucked.

have asked workers @ amoeba about this before and it has to do with when they were most popular not when they stopped making records. since the beatles have never stopped selling they remain in rock. if that makes sense.

yerp, makes sense to me. "oldies" doesn't refer to the age of the music, it refers to the kind of people who buy it. roy orbison and elvis are great, but it's generally older people buying their stuff these days. whereas, due to the continued worldwide media conspiracy, the beatles are still relevant and cool to younger people.

I'm guessing most people under 25 wouldn't listen to Elvis unless you paid them either.

My parents were just in Memphis and of course went to Graceland, so I got to thinking: for the life of me I couldn't figure out what if any cultural resonance Elvis has retained. Elvis had his share of awesome, but I've never met anyone who was an earnest Elvis fan the way many people are Beatles (or Stones) fans. It seems when Elvis is invoked, if he is invoked at all, it is as kitsch or punchline, which of course is not fair to his legacy, even though his legacy, ironically, absolutely invites it. Now, the Beatles solo have all invited and deserved barbs as kitch or crap or has-beens or saps, but the Beatles proper have remained pretty bulletproof. They're like a perpetual motion machine, a pop music comet circling the globe and constantly being discovered by young people staring up waiting for it to pass. Can't think of any other acts outside some sort of communal/collective scene (like the Dead) like that.

Especially for music that old. I mean, sometimes I imagine there as as few people listening to Buddy Holly as there are listening to Big Star. I guess Johnny Cash has endured as a trans-generational icon, thanks to his late-life finish line sprint.

I've never met anyone who was an earnest Elvis fan the way many people are Beatles (or Stones) fans.

This is a truly sad statement. I believe you, but it's a fucking tragedy nonetheless. Elvis Presley was one of the five or ten greatest musical performers this country has ever produced - up there with Louis Armstrong, Frank Sinatra and Miles Davis - and the fact that he's been reduced to "kitsch or punchline" is something Americans with functioning ears should be ashamed of.

My mother is an absolutely earnest Elvis fan. So is my nephew, or was as of a couple of years ago. Mom is 65, nephew is 17.

I'm a big Elvis fan, though it took a while, and have never willingly sat through a single one of his movies. The number one complaint I hear about Elvis is that he "stole black peoples' music". Which isn't really a complaint because how does that make him differ from every other musician of the latter 20th century?

It is a tragedy, almost a classical tragedy. Certainly I know people who are Elvis fans, but not to the extent that I know massive Beatles fans. Elvis deserved a mass redemption he never got, but the fact that "Elvis impersonator" is probably the first thing a lot of people think of when they think of Elvis pretty much sums up said tragedy.

I wonder, had that massive decade by decade boxed set reissue program kicked off a year or two ago rather than whenever it did, if the timing might have been better. I hate to be all internet about this, but it would have allowed for a lot more young, engaged voices to asses and re-assess rather than whatever it got in the pages (back when there were pages) of the usual suspects. FWIW, there's exactly one Elvis review in the 'Fork archives.

My experience and perception of the elvis legacy is so far removed from what you're describing it's bewildering. Are you sure you mean the elvis, the elvis presley?

Are you American? Honest question, because maybe this is a matter of perspective. You know about Elvis impersonators and impersonations, right? Which proliferated far more than any, say, Beatles impersonations ever did, and rarely emphasized the music over the jumpsuit and voice? Do you remember the Skinny Elvis vs. Fat Elvis stamp debate? Peanut butter and banana sandwiches? The jungle room? Doing kung fu moves on stage? There are plenty (like me!) who find a lot to like in Elvis, and love certain periods or songs or whatever. But Elvis the icon as I encounter him in the wild really does seem to be kitsch. Obviously Elvis was a huge, important musical figure. So was Jerry Lee Lewis, Little Richard, Chuck Berry, Johnny Cash, lots of folks who were perhaps less famous/successful. But those other cats imo are remembered in different ways than Elvis seems to be (which is different from how he should be remembered).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elvis_impersonator

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6JbBVKQDTWQ

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tdxr0z3SZ74

Two things I'd say as to why time has been kinder to the Beatles. First, most of Elvis's greatest music is concentrated into two very brief periods: '56 to when he goes into the army in '58 (the Sun stuff was recorded earlier, but not really heard till he became big), and the comeback in '68/69. The Beatles have a fairly solid block of music from '63 to '70; if you're a fan, you won't like it all, but you probably have favourite songs strewn across that block. Also--related--while I can certainly see where someone might view Elvis's greatest music as greater than the Beatles' greatest (not me, but many do), I think it's hard to argue that Elvis didn't make more bad music than the Beatles. For whatever reason--maybe the lingering evidence of all those '60s movies--and fair or not, his less-than-great self seems to live on on almost equal footing with his genius. Solo work aside, that's not true of the Beatles.

It's an interesting question, one that I've tried to figure out myself. I think there a whole bunch of reasons.

Are you American? Honest question

lol

as a yank, my experience of elvis is akin to j-in-c's

the whole thing seemed to hit larry pretty hard in 'rattle and hum' tho i ascribe rather greater depth to our deemster

also my landlord, a lifelong brooklyn resident who looks like a latter-day maradona, has 5THBTLE on his car license plate

Elvis needs a decent biopic.

a role nic cage was born to play

I have a dim memory of the Kurt Russell TV film being pretty good.

Wow--had no idea it was directed by John Carpenter until I looked it up just now. I've seen Russell talk about being on the set with Elvis as a kid, and he says he was a great guy. So he brought that to the film.

"elvis was a hero to most/but he never meant shit to me/love the Beatles tho obv/I mean come on who doesn't?" - Chuck D

just one more nice thing: i think markers is hilarious and awesome. the "i miss you" video gets me every time i encounter it lurking through the old threads.

― Treeship, Monday, June 10, 2013 5:33 AM (7 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

*flags post*

*flubs post* morelike

I know who mickey mouse is thats about it tbh.

Were I to guess, i'd say any disconnect is occurring btwn 'serious music people' - say ilm as represented here by jic- and 'musics nice isnt it' people like myself, but from the latter pov i'd have elvis as an icon to match the beatles, sinatra, mid 90's oasis, anyone

tbh the beatles shit that most USians are into is pretty kitschy too, pepper & abbey road & yellow submarine, "strawberry fields whatever", it's like goofy good times music for light drug dalliances

ok now I'm sold

Let's get real tho, yanks. The beach boys are a novelty band and you've got to stop inviting them to these discussions.

sounds a bit "serious music people" to me hmmmmm

I dont see the point of having a cake and not eating it tbh

The beach boys are a novelty band and you've got to stop inviting them to these discussions.

With you 1000%. Gimme "Good Vibrations" and "Don't Worry Baby" and I'm done.

Oh shi

My gun was loaded with blanks, but now shots have been fired

What about God Only Knows? Surely that isn't a novelty song.

A lot less so than "Good Vibrations"

tbh the beatles shit that most USians are into is pretty kitschy too, pepper & abbey road & yellow submarine, "strawberry fields whatever", it's like goofy good times music for light drug dalliances

― Euler, Monday, June 10, 2013 8:39 AM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

vs

alright.. i only read the first bunch of postings.. and i dont know why there are so many haters out there.. dave is a great guy and does alott of work for charities.. pardon the spelling haha.. i dont know where you get corporate rock band from.. since hes libral as hell.. his lyrics are great.. just get beyond everyday and gravedigger.. his so smooth on the guitar its not even funny.. everyone in the band has incredible talent.. and i dont know how you can say its bland music.. some of the greatest artists ever are bland.. for example.. and keep in mind i love the beatles.. but "we all live in a yellow submarineee yellow submarinee.. la la la" its very boring as well.. oh and about his voice.. very few people have the range that dave has.. and what kind of music does everyone here listen too??.. besides britney spears and john mayer of course..
-- CcchrissS (guitarshark198...), December 10th, 2005 3:25 AM.

Once you're separating pop music into kitschy and non-kitschy you've already kind of painted yourself into a corner.

Cf me backing myself into a corner on the lumineers thread

Beach Boys is a good thing to bring up, I think. There are Serious Music People who revere the band, but I bet many only know the hits, and many of those folks listen with some degree of fun fun fun irony. Which is something else unique about the Beatles: does anyone listen to the Beatles ironically? Can the band even be listened to ironically? Elvis, Beach Boys, sure, there's a certain kitsch factor, but even the kitschy Beatles stuff seems self-aware enough to be inured from dismissal. "Yellow Submarine" isn't a great song, and the Beatles don't present it as a great song, but it's still, you know, a great song.

Also, the Beatles never took the stage to "Also sprach Zarathustra,"

It was implied.

Also, the Beatles never took the stage to "Also sprach Zarathustra,"

They never took the stage at all after 1966, pussies

Maybe they would have had they pumped themselves up with Also sprach Zarathustra every night.

I have a dim memory of the Kurt Russell TV film being pretty good.

I watched this about a year ago or so - it's pretty good, Russell is a lot of fun, but nothing revelatory

i think it's pretty misguided to assume that even casual BBs fans are 'listening ironically,' whatever that means -- anyway, there's nothing kitschy about 'fun fun fun,' no moreso than 'she loves you' or 'i wanna hold your hand.'

in my experience most ppl are at least sort of aware that elvis was once young and cool, and that you need to separate 'cool elvis' from 'lame elvis.'

For sure. Same with Beach Boys! But I guarantee you there are more people who do "Kokomo" at karaoke night than "Fun Fun Fun."

And it's not because "Kokomo" is good.

People do the Beatles because everyone knows and loves the Beatles.

Where did you get all these fascinating karaoke stats?

I pulled them out of my butt, ironically.

That was how Yellow Submarine was written.

Many people do actually like "Kokomo," btw.

Where did you get those stats?

No numbers, no credibility!

(When I saw the Beach Boys last year, I totally didn't mind Kokomo).

i like kokomo but i kind of hate the beach boys, connection prob

only really came to terms w this the other day when i voted for san francisco

defend the indefensible: "kokomo" by the beach boys

the little bit that goes 'that's where we wanna go-o-o' right before the chorus in 'kokomo' is really nice.

What would it say about the Beatles if "Little Deuce Coupe" was the most popular Beach Boys song at karaoke night?

I remember reading a thread where aerosmith argued that kokomo was the best beach boys song

It seems like the product of a different band to be honest, not really a "beach boys" song.

It's a "product" of Satan's butthole, Hail Satan.

whenever I think of Kokomo, I think of toddler mary kate or ashley olson saying "KO-KO-MO" on that episode of Full House, and then I start to think about whether I actually find that cute, ironically cute or just disgusting, and then my mind spins into a nihilistic vortex that takes me days to get out of.

Otm. Full house is kind of uncanny... nostalgic in a bad way.

interesting Lewisohn interview here. pretty psyched for the book now tbh
http://beatlesexaminer.podbean.com/2013/06/23/twst-39-mark-lewisohn-on-his-beatles-biography/

! will listen

i'm so happy
cuz today i shaved my head
and i'm not sad

There's more of that Lewisohn interview on the guy's own webpage (scroll down): http://www.kenmichaelsradio.com./

All Those Years sounds mindblowing: starting with a 1,000 page book that will be the first of three... !

Trying to imagine what these "wow moments" will be.

Tuesday: John meets Paul

All Those Years sounds mindblowing: starting with a 1,000 page book that will be the first of three... !
― hewing to the status quo with great zealotry (DavidM),

I think the "director's cut" they are releasing UK only at first is actually 2,000 pages!!!

http://www.craigharper.com.au/uploaded_images/yawning.jpg

Party pooper

and knowing what the boys had for breakfast on August 5, 1959 is a PAR-TAY!!

I'll remember to bring a flask of coffee and a sleeping bag if I ever get around to reading it.

My guess is nothing will be as wow as the teenage circle jerk revealed in Paul's book.

i never really feel like i need another beatles book besides the large silver anthology book

This is fun - all of the Abbey Road medley w/isolated vocal tracks:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VrAdX4O1m4M&feature=youtu.be

Let's hear some Carnival of Light, motherfuckers!

I don't care if it's 20 minutes of Ringo dragging a tambourine across the floor, I NEED TO HEAR IT!

Seriously, dunno what the fuck McCartney's waiting for.

Someone made another fake a few weeks ago, this time incorporating "John" saying "Barcelona."

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QgKCQJfAVgI

http://simpsonswiki.com/w/images/5/5d/Helter_Shmelter.png

http://www.thebeatlesonline.co.uk/thebeatles/Live-At-The-BBC/
NEW PRODUCT
I never downloaded the big ol' complete Beeb Beatles sessions (9 discs?). Is there great stuff that wasn't on the first official release?

In 1994, The Beatles’ Live at the BBC was released to worldwide acclaim - hitting number one in the U.K. and number three in the U.S. and selling more than five million copies within six weeks.
A new companion to The Beatles’ first BBC collection, On Air – Live at the BBC Volume 2, will now be released on 11 November.

On Air’s 63 tracks, none of which overlaps with The Beatles’ first BBC release, include 37 previously unreleased performances and 23 previously unreleased recordings of in-studio banter and conversation between the band’s members and their BBC radio hosts.

In the studios of the British Broadcasting Corporation, The Beatles performed music for a variety of radio shows. On Air - Live at the BBC Volume 2 presents the sound of The Beatles seizing their moment to play for the nation. Thrilled to hear these exciting recordings again, Paul McCartney said, “There’s a lot of energy and spirit. We are going for it, not holding back at all, trying to put in the best performance of our lifetimes.”

On Air Live At The BBC Volume 2
DOUBLE CD ALBUM
£15.99

'Live at the BBC Volume 2' Limited Edition Lithographic Print
ART
£49.99

'Live at the BBC Volume 2' CD & Limited Edition Lithographic Print
BUNDLE
£63.99

that bundle is a fucking DEAL

I have a question about the Beatles:
This is pretty much just anecdotal, but it seems like most people under the age of about 45 who are fans of the Beatles have been listening to them since they were kids? I don't just mean listening to them in sense that pretty much everyone of this age who has grown up in the western world heard a lot of their songs, I mean specifically putting on their parents Beatles LPs or borrowing Beatles albums from their local library or whatever. Is there anyone on ilx who regularly listens to the Beatles as an adult who didn't really listen to the Beatles before the age of, say, 14? Do you think that the fact you first encountered these songs as a kid makes a difference to how you hear them today (if this is when you first heard them)?

I'd say most fans of The Beatles listened to them as kids, unless they were 70 or older.

Although Steve Neive apparently had not really heard them before Elvis Costello gave him some of the early albums. Dunno if he's a fan though. He definitely liked them though.

Is there anyone on ilx who regularly listens to the Beatles as an adult who didn't really listen to the Beatles before the age of, say, 14?

I got into them via my parents' vinyls of Abbey Road and Revolver, must've been about 15.

I was p familiar with albums my dad liked a lot when I was a kid (Beatles for Sale, Rubber Soul, Help), but didn't hear their later stuff (Revolver - Abbey Road) in their entirety until I was about 17.

Age 14 or 15 here again too. Around 1995, just before the Beatles Anthology TV series. I really barely knew their music before that point. I remember having a decent supply of similarly-minded peers as well. So what is it about Beatle music that so lends itself to That Age? Is it the same thing it was in the Sixties - a halfway house between kid-friendly pop (big hooks, clean sounds, fun to sing along) and Weird Music rife with Experimenting, Art-ness and Teenage Anxieties? But then I'd say they should be more of an all-ages thing in that way - you can find points/albums all along their career to hang your hat, wherever you stand on popism/rockism. Maybe it's just that they have so much narrative, or that the shape of that narrative starts to resonate at that age? Just throwing things out there.

I got into them via my parents' vinyls of Abbey Road and Revolver, must've been about 15.

― I wish to incorporate disco into my small business (chap)

These are solidly my two favourite Beatles records to this day, by the way, possibly not coincidentally.

I'm guessing I was maybe 8 when I got into my dad's Beatles records. I went through them chronologically, and for the first year or so I couldn't really get into anything past Revolver because it all seemed too weird. Magical Mystery Tour was the gateway to the hippie-beardie stuff, because it was so goofy. (Though the yellow matter custard dripping from a dead dog's eye freaked me out.) But I think that's why I've never loved Abbey Road and Let It Be the way I love the early and especially mid-period stuff.

But anyway, yes, sure. What I really wonder is how kids hear it now. Like, my kids may have never heard the Beatles, because I just don't play them that much -- and even when I do, it's just one thing among many that they hear. To keep things in perspective, my oldest son is 9. I was into the Beatles when I was 9, and their oldest music at that point was about 16 years old. For my son to be into something of similar vintage, he would be listening to OK Computer.

Is there anyone on ilx who regularly listens to the Beatles as an adult who didn't really listen to the Beatles before the age of, say, 14?

I've probably mentioned it on a thread or two, but the only Beatles album my parents owned was the Yellow Submarine album, so those four or so songs are pretty much all I had to go by other than what I heard elsewhere (Hey Bulldog is still one of my fave songs). I didn't buy a Beatles album until college, at the earliest. In fact, I want to say the only Beatles product I ever owned was a used copy of the BBC sessions, White Album and Yellow Submarine Songtrack. Now I have everything and listen to it pretty much regularly.

Because it's funny, btw, the only Dylan album my parents had was Self Portrait (!) and the only Stones album my parents had was Goat's Head Soup (and it was missing the actual LP). But they had every Bill Cosby comedy album!

My wife grew up in a largely rock-free family but one of about 3-4 rock records her parents owned was the white album.
In contrast I grew up with older sibs heavily into classic rock in its 70s heyday but none of them liked the Beatles so the only area of Rock history my wife has an edge on me is the Beatles
My kids mostly hear music via my iPod in the car and there are only about 4 Beatles tunes on it so they don't know them at all, but my daughter loves badfinger so close enough I guess

my dad told me always to tell the Beatles to fuck off

and did they?

2 down

It seems like I was maybe overestimating how young people tended to be when they got into the Beatles? When I was a pre-teen (late 80s to mid 90s) they seemed very much part of a kids canon to me? Like, I was aware of Ringo primarily through his narrating Thomas the Tank Engine, I had a Rupert the Bear book that tied into McCartney's Frog Chorus, I'm pretty sure we sang Yellow Submarine and Octopus's Garden at a school assembly...
The first Beatles album I listened to was my parents cassette copy of the Beatles Ballads, I think I was about 8 or 9 and would listen to it on repeat for hours. Maybe some of this list is UK specific, or specific to a certain time in the UK? I don't think the Beatles Ballads was issued in the US for example.

i had a spell of intense-ish Beatles listening in my v. early teens based around some two-part early tapes doc on the BBC i think. plus teachers used to beat you over the head with that shit. my brother had a couple of budget comps aping the red and blue albums, i liked the early R'n'B clones and "Hey Bulldog", still ok with that stuff mostly.

parents had no interest in them whatsoever, used to come across them at other kids' houses more often.

mainly i think they were never central to any narrative of music that i was interested in pursuing

"mainly i think they were never central to any narrative of music that i was interested in pursuing"

I was definitely into the Beatles a long time before I was 'into' pop music per se, when I did start getting into music as a teenager and constructing a canon of what I thought was 'good/cool music' there wasn't much direct connection to the Beatles, although I still listened to them a lot and didn't like them any less.

I think part of the appeal of the Beatles for me at that age was that they did seem to fit into this kids canon, but at the same time there was something mysterious about them, and I think part of the reason that I would spend so long listening to them was that I was trying to understand it, work out what it was about.
Another important bit of Beatles stuff for me when I was kid was my mum's old copy of the Beatles chords for guitar book, with illustrations by Alan Aldridge:

http://eil.com/images/main/The+Beatles+-+Complete+-+Guitar+Edition+-+BOOK-214226.jpg

http://cs1893.vk.me/u725329/99607456/x_7ea9d6c5.jpg

i think Simon and Garfunkel filled this slot for me as a pre-teen

i was a 1 kid: 9th grade christmas present, during one of the periodic generation-indoctrinating marketing blitzes. this was also p much my introduction to music outside, like, holst, or bond songs, so it's that stuff that i associate with childhood. the beatles were an adolescence gateway: songs about girls and depression. DC otm re: the narrative, which was an early introduction to People Growing Up. the later stuff (abbey road, "two of us") was almost frighteningly sad to me for this reason. listened to almost nothing else for basically a year; consumed everything w/out much attention paid to chronology (this was also the heyday of napster). abandoned them suspiciously quickly after a girl i liked (who'd for a while had no choice but to love them, because her boomer parents had a houseful of ghastly paraphernalia) embarked on a punk phase and told me as gently as she could that the beatles were "too soft". to the extent that that memory lingers i guess i do think of them as entry-level. i don't put them on very much now except for "she said she said" or "hey bulldog" but when i do they're still pretty immediate.

I was aware of them as a little kid, but didn't get properly into them until I was 14, when I pinched the (2) albums my dad owned off him (Pepper and Mystery), and then bought up the others myself.

I tracked down (for myself) the Monkees DVD where Tim Buckley closed one of the episodes, and I played it for the kids, they enjoyed it a lot.

I then found The Beatles' "Help" DVD, and again I played it for their entertainment, as reported on in the thread "So, should I let Amber and Alice see the Beatles' "Help" film?;

At this point, they thought The Beatles were a follow-on from The Monkees, in fact I remember Alice singing "Hey hey we're the Beatles" at one point.

Since then, I hadn't really made a point of getting them 'into' The Beatles, but Alice, being the musical one, has made a point of learning all there is to know about them (and has given chapter and verse to various music teachers about the specifics of the "Twist and Shout" session..)

the only person my age I know who's REALLY into the Beatles had parents from Liverpool who loved them. He genuinely rates Kula Shaker which is a bit wtf for a 23 year old. He's already married though.

I had a phase at about 12 when I thought 'This Boy' was the deepest shit ever recorded (lol) and that was it. I think apart from listening to And Your Bird Can Sing on YouTube a few times, I've never actually put a Beatles song/album on out of choice.

Grew up w a bootleg of Yellow Submarine on VHS, and I remember talking about it on the bus to school and stuff. I was way into it. Must have been 5 or 6. That tape also included Magical Mystery Tour! And we had another one (that I didn't find until I was a teen) that had The Compleat Beatles with Malcolm McDowell narrating.

they were definitely part of the kids canon for me, all my friends liked the early beatles stuff when we were 10 or 11. we sang "i want to hold your hand" at our school's spring concert.

when i was 14 or 15 i really, really got into them. probably the first band that i just plunged into and checked out albums and books from the library and totally immersed myself in them. they were fun and accessible and also had a weird, mysterious druggy vibe that captured my fascination. i started smoking pot a fairly young age and i was blown away that "walrus" had the chant at the end that seemingly goes SMOKE POT SMOKE POT EVERYBODY SMOKE POT EVERYBODY SMOKE POT that freaked me out but also seemed really cool

btw i just shut down my brain to anyone who says that the walrus chant is saying something else. i don't care if i'm wrong, to me it will always be SMOKE POT SMOKE POT EVERYBODY SMOKE POT EVERYBODY SMOKE POT

Ha, I didn't hear it like that until I was in college, and I'd first heard "Walrus" when I was 6. I did ask my mom what an acid trip was, though (having read Lennon's quote about writing the first lines on an acid trip).

We learned a lot of Beatles songs in primary school, Yellow Submarine and Octopus' Garden were definitely in our songbooks. And I learned a lot of the popular songs from watching the Beatles cartoon on tv, iirc they would play an animated clip of the songs and have a bouncinig-ball singalong type thing

then in high school a friend made me a copy of Sgt Pepper, and another friend had this weird Reader's Digest collections of Beatles cassetes, like 6 of them that had all the songs. We got mum the blue and red compliation sets on CD for her birthday, and those became a household staple most weekends.

To be completely honest I spent most of my life only knowing the hits. I hadn't really listened to that many complete albums except Pepper til the re-release campaign, and then I started gobbling them up.

I think boomers hadn't yet infiltrated education when I was in grade school. The idea of singing Beatles songs in class, or at an assembly, would've garnered reactions from some parents and teachers along the lines of "You let our kids sing commie drug music!"

We sang Yellow Submarine and When I'm 64 in primary school, maybe a few others I'm forgetting.

Oh and my class once did a dance routine to Maxwell's Silver Hammer. It got quite violent as you can imagine.

RIP Jackie Lomax:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KT7HMdUEBI4