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Kittybriton
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« Reply #45 on: 16:49:19, 29-08-2007 » |
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When classical 'heads' say they like the Beatles, I always assume it's because they've not listened to any other 'pop' music.
I certainly do not regard myself as a "classical head" (whatever that may be - although I think it's fairly obvious what it is intended to mean) but, having come from a virtually music-free environment and then having suddenly been totally taken over by music, I grew up during the early 1960s listening to Boulez and Stockhausen while my peers were listening to - and debating the relative merits of the Beatles and the Stones; however, I was doing this at that time in complete ignorance of Beethoven and Sibelius, so I'm not suggesting that it was in any sense a typical listening experience, let alone a recommended one. That said, once I'd gotten around to experiencing a while raft more "classical" music as well as more jazz, pop etc. by later in that decade, I was left feeling that almost all the pop music I'd heard simply did nothing to excite me like other music did - even some of the examples from the mid-60s to early 70s that Ian mentioned, though often rather more interesting and less (for me) run-of-the-mill, didn't do a whole lot for me, either. All this was and remains very much a personal reaction rather than any kind of value judgement, but I simply could not help but feel that, for example, Chopin's Polonaise-Fantaisie and Varèse's Arcana grabbed all of my attentive faculties and wound me up in ways that all the pop music in the world just didn't. so you've listened to a lot of BS?  |
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Click me -> About meor me -> my handmade storeNo, I'm not a complete idiot. I'm only a halfwit. In fact I'm actually a catfish. |
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Reiner Torheit
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« Reply #46 on: 17:32:25, 29-08-2007 » |
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"I was, for several months, mutely in love with a coloratura soprano, who seemed to me to have wafted straight from Paradise to the stage of the Odessa Opera-House"
- Leon Trotsky, "My Life"
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ahinton
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« Reply #47 on: 17:55:55, 29-08-2007 » |
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When classical 'heads' say they like the Beatles, I always assume it's because they've not listened to any other 'pop' music.
I certainly do not regard myself as a "classical head" (whatever that may be - although I think it's fairly obvious what it is intended to mean) but, having come from a virtually music-free environment and then having suddenly been totally taken over by music, I grew up during the early 1960s listening to Boulez and Stockhausen while my peers were listening to - and debating the relative merits of the Beatles and the Stones; however, I was doing this at that time in complete ignorance of Beethoven and Sibelius, so I'm not suggesting that it was in any sense a typical listening experience, let alone a recommended one. That said, once I'd gotten around to experiencing a while raft more "classical" music as well as more jazz, pop etc. by later in that decade, I was left feeling that almost all the pop music I'd heard simply did nothing to excite me like other music did - even some of the examples from the mid-60s to early 70s that Ian mentioned, though often rather more interesting and less (for me) run-of-the-mill, didn't do a whole lot for me, either. All this was and remains very much a personal reaction rather than any kind of value judgement, but I simply could not help but feel that, for example, Chopin's Polonaise-Fantaisie and Varèse's Arcana grabbed all of my attentive faculties and wound me up in ways that all the pop music in the world just didn't. so you've listened to a lot of BS? Ah, now that'd be telling, would it not?! It might also be rude to tell, especially had I done so in the sense which I believe you to infer here and even more so I f were to declare where I'd listened to any - so I will desist. Best, Alistair |
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xyzzzz__
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« Reply #48 on: 19:18:45, 29-08-2007 » |
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"Much as I love the Beatles' for their melodies and harmonies, I think they were vastly over-rated as innovators. Their fans hold Sergeant Pepper's up as some kind of holy grail in musical innovation"
It wasn't innovation so much as pop ws seen to 'grow up' as a popular art into the realms of art with a capital A (that cover). I like the fact that they bring a lot of ppl together who might never post on each other's threads otherwise.
Just like Michael Ball :-)
There ws a lot before the Beatles that ws 'innovative' to me - Link Wray, Litttle Richard, etc etc - but maybe its a foolish game to play.
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IgnorantRockFan
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« Reply #49 on: 10:08:04, 30-08-2007 » |
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It wasn't innovation so much as pop ws seen to 'grow up' as a popular art into the realms of art with a capital A (that cover). That's a fair point, but maybe one needed to have been there at the time to appreciate it. Looking back on it, and giving it an objective weighting, it still looks like a musical non-event to me. |
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Allegro, ma non tanto
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richard barrett
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« Reply #50 on: 10:22:49, 30-08-2007 » |
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Let's not forget that the Beatles were the most "successful" (in commercial terms) musicians of their time. It's somewhat sobering, I think, to compare what they were doing not to the Velvets or Beefheart or Hendrix but to the music at the top of the charts in 2007 (see http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio1/chart/singles.shtml). Today's commercial music is far more homogeneous and formulaic, and I suspect that if composer/performers with (even) the originality of the Bealtes were to emerge, their chances of being supported by the "industry" would be nil. |
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Ian Pace
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« Reply #51 on: 10:49:13, 30-08-2007 » |
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It might seem that comparative evaluation of the Beatles compared to other things of their time is a rather futile activity, but it is implicit in much of the praise that they are accorded. Their supposedly making popular music 'grow up', their leading to pop music's being 'vastly more interesting and worthwhile than it had been before', the music 'standing out from most other pop music of the 1960s', their 'taking mainstream popular music forward' or even being 'innovators' (which is surely only really meaningful in relative terms), all constitute comparative evaluations of various types. I don't dislike the Beatles though I think they are overrated; but their status is in part founded upon a notion of their historical significance and particular importance relative to what else was going on in their time, leading to their canonisation, something that deserves at least to be questioned.
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« Last Edit: 11:06:18, 30-08-2007 by Ian Pace »
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'These acts of keeping politics out of music, however, do not prevent musicology from being a political act . . .they assure that every apolitical act assumes a greater political immediacy' - Philip Bohlman, 'Musicology as a Political Act'
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oliver sudden
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« Reply #52 on: 10:56:04, 30-08-2007 » |
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compare what they were doing not to the Velvets or Beefheart or Hendrix but to the music at the top of the charts in 2007 And perhaps also to what else was at the top of charts when they were? I'm sure someone here has that sort of information at their fingertips? (If, er, they haven't posted it already...) |
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Ian Pace
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« Reply #53 on: 10:57:46, 30-08-2007 » |
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'These acts of keeping politics out of music, however, do not prevent musicology from being a political act . . .they assure that every apolitical act assumes a greater political immediacy' - Philip Bohlman, 'Musicology as a Political Act'
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oliver sudden
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« Reply #54 on: 11:01:47, 30-08-2007 » |
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Ah, yes. Seems obvious really. Probably because it is.  |
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time_is_now
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« Reply #55 on: 11:02:30, 30-08-2007 » |
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It was probably Lulu or Cilla Black, Ollie.  I listened right through Pet Sounds on the way to work this morning - some of it wasn't quite as I remembered - interesting ... Will give it another spin later today and post some thoughts later. Fair points about the comparative thing, Richard, but I do think that suddenly thinking up a comparison (even one as apparently forced as Britten/Verdi!) can help you to get a new perspective on what's distinctive about each of the individual terms in the comparison, as well as (as Ian says) to assess value claims made for each. |
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The city is a process which always veers away from the form envisaged and desired, ... whose revenge upon its architects and planners undoes every dream of mastery. It is [also] one of the sites where Dasein is assigned the impossible task of putting right what can never be put right. - Rob Lapsley
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Ian Pace
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« Reply #56 on: 11:03:56, 30-08-2007 » |
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(if anyone knows a site that has not just the number ones, but the rest of the singles charts from the 1960s, I'd be very interested to see it. Also, which is the best chart to look at for the US? I realised that most of the things I held up in comparison to the Beatles are American; also that, other than Hendrix, that list doesn't include any black music from the time.)
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« Last Edit: 11:07:08, 30-08-2007 by Ian Pace »
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'These acts of keeping politics out of music, however, do not prevent musicology from being a political act . . .they assure that every apolitical act assumes a greater political immediacy' - Philip Bohlman, 'Musicology as a Political Act'
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TimR-J
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« Reply #57 on: 11:18:28, 30-08-2007 » |
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Prayers answered, Ian: http://everyhit.com/chart.htmlWhile we're invoking names like the Velvet Underground, it should be remembered that they made practically no commercial impact at the time. |
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Reiner Torheit
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« Reply #58 on: 11:45:05, 30-08-2007 » |
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I find it sweetly charming that the Fab Four are being assessed here on their musical merits (perhaps this is the real reason why Sir Paul Moptop now finds he needs to write "music" pace T-i-N's interesting thread?). Perhaps I have an unnecessarily jaded and cynical view (don't answer that..) of this, but my direct memories of the Harold Wilson era were very different. I think the first time I ever went into a record store of any kind was being taken by my elder cousin (on whom I had an enormous crush at the time, and was thus in high dudgeon about Beatle-mania). After we had auditioned "Please, Please Me" in one of those booths made of baffle-board (remember those, pop-pickers?) my cousin pronounced this "grooooovy!" and shelled-out 2+ weeks accretion of hoarded pocket-money, and we ran screaming home. "But you haven't got a record-player, Lynne?" "It doesn't matter, I've got the Beeeeaaaaatles!" she cried, hugging the disk tightly to her chest. As a great condescension she was allowed to play it once on her parent's radiogram (remember those?) as a condition of eating all her supper, and then it was time for me to go home and practice the cornet (I would have to wait until Yellow Submarine before brass instruments became at all groovy). In other words, in ref to Richard's point about the commercial success of the Beatles... they represented a marketing success, and buying a Beatles '45 (remember those, and those squiggly plastic things that went in the hole in the centre of them?) had little or nothing to do with the music on it (viz my cousin's purchase)... it was about buying into a lifestyle which said "my parents are wrong and so is Mr Wilson and everyone over 22". You didn't have to listen to the records, you only had to buy them.  (note the baffle-board on the walls...)There is a small prize for the first person to mention Marshall McLuhan in this thread. |
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« Last Edit: 11:48:22, 30-08-2007 by Reiner Torheit »
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"I was, for several months, mutely in love with a coloratura soprano, who seemed to me to have wafted straight from Paradise to the stage of the Odessa Opera-House"
- Leon Trotsky, "My Life"
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John W
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« Reply #59 on: 12:26:52, 30-08-2007 » |
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There is a small prize for the first person to mention Marshall McLuhan in this thread.
Congratulations Reiner. What would you like as your small prize?  |
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