USCHO Music Thread 4: Songs She Sang to Me, Songs She Brang to Me

[FadeToBlack&Gold]

Re: USCHO Music Thread 4: Songs She Sang to Me, Songs She Brang to Me

I do love this discussion, though. It's all opinion, and educated ones, at that.

It's why I enjoy reading old Robert Christgau reviews. Even when he gives an album I enjoy a C, his snooty takes are guaranteed to be entertaining. Then when you think you've got him figured out, he'll go and surprise you by rating an album that's considered throwaway 80s garbage by a lot of people - Poison's Open Up and Say...Ahh! - a B+ because, "A residue of metal principle spoiled the top 40 on their debut, but here they sell out like they know this stuff is only good when it's really sh*tty."

 

[The Rube]

Re: USCHO Music Thread 4: Songs She Sang to Me, Songs She Brang to Me

It's why I enjoy reading old Robert Christgau reviews. Even when he gives an album I enjoy a C, his snooty takes are guaranteed to be entertaining. Then when you think you've got him figured out, he'll go and surprise you by rating an album that's considered throwaway 80s garbage by a lot of people - Poison's Open Up and Say...Ahh! - a B+ because, "A residue of metal principle spoiled the top 40 on their debut, but here they sell out like they know this stuff is only good when it's really sh*tty."

Sounds like Colin Covert reviewing movies for the Mpls/St Paul Star Tribune. Major snobbery.

 

[dxmnkd316]

Re: USCHO Music Thread 4: Songs She Sang to Me, Songs She Brang to Me

Nirvana and Pearl Jam are decade bands -- their music was dominant and important in the 90s. The Beatles and the Rolling Stones are two-decade bands -- their music was dominate and important in the 60s and 70s. Not talking about freshly produced music, obviously, after all the Beatles for all intents are only active in the 60s -- but the true, living influence of the band -- it's active influence, not nostalgia or the endless recapitulation of its fanbase.

For example, The Who, my personal favorite superband of the 70s, are a zero-decade band. They did not substantially change music for any meaningful length of time.

There's only one three-decade group in American postwar history. If you increase the timeframe to go back to 1900 there's probably an argument to be made for somebody like Robert Johnson.

You're going to have to explain that last one. Unless you're talking about not just the group but the solo acts to follow.

 

[Gurtholfin]

Re: USCHO Music Thread 4: Songs She Sang to Me, Songs She Brang to Me

Not quite. I just don't put the Beatles as high up as you do. They are up there, no question, we agree on that. It's a matter of what level.

You are talking out your ***.

Slappy cites source after source and you compare the Beatles to Madonna.


So if not the Beatles, who is your top? Sounds like there would be a bunch ahead of them by your comments.

Put up or shut up.

 

[FadeToBlack&Gold]

Re: USCHO Music Thread 4: Songs She Sang to Me, Songs She Brang to Me

Pearl Jam would have taken Nirvana's place, although I think PJ isn't grunge. They are/were straight up rock and roll. PJ has stood the test of time, also, which is one of the signs of greatness.

Correct; neither was Mother Love Bone.

Grunge is a marketing term that started out as a joke from Mudhoney's Mark Arm, but was harped upon by Sub Pop, and then by the major labels to describe all things Seattle or Seattle-sounding.

 

[The Rube]

Re: USCHO Music Thread 4: Songs She Sang to Me, Songs She Brang to Me

You are talking out your ***.

Slappy cites source after source and you compare the Beatles to Madonna.


So if not the Beatles, who is your top? Sounds like there would be a bunch ahead of them by your comments.

Put up or shut up.

I only compared the notoriety of the Beatles and Madonna. The WORLD knows both artists. That is not necessarily a factor in talent evaluation.

I'd say Led is over the Beatles. Stones.....on par. Chuck Berry over the Beatles. Jerry Lee Lewis, maybe not for musical talent necessarily, but for the attitude he brought to music that helped rock'n'roll form its identity. If Elvis wrote his own songs, this debate would be over in a heartbeat, but that is a major knock on Elvis.

 

[The Rube]

Re: USCHO Music Thread 4: Songs She Sang to Me, Songs She Brang to Me

Re-watched "Hip Hop Evolution" on Netflix over the last couple days. We have mentioned (sometimes briefly) grunge, etc. No rap. If we're talking the world of popular music (so yes, excluding classical, jazz, etc), rap should be included. And Grandmaster Flash would be bigger than the Beatles for influence/reach/etc. He laid the foundation of samples/beats as we know them...all because of a crayon. An entire genre...because of a wax stick of sorts.

 

[Kepler]

Re: USCHO Music Thread 4: Songs She Sang to Me, Songs She Brang to Me

Kids don't know the Beatles? Kep you need to get out more.

Everyone knows the Beatles the way everyone knows the Flintstones -- Boomers never shut up about them. The broad cultural knowledge of the Beatles will end with the death of the Boomers. Even now they are really only known to people under 40 the way people know about disco: "it was a thing and people made a really big deal about it." But that's not the same as a group living in your veins.

 

[Kepler]

Re: USCHO Music Thread 4: Songs She Sang to Me, Songs She Brang to Me

Re-watched "Hip Hop Evolution" on Netflix over the last couple days. We have mentioned (sometimes briefly) grunge, etc. No rap. If we're talking the world of popular music (so yes, excluding classical, jazz, etc), rap should be included. And Grandmaster Flash would be bigger than the Beatles for influence/reach/etc. He laid the foundation of samples/beats as we know them...all because of a crayon. An entire genre...because of a wax stick of sorts.

Have you seen The Defiant Ones? I'm only 2 episodes in but it's really good. Jimmy Iovine has to be the luckiest SOB who ever lived as far as being in the right place at the right time, again and again and again, completely by accident.

 

[Kepler]

Re: USCHO Music Thread 4: Songs She Sang to Me, Songs She Brang to Me

You're going to have to explain that last one. Unless you're talking about not just the group but the solo acts to follow.

I'm talking about how the music is directly referenced, reused, and revived in later music. The Beatles did that for 2 decades of music but then they died off -- they became a sort of historical curiosity: a large branch of a tree but one which was no longer producing branches. There are several rap acts which are still being directly referenced, echoed, spoken to and about.

Music is like a Great Conversation that goes on forever, and where bands all live forever through their work. Every member of a group can be dead and that group's music can still be in conversation with a living group's music (the American Song Book is the history of the jazz branch of this conversation, and in it Louis Armstrong and Sarah Vaughn are still speaking directly to and through contemporary music).

The Conversation has nothing to do with sales or popularity: The Velvet Underground are far more influential than the Beatles and they probably sold less than one millionth of the Beatles' catalog. And critics don't really, either: I and the critics will take our love for the Gang of Four to our graves, and though influential within one branch of one genre of music they can't even compete with somebody like Wire within that channel, let alone across the breadth of music.

I'm talking about something akin to the citations index of peer reviewed journals. The Beatles are almost certainly the most cited group from say 1967 through 1977. But they then fall off precipitously. The only bands actually talking directly to the Beatles today are hipster lo-fi bands in Brooklyn, and part of the reason they are is they are playing off the fact that the Beatles fell out of wide influence. If they had not, those bands wouldn't have touched them because they wouldn't be twee and ironic.

The Beatles are Freudianism. It utterly dominated psychology for 20 solid years, and then within less than a decade it was eclipsed first by Behaviorism, then Gestalt, then Cognitive, until now it belongs to historiography. It's not living anymore. But of course the mass audience still thinks it's Psychology because when they studied it, it was. But they are the shadow and as they pass even the shadow won't be there anymore. Unless, of course, a sort of Neo-Thomist Beatlism rises (something which is probably a wild misreading of the original text, but which works for the living people of that day). That is entirely possible.

 

[SJHovey]

Re: USCHO Music Thread 4: Songs She Sang to Me, Songs She Brang to Me

Have you seen The Defiant Ones? I'm only 2 episodes in but it's really good. Jimmy Iovine has to be the luckiest SOB who ever lived as far as being in the right place at the right time, again and again and again, completely by accident.

I watched it. I wasn't sure after just the first episode, but I hung with it and watched all four. I thought it was very good.

 

[SJHovey]

Re: USCHO Music Thread 4: Songs She Sang to Me, Songs She Brang to Me

I'm talking about how the music is directly referenced, reused, and revived in later music.

Awhile back I was watching a documentary about music and someone described Be My Baby, by The Ronettes, and produced by Phil Spector as basically the Rosetta stone for much of the great music which followed.

 

[Kepler]

Re: USCHO Music Thread 4: Songs She Sang to Me, Songs She Brang to Me

Awhile back I was watching a documentary about music and someone described Be My Baby, by The Ronettes, and produced by Phil Spector as basically the Rosetta stone for much of the great music which followed.

I feel that way about the Shirelles "Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow," the greatest song about teen sex ever written.

I've heard something similar said about "John the Revelator" by Blind Willie Johnson and recorded in 1930 as being responsible for about half of rock and roll.

 

[Slap Shot]

Re: USCHO Music Thread 4: Songs She Sang to Me, Songs She Brang to Me

Even now they are really only known to people under 40 the way people know about disco: "it was a thing and people made a really big deal about it." But that's not the same as a group living in your veins.

I've already demonstrated that to be patently false a handful of different ways. Somewhere along the way a girl that loved the Beatles must have broken your heart because you're being unusually obtuse and illogical about this topic. I'm not going to repeat everything I posted but I'll replay this one: "In 2003 an article by The Independent explained that a third of all Beatles records are being bought people under the age 24 despite the fact the group split up before these people were even born." Also The Beatles' 1 is the 2nd best selling record so far since 2000 and that ain't all on boomers baby.

 

[Kepler]

Re: USCHO Music Thread 4: Songs She Sang to Me, Songs She Brang to Me

I've already demonstrated that to be patently false a handful of different ways. Somewhere along the way a girl that loved the Beatles must have broken your heart because you're being unusually obtuse and illogical about this topic. I'm not going to repeat everything I posted but I'll replay this one: "In 2003 an article by The Independent explained that a third of all Beatles records are being bought people under the age 24 despite the fact the group split up before these people were even born." Also The Beatles' 1 is the 2nd best selling record so far since 2000 and that ain't all on boomers baby.

None of that matters.

Like I said the Beatles are influential -- one of countably few solid A bands in terms of their influence. But (1) they are not head and shoulders above anyone else, and (2) their influence is negligible since the 80s. The reason the Beatles still loom so large is the ripples created by the commercial cash in on them. That isn't a function of musical influence, it's a function of how many units you can sell, which is a function of how well you've created a commercial narrative to entice people to buy sh-t.

But this is like arguing with someone who thinks "my country is the greatest country in world history." It's obviously being driven by identification, not reason.

 

[Gurtholfin]

Re: USCHO Music Thread 4: Songs She Sang to Me, Songs She Brang to Me

I'd say Led is over the Beatles. Stones.....on par. Chuck Berry over the Beatles. Jerry Lee Lewis, maybe not for musical talent necessarily, but for the attitude he brought to music that helped rock'n'roll form its identity. If Elvis wrote his own songs, this debate would be over in a heartbeat, but that is a major knock on Elvis.

Sounds like something said at a party to try and show superior intellect.


The Stones are definitely not on par - and I actually like the Stones more than the Beatles and listen to them regularly. They have no Abby Road, no White Album, no Sgt. Peppers and even if they did, it would be because the Beatles were already doing it.

I'm sure Exile will be brought up - my least favorite of their best records.


I believe that Zeppelin is the most iconic rock 'n roll band of all time - meaning that they encapsulated the talent, debauchery and mythos of what rock stars would become. They did it first and on a grander scale than anyone before them. They had it all... great song writing, a lead singer that made panties wet, really good (pantheon level to some) lead guitarist, popularity, notoriety...

Zeppelin and Floyd are my two favorite bands all time.


The Beatles are on a different plane than most iconic though. They were more popular, wrote better songs, crafted better studio albums, transcended rock and became part of pop culture, inspired and influenced more artists and on and on....

 

[Gurtholfin]

Re: USCHO Music Thread 4: Songs She Sang to Me, Songs She Brang to Me

Kep - you seem to have a bias against Boomers which is clouding your judgement.


Sometimes the lowest common denominator is correct.

I know... it irks me too.

 

[Kepler]

Re: USCHO Music Thread 4: Songs She Sang to Me, Songs She Brang to Me

Sometimes the lowest common denominator is correct.

"Just because everybody believes something doesn't mean it's wrong."

 

[St. Clown]

Re: USCHO Music Thread 4: Songs She Sang to Me, Songs She Brang to Me

Kep - you seem to have a bias against Boomers which is clouding your judgement.


Sometimes the lowest common denominator is correct.

I know... it irks me too.

He can't seem to get around the idea that the Beatles still have an influence on active musicians still making music, and are considered part of the current generation. Watch or listen to interviews of active artists, and you will hear them credit the Beatles time and time again. They may not be the singular influence that they once were, but they're still being counted as an influence for successful musicians.

 

[dxmnkd316]

Re: USCHO Music Thread 4: Songs She Sang to Me, Songs She Brang to Me

I'm talking about how the music is directly referenced, reused, and revived in later music. The Beatles did that for 2 decades of music but then they died off -- they became a sort of historical curiosity: a large branch of a tree but one which was no longer producing branches. There are several rap acts which are still being directly referenced, echoed, spoken to and about.

Music is like a Great Conversation that goes on forever, and where bands all live forever through their work. Every member of a group can be dead and that group's music can still be in conversation with a living group's music (the American Song Book is the history of the jazz branch of this conversation, and in it Louis Armstrong and Sarah Vaughn are still speaking directly to and through contemporary music).

The Conversation has nothing to do with sales or popularity: The Velvet Underground are far more influential than the Beatles and they probably sold less than one millionth of the Beatles' catalog. And critics don't really, either: I and the critics will take our love for the Gang of Four to our graves, and though influential within one branch of one genre of music they can't even compete with somebody like Wire within that channel, let alone across the breadth of music.

I'm talking about something akin to the citations index of peer reviewed journals. The Beatles are almost certainly the most cited group from say 1967 through 1977. But they then fall off precipitously. The only bands actually talking directly to the Beatles today are hipster lo-fi bands in Brooklyn, and part of the reason they are is they are playing off the fact that the Beatles fell out of wide influence. If they had not, those bands wouldn't have touched them because they wouldn't be twee and ironic.

The Beatles are Freudianism. It utterly dominated psychology for 20 solid years, and then within less than a decade it was eclipsed first by Behaviorism, then Gestalt, then Cognitive, until now it belongs to historiography. It's not living anymore. But of course the mass audience still thinks it's Psychology because when they studied it, it was. But they are the shadow and as they pass even the shadow won't be there anymore. Unless, of course, a sort of Neo-Thomist Beatlism rises (something which is probably a wild misreading of the original text, but which works for the living people of that day). That is entirely possible.

I guess I can see that. I'm still not sure I would say NWA quite makes it into your three-decade though. Maybe they do. Especially if you include the solo acts. I'm just not that familiar with rap and hip-hop though.