Slashdot Mirror
Attempt To "Digitalize" Beatles Goes Sour
An anonymous reader points to this article at exclaim.ca, which begins "Just when Beatles fans thought the band were finally going digital, the Norwegian national broadcaster has been forced to call off the deal. Broadcasting company NRK has had to remove a series of 212 podcasts, each of which featured a different Beatles song and would have effectively allowed fans to legally download the entire Fab Four catalogue for free."
Recently, Paul McCartney said negotiations to get the Fab Four onto iTunes had âoestalled,â leaving some fans more than a little ticked that they still have to listen to the band the old-fashioned way.
What's "the old-fashioned way"? Bit-Torrent?
Nothing interesting to say...MUST...NOT...REPLY...ohtheheckwithit.
For a group closely associated with peace, love and everything good about 60s and 70s counterculture, the Beatles (and their heirs/hangers on/rights holders) certainly seem to behave like craven corporate shills.
Personally I find them to be tremendously overrated too, and not a patch on many of their contemporaries (Pink Floyd, Dylan, Hendrix, The Animals, etc etc etc). Sgt Peppers was rather good though.
Am I the only one that's incredibly annoyed by the fact that people seem to have forgotten that CD's ARE DIGITAL?!?!? I know what they mean is digital distribution, but nobody says that. They say things like, "the Beatles are resisting going digital", or "The Beatles are finally going digital with Rock Band", or whatever...You can already listen to the Beatles in digital form. You've been able to listen to the Beatles in digital form for 30 years...
ZuluPad, the wiki notepad on crack
The only ones hurt by the Beatles not being on iTunes and other services are the remaining members. Those that want the Beatles either rip their own cd's or just snag them from torrents. Led Zeppelin finally relented, Pink Floyd gave in, I just find it amazing that a band that embraced technology in its heyday is now completely terrified by it.
Like Flock of Seagulls!
Why use the word "digitalize", they have CD's, pretty sure those aren't recorded in analog.
Oh, and I'm sure all the die-hard Beatles fans have complete discographies in "digital" as it is and wouldn't really care about a new way of downloading it.
I think Linux isn't better than Windows hence in the slashdot realm I'm a troll
Look I'm sorry but The Beatles are nowhere NEAR Mozart, Bach, Beethoven and the likes. Please don't even hint at the possibility that they might be timeless even taking into account that "timeless" really means "until the end of our civilisation". The moment everybody who remembers them from their youth dies, The Beatles will fade into obscurity and/or will become an musicophiliac's thing.
Hell, Marlene Dietrich was "timeless", now most people don't even know who she was, same goes for people like von Braun, Charlie Chaplin, Buster Keaton, Marlon Brando etc. etc. All very well known, all very timeless, all almost unknown of amongst the modern youth.
No, but this is like saying that something being published on Google Book Search means that the work is "finally being recorded in written form!"
The Beatles aren't on iTunes because Apple is pissed at Apple. I was also under the impression that under British law, early Beatles recordings are about to become public domain so there is this sudden urgency to create and sell Beatles music online in some format.
And if I'm not mistaken, there is a Beatles Rock Band game coming out next Christmas.
http://blindscribblings.com - Tasty pop-culture in conceptual fashion.
Well, let's put it this way. The Beatles are WAY more important than YOU are.
All these people who find the Beatles so uninteresting gets me wondering why they're compelled to write and
tell everybody about it. I mean, when I'm uninterested in a slashdot story, I just don't read it! And I
sure don't bother visiting classical music forums in order to announce my disinterest in classical music.
Why, that would be completely stupid!
Hide all sigs: Click HELP+Prefs (top), VIEWING (last on right), DISABLE SIGS (3rd on left) and SAVE (hidden at bottom).
Hmm, why did the guy who posted a less well-thought out version of the same comment 3 minutes later gets modded up as "insightful", while OP gets modded down as "redundant"? Timestamps don't lie.
If that had happened to me I might be thinking, Christ. You know it ain't easy. You know how hard it can be.
You're telling us all that you have no interest in people talking about their lack of interest?
Do you..ah...see the problem there?
Nonsense. People always over-glorify that one period of music. Do you really think that the only great musicians in all of human history were born in a span of a hundred years?
The modern youth you describe remember Frank Sinatra and the Beatles just as well as they do Mozart and Bach. Which is to say, vaguely. No music remains truly popular forever. Your definition of timeless as "lasting until the end of civilization" is overly strict. Nothing could meet such a standard, or, if something could, there would be no way for us to know it.
Music can be fairly described as timeless so long as some people in the modern day, who were not around when the music first became popular, still enjoy it. I think the Beatles can easily meet that criterion.
"I was also under the impression that under British law, early Beatles recordings are about to become public domain. . ."
How does that work internationally? Can those same recordings still be under copyright in other nations (like the US)? Or, since the UK is the 'home' country of the Beatles, does their copyright term prevail internationally? Even if the recordings are still under copyright, in the US, but are public domain in the UK, can people in the US receive legal copies from someone in the UK, even though it would be illegal for them to further copy those works? I believe a fundamental principle of copyright law is that those receiving works don't need the right to make the copy, but rather the person/company that gives them the copy - leading to, I would think, an ability for someone in the US to be able to *receive* the legal copy from the UK?
[quote]Would you say, "Can we please move beyond Mozart"? Some music is timeless.[/quote]
The Beatles were wildly popular, but their work is quite dated and much of it was lame fluff.
Their now elderly original fan base is dying off, and their work is not the sort that will excite many new fans.
The Beatles didn't have anyone with the personal intensity of a Jim Morrison, or the amazing guitar ability of Jimi Hendrix. Their work was accessable, but tame and not very interesting.
"This post is an artistic work of fiction and falsehood. Only a fool would take anything posted here as fact."
Interesting observation actually, I think many more modern youth know Frank Sinatra than they do the Beatles.
Of course not all great music was done in that classical span of a hundred years, but I really wouldn't call The Beatles as something all that worthwhile. Dunno, they just don't seem all that special and most other people under 30 that I ask also seem to agree. Perhaps it's just not what's "in" these days as we seem to be far more into 1950's, 1970's and 1980's music than 1960's. Interesting no?
Also, strangely enough, I can't find a single person above 15 who likes 2000's music. Why is that?
Yeah, General Custard drinking from a dead dog's eye/nose would definitely be considered "wierd crap" in my book.
The eternal struggle of good vs. evil begins within one's self.
Look, nobody calls book publishing "Alpha/numeric character distribution".
Am I wrong for naming content by its content (MIME) type? My mother asked if I would send her pictures of my vacation, and I told her "yep, I'll have those image/jpegs to you in a multipart/mixed by saturday", then she called me a human/x-weirdo and I modem/NO-CARRIER'd her! We haven't spoken since, but at first I thought you were her posting AC before I noticed your improper labeling of publish/multichar so you couldn't possibly be her. Besides, a human/female on http://slashdot.org./article.pl? No way!
I'm 47 and I like new music, I actively seek good music I haven't heard 36 thousand times before.
It's harder than it should be, esp. considering I live in Chicago...
I know many 20 somethings who know the Beatles and consider them "classic" as in "From before my time but still worth listening to" Of course they think that about The Clash too...
Actually, we don't quite know who Shakespeare is. But we do know his works and pseudonym quite well.
It's not like we're talking Aerosmith here. They don't really get a fan base; they're just good.
Support my political activism on Patreon.
The moment everybody who remembers them from their youth dies, The Beatles will fade into obscurity and/or will become an musicophiliac's thing.
Kind of like ... oh, any musician ever born? Some prophet, you.
Hell, Marlene Dietrich was "timeless", now most people don't even know who she was, same goes for people like von Braun, Charlie Chaplin, Buster Keaton, Marlon Brando etc. etc. All very well known, all very timeless, all almost unknown of amongst the modern youth.
Yeah. Kind of like Mozart, Brahms, Beethoven, et al? Or do you hear the modern youth bumpin' those classics as they roll down the block? Yeah, man, music is dead all right. Might as well cut off our ears.
No. How about this one? Fuck the modern youth. What did the modern youth ever know?
Much as you might not like the Beatles, some (but not all) of their rather broad and diverse catalog still stomps the crap out of just about any rock band that ever existed. Yeah, Led Zeppelin was great, too -- but much of their stuff is pompous, self-indulgent claptrap. Pink Floyd was great, but a lot of their stuff was silly, navel-gazing pseudo-intellectual rubbish, with a good measure of holier-than-thou arrogance thrown in. And honestly, I doubt that either of those bands would deny the debt they owe to the Beatles.
And FWIW, at 35 I'm hardly the Beatles' "original fan base." To me, for you to imply that nobody but a bunch of rotting mummies listens to one of the greatest rock bands ever just shows you out as your basic, self-important young person who thinks you know everything. Guess what? The older you get, the more you'll "forget."
And P.S. my last girlfriend's favorite band was the Beatles, and she was 21.
Breakfast served all day!
Perhaps timelessness is something only truly proven after a few generations. We can't really say that something from ours or our parents generation is timeless. Only declare hopefully that it will be.
sudo mount --milk --sugar
Being the first they perhaps weren't quite talentless, but they were as creative and artistic as Britney Spears.
Let me guess: You don't play any instruments, do you?
Breakfast served all day!
Isn't a filter supposed to keep all those caps out of posts ? Anyway, yes you are right, the Beatles weren't commercial at all. That is evident especially now from how they are being such primadonnas about having their music digitally available (online, whatever).
I'm 47 .... I live in Chicago...
Hi Barak you really should register rather than posting as AC.
http://michaelsmith.id.au
You're simply wrong - there were Britney Spears equivalents in the 60's, but that's not what the Beatles were. You're thinking of the Monkees, maybe. Good marketing at that time wasn't as important as today - the legitimately good musicians came through on top of the highly commercialized stuff.
Also - it just takes listening to the Beatles to get the answer you seek. They're very good, with very well written lyrics and musical accompaniment. I'm not sure what more of an answer you need than that - just listen to them!
OK -- and mind you it's not as if I listen to Beatles records every day or anything -- but for starters it largely depends on what you're listening to.
Most people who talk about the Beatles as "great music" are talking about their later catalog, and I'm certainly among those. My favorite albums are probably Revolver, Rubber Soul, and Abbey Road, and I like some of the stuff in between. I can not listen to songs like "I Wanna Hold Your Hand," so I can't defend them.
As for what makes it good music, believe it or not, at the time a lot of it was highly creative and original. Though a lot of the songs are credited Lennon/McCartney, in truth the Beatles were a band in the truest sense, with all four members contributing. (Witness the fact that none of their solo efforts were as good as the Beatles stuff.)
Furthermore, they really were good musicians, as well as songwriters/arrangers. If you walked up to Jimmy Page tomorrow and told him to his face that you think George Harrison was a better guitar player than he is, he might just agree with you.
As far as Beatles fans go, I myself am a "Paul." I think he wrote great melodies and just really nice songs. You can call them pop if you want, but then all of rock n' roll up until probably the mid-90s could just as easily be categorized as pop.
And I don't think you can really discount that there really hadn't been any music that sounded like that before the Beatles came along. In other words, hindsight is golden.
Example: Me, the first new music that was really compelling to me in my teenage years was Suicidal Tendencies, GBH, the Dead Kennedys, and Minor Threat. Then I discovered Metallica and Slayer, and I ran in that direction. Then one day somebody played me a Black Sabbath record from the 1970s. My reaction? It's crap. It sounds like crap, it's too slow, it's not "heavy," the singing is weak and silly. Well, look -- I was wrong. And really not a single one of those bands I mentioned would have come around had it not been for Black Sabbath. I just wasn't experienced enough, I didn't understand music or recording or anything else enough, to properly be able to appreciate what had come before the bands I was familiar with. I'm thinking a lot of the Beatles-haters in this thread are falling victim to some of the same.
Someone else in this thread said that the Beatles lacked anyone with the "power" of a Jim Morrison. Oh really? And John Lennon had no cultural impact, did he? Interesting.
I'm the first to admit that a lot of the Beatles' stuff is commercial -- particularly, I think they get way too much credit for inspiring the psychedelic movement -- but to pretend that they weren't groundbreaking, highly original, highly creative, highly talented musicians just makes a person sound ignorant.
Breakfast served all day!
Watch and listen to the progression they made in just a few short years. Yes, arguably some of the earlier stuff might be dismissed as "teeny bopper" stuff, but even a lot of it had much higher production quality and songwriting quality compared to everything else out at the time. So the quality was head and shoulders above much of their 'competition' at the time.
But watch the artistic progression between
1963 - I Saw Her Standing There / All My Loving
1964 - Can't Buy Me Love / Eight Days a Week
1965 - Drive My Car / Day Tripper / Yesterday
1966 - Taxman / Tomorrow Never Knows / Eleanor Rigby / Rain
1967 - I Am the Walrus / Fool on the Hill
1968 - Revolution / Lady Madonna / The Inner Light
1969 - Something / Because / Get Back
Just in the span of a few years the songwriting quality exploded, and brought with it new production techniques and set new standards for what was considered 'art'.
Most of those songs above can hardly be considered 'teeny bop' music, or comparable with Britney Spears. For one thing, the Beatles were 4 people who increasingly expressed their individuality, yet managed to retain a 'Beatlesque' quality to most of their recordings. Britney is one person, and while she probably expresses herself in her music, it's limited by the perspective of her being one person, not bringing the perspective and talents of multiple people (well, multiple 'named stars') to the equation.
Few artists have displayed such remarkable growth and boundary pushing, while still retaining and growing a fan base, as the Beatles have. Arguably U2 might fit that bill, or perhaps REM. They didn't start off as primarily targeting teenage girls, then progress in to more adult themes later - they simply started targetting college age kids from the get go, so the artistic progression is harder to graph, in my mind.
"Had good marketers"? They had radio DJs, and a manager who dressed them in suits. That was about it. They had no massive PR team, or a marketing department. They had a roadie, and later a press agent, but hardly the stuff of mega-acts today (the Stones' organization comes to mind).
Another angle that captivates people about the Beatles is the 'rags to riches' story. 4 kids coming from essentially an outcast area of England London would have cared to forget, conquered the music world and changed pop culture. Simply the fact that they had such an impact is in itself part of the attraction for many people to discover and listen to their music (to see what the fuss is about).
Something about the music (quality of production, songwriting wit, energy of early performances, sophistication of imagery in later song) continues to entrance a large number of new people every year. You're apparently not one of them. Too bad - it's your loss.
creation science book
Yes, the Beatles are pretty unpopular with today's youth. Oh, wait, actual data and not random anecdotes:
http://www.last.fm/charts
And I seriously hope no one tries to argue that enough baby boomers are on last.fm to skew the data.
It's DIGITIZE.
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
You've got some very good points in your comment regarding the Beatles. However, if someone doesn't care for the Beatles, it doesn't necessarily mean that the band sucked; just means that the person doesn't care for the music.
I tend to agree - my parents were big Beatles fans, and I've tried to listen to some of it. Just doesn't get me going the same way other music does. The band could be the best thing the world has ever produced, but if I don't like it, I'm probably not going to truly appreciate it as much as those that do enjoy it.
Not a thing in the world wrong with not liking the Beatles.
Karnal
And only a fraction of Mozart, Beethoven, etc... are still around, or considered timeless...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_compositions_by_Wolfgang_Amadeus_Mozart
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_compositions_by_Ludwig_van_Beethoven
Now tell me if all, or even a quarter of those are well known... hell half of them don't even have a wiki page, which means accorded to the internet masses, they are less relevant than most Beatles songs
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_The_Beatles_songs
I really wouldn't call The Beatles as something all that worthwhile. Perhaps it's just not what's "in" these days.Interesting no?
No. It's just sad (for you).
I'm trying to be nice about this. Let me put it this way: I'm confident that most people your age appreciate the Beatles more than you and your friends.
I can't find a single person above 15 who likes 2000's music. Why is that?
Going out on a limb here: It's because you and your friends haven't yet been able to drench recent events in the thick layer of "irony" you need before you can enjoy something (e.g. 50s, 70s and 80s music).
I'm over 40 and I love some of the music that's been released in this decade: Mike Doughty, Poe, Iron and Wine, Eels, etc.
The most rabid believers in American Exceptionalism are the exact same people whose policies are destroying it.
Not a thing in the world wrong with not liking the Beatles.
Of course not. But "Britney Spears of the 60s"? Ridiculous.
Breakfast served all day!
II can't find a single person above 15 who likes 2000's music. Why is that?
Define your terms. I'm an old guy (53), and I like a lot of music made in this century, but I despise the dreck that makes it to the top of the charts. The current A&R policy for pop music is driven by a business model based on focus groups; it's a dinosaur, thrashing its tail in its dying throes, crushing a few of the tiny mammalian successors that will eventually reign supreme!!!!
I feel better now.
But I still wish radio didn't suck so much.
Wow. You sounded sort of rational and convincing until this point, where your Beatles fanboyism came gushing out.
Led Zeppelin, I think it's widely acknowledged, are great for their guitar work and for bringing that style of music to the (white) masses and into the popular consciousness, but in their own right are probably not "great" musicians in the historical sense. But Pink Floyd... to say "a lot of their stuff was silly navel-gazing pseudo-intellectual rubbish" whilst defending the band which wrote lyrics like:
and
is just laughable. In fact, let me go one further. The Beatles are to Pink Floyd what Coldplay is to Radiohead: one writes catchier and perhaps more memorable songs than the other, but the other truly composes music rather than coming up with a good tune, and dares to create totally new musical concepts rather than tweaking and refining a reliable formula. I will admit the Beatles went through their creative phases, but your anti-Floyd attack is just stupid.
So, let's look at the rest of your ramblings:
Well, go into any half-decent music shop and I'll bet you find more Mozart, Brahms and Beethoven recordings on the shelf than Beatles, Floyd and Zeppelin. So it will be interesting to see how many Beatles CDs there are on the shelves (or whatever the 2038 equivalent is) in, say, 30 years time. I'd bet that many 'kids' will perhaps listen to a best of, a few will delve deeper, and most will have heard 1 or 2 songs, mostly those that the band and rights holders seem to kindly license to advertisers.
I direct you to one Mr Bob Dylan. While your boys were singing "She loves you yeah yeah yeah", he was writing "A Hard Rain's Gonna Fall" and "Masters of War". By the time the fab four got to something really interesting like Sargeant Pepper's, Dylan had (a) been the first popular musician to take a truly electric sound on the road, (b) reinvented himself from folk hero to rock rebel and in the process understood for the first time the true nature of modern musical stardom and the complex relationship between the superstar and the audience (c) written songs of huge cultural and musical significance like "Subterranean Homesick Blues" and "It's Alright Ma (I'm Only Bleeding)", (d) released easily the longest and most substantial 'single' to that date in the form of "Like a Rolling Stone", (e) invented a totally new sound (the "thin wild mercury sound" of Blonde on Blonde) and released arguably the most consistently good rock album ever in the process, (f
Read Pynchon.
Double nonsense. Or do you really think that it's impossible that prevailing social, technological and cultural conditions might give rise to relatively brief "golden ages" in which music (or other aspects of society) move forward in tremendous leaps? I mean, the Beatles themselves were smack bang in the middle of just such a leap forward, as amplification and rapid social change created a window for their art.
The very point the GP was making is that people DO still know who Mozart and Beethoven and the like were. Hell, any half educated kid would have at least heard OF them, if not (knowingly) listened to them. I doubt there are many people alive who haven't heard at least a few snatches of some of their more famous music in one form or another.
On the other hand, will the same be said of the Beatles in 200 years time? So far we know they were extremely popular, changed the conception of popular music in several very closely aligned countries, and made a lot of money. But I think it is a least arguable that when the dust settles from the mid-20th century music revolution (such as it was), that they may not be regarded quite as highly as you seem to be suggesting. In history's eyes they may come out as more of a Rachmaninoff than a Mozart - known to the discerning fan, but not universal.
Read Pynchon.
"From before my time but still worth listening to"
That's where I would fall, and I think even the poster that started this thread might fall into that category.
I do think the Beatles are vastly overrated though. Not to slight the actual Beatles, it's just that nobody can live up to the hype some of their rabid fans give them. If they did a show, resurrected John and George, Jesus came again & sung backup vocals, they solved global warming during the show & gave everybody in the world orgasms at the same time, they couldn't live up to the hype.
I'm sorry, but everyone replying to this thread saying the beatles are a fad are kidding themselves. They were easily the most influential and popular band of the 20th century. If you're basing your opinion on the couple of hits they had in the 60s you really need to listen to the rest of their work. Also, read your music history. Much of what the beatles did was in fact the first time anyone did it.
There's a reason the Beatles are still as popular as they are, and it's not some corporate conspiracy.
If you listen in a general way and look for "appeal," then The Beatles will probably not impress you. At the time they recorded, there was nobody better. But since you're listening in 2008, not 1968, you're seeing them through the wrong end of 40 years of improvements in pop music technology and marketability. We're much better now at making "appealing" pop, so Britney Spears (or more precisely, her extensive team of producers, engineers and session players) is just plain better at it than The Beatles were, in the same way that a middling 2008 relief pitcher could consistently strike out Babe Ruth if you didn't give him the benefit of modern training, video replays, etc.
The difference only arises if you listen for detail, which requires a little more work on your part. If you actually want to get what people see in The Beatles, try the following:
1. Play "A Day In The Life" but focus only on the drums (when they come in at about 0:45).
2. Play "Drive My Car" but focus only on the bass.
3. Play "Nowhere Man" and focus only on the vocals. (If you don't get it on this one, remember that electronic vocal effects hadn't been invented yet: This is simply three people singing.)
4. Play "I've Just Seen A Face" and focus on the interplay of the two acoustic guitars.
5. Play "Eleanor Rigby" and really concentrate on the lyrics, and what they mean.
6. Do the same with "For No One."
7. Now that you're in the right frame of mind, play "Strawberry Fields Forever" and listen for detail. You should immediately feel how much "stuff" there is in it, and how it all comes together.
8. Finish with "Here Comes The Sun." Listen the same way.
Let me know if it works.
-Graham
the Beatles weren't commercial at all.
I trust that was sarcasm...
Help! Hard day's night... those lamentably bad films...
The Monkees! was a tongue-in-cheek parody of the Beatles' commercialism.
Oh i'm sure beatles is just as popular as motzart NOW. Buuuut i think when the beatles are 250years old we will see a big difference. Hell i think in 50 years the beatles will be a good deal less relevant than Mozart. Thats the point.
Pop music is like chocolate: it may taste really good, but in the back of your mind, you know it's bad for you.
But I still wish radio didn't suck so much.
perhaps you should try http://www.abc.net.au/triplej/. its a radio station that doesnt play too much (any?) of the top 40, no commercials, and streams over t3h n3tz0rz. while i'm out of their demographic at 37, and dont like all the music, i love the fact there is "no fricken ads"
-- $_='ab-bc ratvarre';tr"'a-z'"'n-za-m'";print
"Most people who talk about the Beatles as "great music" are talking about their later catalog..."
fail.
Honestly, they don't walk on water, but the Beatles' early pop music was night-and-day different from what had gone before.
No syrup, no sap - at least compared to the industry around them. In their earliest releases as a quartet with George Martin producing, the Beatles made music that was spare, direct, harmonically complex and hummable.
Sure it was fun, but Pop is supposed to be. The harmonies of "Hold Me Tight", the energy of "It Won't Be Long", the jangle, falsetto and close harmony of "Ticket to Ride" - dude, you may not like Pop, but just say so. As pop music goes, there hasn't been much greater.
I am so sick of this response.
As a matter of fact, I do play instruments, and even majored in music (vocal performance) for my first 2 years of college, until I realized I didn't want to be a music teacher, and that was all I'd be able to do with that degree.
So, I'd like to think I know a little about music. I don't know as much as my buddy in his PhD course, doing his dissertation on some godawful obscure nook of music theory, but I know a lot more than the average bear.
The Beatles wrote straight-up, standard pop music. There is nothing particularly noteworthy about them, aside from the hype that surrounded them. Don't get me wrong; comparing them to Britney is absolutely unfair, but they aren't really any more skilled or special than, say, Smashing Pumpkins. In fact, Corgan's guitar skill probably outdoes any of the Beatles (why he moved to synths, which he's no good at, I'll never know). It's on the top end of pop-music-seriousness scale, but it's still just pop music.
I have gotten into feelings-hurt-level arguments about this, but it just has to be said: The Beatles are/were nothing special, musically.
http://www.abc.net.au/triplej/
Thanks, I'll check it out. I've found a few streaming stations that I like, including SomaFM and WFMU.
I remember my 14 year-old niece. She was wearing a t-shirt that said "The Beatles" as everyone in her school wore them.
I asked her if she ever listened to "The Beatles" and she replied "Who?" and I said "The Beatles, you know like your T-Shirt says." and then she said "What kind of music do they play? Are they rappers or techno or heavy metal?" I said "No, they were Rock and Roll, classic Rock and Roll, like from the 1960's." and she said "What kind of songs did they play?" and I said "Yellow Submarine, Yesterday, A Hard Day's Night, and a few others." she said "They sound silly, are they still alive?" I said "No, two of them are dead." and she said "Then how do they play their music, did they replace the two dead guys yet?" I said "They had like over 200 songs and they are trying to digitze them into new formats." and she said "How can they digitize them when half the band is dead?" and I asked "How could you wear a Beatles logo T-shirt and not know who they are?" and she said "It is a fashion trend at our school, everyone is wearing them because our grandparents used to wear them. You know, Hippies and stuff like that. Retrofashion is so in now."
Ironic that at one time The Beatles claimed they were bigger than Jesus. Now the youth of today hardly even know who they were other than some t-shirt sold in the mall as Retrofashion your grandparents used to wear.
Remember, Slashdot does not have a -1 disagree moderation, and no, troll, flamebait, and overrated are not substitutes.
"Vår daglige Beatles" (Our daily Beatles) was a daily radio program presenting all 212 recordings by The Beatles in chronological order, presented by Bård Ose and Finn Tokvam. Every presentation lasted about five minutes and contained interesting facts about the song -- what the inspiration for the song was, how it was recorded, some trivia about the period it was recorded, and so on. A very well-produced and informative work. The radio show started January 2007, and every Beatles song was played in its full length. It's believed this is the only time Revolution 9 was played in its entirety on Norwegian radio.
The last episode was aired 2007-12-13, and when christmas 2007 arrived, all 212 podcasts were put out for download at nrk.no as a christmas present for all Beatles fans, with the music removed. A real treasure, even though I had this cron job running every day to download each episode. Still, it was nice to get the complete collection.
This January NRK was planning to release every episode with the music. They got a deal with TONO (the Norwegian RIAA) and everything was OK, but it turned out that the agreement with IFPI and FONO only allowed publishing shows aired the last four weeks, and as mentioned, these programs were aired in 2007, so the podcasts had to be pulled.
.At the time they recorded, there was nobody better. But since you're listening in 2008, .../p>
Dude, perhaps you should look at the calendar some time.
I'm 26 and also live in Chicago. I consider the Beatles classic, classical music classic, and hope that one of my most favorite bands I've traveled the world to see (Nine Inch Nails) will be something my (eventual) children will see as classic because of the style. Deciding if music is "classic" is like deciding if abstract art is "art". It's all up to the viewer/listener.
Like Flock of Seagulls!
Truly timeless, in the most literal of senses.
they perhaps weren't quite talentless, but they were as creative and artistic as Britney Spears Jesus H. Christ, -5 clueless. Have you ever tried TRANSCRIBING a Beatles song?
Amen.
I'll try not to bore you all with the rant you've heard thousands of times before, but today's music is so... cold. While the advent of MIDI sequencers and cheap pro audio equipment caused a grassroots indie revolution on the internet (Creative Commons/Jamendo), it also allowed the labels to easily produce a single sound. Today's "artists" have very little creative input on their work.
Any idiot can open up one of the many audio editors, lay down a synthesized rhythm track, and make a dance single. Try it yourself. Pop open an editor, get a beat, record some shitty lyrics (you can fix them with a harmonizer, just like the pros), and add tons of distortion and digital effects. Hey, look at that: you have a rap song that sounds just like one of the top 40.
You think with the power of modern synthesized composition, real artists could actually take advantage of the limitless possibilities. Need a 300-member orchestra for a difficult piece? No problem! A good composition program and a nice set of sampled sound and you've got it in a few days' work.
The problem, really, is the labels. There are LOTS of good independent artists and composers out there, who are doing good things with all these new tools. But the mainstream labels seem to stonewall all of them. All we get is dancefloor song after dancefloor song with the same sound.
Of course, the related issue is the conglomerate ownership of radio. I know of very few independent stations left that aren't owned by some massive corporation. In the local radio market where I live up in Canada, we have four main stations. They are/were called Jet, Magic, CBC, and Jump. Jet and Magic are/were both owned by one of the media conglomerates. CBC needs no introduction, as it is the Canadian national public radio service. Jump is a community-licensed, volunteer run station.
So, massive conglomerate decides that Magic (more locally-focused than Jet) is under threat from the community station, Jump. So they shut Magic down, and seek a new license from the CRTC to open a new station.
Now here's the fun part. The CRTC grants the license to the conglomerate. The new station, Sun, has as of now almost entirely eradicated the publicly-accessible community station, which appears will have to shut down. The airwaves are now pumped with top-40 crap, instead of locally produced content. What gets me is that the CRTC WILLINGLY chose to give priority to the station airing music that has ALREADY SATURATED the market, rather than LOCALLY PRODUCED content. The CRTC needs to be shut down and control transferred to Industry Canada, who at least understand the importance of niche radio applications (Canadian HAMs enjoy some of the laxest restrictions in the world).
Whew... now that that's off my chest...
"Perhaps timelessness is something only truly proven after a few generations."
Given that the length of a "generation" is commonly defined to be 20 to 25-years (genealogy) and the early works of the Beatles is around 1962, I'd say that criteria has been met. YMMV.
"Interesting observation actually, I think many more modern youth know Frank Sinatra than they do the Beatles."
I think you're dead wrong. I'm 17, and still in high school. *Everybody* knows who the Beatles are. If you mention Frank Sinatra, most of the time you'll get funny looks.
How did The Beatles play a sub genre of a music genre that was invented more than a decade later? The Beatles started out in 1960. Punk in the seventies. Punk has influences, like any other genre, but it's hardly the same genre, if genres are supposed to have meaning at all.
"The Beatles wrote straight-up, standard pop music."
Rubbish! The Beatles created a new genre of music. A good one too. Britney Spears just continued the manufactured pop popularised by The Spice Girls.
The Beatles wrote straight-up, standard pop music
First, if you can fit Beatles music into a single genre, then you probably haven't listened to much more than their most popular stuff. Secondly, was 'standard pop music' even a genre in 1960? Or is it one defined as 'stuff that sounds like the Beatles?'
I do agree that they're massively overrated. They have some really great songs, like Norwegian Wood, and a lot of trash. The same is true of most of the great composers, who jotted down a huge amount of trash to please various members of the nobility.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
In terms of sonic complexity, the Beatles are more interesting from a musical standpoint than Mozart. He was just an expert tunesmith with the ability to set melodies in symphonic structure. Some of the music the Beatles made, particularly around the Sergeant Pepper/White Album period, compares well with Mahler or Philip Glass. It still forms the basis of the popular music that most people listen to today, so just as blues fans will always tend to work their way back to Robert Johnson and his ilk, so most musicians today will acknowledge their debt to the Beatles. Certainly all of the working musicians I know, in various fields, are all Beatles fans and none are quite as ready to dismiss them as some people in this thread are.
[FUCK BETA]
fair point, but Mozart would not have actually performed his own music so it is not quite the same thing.
Errm, what? Mozart was known as a performer at an age when Britney wasn't even in Mickey Mouse Club, also playing his own pieces.
Lars T.
To the guy who modded me down from perfect to terrible Karma - Apple haters still suck
... gave everybody in the world orgasms at the same time, they couldn't live up to the hype.
...I'd be willing to give that a try.
I agree with you completely. I'd also like to take this opportunity to point out that Pythagoras was an idiot. After all, we currently have below average high school students doing more complex mathematics than he ever did.
The quote "If I have seen further it is only by standing on the shoulders of Giants" isn't only applicable to sciences.
The irony of the Beatles' music was that while so much of it sounded simple, it was much more complex that it seemed. In fact, I've found it's an incredible and rare talent to make complex music, but it's even more incredible and rare to make complex music that doesn't sound complex. It works on more levels for more people, and I think that's one of the reasons why people (including me) revere the music of the Beatles as much as they do:
They broadened the boundaries of "pop" music incredibly, helping to lay much of the groundwork for music of the next decade, and at the same time were sowing the seeds for the "art rock" progressive music movement that also thrived in the 70s.
Plus they had neat haircuts.
You are in a maze of twisty little passages, all alike.
I *almost* agree with you. I know of two reasons to put the Beatles on a pedestal above most pop music.
One is their level of skill. You may not be impressed with their guitar work, but it has to be said that the Beatles were, at the time, the top of the game in songwriting, concert performance, and coordination between the band members.
Two is the innovation of the 'Wall of sound'. The Beatles were one of the groups that pioneered this technique and they showcased it brilliantly. But that had little to do with the band, it was the work of their producer.
So yes, the Beatles deserve to be highlighted in the annals of music history. Not as much as some people do, but they deserve more recognition than the average pop group.
Genocide Man -- Life is funny. Death is funnier. Mass murder can be hilarious.
Britney Spears has something in common with Mozart and Beethoven: No one has heard any of them perform live music.
And it was dripping, not drinking.
Still, to this day I've never heard any musician utter the words "prison reform" since John Lennon.
(Have you? I hope to be corrected by young people or anyone more aware than I am.)
The whole social revolution of the 60's is tremendously tied together with the Beatles. It was actually
considered much cooler to be idealistic then, than to be cynical and ironic! Growing up today, I can understand
how some might see the Beatles in the same light as, say, Barney the Dinasaur, producing a similar knee-jerk
rejection.
One of those multi-decade-long pendulum things. Hope it's started back the other way!
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