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| From | Stewart Mason <flamingo@theworld.com> |
| Subject | Re: Another Bealtes? |
| Date | Wed, 04 Aug 2004 00:22:54 -0400 |
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At 11:23 PM 8/3/2004 -0400, Josh Chasin wrote:
>I know 15-year-old kids who are learning
>Beatle songs on guitar, because they love them.
I know 15-year-old kids who are teaching themselves Elizabethan folk songs
on the hammered dulcimer, because they love them. They are a distinct
minority. I also know a 15-year-old kid who recently got into a massive
"classic rock" phase, by which he means that he's discovered his mom's
Talking Heads, Elvis Costello and B-52's albums (many of them at least 25
years old at this point, which means that they are to 2004 what Elvis'
"That's All Right" was to 1979 -- and good lord, let's all chew on THAT for
a moment, shall we?). Said kid has heard a few Beatles songs, though not
many because his dad is into hardcore early jazz and acoustic '20s blues
and his mom came of age around the time of FRAMPTON COMES ALIVE and RUMOURS
and didn't progress backwards much. He's genuinely not impressed by the
Beatles. His reaction is pretty much exactly what my reaction to my
parents' Ernest Tubb and Patsy Cline records were when I was 15: eh.
Do I think he'd like REVOLVER if he gave it the time and energy? Could be,
although honestly based on his personality and tastes, I think he's much
more likely to be attracted to '65-'69 Kinks. The kid reads P.G. Wodehouse
and Evelyn Waugh, fer chrissakes, so he'd like that Veddy Veddy English
thing. Do I think he's some kind of mutant freak because he doesn't like
the Beatles? Nah. I think he's a 15-year-old kid. I turned 15 in 1984.
Would I have been a freak because I wasn't into Benny Goodman? After all,
let's remember: Benny Goodman, along with Glenn Miller and Tommy Dorsey,
was at least as completely revolutionary in jazz as the Beatles were in
rock, and in much the same fashion: they made something new out of their
musical forebears, and they brought that new sound to the teenybopper
masses. (The Beatles were not the first musicians to make 14-year-old
girls jump up and down and scream while leaving little wet spots on the
theater seats: Dorsey's singer, a skinny little Italian kid named Frank
Sinatra, was the guy for whom the archaic term "swooning" was revived.)
>The Beatles already HAVE endured
>long enough to stand the test of time. Its 40 years since "She Loves You;"
>FORTY YEARS. Walk down the street, sing a few bars, ask people to identify
>the artist. Hell, ask Lou Reed; he always hated them. But he'll get it.
>And don't just ask boomers; ask kids, old ladies, everyone. Black, white,
>Latino, everyone.
See, the thing is, I honestly don't believe that's true. Are you really
saying that a large majority of average people on the street, crossing
demographic boundaries, would be able to identify "She Loves You" as being
a Beatles song? I don't believe that. I have no doubt that many people
would, and that they would be of various and diverse backgrounds. But no,
I don't believe that "everyone" would. If an editor somewhere wants to pay
me to write the story, I'll go out to Faneuil Hall and start buttonholing
people myself.
There was a story in the Sunday Guardian a few weeks ago, written by a
17-year-old music fan who was being taken to a variety of boomer-oriented
acts he'd never really heard, just to see if the music meant anything in
particular to him. (I think the URL showed up here, among other places --
brief answer: some did, some didn't). The story started with his cab
passing the banners for the McCartney concert he and his editor were going
to, and the kid saying "Oh, so is that what he looks like?" This is a
perfectly reasonable statement -- why SHOULD a 17-year-old kid of today
know what Paul McCartney looks like? -- but it apparently drove his editor
into something of a fit.
S
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