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| From | "Stewart Mason" <craigtorso@verizon.net> |
| Subject | Re: All Things Must Pass (or else they'll create intestinal |
| Date | Fri, 27 Apr 2007 02:34:20 -0400 |
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----- Original Message -----
From: <tinyvolcano@wavecable.com>
> Let us all give up (for one minute)....that the Beatles are divine
> and no one could possibly do better. I was trying to point out that
> the many listeners of pop music who reside on the discussion group
> are lovers of pop...no?
It's where you use words like "divine" that you're losing me. The
Beatles were a magnificent pop band, but they were not touched by the
hand of god. And I think it does a disservice to them as musicians to
put them on such an exalted pedestal.
>
> Ok, simple question here, aside from the magic of the time (1960's),
> the actual timing for the Beatles and the fact that the audience of
> the 60's was ready for something great ..... lets just look at the
> songs, the arsenal of excellent material and now lets look at any
> artist since who has forged their own template(way the Beatles
> did)to or rather-branched off to do something special and unique-
> AND has rivaled the Beatles in this way of excellent fresh material,
> so that the world universally recognizes as they might have the
> Beatles collective works.
Fair enough. But that's an impossible question to answer, because the
rock audience now is completely splintered. This first started in
earnest with the FM/AM split of 1967, then continued with the
fracturing of the audience into different target demographics in the
'70s, and on into the complete Balkanization of musical styles now.
As Lester Bangs put it: "We will never again agree on anything the way
we agreed on Elvis." That says it all, and he said that 30 years ago,
so it's only more true today.
Another important factor is that the rock audience in the '60s was
much smaller in terms of its age range. Let's accept the argument
that the first rock and roll fans were the baby boomers, which is a
total oversimplification, but humor me. So in 1967, the vast majority
of rock fans were 22 or younger. Today, if we keep 1945 as the
starting point, there are diehard, lifelong rock fans who are 62 years
old. So there are at least three or four generations of rock fans
now! Even in my own family, where my eldest brother is 18 years older
than I am, there are clear chronological differences between us: the
two oldest were the British Invasion fans, the middle child was a
devoted fan of Elton John and the singer-songwriters, the one nearest
me was stadium rock and first-generation punk, and I was the new
waver.
To put it another way: what did you folks who were around and aware
when SGT. PEPPER came out think of Rudy Vallee? Because that's the
historical distance between today and June 1, 1967.
> I was simply asking all to offer up those artists? How are they?
> Where are they? I have my favorites stored in 1000's of cd's....but
> I know of no one who has created as a significant "new sound" since.
> Defeated attitude? No man, not at all. A simple question.
Okay, so the question is, which artists since the Beatles do we think
have had at least 8 prolific years in which they've first defined
their own sound and then expanded upon it, so that a fan would not
mistake a song from the first album of that 8 years for a song from
the last? That's pretty easy.
Most of these artists were recording before and/or after the dates in
parentheses, and most did fine work outside of those dates, but this
was the period where they were at their creative peak. I didn't count
acts like, say, Michael Penn or Fountains of Wayne, who have been
around for years but have only released a relatively small handful of
albums in that time, or bands like Squeeze who keep breaking up and
reforming every few years.
Captain Beefheart ('67-'80)
Can ('68-'76)
John Cale ('70-'82)
Fleetwood Mac ('71-'79)
Electric Light Orchestra ('71-'80)
Steely Dan ('72-'80)
Richard Thompson ('72-'94)
ABBA ('73-'81)
Tom Waits ('73-'92)
R. Stevie Moore ('74-'88)
Sparks ('74-'82)
The Ramones ('76-'84)
Elvis Costello ('77-'94)
Talking Heads ('77-'85)
Peter Gabriel ('77-'86)
Kate Bush ('78-'89)
The Fall ('78-'88)
XTC ('78-'89)
Siouxsie and the Banshees ('78-'88)
The Cure ('79-'89)
New Order ('81-'89)
Robyn Hitchcock ('81-'93)
Cocteau Twins ('82-'96)
Redd Kross ('82-'93)
REM ('82-'94)
The Replacements ('81-'89)
Billy Bragg ('83-'91)
Nick Cave ('84-'96)
Everything But the Girl ('84-'96)
The Ex ('84-present)
Half Man Half Biscuit ('85-present)
Sonic Youth ('85-present)
The Wedding Present ('85-'94)
They Might Be Giants ('86-'94)
The Magnetic Fields ('90-'04)
Saint Etienne ('91-present)
Barenaked Ladies ('92-present)
Guided By Voices ('92-'04)
Yo La Tengo ('92-present)
P.J. Harvey ('92-present)
Stereolab ('92-present)
The High Llamas ('92-present)
Sloan ('92-present)
Bjork ('93-present)
Lambchop ('94-present)
The Roots ('94-present)
The Mountain Goats ('94-'04)
The Apples In Stereo ('94-'02)
Beck ('94-present)
Outkast ('94-'03)
Blonde Redhead ('95-present)
Air ('97-present)
Deerhoof ('99-present)
Please note that I'm not making any kind of objective argument that
any of these bands are somehow "better" than the Beatles, which is a
specious and unwinnable argument. I'm simply saying that these are
acts who have had similarly long creative peaks, and have released
many records that are every bit as dear to me as REVOLVER.
S
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