In a message dated 8/3/2004 6:04:22 PM Eastern Standard Time, audities-owner@smoe.org writes: <> Jaimie, I think you got that exactly right. While a lot of people my age talk about where we were when we heard that Kurt Cobain had committed suicide (I was 14, coming back from the geography bee), the reality is that before we heard "Smells Like Teen Spirit" on our radios, the world was a different place to us. I remember really loving the Escape Club a couple years before that, because "Wild Wild West" really rocked. Like, seriously, this was it... that was our reality. I know that to some, that seems stupid, because you had already found the british invasion and punk and new wave and all that beforehand, but for those of us in our mid-20s now, we were way too young to experience that firsthand. I listened to top 40 with paula abdul. Nirvana, and the way that their success caused radio to drag out all of the remaining indie underground bands into the mainstream, was a major revelation to us. And again, as I've aged and explored music more on my own, I realize that Nirvana just won the equivalent of a musical lottery, combined with creating the right thing at the right time, but it DID influence a lot of people because we wound up realizing that there were far broader horizons than we'd realized up to that point. We learned not to accept what we were being spoon-fed sooner than we otherwise would've. And granted, the entire thing was corrupted within a few years--when alt.rock radio became the clear-channel controlled crud that gave us Creed, Nickelback, and other grunge retreads--but an awful lot of us "got" it in time. It's funny, because I think a lot of us here come to power-pop from different sides... some of us herald its independence and almost punk-ish d.i.y. spirit, others love the meticulously crafted, bright melodies, yet more find it to be a more "adult" alternative to the top 40 records of our youth, and others feel it's the closest thing to one of the golden eras of singles, the mid/late '60s. But I think it's great we all arrive at this common point, even if we disagree on many other acts (I rather like Jeff Shelton's Spinning Jennies, but I've disagreed with him many times on list when he's trashed acts like the White Stripes etc., who I actually quite enjoy). This is all cool, though, because the reality is that pop fans are coming from an awful lot of divergent places. Someone else (I think it was John Micek, but I could be wrong) touched upon how hip-hop (and electronic music) were in many ways as culturally important as the Beatles, and I think that brings up an important point. As fans of guitar-driven pop music, the Beatles are the bread-and-butter... the band we constantly point to (though, oddly enough, I would say I prefer CARS-influenced acts more than anyone who is implicitly Beatles-influenced). But go to the hip-hop world, and the perspective changes drastically. That isn't to say that those guys don't like the Beatles (check out the brilliant-as-it-sounds "Grey Album", where DJ Dangermouse mixed the acapella versions of Jay-Z's "Black Album" with sonic bits--and I do mean BITS--of the Beatles "White Album"), but the root of influence lies more in a variety of sources from disco to strains of international music, hard rock, and dance music. There's a tendency nowadays to point to Eminem as the face of hip-hop because he's had (arguably) the greatest cultural impact, but hip-hop is as diverse and wide a genre as rock. Dismissing the entirety of hip-hop because you don't like Eminem would be like hearing Van Halen and deciding that, because you're not crazy about them, you also don't like the Beatles. There is really a lot of very thrilling and challenging hip-hop, and while it occasionally goes through its dry spells, it's still an ever-evolving and entertaining genre. It's also notable that hip-hop, like power-pop, is very singles-based. It's odd how the two both rely so heavily on a catchy hook. <> I just wanted to repeat Stewart's line there. Hip-hop guys ARE musicians. Calling them anything less IS an insult. It's as insulting as saying that the Beatles aren't musicians, while Beethoven is, because Beethoven wrote symphonies, or some equally arbitrary BS. And as he points out with his ?uestlove example, a good many of them play "old fashioned" instruments as well as using new-fangled musical technologies to create good music. If you want to search for "the next Beatles", then you're going to have to stop ruling out modern music-making techniques--including the use of samples to create tracks. << Because the Beatles were the first, and no one can ever be the first again.>> See above. If the lessons were forgotten (as they were for many of us in the late '80s/early '90s), they need to be taught again. And speaking as someone who is firmly part of generation X (if not Y, scholars disagree), Stewart's right in that the whole "spokesmen of a generation" crud flung at the Beatles has done far more to harm their reputation amongst people in my age group than to help it. Everyone wants to find their own way, not to have things crammed down their throats, especially when it carries the undercurrent of "mine is better than yours". I would argue that that very attitude is sort of a generational "correction" that undoes a lot of the influence the Beatles had in the first place. I don't disagree with a lot of the rest of your sentiment--that the Beatles had a cultural influence unlike no other rock band--but I think that even voicing that attitude has a way of diminishing that influence. Does that make any sense? On another note, I've found this thread to be far more interesting than I had originally expected... what do you know! Bruce's spirited call to arms to get all of us to start power-pop labels especially brought a tear to my eye, and got me thinking about the things I'd love to get out there (Squeeze B-sides! That one Sparks album that was never put on CD! Already-out-of-print-mid-90s-Britpop discs! Complete reissues of the Cars catalog... okay, now I'm dreaming) before I came back down to my own financial reality. In an audities-loving mood, Jason