-----Original Message-----
From: Josh Chasin <jchasin@nyc.rr.com>
Sent: Aug 3, 2004 7:45 PM
To: audities@smoe.org
Subject: Re: Another Bealtes?


>The Beatles were in fact far MORE than a totally kickass rock band.  They
>were a cultural touchstone.  If you walked down the street and you heard
>Revolver or Sergeant Pepper coming out of a window, you could walk in and
>instantly know about each other that you were "one of us."  

Couldn't you say the same thing about Elvis?

>There was never
>a rock band before the Beatles (though there were some contemporary with
>them); They did it all first, from the getting huge to the ego clashes to
>the break-up to the solo careers.  They created the template, and I think
>their intrinsic resonance contributed to that even becoming the template.

>You could argue that Nirvana meant the same thing for a different
>generation.  But you'd be wrong.  Because the Beatles were the first, and no
>one can ever be the first again.  Its like asking if you'll ever lose your
>virginity a second time, if there'll ever be another first kiss.  The
>Beatles don't go with the Stones and the Kinks; they go with JFK and landing
>on the moon and the Mets winning the World Series.  The Who, it turns out,
>were not the first band to vomit in the bar; that would have happened in
>Hamburg.

This is another place where I kind of lose you.  I was in Berkeley when Nirvana hit, the home
to 924 Gilman, tons of punk bands...for the kids walking down the street listening to
Nirvana, or to give an even better example, Green Day, they were "first", because it
was their first attachment to music, and to their lifestyle and culture. For them, JFK and 
moon landings meant nothing.  They cared about Reaganomics.  I had Beatles records
when I was 9 in 1969, but my "first", when I was 15, was Bruce Springsteen


That's why I believe that as regards the "Youth of Today," if they have
anything like the Beatles, you have to look entirely outside the construct
of the rock band.  I reiterate that the closest collective experience to the
Beatles  (and ultimately that's what the Beatles were, a collective defining
generational experience that has not been matched by a pop group since, and
won't be) for the Youth of Today is the Internet.  And there will never be
another Internet.