>
> I do think part of it was being there when it all happened.I am old enough 
> to have experienced the entire British invasion as it happened.Talk about 
> good and exciting times.The Beatles were the buzz at that time and "Sgt. 
> Pepper" blew everybody away."Pet Sounds" had a huge impact as well.
> I do love FOW and Supergrass .I'm a huge pop fan.But they can't take the 
> place of hearing all the early Kinks albums.

But I don't think that's anything to do with the *music* necessarily.
It's all to do with the age of the listener and the intensity of the memory. 
And that goes to an earlier argument about Pepper's effect on the pop 
culture zeitgeist.
When you're a teenager or in your early young adulthood, you just feel 
*everything* more intensely -- because it's new and because it's exciting 
and because you just don't have anything to compare it to. Obviously, that 
feeling diminishes some as you get older (but not when it comes to falling 
in love -- that rush remains the same no matter what) for a lot of stuff, 
music included. That's because you're able to draw lines between records and 
realize that this band was influenced by this band, who were obviously 
influenced by this band. You start to appreciate music along a continuum, 
rather than have those "Holy Shit!!!!" moments you had when you were a kid.
I feel the same way about hearing U2 and R.E.M. for the first time. Those 
records, because they were the first ones I heard during my musical coming 
of age ("Under A Blood Red Sky," and "Reckoning" respectively) remain more 
vital and intense for me because they were the first. They were the ones 
that inspired me to become addicted to Pop music and to start playing and 
writing my own music. It's pretty safe to say I probably would never been in 
bands or made records without having heard them.
But I wouldn't be so vain to say that everything that came after them was 
inferior or were pale imitations. And that's the essence of the argument 
that's being made in other posts, and it's the one I object to heartily.

john
(who really needs to get some work done today, but has writer's block, and 
cannot)