The Beatles Curse

[Happy Jack]

The last time West Ham beat Liverpool at Anfield the top of the Hit Parade (ask your Mum) was She Loves You.

Until today.

It's a sign, I tells ye, a sign!

[TimR]

[quote name='skankdelvar' timestamp='1440871642' post='2854490']




Not for much longer though. The Grim Reaper crooks his spectral, bony finger for the older generation and today's lazy, self-entitled, narcissistic floppy-haired youngsters are mostly too busy getting tattooed and drinking alcopops and indignantly protesting about the [i]desperate[/i] [i]unfairness[/i] of modern life to identify music as anything but a cheap, disposable personal soundtrack.

...
[/quote]

We were listening to the car radio the other day. On one of those radio stations for old people - Radio 2. My 15yo daughter remarked that she knew the tune being played, it was really old, but she liked it.

The tune?

George Michael - Careless Wisper.

I believe one of his influences was Freddie Mercury.

Anyway. My point? I can't remember now.

Oh yes. My kids have been trained never to say "It's not fair." So your observation is a fairly general one.

[Big_Stu]

In the gospel according to Paul Gambacini (on Radio 2 just now) today is the anniversary of The Beatles last ever live show in 1966, not counting the Apple roof. This means that the "known" line-up gigged for a little over 4 years.

If any other of their peers had done likewise I doubt the Beatles would have been alone in being experts in studio-work and effects only. The Beach Boys would have nailed it.
Brian Jones, might not have died, no Mick Taylor Stones era, no Ronnie era.

Edited August 29, 2015 by Big_Stu

[skankdelvar]

[quote name='Happy Jack' timestamp='1440876193' post='2854535']
The last time West Ham beat Liverpool at Anfield the top of the Hit Parade (ask your Mum) was She Loves You.

Until today.

It's a sign, I tells ye, a sign!
[/quote]

The Moving Finger writes; and, having writ, moves on: nor all your piety nor wit shall lure it back to cancel half a line, nor all your tears wash out a word of it.

[i]The Rubber Yacht of Hymie Cohen[/i]

[quote name='TimR' timestamp='1440882228' post='2854583']
Oh yes. My kids have been trained never to say "It's not fair." So your observation is a fairly general one.
[/quote]

Quite so. Yet - as within the plum lies the stone then so in the general lies the specific.

Truthfully, I doubt very many yoof are floppy-haired, tattooed, alcopop-swilling narcissists on a white-knuckle ride to Self-Entitlement City. But let's just say for the sake of argument that they [i]are[/i]. Satire works better that way.

[TimR]

Well, the boy has floppy hair if it helps.

[skankdelvar]

[quote name='TimR' timestamp='1440884036' post='2854588']
Well, the boy has floppy hair if it helps.
[/quote]

I'll take any help I can get.

[lurksalot]

[quote name='skankdelvar' timestamp='1440871642' post='2854490']


Quite so. And Los Beatles will probably have accounted for more of these epiphanies than all the other bands or artists put together.

Not for much longer though. The Grim Reaper crooks his spectral, bony finger for the older generation and today's lazy, self-entitled, narcissistic floppy-haired youngsters are mostly too busy getting tattooed and drinking alcopops and indignantly protesting about the [i]desperate[/i] [i]unfairness[/i] of modern life to identify music as anything but a cheap, disposable personal soundtrack.

In this misapprehension the young are greatly to be pitied; verily, it is a curse which will render the balance of their lives a barren, soul-less wasteland wherein they will wander in direction-less melancholy. But when they lay the sod over the last of the Beatles generation we shall be whistling 'She Loves You' through our decomposing lips; the last laugh shall be ours.
[/quote]
It matters not that everyone might not have an epiphany in a musical sense , as long as some do.

[Happy Jack]

[quote name='lurksalot' timestamp='1440897343' post='2854652']
It matters not that everyone might not have an epiphany in a musical sense , as long as some do.
[/quote]

Send not to see for whom the Tubular Bells toll ... they toll for thee.

[skankdelvar]

[quote name='lurksalot' timestamp='1440897343' post='2854652']
It matters not that everyone might not have an epiphany in a musical sense , as long as some do.
[/quote]

[size=5][b]The Scandal of 'Epiphany Cutbacks'[/b][/size]
[size=5][b]by Piers Corbyn[/b][/size]

[size=5][b][/b][/size]

[b][size=3]Guardian Science News: [/size][/b][size=3]30/8/2015 - 14:48 GMT (copyright Corbyn Omniglobal Weather)[/size]

[font=georgia,serif][size=4]If [/size]we are ever to build a fair society founded on equality, compassion and - above all - [i]hope[/i] then it behoves us each to strive for the day when [i]everyone[/i] has the opportunity for a musical epiphany. [/font]

[font=georgia,serif]To blithely accept that some may never have a musical epiphany is morally unconscionable at a time when literally [i]tens of millions[/i] of little people at kitchen tables up and down the country are deprived of the right to a musical epiphany by the brutal policies of a tiny hegemony. Will we tolerate a situation where musical epiphanies are for the privileged few rather than the striving many?[/font]

[font=georgia,serif]Never.[/font]

[font=georgia,serif]I shall not rest nor shall my sword sleep in my hand till we have universal free epiphanies in England's green and pleasant land.[/font]

[font=georgia,serif]Oh, and that global warming thing? Complete bosh. Polar bears? They're all fine. ([i]continues anti-climate change rant to visible discomfort of his sibling Jeremy[/i])[/font]

[lurksalot]

well played gents , excellent stuff

[blue]

[quote name='Woodinblack' timestamp='1440809511' post='2854107']
No, I get it, I wasn't there and I am good with that, The time I grew up, the decade after that was great for music, and the life that went with it and magical to me, and the life that went with it. I suspect it was to all of us when we get to that age. And like most of us I guess, we wouldn't have rather been born at a different time, and that is pretty good.
[/quote]

I can't imagine that the magic was at the same level as my generation experienced with The Beatles.

Blue

[blue]

[quote name='TimR' timestamp='1440882228' post='2854583']
We were listening to the car radio the other day. On one of those radio stations for old people - Radio 2. My 15yo daughter remarked that she knew the tune being played, it was really old, but she liked it.

The tune?

George Michael - Careless Wisper.

I believe one of his influences was Freddie Mercury.

Anyway. My point? I can't remember now.

Oh yes. My kids have been trained never to say "It's not fair." So your observation is a fairly general one.
[/quote]

I'm sure Freddie was influenced by The Beatles.

Blue

[Billy Apple]

[quote name='blue' timestamp='1440954739' post='2854950']
I can't imagine that the magic was at the same level as my generation experienced with The Beatles.

Blue
[/quote]

I dunno. Seeing Motorhead at Newcastle City Hall in 1980 was pretty bloody good. Awesome, as you might say.

[Cosmo Valdemar]

[quote name='Big_Stu' timestamp='1440883290' post='2854586']
In the gospel according to Paul Gambacini (on Radio 2 just now) today is the anniversary of The Beatles last ever live show in 1966, not counting the Apple roof. This means that the "known" line-up gigged for a little over 4 years.


[/quote]

Have a look at their live history up to that point. More than most manage in a lifetime.

[redstriper]

Not sure if this is relevant but a friend of mine was in Bilboa Spain last night at a huge fiesta with music and hundreds of people dancing in the streets until the next morning.
He only heard one song in English - this was it:

[media]http://youtu.be/PkbhYvZnQyU[/media]

[Woodinblack]

[quote name='blue' timestamp='1440954739' post='2854950']
I can't imagine that the magic was at the same level as my generation experienced with The Beatles.
[/quote]

No, you can't.

But then I can't imagine your magic being at the same level as mine. Thats the way with magic, and experience, it is personal and non transferable.

Edited August 30, 2015 by Woodinblack

[Rich]

[quote name='Woodinblack' timestamp='1440976371' post='2855114']


No, you can't.

But then I can't imagine your magic being at the same level as mine. Thats the way with magic, and experience, it is personal and non transferable.
[/quote]
+ about a million. My musical epiphany was the 2-Tone/ska revival of the late70s/early 80s. Horace Panter made me want to play bass, Suggs made me want to be silly, Dave Wakeling made me want to protest about stuff, they all made me want to get up and dance. It grabbed me in a way I cannot possibly explain and changed music, changed life, for me forever. That was my magic.

Didn't hear much Yellow Submarine influence in there either

[skankdelvar]

I think we have to put this all in context.

You are ten years old. It is February 1964 but - frankly - it could be 1954. You are in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Barely three months earlier President Kennedy was assassinated and a pall still hangs over the nation. It is the depths of winter and your fellow citizens of Milwaukee have little to cheer them. The only recent local event of note has been the production of the world's largest cheese (15,723kg) for the New York World's Fair.

Last week there was a military coup in some place called Vietnam but American troops are already there in small numbers so no cause for alarm.

As January turned to February the somewhat 'tired' Mr Bobby Vee sat atop the singles charts but this week it's the Beatles. The mania has already begun to build. One month earlier 'Meet The Beatles' went gold and manufacturer Baskin Robbins released 'Beatle Nut Ice Cream'.

It is a cold Sunday night and the nation's most popular TV show comes on air. Most people have just heard the rumours so they tune in out of habit or curiosity.Ed turns to the camera, delivers a brief intro and there they are. Sixty per cent of the nation's TV audience is watching as the Beatles open and close the show.

Next day, the talk in school is of nothing but the Beatles. And they'll be back on Ed Sullivan next week and the week after. They will eventually play ten or so different songs and get the biggest exposure since Elvis in 1956

With these performances the Beatles will assist at the birth of the sixties as a 'decade' and - in so doing help to detonate counter-cultural attitudes which will survive into the 21st century. For four years the Beatles will be the most important pop group in the world. They will lead their worldwide audience of tens of millions into considerations about politics, fashion, protest, drugs, war and peace.

By the mid-late sixties the Beatles will be the reclusive elder statesmen of the gentle, hopeful flower-power generation. They have helped to give birth to a way of life and are - in some ways - its public face. But as the decade ends amidst the bleakness of Altamont and Nixon's first term the Beatles will sign out and leave the building, taking their optimism with them. The Sixties are over and for many the world will seem a greyer place.

Doubtless we have each had our musical epiphanies and valid they will have been, dear reader. But we have not shared an epiphany with so many other people and in such a profoundly all-encompassing way as did the American Beatles generation.

We cannot possibly comprehend what it was like to live in America from 1963 to 1970 and to have been experiencing the music, the films, the books, the colours, the ideas, the Vietnam war and the politics as they happened. It is of this [i]totality[/i] which Blue speaks when he expresses the importance of the Beatles in kindling young peoples' response to the challenges of the Sixties.

Frankly, I am envious. I was there in the sixties but I wasn't [i]there[/i]. Everything else is white noise.

Edited August 31, 2015 by skankdelvar

[Annoying Twit]

The equivalent to that sort of thing nowadays would be if Psy could make the kind of splash he made with Gangnam Style, but was able to keep building on it for years.

[operative451]

It's the late 1980s. The cold war's been going so long you don't even remember that you're scared anymore. You've just left a school where nobody really gave a toss, and despite being moderately clever you don't have any hope of getting a decent job because where you live, there aren't any. The Berlin wall is about to come down, but you don't know that. Everything is stale, your generation's idea of music appears to be The smiths (english person moaning about england) or U2 (irish people moaning about england). Everyone from your parents generation that you know is a total f***-up, including your parents. They just keep going about 'their era' and how the beatles changed everything. Not much seems to have changed since. Fairground attraction are on bloody top of the bloody pops again.

Then, late at night when you're twiddling radio dials, you hear this strange 'wiggy wiggy' noise and and a spoken intro to a record: 'Enjoy this trip. Enjoy this trip. And it is a trip....'

[url="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GSb9w9AMIOs"]https://www.youtube....h?v=GSb9w9AMIOs[/url]

Similar?

Edited September 1, 2015 by operative451

[blue]

[quote name='Billy Apple' timestamp='1440955499' post='2854956']
I dunno. Seeing Motorhead at Newcastle City Hall in 1980 was pretty bloody good. Awesome, as you might say.
[/quote]

I'm sure it was. But as good as Motorhead is, they like other bands will never create the magic we experienced in 1964.

Again The Beatles were so much more than music or a concert event. They were a way of life.

In closing, You had to be there.

Blue

[blue]

[quote name='Cosmo Valdemar' timestamp='1440967868' post='2855044']
Have a look at their live history up to that point. More than most manage in a lifetime.
[/quote]

Yeah to that, dig it.

Blue

[blue]

[quote name='Woodinblack' timestamp='1440976371' post='2855114']
No, you can't.

But then I can't imagine your magic being at the same level as mine. Thats the way with magic, and experience, it is personal and non transferable.
[/quote]

True, except when it come to The Beatles. No other generation had the chance to experience that we did. it's just one of those things you can't explain.

In closing, we were there, you weren't.

Respectably

Blue

[blue]

[quote name='Rich' timestamp='1441011282' post='2855221']
+ about a million. My musical epiphany was the 2-Tone/ska revival of the late70s/early 80s. Horace Panter made me want to play bass, Suggs made me want to be silly, Dave Wakeling made me want to protest about stuff, they all made me want to get up and dance. It grabbed me in a way I cannot possibly explain and changed music, changed life, for me forever. That was my magic.

Didn't hear much Yellow Submarine influence in there either
[/quote]

And at some point Horace's influence go back to The Beatles. Protest, yeah The Beatles had a big foot print there too, especially John.

Guys, were not talking about a record or a show. It was like a religion as I have said many times before, a way of life.

Blue

[blue]

[quote name='skankdelvar' timestamp='1441042604' post='2855604']
I think we have to put this all in context.

You are ten years old. It is February 1964 but - frankly - it could be 1954. You are in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Barely three months earlier President Kennedy was assassinated and a pall still hangs over the nation. It is the depths of winter and your fellow citizens of Milwaukee have little to cheer them. The only recent local event of note has been the production of the world's largest cheese (15,723kg) for the New York World's Fair.

Last week there was a military coup in some place called Vietnam but American troops are already there in small numbers so no cause for alarm.

As January turned to February the somewhat 'tired' Mr Bobby Vee sat atop the singles charts but this week it's the Beatles. The mania has already begun to build. One month earlier 'Meet The Beatles' went gold and manufacturer Baskin Robbins released 'Beatle Nut Ice Cream'.

It is a cold Sunday night and the nation's most popular TV show comes on air. Most people have just heard the rumours so they tune in out of habit or curiosity.Ed turns to the camera, delivers a brief intro and there they are. Sixty per cent of the nation's TV audience is watching as the Beatles open and close the show.

Next day, the talk in school is of nothing but the Beatles. And they'll be back on Ed Sullivan next week and the week after. They will eventually play ten or so different songs and get the biggest exposure since Elvis in 1956

With these performances the Beatles will assist at the birth of the sixties as a 'decade' and - in so doing help to detonate counter-cultural attitudes which will survive into the 21st century. For four years the Beatles will be the most important pop group in the world. They will lead their worldwide audience of tens of millions into considerations about politics, fashion, protest, drugs, war and peace.

By the mid-late sixties the Beatles will be the reclusive elder statesmen of the gentle, hopeful flower-power generation. They have helped to give birth to a way of life and are - in some ways - its public face. But as the decade ends amidst the bleakness of Altamont and Nixon's first term the Beatles will sign out and leave the building, taking their optimism with them. The Sixties are over and for many the world will seem a greyer place.

Doubtless we have each had our musical epiphanies and valid they will have been, dear reader. But we have not shared an epiphany with so many other people and in such a profoundly all-encompassing way as did the American Beatles generation.

We cannot possibly comprehend what it was like to live in America from 1963 to 1970 and to have been experiencing the music, the films, the books, the colours, the ideas, the Vietnam war and the politics as they happened. It is of this [i]totality[/i] which Blue speaks when he expresses the importance of the Beatles in kindling young peoples' response to the challenges of the Sixties.

Frankly, I am envious. I was there in the sixties but I wasn't [i]there[/i]. Everything else is white noise.
[/quote]

Skankdelvar, you are the master wordsmith. You have carefully articulated what was happening and why it could not have happened with other bands after The Beatles.

I think it was such a phenomenon, the younger folks here can't grasp what were talking about.

In most of their post they are completely missing the point. But I want to stress again, it's not their fault. They weren't there, hence there is no way of getting them to understand.

We can't explain the explainable.

Much Respect To All

Blue

Edited September 2, 2015 by blue