Bands Better than the Beatles?

[uwe]

None of this can be seen on youtube here unfortunately ... Kate Perry excepted ... was that the performance with her wearing an extraordinary gown? I didn't think it was that horrible. She did put emotion in it I think, duff notes and key uncertainties or not. It's a difficult number.

I never liked that song btw, always found it overdone, Macca at his unfortunate most overplayful and Mozart-overembellished. As a love song, I always thought "Something" so much more poignant.

[Pilgrim]

For those who watched the 50th anniversary Beatles special last night - there should be no questions left.  The work they left speaks for itself and laid the foundations for much of what we hear today.  There wasn't a human being in that theater who couldn't sing along to every number.

It's also a reminder to me that what I really like playing is based in 12-bar blues. 

Another thing I noted - Ringo may be the most comfortable person on stage I've ever seen (next to Dean Martin).  He really looked as if he were totally at home up there.

[gweimer]

For those who watched the 50th anniversary Beatles special last night - there should be no questions left.  The work they left speaks for itself and laid the foundations for much of what we hear today.  There wasn't a human being in that theater who couldn't sing along to every number.

It's also a reminder to me that what I really like playing is based in 12-bar blues. 

Another thing I noted - Ringo may be the most comfortable person on stage I've ever seen (next to Dean Martin).  He really looked as if he were totally at home up there.

If you watched the interviews with the now grown women that were at the shows, you noticed that one of them said that Ringo was by far the most popular Beatle in the beginning, for much of that same reason.

[uwe]

I wasn't a woman even back then, but even I thought Ringo was cute! Him and Paul were my favorites as a child. Lennon seemed aloof and he wore glasses, George never spoke.

I remember when my 9 years older than me brother brought the "I want to hold your hand" single home. It sounded like nothing I had heard before. "Hey you-hou-hou, I tell you so-hum-thing, dungadungadung, I think you understand ...". And my did it sound good. The sonic quality alone was stand-out to anything else you could hear back then (and the Beatles' early sixties output has held up sonically like nothing else from that era, George Martin was that good). And while my brother started to grow out of the Beatles by the late sixties in favor of Stones, Hendrix and, yes, Deep Purple, I remember listening to the Magical Mystery Tour EP over and over. And over. I must have been 8 or 9 and was fascinated by the music which had an Alice in Wonderland lushness to it. Creeping into the room of my brother when he was not at home, I would marvel at the sleeve and how the Beatles were dressed. For years, those four songs Magical Mystery Tour, Your Mother Should Know, The Fool on the Hill and I am the Walrus were my four favorite Beatles songs. Your Mother Should Know still sets me in awe for its sheer catchiness though it is not that simplistic at all. And, no, it's not rock, more British dance hall (not that I knew or would have cared back then), but a bloody great tune.

Sgt Pepper will always be among my desert island selection. I never grow tired of it and still detect new things everytime I listen to it. It's also viewed as the first Prog album in Prog circles.

PS: And from a non-native speaker: You could always understand their lyrics so well!

[westen44]

Revolver, Sgt. Pepper, and Abbey Road are my favorite Beatles albums.  But not far behind are Rubber Soul and Magical Mystery Tour.  I feel MMT is greatly underrated, maybe because people associate the film (which wasn't highly regarded) with the songs themselves.  A special mention might also be made of the double white album, although it was somewhat uneven.  (Not really too uneven to bother me much, though.)

[Pilgrim]

I loved the white album - didn't know the earlier albums that well.  But it has such range, and such a quirky selection of tunes and lyrics, that it's a landmark to me.

And I recall clearly that "Birthday" was a tune you could test your tone arm with.  If you could play Birthday without the arm skipping, you had a good one.  The bass notes threw the stylus out of the grooves otherwise.

[gweimer]

I can agree with the idea that Sgt. Pepper was the first prog album.  It was born and bred in a studio, isolated away from live concerts.  I'm sure that the band never intended to play the songs live.  For a four-track recording, it showcases the brilliance of George Martin as a producer.

I like MMT, but I think it came a little too close to Sgt. Pepper, both in time and nature.

I love The White Album.  I saw it as a return to more basic instrumentation and simpler songs ("Revolution #9" excluded).  It was also an album that showed a little more aggression from the guitar.

[uwe]

In my fantasy, I always see Sgt. Pepper and the MMT tracks plus the singles Penny Lane, Strawberry Fields Forever and All You Need is Love as one fantastic double album!!!

[lowend1]

Sgt Pepper will always be among my desert island selection. I never grow tired of it and still detect new things everytime I listen to it.

We can fix that...

[uwe]

You know what? Closet whimp I am , I like the Bee Gees way too much to not like even this here!  I never saw the movie, never heard the soundtrack, by all accounts the movie was horrible (not that all Beatles films were exactly Academy Award Winner suspicious!) though looking at it now it's so endearingly incredibly cheesy it's moving! Is that Leif Frampton impersonating Peter Garrett or the other way around? With all due respect to him and Joe Cocker, no one can sing that song with the laconic beauty of Ringo. At least he didn't use the voice box to, uhum, doobie wah all over it. Someone had compassion.

But the true value of this vid which you have thankfully posted, Lowend, is ...

BARRY GIBB PLAYING A RIPPER!!! 
Men have turned gay for lesser reasons!

Now go(ose-step) and post it where it belongs, das ist ein Befehl!!!

[lowend1]

But the true value of this vid which you have thankfully posted, Lowend, is ...

BARRY GIBB PLAYING A RIPPER!!! 

With me, there is always an ulterior motive

[uwe]

I like a gender to be intransparent.

Make that "I like agendas to be ..."!!! 

[gweimer]

I just came across this, purely by chance...

The musical guest on a 1986 SNL show, alt-rock band the Replacements, lived down to their reputation and were definitely not ready for prime time. During their two songs, they were so intoxicated that they repeated and forgot lyrics, stumbled around the stage and into each other, and yelled obscenities at the crowd.

[godofthunder]

Sounds like the Replacements.

[Dave W]

The Replacements were huge in the alt-rock scene here and still have a rabid fan base, but if you took a survey of the general public here, I think the Beatles would easily be thought of as the better band.