Agreed, as much as I want to reply to some of these posts I'm just tired of discussing The Beatles.

it's like punk rock and acid house never happened.

[QUOTE]Originally posted by running paint:
Personally I think they have always sagged under the extreme weight of their own ordinariness, /QUOTE]

What's so ordinary about the Beatles? I'm not sure if the sarcasm will come through, but here it goes: "Yeah 'Strawberry Fields Forever' is so ordinary with its ordinary chord progression and its ordinary production and its ordinary lyrics- I'll take James Blunt any day!"

just my opinion Bubba, no need for sarcasm, to these ears there's not much difference between Macca's bleatings and that of James Blunt. Lets face facts, Paul M, married a one legged, gold digging ex porn star and he's still dull as dish water, any way, the real fab four came from Dussledorf, not Liverpool.

Amusingly enough, these two bands always vie for my top 2 on lastfm. Each of them has a great diversity of sound over the course of their career... excellent stuff.

I have a few things to say about this topic, so have a seat and get ready. I like to think of myself as someone who has a superior appreciation for rock music. It is the background music of my life, of the daily grind. The soundtrack to the things that happens to us while we are busy making plans (to borrow a quote from my hero, John Lennon). As a connoisseur of this particular genre of music, I always had a sense of the natural progression in rock from the early slave tunes through the blues of Mississippi delta singers like Robert Johnson. I also recognized and felt essential to the evolution of music the interpretation of black music by pioneers like Elvis, Carl Perkins, and that underappreciated legend, Jerry Lee Lewis. But it was always the transformation of that American music with the English invaders that marked the advent of true rock and roll for me. The Rolling Stones, the Kinks, the Who, these impetuous, spotty faced English working class punks who took the primal energy of rhythm and blues and made it into a musical revolution. True rock to me was a blending of these black and white influences, culminating in the greatest music of our century—the FAB FOUR—THE BEATLES. Until now. Now there is a new king of rock and roll, a new standard to which all rock musicians will have to strive to match, and that new standard is none other than that modern-day English Fab Four, the young and impetuous men who together make up the band known as Radiohead.

Before I go on to prove my assertion, it may be necessary to explain what it was about the Beatles that, in my opinion, made them the premier and peerless act in the history of rock and roll. That way, I will then be able to explain why Radiohead is even better. The first thing about the Beatles was the music. They were great musicians. All of them, even the underappreciated Ringo, were innovative and virtuosic on their instruments. They made sounds that had never been heard before. They were tremendous singers. The Lennon and McCartney songwriting duo was perfectly balanced, originating music that was perfectly balanced—sweet and cynical, straightforward and ironic, happy and sad, fun and angry. No one had a sweeter voice than Paul, no one could scream like John. They also evolved. If they had only made one album they would have been remembered as a great band of the 60s, the creators of fun and buoyant but also raunchy rock standards like Please Please Me and I’m Down. But they didn’t ever rest on their laurels, they never sold out. The Beatles of 1970 seemed to have little in common with the mop tops of 1964, and yet true fans recognized the threads that connected the songs of those years, and also appreciated how each member had evolved and changed, and subsequently changed the face of popular music.

But the most important thing about the Beatles was that they were true artists, the most artistic band in rock. They experimented, they pushed boundaries, they played with the technology available to them to create a new form of music, an art form. Some might say they wee a bit pretentious, that they thought they were bigger than the music they made. But they were. They symbolized the era; they created a new sound to go along with a very different time and culture. They invented the concept album. In fact, they invented the album. No longer a collection of singles, the album was a complete product, a musical journey with the four members of the band as tour guides. They wrote and produced their own music. Rock music would never be the same. The Stones, the Who, and other great bands of the sixties, were only trying to echo what the Beatles had already done, and to follow the trail they had blazed. More than any rock musicians before or since, the Beatles made art. Who could seriously argue that “Sergeant Pepper” doesn’t rank as one of the great works of art of the century--visual, musical or literary?

After the Beatles broke up, at the very top of their game, of course, rock music continued to evolve. The work of the 70s and 80s that I always liked best were by those musicians who seemed to me to be carrying on the torch lit by the Beatles. And there were some great bands. The problem was that after the Beatles, rock music branched in too many directions. Some bands were very good, but no single act could claim to be the true descendants, none could really claim to carry on the legend. You had the Stones and the Who, and later led Zeppelin, legitimate contemporaries of the Beatles who managed to find the art in their own abilities, but they seemed painfully aware that they could never be the real deal. They were doomed to become the symbols of the genre that came to be known, sometimes derisively, as “classic” rock. You also had the California school, the southern and western singer-songwriters like Jackson Browne and the Eagles. Many of these musicians did great things, produced great songs and were great musicians—some of them like Jackson Browne and Don Henley were true poets who spoke to the aging, jaded, post-protest hippy generation of boomers who were fattening up and mellowing out.

And then there was the branch of rock that became known, presumptuously, hopefully, unrealistically, as art rock. David Bowie, Bryan Ferry, Sweet, Brian Eon, some goofball called Mott the Hoople. I loved some of these guys, particularly Roxy Music, and even Queen. It was fun to think of them as the truly Beatlesque musicians of the post-Beatle period. But they actually called themselves art rockers, all glitter and flash and experimentation and funny sounds and cross-gender style. On the other end of the spectrum were the macho jock rockers, the early head banging heavy metal bands like Aerosmith, Grand Funk, Deep Purple. But was there any act which attempted to tie it all together, to be cohesive and coherent keepers of the Beatle flame? No. These acts were too specialized, too clearly and cleanly typecast. One who made a pretty admirable attempt was Elton John, the early version, that of “Yellow Brick Road” and “Caribou.” At least he was eclectic and diverse. But he soon descended in to pomp and circumstance. He became “Captain Fantastic.” And yes, he did have a great voice, McCartney and Lennon rolled into one, but the real brains behind the goofy glasses always belonged to songwriter Bernie Taupin, who no one ever saw in real life.

And then, just in time, came a thing called punk, rescuing true believers from the complacency, the overproduction, the Phil Specter walls of sound, the “art.” In a very real sense punk rockers, for all of there brashness, amateurish musicianship, vomit, and spit, were the real inheritors of the Beatles legacy. Finally, rock had gone back to its roots, to raw feeling, passion, anger, and youth. Think of the simple song structures of the Ramones, the anarchic howls of Johnny Rotten, the chopping rhythm guitar of Joe Strummer, and you see the mirrored reflections of the Beatles, the Stones, the Who. And though Eagles fans may have dismissed them, it was the so-called punks who evolved, like the Beatles before them, finding that they actually were good musicians, that they could grow older and more sophisticated. One need only listen to “London Calling,” the double album Clash epic, to see that. But then new wave and MTV put an end to punk. By the mid-80s, punk rockers were falling into the same trap as the art rockers a decade earlier and becoming just as fragmented, reliant on producers and synthesizers and something called tape loops, and frilly, silly clothes. And mullets.

The 90s brought the inevitable backlash. Thank God, the music coined as Grunge. Suddenly, white kids who felt silly imitating black hip hoppers could mosh to the 90s alienation that they felt in their hearts, turning to Kurt Cobain, a true rock and roll spirit who had it all—anger, a sweet voice, poetry and a violent, premature death. They could also turn to a new band consisting of four young, brainy kids who had grown up together in a working class English town and tinkered with a variety of instruments, influences, and sounds, and worked their way up playing local pubs. Sound familiar? The Beatles all over again. Though no one would have guessed it at the time. This was Radiohead in 1992, bursting on the scene with “Pablo Honey” and its raunchy anthem of alienation—“Creep.”

Since its grungy origins, Radiohead has evolved. Its first album fit right into the Nirvana-style teen angst. Next came “The Bends,” an album of inspired power-pop. Guitar rock featuring soaring melodies and slashing pedal-packed electric guitar. A new direction, like the Beatles going from “Yesterday” to “I Am the Walrus” in the space of a year. And then came Radiohead’s own “Sergeant Pepper”—“OK Computer.” As different from “The Bends” as “The Bends” had been from “Pablo Honey,” “OK Computer” boasted a wide variety of styles and sounds, tied together by a common theme—the alienation and desperate search for humanity in the computer age. On my top-ten list of rock bands in history, my desert island classics, “OK Computer” put Radiohead way up there, right in with the rock n’ roll trinity—the Beatles, the Stones, the Who. But nothing prepared me for what was to come next. Two albums in the space of one year—“Kid A” and “Amnesiac.” Turning away from its past once again, Radiohead was pioneering a new kind of music, experimenting with sounds and styles that I believe were never heard before. Truly, Radiohead was art. And it was art in the tradition of the great Beatles.

What makes Radiohead the Beatles of the new millennium? First and foremost, they are a rock band. Four young men who were childhood friends who had penned tunes after school in their bedrooms as teenagers. Kids who didn’t fit in with the popular kids. Arty music wizards. Taking their name from a Talking Heads song, Radiohead started simple, with inspired, energetic grunge tunes tempered by sweetness and a voice, Thom Yorke’s voice, which could soar in a sweet falsetto as well as sneer and wail with unbridled abandon. Yorke, about whom much more must be said later, has a voice that combines the best of Bono and Freddy Mercury—high, sweet, and theatrical—with an edginess—a shaky, neurotic, nasty and raw wail—reminiscent of the best of Johnny Lyndon and Bryan Ferry. They have a keen sense of melody. The one thing that connects them most to the Beatles tradition, Radiohead never wavers from that one simple requirement. Even in the most experimental, the noisiest, the most schizophrenic songs, they always remain anchored in melody. Beautiful, tuneful, soulful melodies. Not southern, not country, not punk, not glittery, not flashy—just beautiful, often highly original and unusual, but always melody, always a firm sense of song. Always Beatlesque, always art.

Radiohead evolves. Much to the regret of casual fans, each Radiohead album, and I do mean album in the classic sense—is completely different from the last. While “The Bends” is power pop, “OK Computer” is disillusionment, schizophrenia, moodiness, and technological wizardry. “Kid A” and “Amnesiac”? All gizmos, pops, and whirrs, anarchic jazz, and indecipherably complex, overlapping, mindboggling rhythms. But always melody. Never without naggingly bittersweet, beautiful melody of the sort that must make Brian Wilson smile.

Like the Beatles, Radiohead has met so much critical acclaim, as well as popularity (though no one seems to know who it is who is actually buying all these Radiohead CDs—a bunch of alienated misfits, most likely, but who isn’t one?). Radiohead became so successful that the band ceased having to answer to anyone other than themselves long ago, after “The Bends” at least. The last two albums are so unlike anything on the charts. Record company executives are perplexed, but they can’t complain. Radiohead refuses to obey anyone, to be marketed and molded by “suits” who know only polls and charts and numbers and focus groups. They write, play, produce, and perform exactly what they want to, and their success provides them with what today is an unthinkable amount of artistic license.

And then there is Radiohead on stage. Last week, I was fortunate enough to see them live, at Liberty State Park in New Jersey, out of doors with the Statue of Liberty and the World Trade Center looming over them—framing them--on each side of the stage. They came out at dusk. They played four encores. Four strange little surly Englishmen, wizards of their time, wearing T-shirts and sneakers, surrounded by hundreds of guitars, keyboards and gizmos. The crowd, a motley assortment of geeks, weirdoes, music aficionados, outcasts and art lovers stood there, mouths agape, realizing they were seeing something out of this world, yet curiously rooted in it, the state of the art.

It was during this show that I realized it. I remember the exact moment. It was during the band’s rendition of “Pyramid Song,” the song with the impossible tempo, the song which I had already decided had surpassed both “A Day in the Life” and “I Am the Walrus,” John Lennon compositions, as the greatest song ever recorded. The members of Radiohead were having a blast, smiling at the realization that they were making musical history, playing with the instruments like children in day care, deftly weaving together the unbelievably complex rhythms that make “Pyramid Song” a singular achievement in rock history. Then the thought hit me. Radiohead had done it. This band had done the unthinkable. Radiohead had surpassed the most artistic musicians in rock history. Radiohead was better than the Beatles.

By the way, I originally wrote that "paper" back in the summer of 2001. But I guess it's still relevant seven years later. . .

It is on the one hand, lovely to see such passion for music, but equally, it's totally dispiriting to read such twaddle; such wrongheaded criticism.

quote:

Originally posted by Android:
I like to think of myself as someone who has a superior appreciation for rock music.

I didn't make it very far.

ha ha, that's exactly how far I got too.

quote:

Originally posted by running paint:
ha ha, that's exactly how far I got too.

me too. I was going to comment on it earlier but it took me half the day to scroll past that mini-book. Could someone send me the cliffnotes on it?

good old rock n' roll as we knew it is dead. I mean we have Jet ripping people off and Green Day dissing the United States. Could it get any worse??

quote:

Originally posted by IndieFolkExperimentalLover:
good old rock n' roll as we knew it is dead. I mean we have Jet ripping people off and Green Day dissing the United States. Could it get any worse??

Yes.

You guys are being relatively harsh on Android, eh? The topic of this thread is The Beatles vs. Radiohead. He picked Radiohead (though he says there are only four members, when there are indeed five... kind of strange), and essentially argues that they have taken over the mantle of "The Best Band Ever" from The Beatles. Whatever, that's his opinion.

Kulturtrager, how is his wrong-headed criticism any different than others' criticism on this board? Just because you disagree with it? I don't agree with all of it either, but that doesn't make it "wrong-headed."

The remarks made to his post kind of solidify the fact that this forum is going downhill, when a new person can't even post his thoughts (albeit long) on a thread without getting worthwhile replies. For further proof, look in some of the recent threads in the "Indie" section.

I'm sure that this has been mentioned before, but I'll say it again. While Radiohead releases a great album every two or three years or so, the Beatles were releasing great full-length albums every 6-8 months! Really amazing if ya think about it. Here is a list from wikipedia to back me up

* Please Please Me (Parlophone, 1963)
* With The Beatles (Parlophone, 1963)
* A Hard Day's Night (Parlophone, 1964)
* Beatles for Sale (Parlophone, 1964)
* Help! (Parlophone, 1965)
* Rubber Soul (Parlophone, 1965)
* Revolver (Parlophone, 1966)
* Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band (Parlophone, 1967)
* Magical Mystery Tour (U.S. only. Released as a Double EP in the UK) (Capitol, 1967)
* The Beatles ("The White Album") (Apple, 1968)
* Yellow Submarine (Apple, 1969)
* Abbey Road (Apple, 1969)
* Let It Be (Apple, 1970)


That is thirteen albums in around eight years. By comparison Radiohead has released seven full length albums in around 15 years. Not quite as prolific.

I love both the Beatles and Radiohead, but I definitely listen to Radiohead more. And I would say that is due to fact that I grew up with Radiohead and they are still together while the Beatles were through ten years before I was even born.

Posted by ProfAmaretto

quote:

Kulturtrager, how is his wrong-headed criticism any different than others' criticism on this board? Just because you disagree with it? I don't agree with all of it either, but that doesn't make it "wrong-headed."

Clearly Prof, and with respect I suggest you remove that part of your user name, if you fail to understand how criticism can be 'wrong-headed' in terms of a particular analysis, then you need to look beyond your relativist, post-modern inculculation, to a deeper and broader appreciation of textual studies.

So it is rather posts like yours, indicating an inability to discern serious critiquing from mere opinion that is making metacritic a rather dull place these days.

quote:

then you need to look beyond your relativist, post-modern inculculation, to a deeper and broader appreciation of textual studies.

So it is rather posts like yours, indicating an inability to discern serious critiquing from mere opinion that is making metacritic a rather dull place these days.

First of all, I'm not a Professor, nor do I pretend to be. I just like the name

And second of all, how dare you. My point was, Android's post is as relevant as yours, and you called it "twaddle" and "wrong-headed criticism" without listing why. Now you're telling me that I need to look beyond my "relativist post-modern inculcation to a deeper and broader appreciation of textual studies." Studies of what? Critiquing? Well, my apologies to you sir, because I wasn't aware that every post on this forum had to be worthy of yours, or anyone else's, "critical standards." It's a forum, one out of thousands on the Internet, and it's where people come to express their opinions. Nothing more.

Prof, you come across like a decent guy, and I'm certainly not trying to dismiss you out of hand, but when a contributor to a forum for a website called "Metacritic" writes such an obvious attempt at providing a critical framework from which to compare and contrast two acts, then it is damn obvious that they must accept criticism in return.

I said that I enjoyed Android's passion in writing his stuff, but it really is poorly thought out and full of holes and shouldn't we all be trying to improve each other's ability to think and write in better ways?

Opinions are worthless. Serious, engaged debate which furthers one's understanding of a topic is the only game in town.
And yes, I am aware that I was a bit short in my throwaway twaddle comment, but I really don't have the time or energy to respond to all the poor writing in Android's post.

quote:

Prof, you come across like a decent guy, and I'm certainly not trying to dismiss you out of hand, but when a contributor to a forum for a website called "Metacritic" writes such an obvious attempt at providing a critical framework from which to compare and contrast two acts, then it is damn obvious that they must accept criticism in return.

Agreed, but with the exception of your reply, I wouldn't count any other posts as criticism in return. It just seemed like, to use your word, "twaddle." And understandably, Android's post is long and more drawn out than it should be, but it seemed like it deserved more than "I couldn't read it all." Then why did you even post?

quote:

Opinions are worthless. Serious, engaged debate which furthers one's understanding of a topic is the only game in town.
And yes, I am aware that I was a bit short in my throwaway twaddle comment, but I really don't have the time or energy to respond to all the poor writing in Android's post.

I agree that I enjoy debate more than simple opinions posted on here, but what do you really expect from a forum, regardless if it's called Metacritic, or Bob's Music Forum? Yes, the expectation is that Metacritic would have people more willing to discuss a topic than just throw mindless slander at each other. But it happens here, and it's been happening here a lot more recently, which is what I meant when I said that I feel like this forum is going downhill. People post something (opinion or otherwise), and hateful, obnoxious responses are all I read. I don't want to name-call (and I don't think I have to, any regular contributor to this forum knows the people I'm referring to), but it gets tiresome after awhile. If one has a critical response to someone's post, they should explain themselves. Otherwise to me, it just seems like their opinion, and as you said, those are worthless.

Even though I commented on the length of Android's post, I'm with the Prof on this one. Some of you can't wait to attempt to sound intellectually superior by using over-reaching and unnecessary terminology, like:

quote:

then you need to look beyond your relativist, post-modern inculculation, to a deeper and broader appreciation of textual studies.

Translation: You need to look past your known influences and study not only the history of music and writing but the technical aspects of each as well before calling me out on such apparent douche-baggery.

Translation inside Translation: I think I'm smarter than you.

quote:

I said that I enjoyed Android's passion in writing his stuff, but it really is poorly thought out and full of holes and shouldn't we all be trying to improve each other's ability to think and write in better ways?

Only if someone asks for ways to improve. Not everyone is trying to become a writer or critic or hipster, just waiting to be discovered on the Metacritic message boards.

See...no serious writer would ever use an emoticon.

Mark Twain didn't need to use big words to be considered a genius

This message has been edited. Last edited by: mymindsblank,