So who here doesn't really like the Beatles

[bart]

The gauntlet was thrown,
a day of turmoil and strife;
Twenty two pages

[Soma.]

Bart do you just post haiku's on reddit these days? Do you remember when you were an undisputed top 3 poster?

[Norah]

am I done?

this was kinda cool. As long as no one was singing.

This is used as one of my favorite samples in a Beastie Boys song.

[McParadigm]

For the sake of clarity, let me just point out that I really, really love it when people openly hate the thing that I like.

I can talk for hours with my grandfather about Hank Snow, and we can go over his residency at the Grand Old Opry or his reaction to the introduction of African American influence into hillbilly music by Elvis, or whatever…but of course he's still going to want nothing to do with Thin Lizzy or Broken Social Scene. My father and I used to talk about Bob Dylan, the Rolling Stones, Neil Young, Tom Paxton, and Phil Ochs all the time…but Godspeed you Black Emperor wasn't even really music to him, and Belle and Sebastian could never hope to match the height that the Eagles soared to.

It just tends to go that way with the people, or it does for me…the ones who dig Harold Melvin and the Blue Notes, Nina Simone, or Sam Cooke might tell you that Tom Waits can't sing and that Mr Lif is crap. The ones who like the Buzzcocks might roll their eyes at both Tennessee Ernie Ford and Pearl Jam. The Blue Oyster Cult guys don't tend to dig Guided by Voices, nor the reverse. I don't even want to talk about the Springsteen or Eric Dolphy fans I know.

So you're always surrounded by...or, I am always surrounded by...people with whom I share 3 to 15 favored artists, but who can pretty much be counted on to dislike or outright hate 99% of the rest of my music collection. And the thing about people is, in real life, they tend to be really nice. They just kind of tiptoe around that stuff. Liking a band they know (they KNOW) is shit is like having a terminal disease. That type of kindness is probably good practice in general… Hell, even I do that in the real world…but I'm not particularly sensitive about the music that I like, either.

The thing I was loving about stip's reviews wasn't "ha ha he doesn't like the Beatles so what an idiot!" It was the brutal, direct honesty of it all. People who really don't like a thing that you like and have the ability to articulate something other than "this sucks," sometimes end up pointing out qualities or events within the music that you really like but hadn't thought about, or hadn't thought about for sometime. They can even (and this sometimes happens with reviews) concoct an entire alternate story for the band from the one you know. They can make them feel sort of brand-new again.

Now, it rarely plays out that way in real time, but it's something the Internet is wonderful at…shitting on a rose so very, very much that you suddenly remember there's a rose there, and you just took it for granted for a while.

Frankly, I wish we did this exercise all the time. Find out a few artists that a poster on the board doesn't like, through YouTube videos at them, and get their honest and unsanitized response to them. It's hilarious, and I've been listening to If I Fell off and on all day because of it. I bet I hadn't listen to that song in well over six months before today.

[Birds in Hell]

This feels mean.

He hasn't said anything worse than what Lennon as said about most of these songs.

No, I mean we're making him listen to all these songs he's not gonna like, and then we're laughing at what he says about them.

Yeah. It's great.

[E.H. Ruddock]

What the Fuck is this thread? I SHOULD LOCK THIS THREAD RIGHT NOW

Just another evidence of thought-provoking comments being shut down.

Sigh

[Soma.]

Ruddo, don't say shit like that. Act a bitch, slapped a bitch etc.

[Gods' Die]

Is Burt Reynolds Rafa?

[Birds in Hell]

I'm Only Sleeping

No thank you. The harmonies, the guitar tone, the melody, this is like everything I find boring about the beatles distilled into 3 minutes. Not bad, just uninteresting. Hypnotic, in a way, but not a good way

Fuck, this goes on for two more minutes.

I can't imagine there's not better examples of every part of this song in some other Beatles song

That blurry distorted sound that cuts through occasionally is pretty annoying


Actually at the very end it was kinda cool

This has probably been done to death, I'm not subjecting myself through reading all of this to find out however, but I think I'm Only Sleeping is one of the most intensely appealing songs I've ever heard. It's just perfect. I must've heard it thousands of times and it still puts me in another world every single time.

[Birds in Hell]

I'm mystified by the "60s aesthetic" that stip finds so unappealing. I guess I can hear something approaching that in their early-to-mid 60s material but I can't see how anyone can point at something from Revolver through Abbey Road as feeling twee or dated or whatever else stip is hearing.

[Lament]

Yeah, I'm Only Sleeping is one of the Beatles songs I do very much enjoy as a non-fan. The John songs on that record (I'm Only Sleeping, She Said, She Said, and Tomorrow Never Knows) would actually all be on the shortlist of Beatles songs I really, really like/love.

[McParadigm]

Tomorrow Never Knows is one of my favorite line blurrings between songwriting and in-studio sonic development. John wrote the song...but it's really just a single chord and some half-borrowed lines. It hints at a mood, but doesn't envelope it as written.

Then Paul adds the tape loops.

Then George adds the drone.

Then Ringo writes that drum part.

Then Emerick invents close micing on drum kits and redefines the way drums are recorded, giving the beat that powerhouse sound. He also wires the vocal mic input through a Hammond organ amp to give John's voice an almost surreal yet serene quality.

So the song as written is barely a song. It barely exists. The song as "created" becomes like gorgeous patterns splashed across a blank canvas.

One of those rare times when I think songwriting credit is totally inefficient.

[Soma.]

"Within You, Without You" is my favorite Beatles song. It used to be "Eleanor Rigby". Any thoughts on those two, Mac?

[fishbob]

Within You Without You has some of the most gorgeous flowing melodies of any song I've ever heard. The way all the lines fit together, the vocal lines are so soft and slow, and then the rest of the arrangement is so sporadic and everywhere is incredible. That to me is definitely a song that one day just clicks, suddenly goes from bizarre to utterly perfect. To me that song is absolute light-years beyond anything George ever produced before or after. Goddamn arrangement of that piece, gets me excited just thinking about it

[fishbob]

am I done?

this was kinda cool. As long as no one was singing.

No offence stip, but this really is one of the prime reasons why I can't take Beatles-bashing seriously. This song is the bookend of Abbey Road (as you can probably see) and the finale of a 17-minute epic medley. I know it's bold of me to make assumptions but this post kind of insinuates you'd never heard it before, which to me speaks in volumes as to how much Beatles you must have ACTUALLY heard in comparison to how much you THINK you've heard. Heck, I'd nearly throw away half my Beatles albums JUST to have the Abbey Road medley, yet it's one of the lesser known pieces of work that outsiders ever judge them on.

[McParadigm]

"Within You, Without You" is my favorite Beatles song. It used to be "Eleanor Rigby". Any thoughts on those two, Mac?

George made a comment in an interview once about not really knowing how much of his Indian music thing was initially about needing his own voice, and how much of it was internalized from his religious pursuit. It really didnt have that big a part to play in his music after this, and I realllllly wish it had. That blending of Indian music...tonally almost incompatible with Western scales...and "traditional" strings is so great here. I cannot fathom how it gets treated as a weak moment on the album.

I like George, and I still think he saved Abbey Road, but so much of his life after this track feels to me like he was doing an unremarkable type of music really, really well. I also think a lot of his appreciation comes from the fact that he's the only Beatle songwriter you haven't been bludgeoned to death by prior to buying any records. He's the only one who can ever feel even remotely new.

[Fuzzcharger]

The 3 Beatles songs I do love are :

Rain


Paperback Writer


Something

[zeb]

Within You, Without You is my favourite song from Sgt Pepper's.

[fishbob]

I've never really like Something, although I think the guitar solo is one of George's best

[Soma.]

"Paperback.." rocks so hard. Awesome.