What Was Each Beach Boy Doing When He First Heard Sgt Pepper?

[ghost]

The ending drone cycle of Cabinessence - "Over and over..." has an Indian sort of feel with the droning note and banjos sounding like sarods. Timeless. But it's all so tastefully done - no badly played sitars up front in the mix ready to go out of style as soon as it began, just eerie sounds buried in the mix by sound master Wilson.

[pixletwin]

Not sure why I am feeling defensive reading all this stuff slagging off the Beatles.  

[SamMcK]

I don't know what's wrong with respecting both groups without having to put the other down to make the other seem superior. 

[ghost]

I don't know what's wrong with respecting both groups without having to put the other down to make the other seem superior. 

It's all a put on man, just run with it. Leonard Bernstein should've hosted a competitive music program with an episode featuring Brian Wilson & Paul McCartney. Brian, Wonderful. Paul, She's Leaving Home. The crowd cheer response is measured by machines and a panel of judges judge the merits of the music and performances of each. Brian destroys Paul. Paul is left whimpering on the stage as Brian soars into the sky on etheric rainbow eyed sound beams. The Beatles break up that night realizing they can never reach Brian's level of abstract musical genius. Brian then takes the Beach Boys deep into his white spiritual sound and they revolutionize music forever, psychedelicizing the face of the earth within a few decades. Brian was quoted in 1990 as saying, "Remember that group The Beatles? That tried to compete with us? Hahaha! What were they smokin!"

[ghost]

let'sssssdo it againnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnn

[Iron Horse-Apples]

Aw come on now guys

The Beatles really did tell us how to live our lives.

I know it's a solo song, but what about Imagine. What a message! A song for the ages

Multi millionaire tells us to give up our possessions.

Trouble is, I don't have to imagine a life with no money

I'm already living the dream

[MBE]

Hell I like The Beatles and The Beach Boys. I like the later better, but the only thing I don't like about the Beatles is that they are not the end all that Rolling Stone and others makes them out to be. They were really good, but I like The Beach Boys music better as well as the music of a half dozen others. The Beatles are in my top ten for certain though. If only Yoko didn't sing on The White Album perhaps they would be in my top 5 .

[joshferrell]

What did Jon or Ed once say? Dennis was more a thumper than a drummer?

would that be "clubber" ?

if he was a clubber wouldn't they have a techno or rap beat?.(the kind of music they play at clubs.)

[willy]

As much as I love The Beatles, I have to agree. Piper kicks Peppers butt on every listen... except for A Day in the Life. 

Never thought of this before... but you are so right! 

[Chocolate Shake Man]

Hell I like The Beatles and The Beach Boys. I like the later better, but the only thing I don't like about the Beatles is that they are not the end all that Rolling Stone and others makes them out to be. They were really good, but I like The Beach Boys music better as well as the music of a half dozen others. The Beatles are in my top ten for certain though. If only Yoko didn't sing on The White Album perhaps they would be in my top 5 .

Why not add Shakespeare to the Academy of the Overrated while we're at it.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fOyw6Q8qWpM

[Chocolate Shake Man]

Aw come on now guys


I know it's a solo song, but what about Imagine. What a message! A song for the ages

Multi millionaire tells us to give up our possessions.

Trouble is, I don't have to imagine a life with no money

I'm already living the dream

I'll take your criticism once you listen to the song again and figure out what he's really saying rather than the thing you just made up.

[ghost]

Imagine there's no Lennon
It isn't hard to do

No lame songs or Yoko
No Beatles too...

Imagine all the people
Listening to Love You
Oooh oooh Oooh.

[FatherOfTheMan Sr101]

Imagine there's no Lennon
It isn't hard to do

No lame songs or Yoko
No Beatles too...

Imagine all the people
Listening to Love You
Oooh oooh Oooh.

Hate to break it to yah, no Beatles = no SMiLE

[?]

Eh, Ghost > Beatles

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r8oFlXnnwKI

[hypehat]

Hell I like The Beatles and The Beach Boys. I like the later better, but the only thing I don't like about the Beatles is that they are not the end all that Rolling Stone and others makes them out to be. They were really good, but I like The Beach Boys music better as well as the music of a half dozen others. The Beatles are in my top ten for certain though. If only Yoko didn't sing on The White Album perhaps they would be in my top 5 .

Why not add Shakespeare to the Academy of the Overrated while we're at it.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fOyw6Q8qWpM

Shakespeare is, if my experience in trying to get uncultured arsespelunkers to turn up to theatre is an indicator, anything but.

[Chocolate Shake Man]

Hell I like The Beatles and The Beach Boys. I like the later better, but the only thing I don't like about the Beatles is that they are not the end all that Rolling Stone and others makes them out to be. They were really good, but I like The Beach Boys music better as well as the music of a half dozen others. The Beatles are in my top ten for certain though. If only Yoko didn't sing on The White Album perhaps they would be in my top 5 .

Why not add Shakespeare to the Academy of the Overrated while we're at it.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fOyw6Q8qWpM

Shakespeare is, if my experience in trying to get uncultured arsespelunkers to turn up to theatre is an indicator, anything but.

Of course Shakespeare isn't overrated. That's my point. It's ridiculous to make such a case for both Shakespeare and The Beatles. Did you watch the link?

[hypehat]

I did, so I get ya.

But i've heard that before, and I'm pretty drunk, so it rankled 

[Chocolate Shake Man]

I did, so I get ya.

But i've heard that before, and I'm pretty drunk, so it rankled 

Fair enough.

[runnersdialzero]

Hell I like The Beatles and The Beach Boys. I like the later better, but the only thing I don't like about the Beatles is that they are not the end all that Rolling Stone and others makes them out to be. They were really good, but I like The Beach Boys music better as well as the music of a half dozen others. The Beatles are in my top ten for certain though. If only Yoko didn't sing on The White Album perhaps they would be in my top 5 .

Why not add Shakespeare to the Academy of the Overrated while we're at it.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fOyw6Q8qWpM

u legit, bro?

[Iron Horse-Apples]

Aw come on now guys


I know it's a solo song, but what about Imagine. What a message! A song for the ages

Multi millionaire tells us to give up our possessions.

Trouble is, I don't have to imagine a life with no money

I'm already living the dream

I'll take your criticism once you listen to the song again and figure out what he's really saying rather than the thing you just made up.

Imagine no possessions
I wonder if you can
No need for greed or hunger
A brotherhood of man
Imagine all the people
Sharing all the world

I know what he's saying, but all lyrics are open to interpretation, and my interpretation is quite simple

When I was young we were very poor (boo hoo) and I really didn't have to imagine having no possessions. So being preached to by some out of touch multi millionaire has always really bothered me.

Don't like the song

And I also believe comparing the Beatles to Shakespeare is ridiculous. What on earth do the Beatles tell us about the fundamental truths of humanity in a way that transcends the ages? Again though, of course lyrics and sonnets are open to interpretation.

I love a lot of your posts R&R, very funny especially when sky-diving. And I'm sorry about the Oasis comments, felt a bit bad about that personal attack

But on the Beatles we'll have to disagee I fear

[ghost]

Imagine being filthy rich
I wonder if you can
No need for want or hunger
A singularity of me
Imagine all the people
Living poorly
except me e e

you may say ay ay ay ay i'm a monkey
but i'm not the only one

[Chocolate Shake Man]

I know what he's saying, but all lyrics are open to interpretation, and my interpretation is quite simple

Absolutely - all lyrics are open to interpretation but some interpretations are more convincing than others and I think you're leaving out a fairly crucial aspect of the song (which I will demonstrate below) that does not quite make your overall assessment convincing.

When I was young we were very poor (boo hoo) and I really didn't have to imagine having no possessions. So being preached to by some out of touch multi millionaire has always really bothered me.

Okay - but Lennon isn't talking about giving up possessions and being poor. He's not saying live life the way people in poverty do - that's simply not what's implied by imagining a world with no possessions. Rather, (and this is at the risk of opening up another can of worms but here we go) he is drawing a connection to the kind of world envisioned by people like Marx who see private ownership as ultimately problematic. In fact, private ownership is what  helps maintain and bolster the kind of class structure that leads to a poor working class dependent on an inherently exploitative system. Lennon is not in anyway saying, give up your house, give up your car, etc. Rather, he is asking us to imagine the possibilities of a society where you can still have a house and a car but it's part of a system of free association ("a brotherhood of man"). So I do think you're missing the point when you say, "I had no possessions because I was poor" because that's simply not what Lennon is suggesting.

More over, I think "out of touch" is precisely the wrong phrase to apply to Lennon. After all, I don't think there has been a single artist in the last 50 years who has tapped into the zeitgeist more than Lennon. Clearly there was something about him that allowed him more than any other artist to appeal to such an enormous amount of people that continues well past his death. Again, it simply doesn't make sense to call someone out of touch when they connected so successfully to popular society.

And I also believe comparing the Beatles to Shakespeare is ridiculous. What on earth do the Beatles tell us about the fundamental truths of humanity in a way that transcends the ages?

Well, first of all, I don't think any contemporary scholar of literature or drama would ever say that Shakespeare told us "about the fundamental truths of humanity in a way that transcends the ages." In fact, the common consensus on why Shakespeare is important is that he articulated so stridently the common concerns of his time and essentially shaped the mainstream literary world that followed him. In other words, writers like Milton, Alexander Pope, etc. were responding to Shakespeare. Even if they never read him (which is improbable) they would still be responding to him, so vast was Shakespeare's literary influence. Now, you could probably find many people who can say that there were playwrights during the Early Modern period who dealt with more serious issues than Shakespeare did, or presented issues in a more startlingly realistic way (which is true enough). You can find people who say that there were poets who had a finer understanding of poetics and a better command of the poetic form, like say Philip Sidney. Nevertheless, no one can argue with the overall impact that Shakespeare had on literature in general. And to be honest, the exact same thing can be said about The Beatles. You can like them, you can dislike them, you can say that there were other bands with more complex music but absolutely no one has had the kind of impact that The Beatles had in popular music in the 20th Century.

In that case (and this isn't directed at you but at people who use the term "overrated"), as my video shows, to call ANYONE overrated is, at best, an exercise of pseudo-intellectual masturbation. But to call Shakespeare and The Beatles overrated is simply an abuse and misuse of term and it shows a very poor understanding of historical movements and how they develop.

[drbeachboy]

So rockandroll, since you have Lennon's Imagine figured out, how about explaining to me what Parks' "Over and over the crow cries uncover the cornfield" means?

[Chocolate Shake Man]

So rockandroll, since you have Lennon's Imagine figured out, how about explaining to me what Parks' "Over and over the crow cries uncover the cornfield" means?

Haha. I'm stumped!

Actually, I do have my own ideas about Parks's lyrics but I'll save it at the risk being long-winded (or more long-winded?).

[Iron Horse-Apples]

Okay - but Lennon isn't talking about giving up possessions and being poor. He's not saying live life the way people in poverty do - that's simply not what's implied by imagining a world with no possessions. Rather, (and this is at the risk of opening up another can of worms but here we go) he is drawing a connection to the kind of world envisioned by people like Marx who see private ownership as ultimately problematic. In fact, private ownership is what  helps maintain and bolster the kind of class structure that leads to a poor working class dependent on an inherently exploitative system. Lennon is not in anyway saying, give up your house, give up your car, etc. Rather, he is asking us to imagine the possibilities of a society where you can still have a house and a car but it's part of a system of free association ("a brotherhood of man"). So I do think you're missing the point when you say, "I had no possessions because I was poor" because that's simply not what Lennon is suggesting.
 

Great reply, and in respect to what you say about Shakespeare in particular I concede to you for shining a torch on my GCSE understanding of the Bard,

However my reaction to Imagine is deeply ingrained, and is influenced by my opinions about Lennon. Lennon was never working class, he was comfortably middle class as a child.  He never knew what it is like to be poor. Would he have given up his possessions and money? I think not.  John Lennon was not the person people think he was. I know he's dead and can't defend himself, but the evidence that Lennon was a conservative politically, had nothing to do with charities and using his power and money to help people is rather overwhelming. This is the guy who used to laugh at the crippled kids bought in to meet the Beatles. He never changed.
Imagine was a product of its time, and maybe reflected a brief period of Lennon's political beliefs that suited him at the time.  Does this detract from the message of the song? This is subjective. I personally think yes it does. If I'm going to be sold a utopia, I like to know who is selling it to me.