As you’re probably aware, the latest wingnut freakout is over a joke Paul McCartney told the other day: “After the last eight years, it’s good to have a president that knows what a library is.” It’s not surprising that the NRO has already done three pieces on this horrific crime, cleverly calling McCartney “Sir Jerk”. Nor is it surprising that Charles Lane, who resembles a chunkier version of Megan McArdle, thinks it’s an important story.
But I am honestly surprised that John Boehner is demanding an apology from McCartney. People don’t like George W. Bush, people do like Paul McCartney, why go there as a Republican elected official?
Cat Lady
John Boehner – the Fool on the Hill?
Zifnab
Oh noes! Right in the fee-fees!
Because he has absolutely nothing better to do with his time. Tell me I’m wrong.
Joe Bauers
Oh, Boner. You never disappoint.
DougJ
@Cat Lady:
How did I miss that one?
PeakVT
Tell me I’m wrong.
Has he tried to stuff himself into a leaking oil well lately?
MikeJ
It probably would have been better to make the joke elsewhere instead of at an official WH ceremony, but he made an inappropriate joke about a war criminal. I’m not that upset. Had Sir Paul waterboarded the little fuckstick even I would be demanding an apology.
Captain Haddock
Must be fundraising time.
licensed to kill time
Because it will rile up the base. Those dang Beatles and their long hair screwed everything up in ‘Murka, anyway.
Napoleon
Oh no, they are already burning Beatle records down south over this!
malraux
Right, but republicans do. Or its one of those protect the family things. Republicans can speak ill of bush (or more likely not speak of him at all) but if someone outside the tribe does, everyone must man the battle stations.
MattR
It’s not about Paul, it’s (predictably) about President Obama. If this story gains any traction beyond NRO, then watch for the pivot –
“Did Obama laugh at the joke?”
Napoleon
@DougJ:
Are you kidding, if you throw things said by/lyrics written by John Lennon you could have come up with dozens of great titles to this post. I mean John Lennon used a “tricky dick” in one of his songs.
Cat Lady
@DougJ:
Sometimes it’s too easy. You were probably overthinking this.
Svensker
Sir Paul should apologize for using “that” instead of “who”. For the sentiment, not so much.
hal
He should have called bush a raghead, then they wouldn’t be offended
mr. whipple
Awesome. No one heard the joke before, now everyone will.
Well played, Boner.
slag
@DougJ: Well, I’m pretty sure that Fool on the Hill is supposed to be ironic, so it wouldn’t really apply to Boehner.
Also, I laughed at his joke.
licensed to kill time
@Napoleon:
Boehner looks like Norwegian Wood. Or has Norwegian Wood.
It’s got two, two, two meanings in one!
MattR
From Media Matters (via a commenter on Steve Benen’s piece that DougJ cited)
Bad Horse's Filly
Suddenly I feel the need to download some McCartney music.
Ella in NM
Maybe because Orange John has a lot of splainin’ to do about somthing else, and wants to take the heat off for awhile:
“Minority Leader John A. Boehner has collected more than $1.4 million from business interests this election cycle for a committee he says he created to help fellow Republican lawmakers. But Boehner’s committee has spent only about a third of its money helping other candidates.
About two-thirds of its expenditures have gone instead to costs the committee describes as necessary to raise money, including fine meals and trips to luxurious resorts where the congressman mingles with corporate-directed groups and lobbyists. Boehner (Ohio) has spent more than $182,000 through the committee on frequent travel with donors to Florida and similar vacation spots, according to Federal Election Commission records, including $70,403 at the Ritz-Carlton in Naples and more than $30,000 at Disney Resort Destinations. ”
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/06/01/AR2010060103887.html
El Cid
It’s really offensive when libruls suggest that the Arizona law to control cross-border lawlessness by lookin’ at people who look foreign is in any way racist in character.
How on Earth could anyone think there was any racism about this, given the mere racial epithets screamed at a children’s school mural by passersby and a radio host & city councilman complaining about the painting showing too big of a n*****.
Also, those artists and librul edjumacators should be indefinitely jailed for daring to paint kids on public walls who are of the wrong color.
I think it’s also time that Real Americans attack Crayola for removing the “flesh tone” crayon that depicts the skin color of good, Real American patriot Caucasian people and tell everyone else to stick with burnt sienna or whatever weirdo colors their imperfect primitive offensive skin is.
Via Wonkette.
Napoleon
@licensed to kill time:
or how about “Here Comes the Sun King”
handy
@MattR:
Yeah but Nugent said all that before Obummy was prez. See! Context libs, context. And totally different situation. Also.
Cat Lady
Slightly OT, but this whole thread is making me excited for Mad Men next month. It will be 1964…..
The Dangerman
Skin tone changed to a brilliant terra cotta; why go there as a
Republican elected officialhuman being?ellaesther
They should just be grateful that John Lennon wasn’t around for the Bush years. He would have been letting the awesome just rip for years at this point.
Derek
@Ella in NM:
Isn’t it kind of expected that all our legislators are bribe-taking shitheads?
MattF
I’m sure that if Republicans gain control of the House in the mid-term elections, this will be added to the Bill of Impeachment.
licensed to kill time
@Napoleon:
Or:
John Andrew Boehner, wearing a face that he keeps in a jar by the door
Who is it for?
All the orange people
where do they all come from?
all the orange people
where do they all belong?
Redshirt
Gosh, I hope the MSM can gin this up such that the House and Senate can pass a resolution condemning this hurtful, hateful comments. The Children, after all!
MattR
@El Cid: Probably the worst part about that is the fact that “Faces in the mural were drawn from photographs of children enrolled at Miller Valley”
El Cid
@ellaesther: I think Lennon would have had plenty of material on the Reagan domestic & war crime spree as well.
El Cid
@MattR:
Exactly. What are the schools thinking, filling their classrooms up with them colored kids? You can’t teach ’em anyway, and they just sit in the classrooms dumbing all the real kids down, having babies, and dealing drugs.
Ash Can
Famous foreign musician makes an undiplomatic comment and we’re all supposed to care? Big fucking deal. News flash for these princesses and drama queens: W made himself fair game for public criticism when he went looking for the job of president of the US, and especially in the wake of how he did in that job, barbs are going to happen. In fact, these tiresome twits should be grateful that so far, it’s only barbs.
Boehner et al. need to grow the fuck up. They’re acting like McCartney cracked a tasteless joke on some poor disabled individual who didn’t have the mental wherewithal to defend himself…
Oh, wait.
OK, maybe I can understand what they’re upset about after all.
El Cid
Do they have safe areas to build bonfires big enough for all the Beatles CDs & records?
Lev
Republicans decided to make the left’s hatred of Bush personal. So they still get angry when a liberal mocks Bush. For me, the right’s hatred of Obama isn’t personal. I could give a shit if Rush Limbaugh talks about birth certificates.
I think this is the key difference here. If you are emotionally invested in seeing your leader as a Great Man being Unfairly Punished by Bad People, you’re not going to be able to see the flaws that he (or she) has. I have a fairly high opinion of Barack Obama in general, but I don’t think he’s a prophet and I take the opposition to him philosophically. Therefore, I don’t feel the need to bristle every time Palin opens her mouth. And I’m still mostly sane as a result.
Napoleon
@licensed to kill time:
Good one!
What I find particularly funny about this is that McCartney has been dealing with the faux outrage of the wacko American right since 1966’s “Bigger then Jesus” comment of Lennon, right through the outrage over Back in the USSR (because the knuckleheads on the right couldn’t see it was a joking sendoff of a Beach Boys song instead of writing a serious ode to a communist country) all the way to today and he had never apologized for anything and in the interim has become one of the richest persons on the planet and a musical icon. So yeah (yeah yeah) I am sure Paul is going to rush right out and apologize to Bush.
arguingwithsignposts
@mr. whipple: Well, morning ho was all over it this a.m., and I’m sure el rush will have something on it too, so at least a few GOPers have heard it. I wonder what Sally Quinn thinks?
Catsy
Among other things, Republicans these days seem to be suffering from a tone-deaf inability to pick their battles.
I mean, seriously: Republican Congressman demands apology from Beatle for insulting Bush the Younger. Isn’t that kind of like defending the honor of bankers or oil exec…
Oh, right.
scarshapedstar
He oughtta apologize and add that Dubya is bigger than Jesus.
Legalize
If only Boner would just Live and Let Die.
*crickets*
scarshapedstar
@Legalize:
He’s a real Boner man, living in his Boner land, making all his Boner plans for nobody.
LittlePig
Aw, their little fee-fees are hurt. Poor widdle Wepublicans.
David
W sez:
A lie-berry is a place where your lies are buried.
Mark S.
For some reason I’m disappointed it was Nerdlinger who came up with “Sir Jerk.” I would have bet money on K-Lo.
Chat Noir
@Cat Lady: I’m right there with you. July 25. Jon Hamm and John Slattery rule.
And back on topic. Benen’s take is spot-on:
eemom
I would send Sir Paul a campaign contribution for this, except that he’s a gazillionaire and isn’t running for anything.
ellaesther
@El Cid: Ooh, you’re quite right.
Man, I still miss him. I was only 15 when he was shot, and, man. Some things are more wrong than others.
Hiram Taine
Makes me glad I got the remastered Beatles catalog not all that long ago, I have the whole damn thing in my phone as MP3s.
They really did do a nice job on that, the sound is much more clear than I remember on the old vinyls.
Tecumseh
Here’s a shocker- a musician busted several times for smoking dope and who once appeared on live TV playing a song called “All You Need is Love” to protest the Vietnam War is liberal and thinks things liberal’s think.
Sheila
A Beatles wish for John Boehner:
“I don’t want to spoil the party so I’ll go.”
Toast
The dude from Salon thinks Ringo had a better solo career than McCartney? Seriously?
scav
Let’s see. The Pope forgives them in an attempt to hide his crisis and The Boner anti-forgives them to . . . veddy veddy interesting. I wonder what stratergie numbur that is in the Shiney! Over There! playbook?
Matt C.
Is “Chunky McMegan” a new one for the lexicon?
R-Jud
So I read the title of the post, and got “Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da” stuck in my head, which was pleasant enough, but then my brain began to “play” the next track, “Don’t Pass Me By”, which is one of those awful faux-country tunes hooted by Ringo. Now I can’t get rid of it.
TL;DR: Damn you, DougJ!
.
Didn’t Laura Bush herself make a very similar joke about W. not being familiar with a library until he took an interest in her?
DougJ
@Napoleon:
I wanted to go with a Paul song or a one that was in the period when they were still writing together.
Zuzu's Petals
@Napoleon:
Actually, that was Chuck Berry’s Back in the U.S.A.
Yes, I am that old.
eemom
John Lennon reportedly hated “Obla-di Obla-da” and that is why he pounded out those intro piano notes the way he did.
Happy ever after in the marketplace….
Napoleon
@eemom:
The story is that they did a million takes of the song and that from the first Lennon hated it, but it was made even worse because of the million takes. Anyways after a days work they all leave the studio, John goes home and gets high and comes back hours later, and some of the engineers are still at the studio. He sits down at the piano and pounds out the intro and says to them something like “this is what the song needs” and left. They went with that intro.
Zuzu – although the title of the song is a play on a Berry song the song itself is a parody of a Beach Boy song. McCartney has even admitted it and he actually wrote it in India when he was with some of the Beach Boys.
fucen tarmal
say say say what you want,
the beatles were horribly overrated by their throngs of boomer fans who had to believe anything they felt was about or for them was the most epic anything ever….
as such, i don’t have a dog in this fight, but i would love to see it become a huge deal….c’mon boomers show some outrage, on both sides!
Wile E. Quixote
If I were Sir Paul McCartney I’d tell Boner to fuck off. Actually if I were Sir Paul McCartney, and richer than God, I’d hire some thugs to break Boner’s legs and when he bitched about it say “I’m richer than you are and I get to do that sort of thing. So suck it up, ya little orange bitch.”
hitchhiker
I guess the minority leader has forgotten that Bush was sold to the American people as a “regular guy” who would be fun to have a beer with. A real man who liked to cut brush. Not somebody with show tunes on his i-pod, so to speak. Definitely not an elitist intellectual type who would waste his precious time at the library.
It’s a little late to get pissy because an aging British musician bought the package. It was such effective marketing, what did they expect? That everybody would do the exorcist head spin on cue?
Calvin Jones and the 13th Apostle
@El Cid: Springsteen wasn’t good enough for you? Did you know that Bruce had a concert the night after Ray-gun was elected the first time? It’s classic what he said. And you gotta remember, Bruce’s parents moved out to CA in the middle 60’s(Bruce stayed behind in NJ, obviously). So Bruce knew all about Ray-gun before Saint Ronnie became President.
Wannabe Speechwriter
The people who claim they’re going to be so tough on terrorists are the ones crying like babies when the dude who had the 3rd best career after leaving The Beatles makes fun of them. Irony really is dead…
Bruce (formerly Steve S.)
The GOP will go. It will vanish and shrink. We’re more popular than George W. Bush now – I don’t know which will go first, Balloon Juice or George W. Bush. Burke was all right but his disciples are thick and ordinary.
JL
“the beatles were horribly overrated by their throngs of boomer fans who had to believe anything they felt was about or for them was the most epic anything ever….”
Maybe you had to have been there.
Listen to their records sequentially, and round it out by listening to what else was happening at the same time. And keep in mind when they first hit, they were roundly ridiculed by a vast majority of people as soon to be forgotten, show-biz freaks.
Catsy
Maybe.
I’ll freely admit my context is different than that of the people who grew up listening to them as fans when they were contemporary. But my general indifference to the Beatles isn’t contextual–it’s musical.
I just don’t like much of their music. It’s not personal, it’s an aesthetic preference. The fact that they were groundbreaking doesn’t change my musical tastes.
Napoleon
@JL:
That is when you really understand how far ahead they were.
fucen tarmal
@JL:
sure, i could do that, if i really wanted to be generous about another generation’s nostalgia, but having had so much of it crammed down my throat as someone born in 1970, i really don’t feel they deserve the courtesy.
they are just like any of the most popular bands, writers, artists of any generation, no more or no less groundbreaking than any other. their popularity, and the fact that people of a certain age associate them with being the first they had heard to combine this with that, doesn’t mean they were any less dependent on their influences or their contemporaries, even if those influences were unknown to most at the time. i think i have considered boomer music, fashion, etc enough for one time. i am entitled to my own experience.
my experience is, the first i was aware of paul mccartney was singing that song with michael jackson. so to me he is just another random pop singer in an mtv format. if music was marketed and sold the same in the 6os as it was in later eras, who is to say the beatles would have stood out as much as they did.
Seth 4:10
Donating $64 to a candidate in honor of Sir Paul, who’s done more good to and for the world than Boner could hope to undo.
Calouste
@JL:
You mean, the Kinks, Dylan, the Who, Hendrix, Pink Floyd? That kind of stuff?
Tonal Crow
This post really should be entitled “All through the day, I me mine, I me mine, I me mine”, cuz it’s all about the GOP and their amazing hypersensitivities.
Dave
OT: Nice people you’re all defending on the flotilla
In response to a radio transmission by the Israeli Navy warning the Gaza flotilla that they are approaching a naval blockade, passengers of the Mavi Marmara respond, “Shut up, go back to Auschwitz” and “We’re helping Arabs go against the US, don’t forget 9/11”
Sounds like they’d fit right into Balloon Juice.
Bruce (formerly Steve S.)
@fucen tarmal:
I don’t think you’re quite getting it. If you listen to a 60s oldies station and enjoy most/all the music, you’re being nostalgic. If you zero in on the Beatles that’s something different.
It’s interesting that you can find Beatles testimonials today on the internet coming from teenagers. When I was in high school you’d have been hard pressed to find any of my peers who had even heard of Benny Goodman much less were fans. Boomer nostalgia is insufficient to explain the persistence of the Beatles.
You are, and believe it or not I empathize with people in your position. But when you say that the Beatles were just another popular act you’re wrong.
Cacti
The tough, macho GOP sure does have some delicate little fee-fees. Don’t they?
jharp
Here is your Sir Jerk. Charming and thrilling the entire world.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8MWVo1fjRsQ
Fuck the whole lot of you. And John Boehner, a special mention for you to go fuck yourself. And please invite your neighbor Congressman Pence.
TuiMel
Well of course you are, laddie.
fucen tarmal
@Bruce (formerly Steve S.):
i think you don’t get it, the beatles are nostalgia. teenagers listen to 80s pop too, teenagers made britany spears one of the highest selling recording artists in history, i don’t necessarily think what teenagers do, or what is popular, is any sort of argument for quality, or relevance.
you sort of make my point however about how myopic boomers were when it came to music from earlier eras, and part of the reason why they look at one band from the era when they were young with so much esteem…
lots of great music from the 40s and 50s even commercially created and sucessful music like the beatles were. it also ignores that there were non-mainstream artists like gil scott heron, james brown etc even concurrent with the beatles that were largely ignored. it doesn’t argue for the taste of their fans or even the quality of the music that the beatles were so renowned, it was simply a time in place where a band fit the medium, and they were able to appeal to a wide audience of people with little prior knowledge of music before them, but who believed their experiences were so grand and epic their musical choices, all of their choices must be.
i won’t argue that some of that enthusiasm has carried over to younger fans, but kids are funny, they can listen to the beatles along side bon jovi, new order, and any number of bands and make some meaning out of them. they don’t even perceive the gaps in taste that these choices may have represented at one time.
benny goodman is far more like the beatles, the beatles are far more like bing crosby, than you might have believed.
Brian J
@MattR:
On the days when I am not feeling like a nice person, I think of all the bad luck nice individuals suffer from–unemployment, trees falling on their cars, houses burning down, cancer, and so forth–and wonder, “Why can’t any of that happen to Sean Hannity?” He’s a truly vile human being.
Mike in NC
Anybody read the Kathleen Parker piece about The Orange Boner this week? I hope he left her a good $20 tip on the nightstand as he left the motel room while she was gargling in the bathroom.
JL
@Calouste:
Yeah, exactly. Don’t forget Motown. Don’t forget any great music from that era.
As Lennon once noted, “We may have been the flag on the mast, but we were moving along with the ship”.
It is absolutely subjective, of course. But in terms of scoring “who-did-what-when” (like a heavyweight fight), round for round the Fabs retired as champs of the era.
Bob
@fucen tarmal: I feel bad for you that you were born in 1970 and yet the first exposure you had to McCartney’s music was that insipid duet with Michael Jackson. You should probably blame your parents for that oversight-it obviously left you jaded.
I can appreciate your ear not liking Beatles music, but that doesn’t mean you get to do what you blame boomers of and dismiss the historical significance of an artist of the past or their influence on their peers and successors. I think it’s pretty well established among folks who make music and those who write about it (excepting your eclectic genius, of course) that the Beatles are a little more than a nostalgia act.
And frankly, your head is pretty far up your ass when you accuse boomers of myopia regarding their appreciation for music of the past. It was probably the first generation that did get exposed to music of earlier generations, as well as other races and cultures. Among other revolutionary developments of the decade, from about the mid-60s on free form FM radio stations began broadcasting in many American big cities and college towns. An afternoon spent listening to the old WABX FM in Detroit might include the Beatles, as well as James Brown (who got played on the “mainstream” AM stations like CKLW and WKNR), Sun Ra, Bill Monroe, John Lee Hooker, Stravinsky, and Desmond Dekker.
tkogrumpy
@fucen tarmal: Your obviously not a musician.
Bruce (formerly Steve S.)
No, ? and the Mysterians are nostalgia.
And that isn’t what I was arguing. We’re talking about whether the Beatles are merely a nostalgia act for Boomers.
What’s with all the grotesque generalizations?
And that’s not what is being argued.
Benny Goodman was like the Beatles in that he was both popular and musically interesting. I brought him up as the closest thing I could think of to the Beatles from 40 years before I was in high school. Yet, as good and enduring as he was, his impact was not that of the Beatles. That was the point I was making.
I’ll just say again that it’s perfectly fine with me if you don’t like the Beatles or anybody else, but I don’t get the crass generalization about an entire generation being uniquely self-absorbed and self-indulgent. Where’s that coming from?
fucen tarmal
you’re argument is that some teenagers listen to the beatles, and when you were their age you didn’t listen to benny goodman, and that somehow that makes the beatles greater than the music that came before them.
that is an argument for popularity as a measure of quality, for the taste of teenagers, you are also grossly generalizing that the beatles are some sort of essential music, its not, it just happened to be popular, which is why you need to see them as more than a band that was popular at a given time…
which makes my entire point about boomers being self-absorbed and self-indulgent, even if you aren’t a baby boomer, they have managed to sell you that the accoutrement of their youth is somehow more important than being just that. also that their music could somehow be quantifiably better than music before and after.
JL
“..my experience is, the first i was aware of paul mccartney was singing that song with michael jackson”.
That’s a shame. My moment that the dream was over came a year or two after the Beatles split. A great comedian named Flip Wilson hosted a variety show, and a video appearance by McCartney was heavily advertised. I could hardly wait, tuned in, and Paul sang the execrable “Mary Had A Little Lamb” (I’m not kidding). Believe it or not, it was even worse than the title implies. I was stunned. Hell, I’m still stunned, it was that bad. The realization dawned that the whole was far, far greater than any of its parts.
Lennon made the same point you’ve done here, too, over 40 years ago. “We’re a sixties band”, he said. Remember (if you knew to begin with) that “their music” was ’50’s rock n roll. They were profoundly cognizant of where their music stood in that grand constellation.
Finally, instead of having music crammed into your ears, why not just change the fuckin’ channel?
fucen tarmal
@Bob:
right because it couldn’t be that the beatles are just a sucky 60s band more like the rest of the pop from that era than different. i’m sorry if you need to think they were more epic than they were, they were just a band, you like them or you don’t.
you do prove my point that baby boomers somehow think their experience and their youth was somehow more epic than anyone else’s…maybe that is why so many boomers became the fuel of the latest evangelical movement.
AlanDownunder
He married a librarian and he still probably didn’t know.
Steeplejack
@DougJ:
“Fixing a Hole.” Listening to it now.
(Great guitar solo, too.)
JL
“you do prove my point that baby boomers somehow think their experience and their youth was somehow more epic than anyone else’s”.
Hmmm. You first heard McCartney when he hooked up with Michael Jackson. That would make you how old? Thirty?
Off the top of my head:
U2 Shot Down…. Kennedy Elected… the Bay of Pigs… the Cuban Missile Crisis… the Kennedy Assassination [conspiracy]… the [televised] Civil Rights Movement (and attendant legislation)… the Gulf Of Tonkin Resolution… Martin Luther King Awarded The Nobel Peace Prize… Escalation In Vietnam… Malcom X Assassinated… Watts Riots… The Great Society… Escalation in Vietnam…. Marijuana, LSD, Long Hair… Space Walks… The Anti War Movement… More Riots… Escalation In Vietnam… the Tet Offensive…. Johnson Challenged, Johnson Vanquished… MLK Assassinated… More Riots… Bobby Kennedy [the next president of the US] Assassinated… Chicago Police Riots… Nixon Elected…. Vietnam War Continues… Moon Landing… the Anti War Movement [and] Government Counter-Reaction…
That took inside of 5 minutes to write.
Give me a run down of the greatest hits of your generations– just off the top of your head.
Steeplejack
@Zuzu’s Petals:
Yeah, but “Back in the USSR” was done totally in the Beach Boys’ style, complete with references to “California Girls.”
Steeplejack
@fucen tarmal:
Massive fail, but thanks for your input. The Beatles created the whole environment in which popular music has played out over the last 40-plus years. They were the Big Bang. Without them you’d still be listening to show tunes, classical lite, watered-down (i.e., whitened-up) blues and Tin Pan Alley and wouldn’t even know what you were missing.
Feel free not to like their stuff, but to deny their impact is to announce: “I’m a petulant whiner.” Koo-koo-ka-choo.
Steeplejack
@Calouste:
Dylan, contemporaneous. The Kinks, roughly contemporaneous. The Who, Hendrix, Pink Floyd–after. And all influenced by the Beatles.
Alex Milstein
Has Boehner demanded that Glenn Beck apologize for publicly dreaming of the murders of Michael Moore and Nancy Pelosi?
Has he demanded Sen Joe Wilson’s apology for calling Pres Obama a liar?
Has he demanded apologies from all the rightwing pols and pundits who post racist pictures and cartoons of the Obamas, the teabaggers who call Obama a Nazi Communist, those who refuse to accept that he is an American citizen by birth?
And yet, a joke about books gets his hackles up. The selective outrage of the GOP will never surprise me.
Alex Milstein
@Steeplejack:
And the Beatles will tell you they were inspired by the Beach Boys and the Byrds.
It was an incredible era marked by incredible music by incredible musicians…an era we are unlikely to experience again.
My daughter is 20 years old. Included in her music collection – in addition to more modern stuff and some Broadway and Ella Fitzgerals – are recordings by the Beatles (she has every album – on a disc supplied by a friend), and greatest hits collections of Otis Redding, The Velvet Underground, early Stones, the Crystals and Etta James. It’s all those years of sitting in the back seat listening to the oldies as my wife drove her to school.
I know I sound like a ‘get off my lawn’ old fogey, but which of today’s acts will be revered 40 years on? The Killers? Vampire Weekend? Justin Bieber? Lady Gaga?
Steeplejack
@Alex Milstein:
Yes, there was a lot of cross-pollination, but the Beatles are Ground Zero.
Glad the kid got a good start in life.
Bob
@fucen tarmal:Yeah, you’re right.
Very little of any cultural significance occurred in the sixties. And it’s boomers who are myopic.
But just to be sure you aren’t arguing from a position of complete ignorance, have you ever actually listened to Rubber Soul, Revolver, or Sgt. Pepper?
By the way, I think (& I’ll bet all four of the Beatles would have agreed-they were aware that they stood on the shoulders of the giants of their own youth) that the fifties were a more revolutionary moment in the history of rock’n’roll music, so I’m unclear on why you would suggest that I somehow believe music started and ended in the sixties-I think “epic” was your phrasing. What did I write that would make you think that?
fucen tarmal
@Bob:
you can’t claim anyone who grew up in the wake of boomer culture is unaware of any of their touchstones, seger, the doobie brothers, the eagles, billy joel, steve miller, the beatles, that represents more than 100 probably 200 songs that i know almost word for word, despite having never been a fan of, or interested in, any of those acts.
its not ignorance of the beatles, much like one who grows up in our culture can’t help but know a good bit about christianity,
as far as the 60s go, lets just say the heavy lifting often was done by people older than those who thought they were the center of the culture. the 50s and 70s were equally as important, and the 60’s wouldn’t have happened without the 20s 30s and 40s. if you want to trace 60s culture, or track its relevance, you find yourself dipping into the stories of other eras quite a bit, for reference and relevance.
fucen tarmal
@Alex Milstein:
define “today’s acts” plenty of music becomes influential, even if it was over looked in its time…i can point to any number of bands, songs etc from the 70s 80s and 90s “when boomers like to say, none of the music compares to their music” which of course means their taste, as if their collective generation was so much more discriminating….as opposed to simply being plentiful enough in number to push later music somewhat to the side, because all hail the boomer! they were great at being marketed to, and they wouldn’t give up their right to be the target of the music industry’s most raw commercial ventures without a fight!
no there is tons of music written after the times of the beatles that is hugely influential. start with public enemy and n.w.a if you like, without whom, there would be no barack obama…
“elvis is a hero to most, but he never meant shit to me”
fight the power
in order to achieve that elvis/beatles level of hero, you had to still meet an acceptable level of conformity, this was a shot across that bow, that had more impact on music and society as a whole than the number of public enemy records sold.
Bob
@fucen tarmal:”seger, the doobie brothers, the eagles, billy joel, steve miller, the beatles”
I take it then that you haven’t listened to the albums I asked about.
That you aren’t aware that one of those artists aren’t like the others says a lot about your critical judgement of popular music since the 1960s. On the other hand, that you are so familiar with “100 songs” by second stringers suggests you’ve spent way too much time listening to execrable classic rock stations.
Actually, what I find to be true is that anyone who grows up in our culture think they know a good bit about Christianity. Much like you think you know a good bit about music. However, I’m impressed by your obvious grasp of the effect of the past on the present.
henqiguai
@Bruce (formerly Steve S.) (#87): Dude !
You didn’t just throw down ? and the Mysterians! Seriously ?! Man, Bladensburg rink used to rock to that and Baby Elephant Walk, ‘specially when the organist from Kalarama rink was doing a guest organist gig. Ah, the old days.
Well, a dead thread an nobody’ll see this anyway, but, ah nostalgia.
Bruce (formerly Steve S.)
@fucen tarmal:
[sigh] No, that is not the argument.
You contend that the Beatles are merely a nostalgia act. In fact, the Beatles are still appealing, decades later, to a fairly broad cross-section of the population. Even teenagers! Mere nostalgia doesn’t explain all that.
Whether the Beatles were “greater” than Benny Goodman in a musical sense is a matter of opinion, but it is inarguable that their cultural impact was greater.
Well, no, you have no idea what I’ve been “sold”. The music industry was trying to sell me KC and the Sunshine Band when I was a teenager, not the Beatles.
I don’t really have anything else to say about all your broad brush generalizations except that you should stop.
sam
When Boehner gets all hot and bothered, and demands that the Fox Republican network plus most of the Republican party, apologizes for every last nasty comment made about the current President and his family,that has continued since November 2008,then I’ll entertain his demands for one comment by Sir Paul McCartney. Until then, go get a tan John!
SAM
@Tecumseh:
If that’s the worst thing he has done, you’re absolutely right, he couldn’t be a Republican! No bathroom scandals with young interns, no long walks on the Appalachian trail that end up in Venezuela? Up-tight-right-white rules they make, but never follow? If McCartney followed the path of the Right he could have made as many comments as he wanted. If you’re Republican you can say and do anything you want, fabricate, denigrate, fornicate, anything but educate!