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billding68 wrote: Astralcat wrote: IanB wrote: billding68 wrote: IanB wrote: If what you are asking is whether XTC were / are better at being the Beatles than the Beatles then the answer is a firm "no". I am not a big fan of rose coloured 60s nostalgia at the best of times but they invented the form and very little has been done since their demise to advance that form beyond the templates they laid out. XTC have moved it forward not an inch and I doubt they would claim any different.
I don't actually much like most of the Beatles music (I listen to the expanded Magical Mystery Tour and maybe Abbey Road or the Blue album once or twice a year) but there is no getting away from the fact that anyone still working with guitars and drums and keys and voices in straight 4/4 with verse chorus song structures owes them a living. Their ubiquity and mass appeal are I think actually a testament to their transcendence as originators rather than a sign of hidden shallows. Shallowness seems to me to be neither here nor there.
There have been "advances" into complexity and equal and opposite "retreats" into simplification and cod authenticity but very little else has been said in the intervening half century or so that would threaten their place at the head of the Rock pantheon. People have had a fair old dip into jazz and classical and contemporary "art" music to freshen up the sound palette but at the core there is really the same old verse chorus ramalamadingdong whether it is Stock Aitken Waterman or the Velvets. It is no wonder that the genre is so constipated. Here comes another copy of a copy of a copy.
That's why for me the over-reachers who risk absurdity and ridicule and whose wings almost inevitably melt in the process are the people to be really cherished. There are a couple of XTC albums that I think are pretty special but that's being competent at plowing someone else's territory rather inventing an entire art form.
the beatles didn't invent pop music they just added to it as did many before them adding layer upon layer to most likely caveman grunts that came before. everything we know is a copy of a copy of a copy etc...everything is repackaged , repurposed , and replayed if we could live 1000 years we would probably die of boredom.
You are probably not old enough to have heard the likes of Nina & Frederick, Frankie Vaughan, John Leyton, Frank Ifield and the dubious pleasures of the Larry Parnes stable as a kid. That's what popular music was like here before (and during a large part) The Beatles' reign. A lot of the music people really listened to and bought en masse back then was a totally different beast to the 1960s we think we remember today. What we think of as the fundamentals of Rock songwriting and record production (and their packaging into a commercially viable whole) owes The Beatles more or less everything. XTC owe them more than most and that's fine but I am not sure you can really compare them without acknowledging the debt as being fundamental.
Rock and roll was dead. Buddy gone. Elvis in the army, Little Richard testifying. Pat Boone stalked the land. The Beatles took their inspirations past and current, added their own talent to the mix and single handedly invented the template for what was to come. They blew it wide open.
'Guitar groups are on the way out Mr Epstein'......
interesting point of view but by your own admission the beatles just added to what came before them they didn't invent anything they just perfected the way to package it into profitable little chunks and sell it worldwide. I don't dislike the beatles in fact I like every thing up to their so called psychedelic phase which was also just a way to change gears and stay with what was really going on at the time(pink Floyd,jefferson airplane,zappa,beefheart,yardbirds etc) in order to sell more units. by that point they lost their proto-boy band good looks and needed a new angle to keep the record company and its shareholders happy.The beatles were by far the most brilliant bunch of songwriters and businessmen of the era but I question the devotion they garner. whats a more innovative album Meet the beatles or meet the residents? Personally I think its the latter.
All art is symbiotic. We're talking cultural catalysts here. The Beatles psychedelic period was groundbreaking - everyone followed. Leary/Syd/The West Coast scene/etc and etc.... ). McCartney championed/was involved in the underground here in the UK, (far more than Lennon) and was fully plugged in to the counter culture either side of the Atlantic. The Beatles were a pivotal element.I think Meet The Residents v Meet The Beatles (a cack handed Capitol concoction - the original uk albums were conceived and constructed as whole ) is a daft comparison by the way. Anyway - who really cares - just variants beauties of noise - Alice Coltrane time! - peace and love _/\_
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