Beatles: Sgt Pepper vs Abbey Road

Basing on how often I listen to them, Abbey Road wins with no contest

Hi,

I have to admit that at the time I loved the Beatles ... like everyone else ... but by the time I heard The Nice, then ELP and some of the "new music", I lost the desire to bother with the Beatles. 

That said, listening to SGT Peppers these days, seems ... rather boring and I find it better suited for the radio "songs" at the time, than any serious music. By the time Penny Lane and Strawberry Fields Forever came out, I though they had "progressed" to more serious music and ideas, other than just eccentric daily commentary.

Listening to Abbey Road, these days, is very different. And it is hard to not state that it is, by far, one of the best "progressive music/rock" albums of all time, SPECIALLY when it came out ... there was nothing like it around, and it blew many folks and stations off their rocks. However, with today's fans, the album is just sent off to the closet to an area that does not think it belongs, and has very little of what "progressive" is .. .mainly a bunch of senseless solos, and a format!

At 73, now, I can listen to the albums, but they are not the exciting material that really helped you wake up and learn about the arts and how they were developing, since rock music was not the only thing going nuts at the time. Within that context, both albums are massive for the history of it all ... something that today's fans do not care about much ... because it makes their favorites not look or sound, very good at all ... and in fact, show most of them as empty and a sad excuse for great music.

Reminds me of classical music ... Mozart, Beethoven, Stravinsky, PUccini, Verdi ... they STILL take me away ... and those albums did at the time, and they still do some, though not much ... probably from hearing it so much.

One last note. Sgt Peppers. The album DID NOT get better for until until I heard the English pressing. The American pressing was a copy taken from a dumpster somewhere and it did not have the ambience that the original pressing had, which Capitol (or whomever) tried to make sure that it was "heard" on the newer "remastered" versions of the album, which were not remastered at all, but direct copies of the English pressing. The last album this happened to? Dark Side of the Moon, where the American version also tried hard to cut down the ambience which the live show made sure you heard ... which made it all better. Later a "remastered" version came out, and again, it was nothing but a copy of the original pressing!