What about The Beatles?

blaughida wrote: Proglodita wrote: So, it’s like I thought it would be. Beatles fans don’t come to progarchives (I know a couple and they don’t listen much prog), and prog lovers like us have nothing to do with early The Beatles. Maybe I’m extremely open-minded, listening not only prog and classic rock, but tango, blues, classical music, opera, and things like Sinatra, Edith Piaf (I don’t have albums but it’s OK) and Inti-Illimani and other groups from my country. Many people on PA listen to a lot of music that is not prog.  Your problem may be with wording of the PA ratings system.  There are star ratings on a scale of 1 to 5 but the stars mean something specific--5 stars="a masterpiece of progressive music" and 4 stars="An excellent addition to any prog music collection. I think people have trouble with this system both when rating and when looking at ratings of very excellent but absolutely non-prog albums by artists who, like the Beatles, are included on PA because of some of their other work.  It may be an excellent, 5-star album if you're writing a review for a general music site, but the PA system requires something to be an excellent progressive album in order to merit 4 stars.  A perfect system?  No, but I can't think of anything better.

 I think your argument is a bit misleading. Most ratings I've seen are based on the reviewer's opinion of the album, not on the site's so-called PA requirement. In some of the more iffy "prog" genres (no names, but I like PA's being open to stretching the limits of a very subjective term - i.e. what is prog) the albums are not rated on their proggyness. I mean - proto-prog or prog-related, if it's not pure prog, wouldn't the groups whose albums are found amongst these 2 subgenres be rated lower because of a lesser amount of progness ? Led Zep 4 has some excellent ratings. But it's nowhere as "prog" as , say , Yes "Close to the Edge". Yet, both are mighty fine albums.
So to come back to the Beatles early albums - most are great as compared to what was generally available back then, & great , period. And there are more than a few "great" & "timeless" songs on there that were more complex than your average top 40 single, including much jazz & classical outside of avant-garde stuff. Check out some of the better Beatles' guitar transcription books. There's a lot more going on than 3 barre chords or I-IV-V progressions in many of what you might consider "simple" pop tunes. And please don't dismiss it all as being the work of artists who were directed by the "MAN". Lennon/McCartney/Harrison/Starr wrote what they wrote. Read their biographies - they deliberately tried to write a hit single but a few times, & realized that forcing it didn't work any better than letting it flow naturally.
Of course, we could start disqualifying some of the early "true" prog groups, as much of their music could now be considered "simplistic" compared to some of today's more  "technically " advanced musical wizards.
So maybe our priority should be to establish an objective scale of prog, based on ? ! :: - + = ?@$^#%&(*)????, so as to re-evaluate ALL the music we have included on this fine site as to how it measures up in our the modern day.

I like the Rattles





The Beatles are OK too.

appreciating any great band's music from 45 years ago is difficult for those music fans who weren't around at the time. I was disgusted with a statement my 25 year old niece came out with recently - saying the Beatles were crap and rap is urban poetry -  the Beatles is every bit of urban poetry as rap, BUT YOU HAD TO BE THERE? not really, the magic trancends time...a mark of greatness. 

Edited by mystic fred - March 14 2007 at 20:00

O.K., time for a real Beatles man to be heard.

All of the albums (regular studio, U.K.releases) are worthy to be in anyone's collection. I hate it when the early albums are dismissed as bubblegum (I won't even address the ignorance of calling them crap ). They were pioneers right from the beginning. When they released their debut, Leslie Gore and Little Peggy march were topping the charts. At the time, this was something completely new.

As to the ratings, here I do it from the perspective of a prog collection. While I would rate most of the albums at five stars on a rock site, here there is different criteria. Most of the early albums would not enhance a prog collection. That doesn't start to happen until "Rubber Soul." It may not be prog, but the roots are there.

You don't have to like the Beatles, but to dismiss them is to dismiss the history of music.

Edited by bhikkhu - March 14 2007 at 19:28

Well, I'm not too mad about the first 2 albums apart from the odd track such as "Not a second time". From "A Hard Days Night" onwards there is good stuff to be found on every album, along with the occasional duffer such as Mr Moonlight. Even "Rubber Soul" had "Run for your Life" which Lennon himself hated.
However from then on nearly everything they did was revolutionary and superior to anything around at the time and most stuff since.
Going by the PA rating system,  it is hard even for me to give any of their albums 4or 5 stars. Probably only Revolver and Sgt Pepper are essential in a prog collection as part of the roots of prog.

Malve87 wrote: Deathrabbit wrote: I agree, every Beatles album was crap until Sgt. pepper. Kinda silly sentence, not true at all.

Deathrabbit wrote: I agree, every Beatles album was crap until Sgt. pepper.

Proglodita wrote: So, it’s like I thought it would be. Beatles fans don’t come to progarchives (I know a couple and they don’t listen much prog), and prog lovers like us have nothing to do with early The Beatles. Maybe I’m extremely open-minded, listening not only prog and classic rock, but tango, blues, classical music, opera, and things like Sinatra, Edith Piaf (I don’t have albums but it’s OK) and Inti-Illimani and other groups from my country.

Many people on PA listen to a lot of music that is not prog.  Your problem may be with wording of the PA ratings system.  There are star ratings on a scale of 1 to 5 but the stars mean something specific--5 stars="a masterpiece of progressive music" and 4 stars="An excellent addition to any prog music collection.

I think people have trouble with this system both when rating and when looking at ratings of very excellent but absolutely non-prog albums by artists who, like the Beatles, are included on PA because of some of their other work.  It may be an excellent, 5-star album if you're writing a review for a general music site, but the PA system requires something to be an excellent progressive album in order to merit 4 stars.  A perfect system?  No, but I can't think of anything better.

So, it’s like I thought it would be. Beatles fans don’t come to progarchives (I know a couple and they don’t listen much prog), and prog lovers like us have nothing to do with early The Beatles. Maybe I’m extremely open-minded, listening not only prog and classic rock, but tango, blues, classical music, opera, and things like Sinatra, Edith Piaf (I don’t have albums but it’s OK) and Inti-Illimani and other groups from my country.

 

 

As stated earlier, the early albums were pop albums to make money for the record companies.  The Beatles were one of the first, along with George Martin, to experiment and get away from the bubble gum rock that was being produced back then.  There was no prog movement to speak of until Revolver, Rubber Soul, etc.  The Beatles were one of the  few groups back then that, because of their popularity and ability to sell records, were actually not only allowed to experiment but, to a great degree, encouraged.  There is not  one well known prog oriented group that I know of that doesn't throw accolades upon The Beatles for having the balls to make the music that they wanted to make.  In many aspects, we might not have the prog music we love so much today had it not been for their lead.  Maybe I'm just an old fart, but having lived through that era, here in the U.S. and over in Europe, I have more of an appreciation for that era.  It opened up doors in many areas, not just in music, that might still be closed today.  If groups like The Beatles or artists like Bob Dylan hadn't used their popularity and their voices back then, you might not have this forum here today to express how much you liked them or they sucked.