Learn me some stuff...

S8-N:

You're thinking of THE MONKIES. Sure, they were a big influence on the Beatles, but the Beatles took it to a whole new level.

I have a feeling that you haven't been listening again. Remember, there's the Beatles in cheap suits and there's the Beatles on drugs....two different bands in my opinion. Take a good hard listen to every single tune on the white album or sgt. pepper. Popish it may be...but pop it ain't.

The only thing that set them back in my mind was Paul's happyinize a song. Happinizing is taking a rather deep, meaningful, perhaps sad song and giving it a nice big hug. Yick. "Happiness is a Warm Gun" is a perfect example. There're all dirty with "i need a fix cause I'm goin down...", but then what's with the lame-ass 'bang bang shoot shoot' harmony at the end? Man, I can't listen to that song with headphones on anymore.

Slackmaster 2000
 
Er, S2K, I believe the boys were funnin'. That is, laughing at themselves and the whole thing, making fun with the lyrics (which themselves were sarcastic as hell) by putting syrupy vocal harmonies on 'em and laughing at how serious content can be overlooked based on the presentation. It's a kind of meta-joke, I always felt.

But you're right about that album. There's a lot of serious sh*t in there...and you may be a bit young, but when the Beatles talked about revolutions, it wasn't ignored as it would be today if the Spice Girls would do the same. It was taken seriously. Lennon (and probably the others) had FBI files.

Have you seen the little piggies? Not typical British humour...deadly serious attack there.

Trivia: the foldout insert to the original album was reputed to contain LSD. Mine didn't have any, though...
 
really liked the feel and groove of the track and although you didn't ask for advice apart from bass line and levels i had one suggestion -- i think the chorus section needs more "warning" to it, some sort of build up resulting in the crescendo and split stereo of the chorus. one thing you could try to achieve this is to use a reversed crash cymbal which peaks just as the first chord of the chorus begins. (you could also run the cymbal trough a phaser effect). just an idea.....
 
S8-N! Re: Beatles - there's formula and then there's formulas. Early Beatles did exactly what we all did when we first got the bug. They learned from old songs. You can't tell me that when you first got a guitar and got your fingers somewhat coordinated, that you didn't try to play a some song you'd heard before...and without formula, you'd have no basis to start, because you have to have some idea of howmusic works. And music DOES have some logical parameters. Bend those parameters some, and people call you original. Bend 'em too much and you become Yoko Ono and nobody wants to hear your stuff...usually most people take the formulas they've heard and expand them to their own developing tastes. It's paradoxical to call this "originality" but it's as close to the concept as it can be, given the nature of music as communication as well as entertainment...The Beatles, if you've ever heard their albums, made big leaps each time out with their expansion of musical ideas. They never took themselves or their images seriously, and were able to keep growing, unlike a lot of other bands that got frozen...The White album is not something I crave to listen to over and over because I find a couple of songs annoying (Martha My Dear, Bungalow Bill)but the others helped me stretch my own musical concepts. Now Abbey Road is a whole 'nuther thing. Forget "Octopus 's Garden" and "Maxwell's Silver Hammer", didn't get into that crap at all...but the rest of the album was and is such a cohesive rush...The guitar part at the end of "Carry That Weight" (just a few bars before the piano intro to "The End) makes me breath hard. It totally (for me) showed that guitar could be something other than the rif on the Stones "Satisfaction". It wasn't' melodious or catchy, like Clapton, wasn't at all like Page, wasn't like anything I'd ever heard...but yet it was so out there..and being so short was probably part of it too...Now anyway, back to formula...How 'bout "attitude formula". Started with those Spice Girls With Rotten Teeth, the Sex Pistols. Totally packaged and yet they believed their own hype. Sorta like the Monkees with leprosy...at least the Monkees had good pop writers like Boyce and Hart to make some memorable (but fluffy) tunes. Now "attitude formula" has turned into "we know what you want 'cause we're telling you what you want formula". Witness Limp Biscuit. I can't believe people still wear ball caps (backwards no less) and are trying to make their version of rap into something it's not. Put some crowd shots of adoring fans into a video, like all those other totally irelevant act like M. Jackson, Janet, Whitney,Spice Boys (uh, I mean Backstreet)etc. I quite expect Fred Dirst in his next video to say "I love you too" in a falsetto voice....My point is, I guess, that anti-formula begets a worse formula, one that's all image and sales. Just about everything on the radio and MTV consists of acts following the leader. It's up to the garage bands to save us all from this, I guess. They learn, take what they need, and hopefully take it all to a new level, but not cloning the crap machine. You can rest assured that Mr. Bungle will never be top forty, but some of us will still buy their music, just so they'll make some more for us, not because we're told it's something we gotta have, but because it communicates feeling with musical substance. Sincerity is where it's at. Beatles had that too...gibs (whoa, this post is way too long and pompous...sorry)
 
I'm not going to get into a huge row over the Beatles, although I should, concerning Satan's comments ... And S2K: I agree with Paul's happinizing, I can get sick of his stuff too, being a Lennon fan. But Happiness is written entirely by John, including the last part. It's intentional kitsch, to contrast with the more serious lyrics. To Gibs: I have been provoked. :) I discovered my dad's microphones when I was 5.. It was a set of two simple dynamic mics, I don't even know why he had them.. But when I realized I could record myself then listen to it later, there was no turning back :) Especially when I realized that two mics and two inputs meant neat-o stereo effects. Anyway, maybe a year later I found a stereo in the garbage-chute room of our apartment building, just sitting there on the floor.. So being a curious kid, I brought it home, and it worked perfectly. :) After playing around for awhile I just came up with the idea that if I had two tape recorders and two tapes, I could record something, play it back while recording on the other, then talk/sing along to it as it's going through the air.. I could do this any number of times by just switching the tapes back and forth.. The first song I recorded was Oh Canada, because I couldn't think of anything else :) I ended up ping-ponging 10 or so tracks of myself singing, drumming, dum-dumming the bass.. It was such a noisy method that you could barelyh hear the original track anymore :) But I was 6, and I've still got the tape almost 14 years later.. That's my story of how I got into music.. Or, homerecording, anyway :)
 
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