The Beatles were an historical anomaly. They were a pop culture phenomenon that challenged the status quo and pushed things along at a time when times were a-changin' at a radically fast clip. The fact that they were actually pretty good underneath those haircuts and the publicity blitz just made it all the easier to sell them to a mass audience. And it's the reason we're still talking about them all these years later.
Business issues and lawyer talk have seen to it that everything in Beatle-land takes forever to happen. So this September 9, the entire Beatle catalog finally gets a sonic overhaul after all these decades of crappy sounding CDs. Not such a big deal for those of us who hung on to our vinyl, but pretty absurd to think that there are millions of people who have been stuck with inferior sounding CDs for their entire lives.
I haven't heard the new CDs yet. And I'm one of those weirdoes who grew up on the "Fake Stereo--add another gallon of reverb please" American releases where all the wrong songs appear on the wrong albums. So what can any of us do?
Well, for starters, we can continue to re-write history, keeping as much actual "truth" in there as might have shown up the first time it got written. To celebrate the Beatles and their fine achievements, I've thrown together 25 pivotal moments in their career, moments that had they gone another way surely would have led to a different outcome for them and their millions of fans.
I'm doing this in rough chronological order since "importance" is really subjective here.
Posts
0 comments:
Post a Comment