The Beatles - Abbey Road

[RJohan]

It changed the way people thought about their place in the world, it encouraged people to pick up instruments and play even if they had no training, it produced some fabulous music (and lots of dross, obviously), it opened the parochial UK music scene up to all kinds of weird and wonderful left-field influences, it had a direct effect on the modern art and graphic design scenes, is still enormously influential in fashion, it brought experimental fiction and poetry into the relative mainstream, and it spawned a vibrant independent record label culture.

Roughly like when Beatles became popular, then...

And those who like Hip Hop / Rap (I can't tell the difference myself), will probably say something like that about their music.

JohanR

 

[joel]

Well, that's OK. Since I have no clue, please tell me what great innovation(s) the Sex Pistols brought to music.

Replace Sex Pistols with Rolling Stones and attempt to answer the question... I think they were both great bands in their time. Neither was especially innovative I think.

 

[Michael L]

I saw The Clash and The Pistols in the same week: The Clash where the better band live, at the time.

M

 

[sideshowbob]

Roughly like when Beatles became popular, then...

Aye, most certainly.

I'm glad there's a Bub, it's quite rare to find somebody who's I disagree with about everything to do with music

-- Ian

 

[Blzebub]

True. You do seem to have amassed a collection of music which I can't stand! Apart from Faust, which seems a suitably-odd overlap point.

 

[sideshowbob]

You do seem to have amassed a collection of music which I can't stand!

I think you'll find it's the other way around, old chap.

-- Ian

 

[Blzebub]

LOL. We didn't play nearly enough 'classical' that w/e.

 

[Paul L]

Ian, I'm sorry but I really struggle with some of your comments and Tony's supporting the SPs. I accept fully that they caught that whole innovation/change thing and shook up the popular scene as it was known until then, just as Bill Haley, Presley at all did, just as Hendrix and others did. I accept fully that they blew the flares and platforms off some pretty painful rock w**king as well and so, yes they were influential.

However, any respect for them ends there. For the past 30 years my view has remained the same. Scum, animals, filth, in fact all the things they seemed to portray. They were violent, threatening, they looked appalling, they spat, they set out to shock. So, I found and still find nothing enriching about them, nothing cultural, nothing that has progressed society. I cannot escape my long-held view that in our country give Joe Public shit food, shit clothing and shit music and he will lap it up. Their legacy was a continuation of chav and lout Britain, public damage, appalling behaviour and basically anarchy. That is what they preached, isn't it?

I don't care if the SPs could play, I don't care if Lydon was a university professor although I doubt it, by all means start a thread on SP lyrics and demonstrate how genial and profound they were.

We all learn in life and so I welcome being proven wrong in my views - by all means pull them apart. Don't expect to do this though by calling someone ignorant, wanting to punch them or dismiss them as having no taste. It is simply offensive and does your intellect no favours. A challenge - show maturely why it is wrong to hold a view that to like the SPs is to succumb to a moral and social level that is simply in the gutter. We are what we eat...

Paul


Postscript: I disagree with Paul R about comparisons with Beethoven. Sure LVB would have the intellect ot make a conscious decision on whether to be a serious composer or exploit the gullible and laugh all the way to the bank. Sure, LVB would have easily been able to utilise the instruments of the day and take entirely different paths to those we know. However, I can't help feeling that he would have found the SP-style of life abhorrent and that he would have managed to introduce one or two notes into the mix that bore some relationship and thought.

 

[DSCOTT]

And yet, they (the Stones) always struck a chord with me and I see them as no better or worse than the Beatles or any other kiddies music because, let's face it, most of it ain't exactly rocket science. I dearly love certain rock music and will never entirely grow out of it but all those egos firmly stuck up their own asses... classical and some other music are constant reminders not to take it all too seriously. Catchy yep, emotional yep, complex er no, challenging er no, intellectually stimulating er no. Mozart has just come on the radio as I post this and you can feel the brain automatically react differently as but one example. All IMHO of course.

Paul

I've got to say that in post after post you have a wonderful way of being condescending. Your views on music seem to line up quite well with your views on audio. A number of your posts evoke a superior than thou tone. If you feel that rock is kiddies music and not challenging and not intellectually stimulating then I genuinely feel sorry for you (in relation to music).

Your perfectly entitled to hold your views on the Sex Pistols but I think you need to get a grip about holding up artists of any persuasion as moral guardians or role models. Whether they be actors, jazz musicians, painters, rock musicians, authors etc, alot of them seem to have major personal problems (in a lot of cases, the greater the personal demons, the better the artist). If artists are to be dismissed due to not adhering to what is considered acceptable behavior by the general public, then say goodbye to Elvis, Jerry Lee Lewis, The Beatles, Rolling Stones, Jimi Hendrix etc etc. Your argument vis a vis the Sex Pistols holds no water. It seems to me that your views on the SP's were framed by the tabloids ( I thought you would be smarter than this) and I wonder whether you have really given their music a chance. To say they have no notes seems to bear this out.

 

[joel]

For the past 30 years my view has remained the same. Scum, animals, filth, in fact all the things they seemed to portray. They were violent, threatening, they looked appalling, they spat, they set out to shock.

Marvellous

 

[sideshowbob]

Paul, you are Sir Horace Cutler and I claim my five pounds.

-- Ian

 

[Paul L]

Culturally (as in the effect on society) a lot of music has a lot to answer for and I see no reason to shy away from saying so, the SPs seemed to plummet to new depths - by design and intent in their case.

I have a strong personality, so what. You need one in life and it's not meant as condescending but perhaps I am. Even if we truly know ourselves it's not the same as how others see us. I do get angry at accepting a norm, a status quo as it were only to then discover that it was way, way short of what was available away from the bullshit, marketing, hype. Alas, getting older only means that whilst you see the matrix clearly yourself you're surrounded by people who either don't see or don't care. Only they define the social, economic or cultural environment you live in and you're stuck with it!

Music is not the creator of the ills of mankind and every genre has had its heroes die of syph or too much fun! However, if you're a parent and you want to see a better world for your kids you do come to the conclusion that a kid spitting and inciting violence or a hoody menacing 'slap my bitch up' or 'fold my ho over' or whatever is street speak at the moment doesn't actually seem to be a positive contribution.

I'm clearly outgrowing a lot of audio and any ability to integrate with the great majority that I once might just about have had. I'm basically getting old and I'm destined to be a cranky old git!

Sir Horace

 

[DSCOTT]

Your comments seem to fall in line with the status quo and the great majority (and not vice versa). Your take on the rock genre is the same one that has been trotted out by conservatives for decades. I don't know whether you are a parent or not (I have 3 teenage boys), but I would rather my sons expand their horizons in relation to the arts rather than restrict them. Being open minded is a positive, but that doesn't mean you shouldn't have strong views. I don't and never have (and never will) condone violence, but your take on the SP's is really straight out of the trash press and clearly forgets that alot of the violence was inflicted on the Pistols (that being said, Sid Vicious was clearly a sad individual).

Being old shouldn't be an excuse for being cranky and a git.

 

[Mike Sae]

I remember when I was growing up, the movie Goodfellas had a unfortunate influence on me, as I went through a phase of stomping people to Donavan's Greatest Hits.

 

[Michael L]

I have a strong personality, so what.

Its called "patronising".

Just because you did not get the Sex Pistols is no reason to imply anyone that does is a fool / ingrate / filthy etc.

Live and let live.

 

[PeteH]

Culturally (as in the effect on society) a lot of music has a lot to answer for and I see no reason to shy away from saying so, the SPs seemed to plummet to new depths - by design and intent in their case.

It's an interesting argument and one which is particularly hot at the moment in musicological circles (qv. the exceptionally brilliant academic Richard Taruskin and Stalin / The Shostakovich Debate): to paraphrase at the risk of oversimplification, what are the ethical considerations surrounding the consumption of art arising from an undesirable or immoral philosophy?

Beethoven would probably have approved of upsetting the bourgeoisie, but IIRC he didn't have a lot of time for music less rigorously worked-out than his own, and I suspect he'd probably have ignored most of what is now called pop music. Cultural relativism is all well and good, but it can run into difficulties at the points where the relative cultures are completely different . Off the top of my head, I'd argue that in general the significance or influence of historically or socially important pop music doesn't arise from strictly musical considerations, at least for a given definition of "musical" - or to put it another way, innovative pop music isn't innovative in quite the same way that, say, Wagner's development of harmony and structural progression from "opera" to "music drama" were innovative.

 

[sideshowbob]

Cultural relativism is all well and good, but it can run into difficulties at the points where the relative cultures are completely different.

I mostly agree with your post, but raising the spectre of cultural relativism is possibly a red herring. Cultural relativism is a complete dead-end, but it isn't relativistic to demand that contemporary popular culture be judged within its own terms, rather than terms more appropriate to other art forms, that's merely an example of being aware of the differences between different forms of artistic expression. Hence my in-principle rejection of the notion that classical music, for example, is inherently superior to some other, more "debased" music, purely because it is, musicologically speaking, more complex. The confusion of complexity with cultural superiority is a modern Western category mistake, for which I blame the Enlightenment. It also leads to very tedious music criticism, which focuses on virtuosity at the expense of meaning.

what are the ethical considerations surrounding the consumption of art arising from an undesirable or immoral philosophy?

I think it's stretching the point a bit to regard pop-culture pranksters like the Pistols as either immoral or undesirable. Pantomine-media-pop-shock seems to have been a fact of life ever since the invention of the concept of the teenager, and has never really done anyone any harm, I'm sure. In fact, it's probably always been almost entirely positive.

-- Ian

 

[joel]

The confusion of complexity with cultural superiority is a modern Western category mistake, for which I blame the Enlightenment. It also leads to very tedious music criticism, which focuses on virtuosity at the expense of meaning.

or replaces complex meaning with complex scoring. The fundamental Western mistake, of course, is the notion of progress as being both linear and inexorable (and, of course, inexorably in favour of the West).

 

[PeteH]

it isn't relativistic to demand that contemporary popular culture be judged within its own terms, rather than terms more appropriate to other art forms, that's merely an example of being aware of the differences between different forms of artistic expression.

Fine - all I have a problem with is the strange kind of inverted intellectual snobbery which pops up from time to time which effectively seeks to deny the existence of any meaningful differences between "different forms of artistic expression".

Hence my in-principle rejection of the notion that classical music, for example, is inherently superior to some other, more "debased" music, purely because it is, musicologically speaking, more complex.

Now you're just poking me to see what I'll do . Again I'd have no problem with this point; the simple fact is that a cultural difference clearly exists, and whether one is to be preferred over the other is a matter of judgement. Don't forget though that we've also seen arguments in this thread concerning the differences or otherwise between the 'intellectual' responses to different kinds of music; you'd presumably recognise that intricacy and subtlety of construction is an important factor in this regard.

I have of course argued in the past that compared with more "debased" music, "classical" music has a deeper, more subtle, more universally relevant and more powerful range of expression which is made possible by its greater technical complexity, but we probably shouldn't rake that one up again and in any case you'll just accuse me of not getting down with the kids .

 

[joel]

I have of course argued in the past that compared with more "debased" music, "classical" music has a deeper, more subtle, more universally relevant and more powerful range of expression which is made possible by its greater technical complexity, but we probably shouldn't rake that one up again and in any case you'll just accuse me of not getting down with the kids .

Would you give some examples of debased music I wonder if Western art music has more universal relevance than, say, contemporary black american popular music and its derivatives.