In February of 1968 ,The Beatles travelled to Rishikesh, in the Himalayan region of northern India
to take part in a transcendental mediation (TM) training course at the ashram of Maharishi Mahesh Yogi.
Phillip Goldberg , in his book American Veda, wrote that The Beatles trip to Rishikesh
" may have been the most momentous spiritual retreat since Jesus spent forty days in the wilderness"
The immense interest and intrigue by everything The Beatles were up at this time as heavily scrutinised and reported by the worlds media,
encouraged the pursuit and study of Eastern spirituality in Western popular culture. Following on with many Gurus ,from India moving to enlighten the minds of the West in the coming decades .

Username Taken wrote:

Bitte_Kein_Lexus wrote: ↑Sat Nov 27, 2021 2:15 pm No offense boomers, but every generation says that. I can recognize how they were influential, but their riffs and lyrics are pretty damn simplistic and dare I say, overrated in many ways.

No offense Lexus, but I'd be interested to hear which band of your generation would you consider to be 'the' band that sets them apart from the others of the time? Nirvana? Smashing Pumpkins? RHCP? AC/DC, Queen. Would love to hear your thoughts.

The 'thing' about the Beatles was that they churned out Number 1 hits ones after another, year after year. There were often times when they had several songs concurrently in the Top 10 charts around the world.

They were also accredited with being pioneers.

While you're right that I'm a 90s kid, there's no "single" band/artist that can represent the whole era. By then, there were way more genres around than in the 60s and it was a lot more diverse. So there's no quintessential 90s band, though many can represent the various genres around.


My main tongue-in-cheek gripe is that it's so "old angry man yelling at clouds" cliche to say music from one's generation was the best. I mean, your parents thought the Beatles and other such bands were crap back in the day, just like you may think music from today is shit. Don't get me wrong, some Beatles and Beach Boys songs are super catchy and both bands were influential. They're just overrated it all, with hindsight and all that.

Fewa Tel wrote: ↑Mon Nov 29, 2021 11:38 am In February of 1968 ,The Beatles travelled to Rishikesh, in the Himalayan region of northern India
to take part in a transcendental mediation (TM) training course at the ashram of Maharishi Mahesh Yogi.
Phillip Goldberg , in his book American Veda, wrote that The Beatles trip to Rishikesh
" may have been the most momentous spiritual retreat since Jesus spent forty days in the wilderness"
The immense interest and intrigue by everything The Beatles were up at this time as heavily scrutinised and reported by the worlds media,
encouraged the pursuit and study of Eastern spirituality in Western popular culture. Following on with many Gurus ,from India moving to enlighten the minds of the West in the coming decades .

I remember my trip to Rishikesh and to talk of the spirituality and any enlightenment to be had came alone from the environmental surroundings that I had thrust myself amongst, being that of many ashrams of the area had the sign upon their door's "full".

hdgh29 wrote: ↑Mon Nov 29, 2021 11:21 am

Beatles? They lost me when they moved into the 'novelty song' market - Rocky Raccoon, Maxwells Silver Hammer etc, even Obladi Oblada - like trite, childish nursery rhymes.

That's what happens when one of your principal songwriters is killed in a car crash and secretly replaced by a look-alike.

Bitte_Kein_Lexus wrote: ↑Mon Nov 29, 2021 1:19 pm My main tongue-in-cheek gripe is that it's so "old angry man yelling at clouds" cliche to say music from one's generation was the best.

I've said this before and I'll keep saying it - the record industry have for their whole existence placed pressure towards music to all sound alike in the name of being radio-friendly and instantly accessible. "All music these days sounds the same" became a cliche in the 50s and is often taken as a sign of someone who's out of touch and unappreciative. But, if you take an analytical approach to dissecting the building blocks of music - tempo, dynamics, rhythm, time signature, melody, instrumentation, key, harmony, chord progression, etc - there is more variety within each of those items individually in a single movement of Rimsky-Korsakov than in the entire catalogue of most hit artists.
The Beatles are of course also guilty, but at least have the distinction of doing it well within the context of their own time.

If you want a hit song you need to run it at a constant ~118bpm throughout, in 4/4, with a drum beat (either on 2+4 or a choice of 2-3 other latin beats), chord progression picked from a list of barely a dozen, a structure built of some variant on verse-bridge-chorus-repeat, runtime 3 minutes, a band of 4-6 instrumentalists with a lead singer and some backing singers... stray from any of that your only chance is to be considered novelty value. The reason that's considered the "best" formula is because that's what works for radio and because people who aren't really that into music will tend to like stuff that's similar to what they already like, so that's what we get fed unless we make the effort to go out and search for something different.


It's also why Prog Rock has always been treated with a weird distain by the mainstream - you can't slap The Wall on an advert for hot dogs.

Nobody's actually said whether they're enjoying the documentary yet. I've seen part 1. Certainly an endurance. It's fascinating and brilliant and not, all at the same time.

Simultaneously? Synchronized,even.

Ah, real music to my ears. Not like the screaming racket the kids listen to these days. It just a bloody noise!