OK - I am listening to the entire Beatles Catalog right now, and I had a few observations

1 - Teenagers screamed a lot when they played live. The band could have been mumbling nonsense and playing their instruments with kitchen tools and no one would have noticed.

2 - Strawberry Fields Forever is amazing.

3 - Hello Goodbye is really annoying if you play it over and over

4 - John may have not buried Paul, but Paul was indeed the Walrus

5 - Ringo never did a drum roll

6 - Let it Be, and Let it Be Naked are still horrible, compared to the original Get Back planned album.

7 - The Beatles were years ahead of their time, even in 1963. Compare their first album with ANYTHING else from the era, including Elvis. Jazz does not count.

They were years ahead of their time, its a shame they couldn't stay together. I remember a documentary where John said that when they played Shea Stadium they couldn't hear each other because of the screaming, they just tried to stay together the best they could through the songs.

I really can't think of one song of theirs that I dislike.

Lady Madonna was borderline annoying for me. They had an incredible body of work but I think they were equaled by Taupin/John in the lyrics and music category.

and the way they played guitar (even if Harrison wasn't a guitar genius) that sets them apart for me.

but the beatles as a group made me:puke:

:hi:

George is and always will be my favorite Beatle.

I loved Lennon and Harrison. Ringo was okay.

Half are good songs, other half is crap. All of Let It Be is crap. Phil Spector should have be jailed just for that alone.

The only thing more annoying than Hello Goodbye is Ob-La-Di Ob-La-Da or Maxwell's Silver Hammer.

Ringo didn't do a roll and he only did one drum solo on Abbey Road, which proved he was one of the best rock drummers ever. Pure rhythm.

in their own right.

You say yes, I say no.....you say stop and I say GO GO GO!!!

and

Bang Bang Maxwell's Silver Hammer came down upon her head.....

What's not to like?

The real debate is whether A Day in the Life is the all time greatest Beatles song.

From Wiki entry of MSH.

The rest of The Beatles

The song took three days of overdubbing because McCartney imagined that it could be a future single. John Lennon later recalled, "he did everything to make it into a single, and it never was and it never could have been."<7> According to Lennon, the band spent more money on that song than any other on Abbey Road, and he derided the song at the time as a prime example of McCartney's "granny-style" writing.

George Harrison described it in 1969 as "one of those instant whistle-along tunes which some people hate, and other people really like. It's a fun song, but it's kind of a drag because Maxwell keeps on destroying everyone like his girlfriend then the school teacher, and then, finally, the judge." In 1977, Harrison would be less charitable, stating "I mean, my God, 'Maxwell's Silver Hammer' was so fruity."<8>

Even Ringo Starr recalled in an interview in early 2008: "The worst session ever was 'Maxwell's Silver Hammer.' It was the worst track we ever had to record. It went on for fucking weeks. I thought it was mad."<9>

Oh, those vinyl records were something. But digitized and fed through an iPod or other digital player, they sound . . . threadbare.

Strawberry Fields Forever is an interesting song; Hello Goodbye is, too, but in a different way. The Magical Mystery Tour album is underrated, but not among the group's best.

John was the walrus, and anyone who says different is itching for an ass-whuppin'.

The Beatles did all of this before they were 30 (okay, with a GREAT deal of assistance from the incomparable George Martin). Compare and contrast to oh so many who have come since then.

I only listen to CDs in full digital 44.1KHz stereo!

:D

And compared to the sound of other .wma files, the Beatles just don't sound very good or full or anything. Even Spector's vaunted Wall of Sound comes off as the cheap studio ploy it always was. Strangely enough, though, I have purchased CDs of other groups from that time (I am probably the only person in the universe conversant on the oeuvre of The Association who wasn't in the group or related to someone in the group), and their recordings come off sounding much better than the Beatles' studio work.

I'll be interested to see (hear) if the remastered stuff comes off any better to my grizzled 50-year-old ears.

I could have sworn there was...

Marching band did

weird.

And "I Feel Fine"'s samba beat his second best.

and buy the whole thing. Tough decision.

My mp3's are good enough for me - play it in the car, while jogging or on the puter

The Mono set. :)

The kinds of tools you use in the kitchen

Underneath it all, I think the early hippies were probably just looking for a little more structure in their lives.

really a product of the music of the previous generation, in some ways, with sophisticated (for the time) recording techniques on top.



Most of it has held up amazingly well, though.

Wondering what prompted this?

Did they put out any official live stuff with screaming fans?

before you jump - keep in mind all he did was remaster the shows.

you can't compare anything he did with what the Beatles did. The old "apples and oranges" thing, but the Beatles would not have existed without Elvis, just as Elvis would not have existed without the old blues guys from the Delta here in the U.S.

They were all brilliant - it's not a zero-sum game, so comparisons are impossible.

You have to take all of popular music, as well as the political climate, when you talk about Elvis and/or the Beatles. What the whole world was like. Then, and only then, can you completely appreciate the truly revolutionary nature of what they did.

Still, the Beatles had some great shoulders upon which to stand - Buddy Holly, Bill Haley and the Comets, Elvis, to name a few - so there is a natural progression that's traceable.

After the Beatles, though, the originality and creativity in music, at least to me, seemed to drop off. Nothing quite compares, even within the socio-political context.

It's just great, great music, and if you think about Hello, Goodbye in 1967, you're a teen, you're smoking some dope, you might go to war in Vietnam, well, it's not such a bad song........................................

:woohoo::hi:

When you have heard all 70+ hours of takes from those sessions (and the original George Martin mix of the "Get Back" album) the Spectorized versions just don't hold up. Nor even the not-so-"Naked" mixes (still a lot of overdubbing and remixing on that one, despite the title)

I have listened to every album beginning to end numerous times...there isn't a dud in there...anywhere!!!

And the hard sound of their earlier stuff kicks much ass and is something I'm spending much more time listening to these days, I mainly listened to the '67 and later stuff when I was a lad.