Posted on 02/09/2014 7:47:02 PM PST by SeekAndFind
Musical moments that capture the attention of a national audience - and beyond - never seem to be in short supply.
Last week, Bruno Mars set a ratings record with 115 million people watching his Super Bowl performance. A few months ago, the talk was about Beyonce’s surprise album. And there’s still discussion of That Miley Moment at the MTV Video Music Awards.
But moments that spark a musical revolution? A dramatic altering of the pop culture landscape? A true moment for historians to analyze? Rare indeed, which is what makes the 50th anniversary of what is considered the start of Beatlemania so remarkable - and so unlikely to happen again.
“The media has gotten so fragmented now ... there’s 50 things in a marketing plan for an artist today,” said Revolt TV President (and former MTV executive) Andy Schuon. “The ability to fan that fire and to give it the kind of intensity that ‘The Ed Sullivan Show’ could get doesn’t exist today.”
Sunday marks the 50th anniversary of the Beatles’ performance on “Ed Sullivan,” their first appearance in America. Nielsen says 45 percent of all TV sets in use at the time were tuned into the broadcast, with fans and the uninitiated alike gathered shoulder to shoulder in their living rooms. The Beatles landed on a trigger point when they hit America. It was a pop culture sonic boom spurred by talent, timing and luck that’s still rattling the windows.
“This was a seismic shift in American culture and it gave the teenagers not only a voice but a way of being, a way of thinking that had never occurred before,” Beatles biographer Bob Spitz said.
(Excerpt) Read more at kens5.com ...
Good Rock and roll was still around in 1961, but you might have to go into regional markets or even overseas to find it. My favorite rock and roll song of the 1960's is from 1961--from Castro's Cuba, of all places.
Presumida (smug)--Luis Bravo
This was a hit in the early spring of 1961 in California and it made #44 on the Billboard Hot 100.
Underwater--The Frogmen
Overall I thought it a good show. My only disappointment was Stevie Wonder. He should have stayed home. A minor annoyance was Lennox in her black “HIV Positive” t-shirt. Can they not for one minute leave the politics at the front door?
I am partial to The Who, myself.
Herman’s Hermits are playing in a small venue north of Houston this month. The tickets are $168 for an OBSTRUCTED view. Same price for The Animals a few weeks later. I went to see them together in 1965 for $6. And I don’t remember how I afforded to pay that much. And I won’t be seeing them again.
I agree. I noticed that Sean Lennon was sitting next to his mother, Yoko, and perhaps he could have even gone up there. I would have loved to have seen their sons join Paul and Ringo.
I did, she agrees with me.
She’d better see one , too . ;-)
Payola existed prior to rock and roll. ASCAP was POed that BMI had all of the hits (ASCAP wouldn’t publish race records or hillbilly records, later known and R&B and country/western, or their hybrid form known as rock and roll) and pushed the investigations (along with the big labels that were losing chart share to small labels and established artists like Frankie Sinatra who couldn’t sing a Womp-Bama-Lama-A-Womp-Bomp-Boo, but somehow scooby-dooby-doo-wa was okay).
Payola predated WWII and it still exists today.
When you hear a “classic rock” song like the Styx’s Lady, you’ve heard a payola hit.
It was establishment forces seeking to cruch rock and roll (certainly rock music has little chart or radio placement today). To get on the charts, you need more than just sales, you need sales in the “right” stores that are tracked and you need a comparable amount of radio airplay.
It’s a closed shop these days. Some would say monopoly but there are no longer corruption investigations. Which is why you pay $12 handling per ticket at Ticketmaster for your Livenation concert and the Livenation owned/pwned venue (they own House of Blues and pwn sweetheat contracts on civic venues across the country).
George Martin had the band ditch the leather jackets and the rough edges for suits and a nicer boy image.
The press conferences may not have been scripted but the humorous take was part of George Martin’s plan to sell the band as 4 unique personas. Probably why he kicked Pete Best out of the band.
They were packaged.
The Beatles’ idea was to move on from ever having to sing I Saw Her Standing There again. Paul said in interviews that he didn’t want to be in his thirties still singing that song.
Funny how it’s the old songs people pay $100+ to go see him sing these days. And he sings them in spite of what he’d rather be singing.
>>Exactly...You could see the audience singing the songs word for word with ages from 25 to 75 years old...Their music is and will be timeless....
Wonder if it sounded a bit like this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UoH9zP_n_g0
Link Wray had distortion and fuzz before them and John Lennon knew who Link was.
Les Paul had multitracked vocals.
Producer George Martin did the string arrangements.
Was the Beach Boys' Pet Sounds a concept album?
Scratchy by Travis Wammack has a backwards bit in 64.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7dxVex-iCyY
But being stoned out and wanting to put some recordings in the end groove of Sgt. Peppers so they could hear something nonsensical when everybody was too stoned to get up and change the record (and that is why it was there), that was their own innovation.
Let's start from the dates. No magic happened in February 1964. It started happening in England at least two years earlier, and exploded there in 1963 with numerous bands, none of which you can accuse of being influenced by the Beatles, if only because those outside of Liverpool never heard of them, but they had certainly heard the same American influences, which the mainstream AM radio in the States did not play much, but which were played by the English broadcasts of Radio Luxembourg, and I'm talking about country and rhythm & blues records of the time, as well as rock and pop records beyond the Top 40 limit favored by the American radio. I suspect that if George Martin had decided to pick up the Hollies instead of the Beatles at the time, we'd be talking about Holliesmania, or Dave Clark Five mania. The talent was there and elsewhere. George Martin would have supplied the flutes and the strings.
Strings in rock records date back to the 1950s. As do accordions, as a matter of fact (Bill Haley had an accordionist in his band.) Concept albums? Take this:
It was enough of a concept, and a clearly articulated concept (what was the 'concept' of Sgt Pepper again?) to be understood and covered in its entirety recently by a duo that wasn't even born when the Everly Brothers recorded it in 1958:
I'm waiting for somebody to cover any of the art rock concept albums. Waiting...
To write something other than Beatles songs. They would become this OTHER band.
"Everyone knows" that Robert Fulton invented the steamship---except he didn't, John Fitch did, but Fulton popularized it and made it the first practical steam-driven ship. Out of all the rock and rollers I interviewed, not one cited the Everly Brothers as an influence on anything they did---including those that I would call more "vocal/harmony" based. Eventually in a conversation they would mention them in passing, but only after citing the Beatles 20 times.
Now, you can argue till the cows come home about who was actually "first" in anything, but based on my rather extensive research and interviewing, musicians of the mid-20th century who played rock and were known for it (as opposed to some people you can pull from a bus route and quit playing when they were 17) almost without exception cited the Beatles as their major influence, and it isn't even close with anyone else. You can say they were wrong to think that way, but you just can't argue with the fact that THEY feel that way.
As for the other "breakthroughs," like all innovations it's not necessarily the guy who actually does it first as it is the person who popularizes it who is viewed as the real innovator (think Robert Fulton vs. John Fitch).
Beatles photographer and film-maker Ethan Russell, a friend of mine and a very close friend of my ex-wife, Rosanne Cash, once said to me that, “like no other band, those guys gave us the gift of our own inspiration.” Amen! Rodney
If you recall a month ago, after Phil Everly died, dozens of musicians, some of who you might have interviewed, said how they all had been influenced by the Everly Brothers. As were the Beatles, without a question, Simon & Garfunkel, Peter & Gordon and the Hollies, among many others. History of popular music did not start and did not end with the Beatles, and did not start (as absurdly suggested everywhere last week) in February 1964. History of trends among the practitioners in some branch of art or craft is meaningless when it focuses on it from the point of view of the users, buyers or receivers of this art, and that is what I am seeing.
And finally, if it wasn't Link Wray who used fuzz on a "major record", then it must have been Nokey Edwards on another 'concept' album that came out long before Sgt Pepper:
The second group occurred when I interviewed people for a biography of Mark Stein of Vanilla Fudge. Again, my focus was never on the Beatles, but on their relationships with Mark, but again, as part of the warm up questions, they ALL mentioned the Beatles as their influence.
There was actually a third group I interviewed during the filming of "Rockin' the Wall," and same thing. Even foreign musicians (Muslim musicians!) that I interviewed for my second film often (but not as universally) said the same thing. So, I think I'm on very, very solid ground here.
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