AHC: Keep Music Good

After they got signed onto Parlophone they were a boy band. This isn't a value judgement, it's fact. They were, during this period, the best band in the world. You're looking at the idea of their being a boy band a posteriori, inferring from the term several characteristics of boy bands that came after The Beatles.

I'm not criticizing The Beatles at all.
No, not at all it isn't as if they were a Phil Spector Girl Group with weenies, they were actually good.
 
After they got signed onto Parlophone they were a boy band. This isn't a value judgement, it's fact. They were, during this period, the best band in the world. You're looking at the idea of their being a boy band a posteriori, inferring from the term several characteristics of boy bands that came after The Beatles.

I'm not criticizing The Beatles at all.

They were never a boy band, for all the reasons aforementioned. And the idea of them being so is not a fact. The concept of boy bands came later, and partially due to people wanting to capitalize on the Beatles (again, we get to the Monkees). And what I mentioned as to what boy bands are are what they indeed are and not just selective cases. And as boy bands came later, with the first perhaps being the Monkees, the way to measure what a boy band is is by those acts. A boy band is, in short, generally a circus monkey trotted around with little to no self determination. It may get self determination later, but so long as it does not, it is assuredly a boy band.

And, even if you are not saying they are bad, you are lumping them in with a sub-section of music of which they are not part, and a sub section which, through generally being dreck and almost always being corporate, is besmirching in undue fashion.

The Beatles are no more a boy band than the Rolling Stones or the Who or the Kinks or the Zombies.
 
Dudicus, they didn't start as a boy band, they were NOT a boy band by the late sisties, but from 64 to 67 they did their time as at least superficially a boy band.
 
Dudicus, they didn't start as a boy band, they were NOT a boy band by the late sisties, but from 64 to 67 they did their time as at least superficially a boy band.

*Le Sigh* No, they did not. They did their time as a basic, though good, early 60s Rock n' Roll group as everyone else did at that period, with all the bells and whistles everyone else had, whatever those may be. You had a bunch of Brits with longer hair wearing suits, playing to the teen demographic (and screaming teen girls) that listened to Rock, the Beatles among them, along with the Animals and the Zombies and the rest.
 
*Le Sigh* No, they did not. They did their time as a basic, though good, early 60s Rock n' Roll group as everyone else did at that period, with all the bells and whistles everyone else had, whatever those may be. You had a bunch of Brits with longer hair wearing suits, playing to the teen demographic (and screaming teen girls) that listened to Rock, the Beatles among them, along with the Animals and the Zombies and the rest.
I guess we'll have to agree to disagree.
 
For the people dismissing hip hop out of hand have you actually listened to it?
THANK YOU. I like hip hop, some rap, electric, rock (old and new), alternate, and the Beatles (a category of their own). And I wish more people would give modern music a chance.
 
How about rendering the boy-band boom of the late 90's and early 00's stillborn.

Lou Pearlman getting busted for pederasty might do it.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lou_Pearlman

The Boy Band trend is as old as Rock and Roll. The right manufactured band can be a cash cow. I worked at a bookstore in 1989-92 and we carried a ton of New Kids on the Block (NKOTB) stuff that sold like hotcakes to willing teenage girls. Not to mention Menudo stuff going to the Latin American market.

Both The Jackson 5 and The Osmonds were very big in the 1970's, including their own Saturday morning cartoons. And let's not forget The Brady Kids, or The Archies.

I'm pretty sure that The Archies, an animated cartoon band made up of studio singers, actually charted! The Monkees, a defacto "boy band" have been mentioned already. I've not checked the chart status of Josie and the Pussycats, however.
 
But can we at least agree I'm right?;)

No, I am simply allowing you to be wrong in your wrongness with my blessing.:cool::cool::cool::cool:


I think the best way to describe it would be:

The Beatles were not a "boy band" per se. They were not created by someone else, for the specific purpose of separating teenage girls from their money. But, excluding the creation of their actual original albums, they did get marketed like one for many years. So they can fall into that category at times depending on the definition.

In other words, to paraphrase Obi Won Kenobi, you are both right, from a certain point of view.
 
I think the best way to describe it would be:

The Beatles were not a "boy band" per se. They were not created by someone else, for the specific purpose of separating teenage girls from their money. But, excluding the creation of their actual original albums, they did get marketed like one for many years. So they can fall into that category at times depending on the definition.

In other words, to paraphrase Obi Won Kenobi, you are both right, from a certain point of view.

By the logic of marketing, everyone popular in music of that era is a boy band.
 
*In crotchety old man voice* Bah! Kids today and their music, it all stinks! I wish we could go back to the good old days of music, with Huey Lewis and the News and whatnot!!! I hate change!!!!!!!

I remember part of a comedy routine sometime in the 80's (don't remember who) that covered this.

In a Grouchy Old Man voice:

"You call that music! Jimi Hendrix! The Who! Now that's music!"
 
Guys, I'm not disputing the songs of those days lacked sex, drugs, and violence, but back then, it was far less common. And the songs were still more meaningful.

To quote Dave Barry: "In my day, people got up and cried with conviction: 'Wooly Bulllllly!.... Wooly Bully! Wooly Bully! Wooly Bully! Wooly Bully!'"
 
The Beatles occasionally slipped into Boy Band Mode, and they were definitely aggressively marketed. But they were still their own and were an awesome boy band.
Tweens can be horrible (especially Justin Beiber), and I could go without some other things (such as American Idol) but overall modern music is great. And although new music has some overly sexual elements, so did old music. But there is so much more to modern music too, even Nicki Minaj has some reasonable good music (to me), I like "Call Me Maybe" and the same is true for other singers and artists. I enjoy Nickelback, but I also like the Rolling Stones, I think DeadMau5 and LMFAO are awesome (and trust me sexy and I know it is not their worst or most sexual song) and I also think Led Zeppelin deserves every ounce of attention it can get. Skrillex is great but so is Donovan.
I know in some ways I am far from mainstream but come on guys (especially Peter Parker) you have to stop ignoring half of music, cut back on nostalgia, and recognize survivor bias when it exists.
 
Nothin' but love for you, Bro'.

Peter Parker, I love you, Bro' you're just adorable, but I have to tell you, right now in this thread you sound like SUCH an old Fart.

I tell you this with smiles and a warm heart my friend, no offense meant.
 
I think there's a difference between a Boy band and a band with boys in it.

IMO a Boy Band is a collection of performers assembled by a manager with the express purpose of achieving chart success. Musical ability or creative talent are not the issue. It's marketability. So they have someone good at singing, someone good at dancing, someone who is very clean cut for the younger teens and pre teens and someone a little more sexy for the older teens and young women.

A band like the Beatles existed prior to a record deal and were performing and making music irrespective of whether a record company signed them up. A band has a soul and a boy band does not. That's why they are usually held in low regard by musicians.

The Beatles were not a Boy Band. The Monkees were.

The Commodores were not a Boy Band. New Kids on the Block were.

U2 are not a Boy Band. Boyzone were.

etc.
 
Right, this has gone on long enough; time for Ed Costello's Patented Thread-Killin' Music Bachelor's to do its thing...

*cracks knuckles*

Leaving aside the stupendously provocative thread title, there's a problem with the premise of keeping music 'the same as in the 60s, 70s, 80s and 90s'. That problem is that, so far as guitar-based popular music is concerned, that's exactly what's been happening for the past ten years. I don't know if it's reached quite the same extent in the US (though there's issues there even if it hasn't), but British music throughout the last decade has been caught in a seemingly endless cycle of what Simon Reynolds terms 'retromania' - a constant mining of the past for inspiration, whether it be 'revisionist' (lifting elements from various artists, genres or records and melding them together or with original ideas to create something new) or 'revivalist' (swiping a sound wholesale from one reference point). We can argue ourselves hoarse about whether this is a good or a bad thing - I'll white out my thoughts below, in case anyone's interested (I'm not really sure it's appropriate to this debate) - but it does have the effect of essentially canonising the first half-century of modern popular music (in the sense that it becomes regarded as an inviolable canon where all that it contains is great, and all that is great, it contains - although given the adulation heaped even on such minnows as the Stone Roses you could be forgiven for thinking it meant something else entirely).

So yeah, now I've desperately tried to validate four years of my life I give this thread about a dozen more posts before dying on its arse?


Okay, 'retromania' - difficult one, this. The prevailing opinion associated with the term (as outlined in Reynolds' book of the same name) takes a mostly negative view of current popular music trends like revisionism and revivalism (both of which, I should add, are my personal terms and aren't widely used). Personally, I find some of the assumptions made to be somewhat flawed, in particular: the idea that the 'generation gap' manifests itself in some kind of noteworthy rebellion-as-new-genre against the prevailing musical establishment, denying the validity of respectful reinterpretation and essentially welding music to the context in which it was created; the idea that music must continue to be as insanely creative as the first fifty years of modern popular music, dismissing as stagnation what I consider to be a necessary period of consolidation (especially in the wake of the maelstrom that is the internet); and the idea that musical innovation can come only from the young, an idea often voiced by people who revere Morrissey or Ray Davies.

As to the revisionism/revivalism split, I find myself quite firmly on the revisionist side, at least when it comes to how I make music, but I will freely admit a lot of my favourite records and bands are revivalists. As ever, just sticking a label on something does not magically make it good or bad.

You all stopped reading about six paragraphs ago, didn't you.
 
Well, in my "The Prodigal Sons Return" TL, I've been planning on dealing with the music scene of the 1950s and 1960s in greater detail. Although I haven't gone into any great detail yet, there have been a few posts hinting at what is going to develop.

All of which reminds me that I really need to post my next two updates soon. *sighs*
 
Top