So trivial, yet it really ticks you off.

[vitanola]

Couldn't stand the Monkees when it was first broadcast and when my sixth grade peers were into it. Thought it was childish, and would rather spend my time listen to Bob Dylan and Frank Zappa & the Mothers.

Imagine my surprise when a classmate informed me that Zappa had been a guest on the show.

I, too disliked them, but then I had just been given a talking machine and stacks of records, and so was already off chasing another sort of muse.

 

[GHT]

I, too disliked them, but then I had just been given a talking machine and stacks of records, and so was already off chasing another sort of muse.

Can't say I disliked The Monkees, never actually saw them or their TV show, but then I was side tracked. As a teenager/twenty something in 1960's Britain, it would have been sacrilegious heresy to admit not liking The Beatles. So when my new wife asked if I was going to buy The Sgt. Pepper album I admitted that I was not that bothered. When she asked me what I did like, I said, thinking that perhaps she might not have heard of the wonderful African/American singers like Bull Moose Jackson, Big Joe Turner & Louise Jordan, I said Big Band. She was amazed and surprised and when I actually admitted that I liked the crooners, she was ecstatic. That's when our collection of music from The Era really started.

 

[LizzieMaine]

Rock has always been, to me, a language I don't understand, either the sound or the song structure. We never had it in the house when I was growing up -- my mother's favorite music personalities were Billy Vaughn, Lawrence Welk, and Liberace, and she couldn't stand Elvis. We didn't know the Bealtes from Herman's Hermits -- I didn't know anything about the Beatles at all until I saw "Yellow Submarine" at the drive-in on the bottom half of a double bill with a Disney comedy called "The Boatniks." I liked "Submarine" for the animation -- although I found those tall characters with the apples unsettling -- but the only song that stuck with me was "When I'm Sixty Four," which had a kind of familiar AABA feel to it. Later on when I first heard a George Formby record, I understood where that came from.

I did like the Monkees, though, for the sheer inanity of the comedy. It reminded me of something you might find in a second-rate Columbia two-reeler, which even at that age I recognized as the kind of comedy you'd laugh at in spite of knowing how hokey it was. I was very fond of comedy on television as far back as I can remember -- I'd get annoyed watching dramatic shows waiting for something funny to happen -- and it seemed like that type of broken-down short-subject slapstick was very much a dominant thing in mid-sixties television. The music on "The Monkees" just seemed like the gimmick they wrapped the comedy around, like the island setting on "Gilligan's Island," the western/cavalry premise for "F Troop," or the superhero schtick on "Batman."

Take away the central gimmicks, and these were all essentially the same show. I remember the moment I realized that, because it was the moment I started to think critically about what I was watching.

 

[Fading Fast]

Having grown up in the late '60s / '70s in a home where Big Band / '40s and '50s crooners / etc. was the only music that played on the radio, but where all my friends were listening to rock - I loved both but thought they were two separate worlds. My dad had no interest in rock and my friends had no interest in Glen Miller.

Somewhere along the line - don't remember when - the epiphany moment came for me when I heard Elvis (having been introduced to rock by '70s Rolling Stones, The Who, etc. albums - I eventually went back and started exploring its early practitioners) do some ballad and realized that he was on the same continuum with Bing and Frank.

That helped make music less compartmentalized for me - like when Bing and Bowie do a duet on Little Drummer Boy.

Theres a beat / a sound to rock that works or doesn't for you - can't argue someone should or shouldn't like it. But the lyrics to some rock songs are, IMHO, poetry that, to Lizzie's comment on language, make the best rock songs poetry set to music.

While a bit pretentious for my taste - I was listening to a few songs from The Who's "Tommy" the other day and thought, those boys really had something to say about society, child rearing and mental illness that was ahead of its time.

 

[HanauMan]

I grew up with my parents listening mainly to C&W. My mom especially would have good old George Jones on the record deck much of the time. So I grew up with the likes of Hank Williams, Jimmie Rogers, Loretta Lynn and others. I still enjoy C&W and directly as a result of being introduced to this musical heritage I sought out older C&W and I also began listening to 'Cowboy' songs through watching films like Highnoon. I enjoy family acts like The Carter Family and also Bluegrass. I kind of stopped at Nanci Griffith and don't listen much to modern C&W. Bing Crosby was a record that only came out at Christmas time to be played (some Christmas song album) and no crooners or suchlike was ever played, except for Doris Day, who was a pretty good singer.

The Monkees and The Beatles were long before my time so while I did listen to their music on the radio, it wasn't something I went out looking for. In fact, I was really only introduced to the Beatles in some movie in the late 1970s where the Bee Gees (my friend was crazy about their music, so I only saw the film because he wanted to see it) sang cover songs from, I seem to recall, Sgt. Pepper. The Monkees were a bit too girly for my tastes at the time whenever I caught their reruns on TV. I did enjoy the Woodstock movie and enjoyed the likes of Jefferson Airplane; man that cute hippy gal could sing. Jimi Hendrix was awesome too. But it wasn't my era and I listened from the sidelines of a decade apart from the action.

My own musical timeframe was basically from Patti Smith to The Smiths. Pure poetry set to Rock music.

As to Classical music, it wasn't played in our home. However, in my early teens we lived in Europe and I began to take note of it because German TV had many classical concerts on air. I thought it was something interesting and I liked the drama of the music. I was also introduced to opera on European TV. However, while I still listen to classical music, and indeed have an extensive collection on CDs, opera somehow didn't enter my soul and I never cared much for it.

 

[tonyb]

Duke Ellington allegedly said, in response to being asked what kinds of music he likes, something to the effect of -- there's only two kinds of music: good and bad. I prefer the good kind.

 

[Edward]

The Wrecking Crew are on hundreds (at least) of pop tunes. Brian Wilson knew all too well the limitations of his brothers and that conniving cousin of his, so while the Boys were out touring he sought out the best players he could find. On a couple of CDs I have around here are recordings of Brian in the studio putting together a couple-three or four tunes -- "Wouldn't it Be Nice" and "Good Vibrations" among them. It's a revelation.

It's such a shame the Beatles seem to dominate so many people's idea of the period. As overrated as they have been ever since, Brian Wilson deserves much more recognition.

That's a big part of the reason why Orson Welles' modern-dress Fascist-satire version of Caesar worked so well, and why it's so rare nowadays to see an actual version of the play done in a traditional Roman setting. We screened a National Theatre version last week which offered a rather ripped-from-Twitter modern-day version of the show, which opened with a furious heavy-metal overture. It's probably the first time a rage-cooked version of "We're Not Gonna Take It" has ever opened any Shakespeare production, and I'm afraid some of our timorous old white ladies will never quite trust our advertising again.

Ha. I love radical reinterpretations of Shakespeare: keeps it living, not a staid museum piece. I've always wanted to direct a production of Macbeth set in the loyalist wing of a Northern Ireland Prison circa 1982....

In the modern version of Romeo & Juliet, Leonardo Dicaprio says, when someone pulls out a huge, great, chromium plated magnum: "Put up thy broadsword." Cracked me up.

That was one of the lovely touches of the film medium; they were able to show in close up that "Sword" was the band of their guns. Would never have worked on stage, but on film... I really don't rate Bahz Luhrman at all, but that film was superb.

 

[tonyb]

It's such a shame the Beatles seem to dominate so many people's idea of the period. As overrated as they have been ever since, Brian Wilson deserves much more recognition.



Ha. I love radical reinterpretations of Shakespeare: keeps it living, not a staid museum piece. I've always wanted to direct a production of Macbeth set in the loyalist wing of a Northern Ireland Prison circa 1982....



That was one of the lovely touches of the film medium; they were able to show in close up that "Sword" was the band of their guns. Would never have worked on stage, but on film... I really don't rate Bahz Luhrman at all, but that film was superb.

I agree that Brian Wilson was under appreciated 50 years ago and remains so now. But his good pal Paul McCartney (yes, they are indeed fast friends) has many dozens of tunes to last the ages. He's a brilliant melodist.

I'm not a big John Lennon fan, though. Those boys had something magical together when they were in their teens and 20s, but Lennon just got too cool for school. He had to know, back when they split, that Paul's tunes (for which they were both credited, and vice-versa) would be the ones grandmas sang to their grand babies a century on. Paul's songs would be the ones covered by innumerable others, and heard in watered-down versions in elevators and supermarkets.

 

[Doctor Strange]

I run hot and cold on Baz Luhrmann's films, but - while the 1968 Zeffirelli film will always be my favorite - Romeo+Juliet has much to recommend it, including good chemistry between Claire and Leo. And many of those modernizing touches a la the pistols with the brand name "Sword" are very clever; I especially like "rising politician Dave Paris" (Paul Rudd!)

Since I'm always interested in different adaptations, I tried to watch the recent Romeo & Juliet with Hailee Stanfield... and couldn't make it past the first scene, which turns the opening street brawl into a joust between Montague and Capulet knights. Worse than that, it rewrites Shakespeare's dialog. It's one thing to set the plays in other contexts (I saw a lot of NY Shakespeare Festival productions in my youth, where the Merchant of Venice's Belmont estate was turned into a yacht, R and J took a page from West Side Story and had ethnic street gangs, several plays that had gay nineties or twenties settings, etc.)... but you don't mess with the words!

Regarding The Wrecking Crew, the documentary by that title out on Netflix (or Amazon?) is very worth a watch. Those guys were brilliant!

And Fading Fast, re The Who's Tommy. I said above that I came from a classical background and only really got into rock/pop late, but I had a bunk counselor at summer camp in 1969 who played the brand-new Tommy album constantly... and it fascinated me and became one of my important gateways into rock. "Wait, it has an overture?!?"

And I never liked The Monkees, it aired before I even liked rock/pop. And as I said above, my folks steered us to "better" shows, which meant a lot of the really silly shows that were popular then - e.g., Gilligan's Island, Green Acres - weren't regular viewing for us.

 

[LizzieMaine]

Elvis was the thematic reincarnation of Al Jolson. Go back and watch Jolie's moves when he sings "Toot Toot Tootsie" in "The Jazz Singer" and you'll see the roots of Elvis.

As to sixties TV comedy, even as a little kid I could see that "Green Acres" was something very very special. I didn't fully appreciate the anti-bourgeois satire of "The Beverly Hillbillies" until I got older, and I always thought "Petticoat Junction" was utter hokum. But there was nothing like "Green Acres" on television then, and there has been very little like it in any other medium -- I learned the meaning of "meta comedy" from it before I knew that such a term existed. To this day I can watch that show and marvel that anything so utterly dada ever got on the air.

All that said, I'll agree with the Doc that most sixties TV comedy (with a few exceptions like Dick Van Dyke, the early seasons of Andy Griffith, and the aforementioned Hillbillies and Green Acres) was strictly lowest-common-denominator. When "All In The Family" came along in 1971 and swept all that away it was like witnessing the Big Bang.

 

[Doctor Strange]

I think Bing Crosby was even more the template for Elvis than Jolson in the white-guy-sings-black-style-and-becomes-a-smash deal. Or more precisely, it's easier to see from a modern POV.

I don't disagree that Jolson did pretty much the same thing, but there's so much now-questionable baggage surrounding Jolson - and his theater-based style is just so big and overwrought - that he's much harder for modern viewers to appreciate. He's a very hard sell to people who aren't as adept at viewing things in historical context as us. And while Crosby can be cloying and schmaltzy, he doesn't seem beamed in from some other universe the way Jolson does.

 

[LizzieMaine]

As to poetry set to music, I think you can extend that to any good set of lyrics. Tin Pan Alley turned out a lot of hacky stuff in its day, but the lyrics of Cole Porter, Lorenz Hart, Oscar Hammerstein, and Dorothy Fields can stand with the best the English language has ever produced. "All The Things You Are" might be the greatest love song ever written.

 

[HudsonHawk]

One of my favorite Shakespeare re-telling plays was one I saw where The Comedy of Errors was set in 1967 San Francisco’s Summer of Love. I also got dragged by one of me ex-fiancés to the theater to see 10 Things I Hate About You, but didn’t know at the time it was Shakespeare. To my surprise, it was kinda fun.

 

[Edward]

I agree that Brian Wilson was under appreciated 50 years ago and remains so now. But his good pal Paul McCartney (yes, they are indeed fast friends) has many dozens of tunes to last the ages. He's a brilliant melodist.

I don't discount that there is much of value in what the Beatles produced - I do like them, even if much of their work sounds a little dated today compared to, say, the Velvet Underground, or Iggy Pop, for the sake of argument. However, my issue is a with the notion that thy have become the untouchable old standard. In all honesty, I firmly believe that had the Beatles kept going but the Stones stopped in 70, for whatever reason - say it was Keith or Mick that Chapman had become fixated with - then they would be the untouchable legends, and the Beatles would be "those old guys who wrote some nice tunes but are kinda sad now".

It was hilarious to see the shock with which some greeted the news that thousands of kids thought that when George Martin died it was George RR Martin of Game of Thrones/i] had been lost (GRRM had to make a statement confirming he was still alive). I think this was incredibly healthy: the popular culture of the 'Sixties Generation' has unquestionably dominated popular culture for far too long. Time it was cut down to size.

I'm not a big John Lennon fan, though. Those boys had something magical together when they were in their teens and 20s, but Lennon just got too cool for school. He had to know, back when they split, that Paul's tunes (for which they were both credited, and vice-versa) would be the ones grandmas sang to their grand babies a century on. Paul's songs would be the ones covered by innumerable others, and heard in watered-down versions in elevators and supermarkets.

Lennon was an ass, a really nasty piece of work. With the Beatles, what was genius was the combination of them. Much like Monty Python worked because you had the old school comedy talent mixed in with those with the surrealist touch (thus what was once destined to be a funny yet fairly traditional skit about a faulty toaster became the Dead Parrot Sketch, such a strong motif in popular culture that twenty odd years later Thatcher, as PM, was able to reference it in a conference speech), the Beatles' particular magic lay in the combination of Macartney's innocent whimsy and Lennon's cynicism. That, and being sensible enough not to record too many of George's sons. Not a one of them wrote or recorded a single note worth a damn post-Beatles.

FWIW, my favourite Beatles numbers by a country mile are both on the White Album - Blackbird, and Back in the USSR.

Sometimes I wonder how many "new Beatles" have been lost because of the way the industry now works. It took the Beatles three to four albums to really hit their stride. Since the turn of the 90s, and probably earlier, you get one shot - sell a million, or disappear.

I run hot and cold on Baz Luhrmann's films, but - while the 1968 Zeffirelli film will always be my favorite - Romeo+Juliet has much to recommend it, including good chemistry between Claire and Leo. And many of those modernizing touches a la the pistols with the brand name "Sword" are very clever; I especially like "rising politician Dave Paris" (Paul Rudd!)

The one thing I didn't like at the time was how they presented Mercutio. On reviewing it now, it really does work well, but I suppose I had just always pictured him very differently - more like a ladies-man version of Jarvis Cocker, or in the vein of David Tennant's take on Cassanova.

Since I'm always interested in different adaptations, I tried to watch the recent Romeo & Juliet with Hailee Stanfield... and couldn't make it past the first scene, which turns the opening street brawl into a joust between Montague and Capulet knights. Worse than that, it rewrites Shakespeare's dialog. It's one thing to set the plays in other contexts (I saw a lot of NY Shakespeare Festival productions in my youth, where the Merchant of Venice's Belmont estate was turned into a yacht, R and J took a page from West Side Story and had ethnic street gangs, several plays that had gay nineties or twenties settings, etc.)... but you don't mess with the words!

I hadn't heard of this one. Yeah... judicious editing is one thing, but once you start rewriting Shakespeare, well.... it isn't Shakespeare any longer, is it? It's like changing the melody in Ode to Joy and claiming it's still Beethoven.

Regarding The Wrecking Crew, the documentary by that title out on Netflix (or Amazon?) is very worth a watch. Those guys were brilliant!

I must check that out.

As to poetry set to music, I think you can extend that to any good set of lyrics. Tin Pan Alley turned out a lot of hacky stuff in its day, but the lyrics of Cole Porter, Lorenz Hart, Oscar Hammerstein, and Dorothy Fields can stand with the best the English language has ever produced. "All The Things You Are" might be the greatest love song ever written.

I still consider Daydream Believer to be the great, lost Bob Dylan song. And I love Bob.

One of my favorite Shakespeare re-telling plays was one I saw where The Comedy of Errors was set in 1967 San Francisco’s Summer of Love. I also got dragged by one of me ex-fiancés to the theater to see 10 Things I Hate About You, but didn’t know at the time it was Shakespeare. To my surprise, it was kinda fun.

The most surprising one to me was The Lion King, which was consciously based on Hamlet.

 

[Fading Fast]

...And Fading Fast, re The Who's Tommy. I said above that I came from a classical background and only really got into rock/pop late, but I had a bunk counselor at summer camp in 1969 who played the brand-new Tommy album constantly... and it fascinated me and became one of my important gateways into rock. "Wait, it has an overture?!?"....

Back in the '90s, I saw The Who perform "Quadrophenia" live. In prep, I listened to the album several times over the preceding weeks. While it will never be my favorite rock album, I gained an appreciation for what they were trying to do - tell a story about a part of the human condition - the angst of youth, split personalities and mental illness - using music to emphasize and narrate.

And, live, it was much more impressive and impactful. Kudos to them for successfully melding to musical genres in a credible effort.

That said, for me, the encore of "Won't Get Fooled Again," "Baba O'Riley" and "My Generation" was the best part.

 

[LizzieMaine]

I think Bing Crosby was even more the template for Elvis than Jolson in the white-guy-sings-black-style-and-becomes-a-smash deal. Or more precisely, it's easier to see from a modern POV.

Artie Shaw once called Crosby the "first hip white man," and he does have a point. Listen to some of the stuff he recorded at Brunswick before Jack Kapp turned him into Mister Somethingforeveryone, and you'll hear a sensibility that none of his fellow crooners possessed.

 

[tonyb]

^^^^
Okay, fine, Edward, you don't appreciate Paul McCartney. But my, you do go on. And to what end?

In my view, which you obviously don't share, McCartney wrote many a great song in his post-Beatles career. It might rub the wrong way if it were suggested that a person who can't hear that would do well with a new set of ears. What you offer differs little from that suggestion. "Not a single note worth a damn." Sheesh.

 

[HanauMan]

Yeah, you're right about the post Beatles Paul McCartney songs. While the Beatles were long gone by time I got into music, Linda and Paul McCartney's Wings did produce some good songs that I liked, such as Band on the Run. They also sang the song in one of the James Bond films. My brother liked them and he had their albums, like Wings Over America.

 

[tonyb]

Artie Shaw once called Crosby the "first hip white man," and he does have a point. Listen to some of the stuff he recorded at Brunswick before Jack Kapp turned him into Mister Somethingforeveryone, and you'll hear a sensibility that none of his fellow crooners possessed.

Sometimes it takes some distance to see what was really happening.

It's now widely held that Louis Prima -- who penned "Sing, Sing, Sing," a veritable anthem of the Swing Era, fer cryin' out loud -- taught the squares how to rock during his resurrection as a late-night lounge act in Vegas during the late '50s and into the '60s. But had that been suggested back then, Mom and Pop from Sioux City would have gone hear Patti Page instead. Prima worked enough of the old dago schmaltz into his act to get 'em in the door. And besides, he looked kinda square -- neat haircut, no facial hair, coat and tie.

Too bad Keely Smith croaked. That's been fairly recently.

 

[Trenchfriend]

I got Paul McCartneys "Flaming Pie"-album from 1997 and it still rocks very good. These "recollection" of the old times, as he said himself, was seemingly very effective.

The album didn't got me really in 1997, when I was 13, but ten years later, it worked.