The Monkees were better than the Beatles - agree/disagree?
- Thread starter Orang Utan
- Start date
Orang Utan
Maybe I like the misery
I use Tippex at workJohnny Canuck2 said:
Jazzz said:
Really?
They didn't start melody a la Crickets.
They didn't start rock n roll a la Chuck Berry.
They didn't start psychedelia.
They weren't the first to introduce meaningful lyrics to pop songs.
So er..
ooh! ooh!
I know!
They were the first to sing in a Liverpool accent instead of either a posh BBC type voice or a phoney American accent (never mind their yeh, yeh, yeh cos people were talking like that anyway by then)
Have I missed anything?
i voted for the monkees..the beatles became VERY played out for me at a young age cos my mum and brother played their records a lot,even as a child i vastly prefered the stones. i especially HATED the sargent pepper LP and abbey road...so dull 
..a second reason i find it hard to be objective about the beatles is because their fans are such PRATS and take them SO seriously, refusing to entertain the idea that lennon/mcartney arent fantastic musical geniuses! i even (crazy i know)went out with a beatle fan and he was so hurt when i said i thought the hollies were better than the beatles! TRUE FACT: all the bands supposedly heavily influenced by the beatles are in fact more interesting to me than the beatles.... including klatuu
sure i like the monkess and the criminally underated hollies..
but for me the ultimate 60s pop group is the zombies, their brooding orchestred hymns to suburban alienation will live in my heart forever! the zombies american cousins the left banke aint too shabby neither!
..a second reason i find it hard to be objective about the beatles is because their fans are such PRATS and take them SO seriously, refusing to entertain the idea that lennon/mcartney arent fantastic musical geniuses! i even (crazy i know)went out with a beatle fan and he was so hurt when i said i thought the hollies were better than the beatles! TRUE FACT: all the bands supposedly heavily influenced by the beatles are in fact more interesting to me than the beatles.... including klatuu
sure i like the monkess and the criminally underated hollies..
but for me the ultimate 60s pop group is the zombies, their brooding orchestred hymns to suburban alienation will live in my heart forever! the zombies american cousins the left banke aint too shabby neither!
118118 said:
Er, no, I was just talking about how the Beatles are not as significant as some people seem to think. I wasn't discussing who was most significant, I was just mentioning precursers to their sound. They wrote good pop songs, they recorded the most up to the minute styles, and they were, within safe parameters, cheeky chappies.
don't get tetchy
so significant does not equate to actual significance then - meaning stuff to people. rather there is some other objective criteria to significance, something about being the first. well tbh i don't find that convincing because e.g. the first does not always mean the most significant - take e.g. the most significant word in this senetence 'It is true that groucho is grouchy'.
Ha!
so significant does not equate to actual significance then - meaning stuff to people. rather there is some other objective criteria to significance, something about being the first. well tbh i don't find that convincing because e.g. the first does not always mean the most significant - take e.g. the most significant word in this senetence 'It is true that groucho is grouchy'.
Ha!
118118 said:don't get tetchy
so significant does not equate to actual significance then - meaning stuff to people. rather there is some other objective criteria to significance, something about being the first. well tbh i don't find that convincing because e.g. the first does not always mean the most significant - take e.g. the most significant word in this senetence 'It is true that groucho is grouchy'.
Ha!
Hmmm, well my posts started in response to an assertion by jazzz that the Beatles changed music. The point I am making is their impact re changing music was not significant. Sure The Beatles had a great significance to a great many people, popularising certain hair and clothing style, providing popular songs that people grew up to and no doubt that mean(t) something to a lot of people.
bluestreak
HomosexualityIsStalin’sAtomBombtoDestroyAmerica
yeah, this is a subjectivity thread. the beatles were more significant, i'll admit that, though they didn't deserve to be IMO.
Orang Utan said:
The fact that the Monkees have a song which is still bastardised on the football terraces today and the Beatles don't says it all
Loved the Monkees when I was a kid and still have their 'Best of...' somewhere. The Beatles mean nothing to me.
Orang Utan
Maybe I like the misery
What do soccer fans use it for?
Cheer up Gary Johnson (or the manager of your own club's detested rivals)
Oh what can it mean?
To a sad shithead (or other derogatory term for said detested rivals) bastard
And a shit football team!
Not exactly poetry but it gets the point across
Oh what can it mean?
To a sad shithead (or other derogatory term for said detested rivals) bastard
And a shit football team!
Not exactly poetry but it gets the point across
ohmyliver said:
It would, but I'm not convinced that the Beatles started the trends that have been considered as influenced by Sgt P. Neither psychedelia nor the 'concept album'. I don't think Sgt. P is a concept album (in anycase a pretty horrendous thing to be accused of starting). What they did do through Sgt P is to popularise certain trends and that itself had an impact. The white album has some claim to originality.
I am not a Beatles hater, and my argument is that the musical impact and originality of the Beatles has been over-stated, not that they were 'crap' nor that they had no impact or significance. I think that any such claim would be daft.
I think the originality and impact of the Impressionist painters (at one point called the Intransigants) has been over-stated too. Now, I think the Impressionists caused a major stir in their time and were in some ways innovative (especially Monet), and are extremely important in art history, but the extent of their originality has been over-egged. The painting out of doors thing was part myth and part a continuation of prior practice - what they did do was eschew the over finished studio construction art, something the Realists and Manet had already started. Their use of bright colour and their ability to sometimes finish a work on location was permitted by technological developments in pigments - so you see bright colour in the contemporaneous e.g. Pre-Raphaelites. So, if I say that the Impressionists are over-rated I mean just that, not that they are crap. (maybe Renoir was a bit crap, but Monet was brilliant!) As with the Beatles; I am not saying they were crap, just over-rated.
Termite Man
zombie flesh eater
Monkees were better , they may not have been as musically innovative or even written their own stuff but they were a great fun pop band who seemed to have some heart and fun doing what they did . The Beatles were just souless song writing machines in comparison !
Johnny Canuck3
Well-Known Member
While I was driving last night, the radio station I was listening to played all of the Sgt Peppers album. I didn't catch all of it, but heard about 3/4 of it. I probably haven't sat and listened to it through like that, for 30 years.
It's a classic piece of music. With the passage of time, we tend to get caught up more in the hype etc, than concentrating on the music itself. The music is excellent.
The Monkees were lots of fun, and I liked them then, and still do, but they were a passing pop phenomenon, while the Beatles were musical giants.
It's a classic piece of music. With the passage of time, we tend to get caught up more in the hype etc, than concentrating on the music itself. The music is excellent.
The Monkees were lots of fun, and I liked them then, and still do, but they were a passing pop phenomenon, while the Beatles were musical giants.
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