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Reminder: The Beatles remain the best band ever.


MarcO

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thanks for your interesting responses. The internet really brings out the best in everyone.

The Beatles ARE the best band ever.

AdamH - Phish weren't, aren't and never ever will be in the same universe as The Beatles. Stop smoking weed.

NewRider - yeah The Stones are GOOD but get real. Stop drinking so much whiskey.

C-Towns - it's generally good to know how to actually SPELL the name of the band you are advocating. Stop everything.

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no they aren't

yes they are

no they aren't

yes they are

no they aren't

yes they are

no they aren't

yes they are

no they aren't

yes they are

no they aren't

yes they are

no they aren't

yes they are

no they aren't

yes they are

no they aren't

yes they are

no they aren't

yes they are

no they aren't

yes they are

no they aren't

yes they are

no they aren't

yes they are

man i hope this bloody factory picks up. i need a hobby.

:)

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I recently arrived back across the Atlantic Ocean from my pilgrimage from the United Kingdom where I saw Sir Paul McCartney play the Liverpool Sound at Anfield Stadium on June 1, 2008.

To see Macca perform in Liverpool was one of the most powerful musical moments in my life, no pun intended. In the set that was filled with the Beatles and Wings hits that have been heard in his last several tours there were a few surprises. Including the set opener "Hippy, Hippy Shake" by Chan Romero, made famous by the Swinging Blue Jeans, which Paul had not performed since 1963 with John, George and Ringo.

The set also marked the debut of a couple of songs, one of which was a rock and roll version of "In Liverpool" which first saw the light of day in McCartney's 'Liverpool Oratorio' which marked his first foray into classical music released in 1991.

The biggest debut of the night was the first performance by any Beatle of "A Day in the Life.†Paul did the first John Lennon verse as well as his middle section of one of the most significant songs off of one of the most critically heralded albums of all-time ‘Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band.’ June 1st, interestingly also marked the forty-first anniversary of the United Kingdom release of 'Sgt. Pepper's.' Though Macca flubbed his own line "Woke up got out of bed, made the bus in seconds flat, made the bus in seconds flat" he did it without missing a beat and even put up his two fingers and looked at them and lipped out the word “twice?â€

After "A Day in the Life" Paul and his touring band of the past two tours went straight into Lennon's "Give Peace a Chance" with a giant peace sign on the screen behind them. It was a beautiful tribute to John and his wife Yoko Ono who was in attendance with the other 35,000 plus fans in Anfield. Paul had performed "Give Peace a Chance" before in Liverpool in a medley tribute to his song writing partner who together helped changed the world.

June 1st not only marked the anniversary of the release of 'Sgt. Peppers Lonely Hearts Club Band' it also marked the fifth anniversary of McCartney's last performance in his hometown of Liverpool. Paul introduced one song by saying "Here's a song I wrote about a road that is not too far from here" and then the band false started into "Penny Lane" and then Paul said "That's okay, now you know it's live."

To hear "Let it Be" played in Liverpool with the line "When I find myself in times of trouble, mother Mary comes to me, speaking words of wisdom ‘Let it Be’" with his mother Mary buried just a few kilometres away was another powerful moment in a night full of them.

Though I myself and I am sure many others were hoping that Ringo Starr would make an appearance at Anfield with McCartney, instead we got Dave Grohl of the Foo Fighters and Nirvana who played guitar and vocals on the Wings hit “Band on the Run†and played drums on the Beatles “Back in the U.S.S.R.†and again got behind the kit with the set closer “I Saw Her Standing There.â€

Fellow Liverpudlian band the Zutons opened the show along with the Kaiser Chiefs, who both put on good sets, but the day belonged to Sir Paul McCartney, perhaps along with Bob Dylan the most significant living musician in popular music.

After the fireworks ended above Anfield Stadium my friends and I made a walk from the stadium to the city centre of Liverpool to Matthew Street where we went to the Cavern Club which was packed with others who made the same mini pilgrimage from the concert and we listened to two Liverpudlian’s play an assortment of Beatles songs. Lennon and McCartney they were not, though I could not think of a better way to end my night seeing Sir Paul McCartney in Liverpool.

Paul McCartney

Liverpool Sound

Anfield Stadium

Sunday June 1, 2008

Start time: 9:08PM

1. Hippy, Hippy Shake

2. Jet

3. Drive My Car

4. Flaming Pie

5. Got to Get You Into My Life

6. Let Me Roll It (tease “Foxey Ladyâ€)

7. My Love

8. C’Moon

9. The Long and Winding Road

10. Dance Tonight

11. Blackbird

12. Calico Skies

13. In Liverpool

14. Follow the Sun

15. Eleanor Rigby

16. Something

17. Penny Lane

18. Band on the Run (with Dave Grohl on guitar and vocals)

19. Back in the U.S.S.R. (with Grohl on drums)

20. Live and Let Die

21. Let it Be

22. Hey Jude

23. Yesterday

Encore: 24. A Day in the Life

25. Give Peace a Chance

26. Lady Madonna

27. I Saw Her Standing There (with Grohl on drums)

End time: 10:56pm (Total time 1 hour 48 minutes)

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Quite the couple days for Dave Grohl

American rockers Foo Fighters treated British fans to a surprise at a concert in Wembley Stadium on Saturday when members of Led Zeppelin joined them onstage for two songs.

Guitarist Jimmy Page and bassist John Paul Jones teamed up with Dave Grohl and his band to play Zeppelin classics Rock and Roll and Ramble On.

The collaboration, coming on the Foo Fighters' second night at the London locale, was Zeppelin's first appearance since the band played a one-off gig in December.

"Tonight, playing here at Wembley Stadium is an honour and if we didn't take advantage of this opportunity we'd be crazy," said Grohl as he introduced the rock icons after playing a 16-song set.

"We knew from the beginning this wasn't going to be another outdoor show, we have been planning this for six months."

Grohl took over the drums while drummer Taylor Hawkins sang vocals on Rock And Roll. Then the Foo Fighters frontman swapped places with Hawkins for Ramble On.

The collaboration came just eight months after members of Queen joined the Foo Fighters onstage at the O2 in London for a cover of '39.

Grohl made sly hints to the special appearance earlier on in the night. "This will be the show we are talking about for the next 20 years."

The band wrapped up the show with Best Of You and Grohl became visibly emotional.

"Welcome to the greatest day of my whole entire life. At this point there is only thing left to do, sing a song together as loud as you can."

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  • 1 year later...

Sheesh, this thread took a little digging for.

The Band of the Decade - The Beatles?

What does it say that the biggest musical group of the first decade of this new millennium recorded its last album 40 years ago?

That's what sales figures show, that the best-selling album of the decade is the Beatles' 1, a collection of their number one hits. And that, when counting the individual albums in their massive (and very expensive) box sets of remastered recordings released just this past September as individual albums rather than one "unit," the erstwhile lads from Liverpool have sold more CDs than Eminem, the leading solo act of the decade, or any group, for that matter.

That's what the figures show, but what do they mean?

For one thing, it points up the fragmentation and flash-in-the-pan American Idol mindset of the new music scene. For another, it points up the ongoing appeal of the Beatles.

Though I liked them, I was never a big Beatles fan. They were somewhat before my time, and when my time came I embraced California bands and singers. I've gone through a number of musical phases, and there were years that passed in which I didn't listen to the Beatles, aside from the unavoidable snippets one hears passing through life.

When the remastered Beatles albums were released this past September, I was intrigued. As I looked over what was being released, I realized that I really didn't know a lot of the material, as familiar as the Beatles seemed. I had a few of the later classics -- Abbey Road, Sgt. Pepper, the White Album -- but the earlier Beatles material, which merely made them famous, was largely a mystery. Even though I had compilation albums. The context was lost. And the recording quality, frankly, left a great deal to be desired.

Since I was writing extensively about Mad Men's season three, set in 1963, the same year as the Beatles' first two albums, when the remastered Beatles albums were released, I decided to get the earliest Beatles albums to have a greater feel of the time.

Which inadvertently kicked off my own sort of personal Beatlemania. Rather than get all the albums at once, I got them one at a time, to get a feel for what each was about and how it resonated with the year in which it was released.

It was like discovering a new band. The remastering of the albums is so well done, the sound so clear and vibrant, it sounds like the music was only recently recorded. And what a band! They put out a tremendous amount of material in a relatively short period of time, from 1963 to 1970. There are 14 remastered albums released by Apple Corps -- 13 studio albums and one double-album of songs released only as singles. That's an average of two per year. (Let It Be, released in 1970, was recorded in 1969, briefly abandoned amidst squabbling before being released after the final Beatles recordings to be found on the vastly superior Abbey Road.)

I'm especially partial to the early Beatles, 1963 to 1965, because it was so unfamiliar and new to me. I knew some of the songs, of course, but they were wrenched from the development of the group on compilation records.

It turns out the early and middle period Beatles albums were all wrenched from context in their original American releases, with Capitol Records frankly screwing them up, changing the lineup of the songs and frequently omitting songs altogether found on the original British releases. Naturally, the remastered albums follow the original British format.

Taking each of the early albums in their original order -- Please Please Me and With the Beatles in 1963, A Hard Day's Night and Beatles for Sale in 1964, and Help! and Rubber Soul in 1965 -- it was easy to see how Beatlemania progressed in Britain, then spread to America (breaking huge in the aftermath of the assassination of President Kennedy) and around the world.

The Beatles were fun and fresh. Still fresh, that is, as they'd played together for years and were a ferocious live act, their chops honed with endless playing in Britain and Germany.

America never really got a strong feel for the Beatles as a live act, since Beatlemania was so powerful a force here that the fans' incessant screaming made it sound as though shows here were being performed on the tarmac at a busy airport. And by the time people had stopped screaming all the time, the Beatles were such superstars that touring seemed a disturbing chore, and they retreated to the studio, where they became the first studio band, experimenting with pop music in ways never seen before.

So the two albums from 1963 stand as the best example of the Beatles in concert. The first, Please Please Me, was to have been recorded as a live album at the Beatles' home base club The Cavern in Liverpool. But producer George Martin decided the acoustics weren't good enough. So he and the Beatles recorded the album in a day at the Abbey Road Studios in London. With the Beatles was recorded later in 1963, in six sessions totaling 28 hours shoehorned into the Beatles' extensive schedule of touring and appearances.

What we get on these albums, bashed out in rapid-fire succession by today's standards, with rudimentary recording equipment, is a tight, energetic group with great vocals on a blend of rock 'n roll, rhythm and blues, and pop ballads. While the band still relied some on cover versions of songs they'd played a million times in their live shows -- as was the fashion of the day -- most of the material is original, with the Lennon/McCartney partnership already striking gold.

A Hard Day's Night, which I've quickly come to love, came out in 1964 along with the brilliant pseudo-documentary film by Richard Lester. The Beatles are antic, arch, and vibrant as they make their way through what came to be known as "Swinging London," which they merely own. Seven of the songs play as nascent music videos during the film, a new genre which comes even more to fruition in Lester's 1965 Beatles film, Help!

While they had more time for recording this album, they didn't have much by today's standards, recording the album on the run again in the midst of all they were doing. By any standards, they delivered a masterpiece, the best example of a guitars-and-drums vocal band playing and singing their own songs in live studio recordings.

This time round the Beatles present 13 original songs by John Lennon and Paul McCartney, and they sound tight and fresh and smart, from the classic clanging George Harrison chord that opens the title song to "I'll Be Back."

After Beatles for Sale, a rather hurried record done for the Christmas 1964 market which nonetheless has some gems like "Eight Days A Week" and "I'm A Loser" along with a return to cover songs, the Beatles hurried to make a follow-up to the hit film A Hard Day's Night.

That's 1965's Help!, which again makes drummer Ringo Starr into an unlikely movie star. Starr, regarded by many as the luckiest man on the planet to get the gig, the runt of the litter, was actually the key to making the group work. The Beatles had suffered for years without a proper drummer. Starr, the working class kid contrasted to John, Paul, and George's rather more posh and educated middle class backgrounds, filled the bill in the nick of time, and added a big dollop of charm to an already charming group.

As a movie, Help! is a Pop Art-inflected, pot-fueled melange of arguably amusing bits. In addition to the obvious nod to the Marx Brothers, it's something of a spoof of the James Bond films -- with the orchestral parts of the soundtrack mimicking John Barry's style, turning a riff from A Hard Day's Night into a mock espionage theme -- perhaps in answer to Sean Connery's famous put-down in 1964's Goldfinger: "Champagne without ice? My dear girl, that's as bad as listening to the Beatles without earmuffs."

The plot? Ringo has this enormous ring he can't get off his finger, so naturally a fiendish religious cult and a pair of mad scientists are after him and the rest of the Beatles, and ... Well, enough of that, except to say that the plot took the lads to the Austrian Alps and the Bahamas. All the better for some cool song sequences, this time in color, adding to the reason why MTV declared director Richard Lester the father of the music video.

Help! is not as consistent an album as A Hard Day's Night, but it marked a further advance, with the great title track a Lennon confessional of antic confusion and McCartney's "Yesterday" merely the most recorded romantic ballad in history, along with the brilliant mid-tempo rocker "Ticket To Ride."

Then came Rubber Soul, the first Beatles album recorded over a consistent stretch of time uninterrupted by tours and appearances, to close out 1965. Widely regarded as one of the greatest albums in pop music history, Rubber Soul, a more folk rock-oriented album, marks the real beginning of the Beatles' transition from a live band to a studio band. It's the first of their albums to seriously utilize studio effects, with new instrumentation and the beginnings of psychedelic rock.

After this, the Beatles pulled back from the breakneck pace that marked the pop and rock stars of the era, working hard during their contracts to extract the most possible from their fleeting fame.

It was evident by then that the Beatles' fame was far from fleeting. From then on, with the exception of some brief touring that ended forever on August 29th, 1966 at San Francisco's Candlestick Park, they concentrated on albums that became classics of the baby boomer generational soundtrack -- Revolver, Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Heart's Club Band, Magical Mystery Tour, the White Album, Yellow Submarine, Abbey Road, and Let It Be.

Branching well beyond the guitars-and-drums rock/rhythm and blues/pop sound of their early years, these albums embrace psychedelia, hard rock, art rock, music hall, children's songs, classical strings, and the beginnings of world music with the introduction of an Indian sound.

I already had Abbey Road, Sgt. Pepper, and the White Album, and the remastered versions of these all sound far better than the earlier versions.

Whether you prefer the later Beatles, long acclaimed as avatars of the counter-culture and progressive politics, or the earlier Beatles, for many of us a largely undiscovered, vibrant young band, it's not hard to understand why their music lasts and lasts and lasts, as fresh and intriguing as ever.

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A former Miss Canada finalist from Ontario has become the first graduate of a Liverpool university's groundbreaking degree program based on the Beatles.

Liverpool Hope University officials believe the master's program, which analyzes the iconic band's music and their impact on Western culture, offers the first advanced degree based on the life and times of the Fab Four.

Mary-Lu Zahalan-Kennedy, a singer and actress born in Renfrew, Ont., and raised in Oakville, Ont., joined the program when it started in 2009 and graduated Wednesday.

She is one of 12 full-time students of the program, titled The Beatles, Popular Music and Society.

Zahalan-Kennedy said the course provided insight into the wide-ranging influence of the band.

The course also deals with how the port city of Liverpool helped shape the group's identity.

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