It wasn't the Sex Pistols, it wasn't the Ramones, it wasn't the Stooges, it wasn't even the fucking MC5 that started the whole fucking thing, IT WAS THE SONICS!
Jake Johnson
Yardbirds, Kinks, The Kingsmen, and the Stones were first. Just by a little though. They all at the same time, but some had more exposure than others.
deathtokoalas
you know, there was this dirty liverpool punk band playing outlandish shows in hamburg before all of them....maybe you've heard of them...
Jake Johnson
Right on. The Beatles were raw as hell back then. I think they always kept an element of rawness, but wrote SOME good love songs as well.
thecountofbasie
The Hamburg live bootleg is quite possibly (and certainly IMO) better than a lot of their later "classic" material...frankly, I think when they got too far ahead of themselves and stopped playing live, the music tended to suffer a bit (though still better than most of their contemporaries)
deathtokoalas
i think it depends on what you mean by "classic" material. when somebody says "classic beatles", i think of the material after revolver. but, i know some people are going to use the term to refer to the stuff before revolver, and write off the later material as a bunch of silly experiments.
the stuff after revolver is almost like it's a different band altogether. to use a tired trope - early, early beatles is the earliest example of punk rock i know of, but the stuff after revolver is really setting the groundwork for progressive rock, and defined just about all of the "art rock" that followed. so, it's really hard to sit there and try and compare it. it's really apples and oranges.
that being said, i agree that their early recordings up to about help have aged pretty badly. if you're going to do early rock 'n' roll, you should do it as raw as possible. despite their continuing commercial appeal, i'd argue that those first couple of records don't really manage to excel at much of anything at all.
thecountofbasie
I meant "classic" in the same sense...honestly, I think the experimentation of the post-Revolver (more specifically, post-live performance) era, while groundbreaking, hasn't aged quite as well as quite a bit of the earlier catalog IMO...maybe it's mostly too polished and not quite tough enough, but it's classic pop-rock for the most part
deathtokoalas
see, i don't even know how to react to that. there's a good two or three hours of unclassifiable art music in there that is still just utterly fresh and entirely unique. i'd hazard a guess that a few tracks, like a day in the life, will age roughly the same way as beethoven's fifth. conversely, i can't imagine future generations listening to i want to hold your hand outside of a 20th century pop music class
i mean...and i say this with no sarcasm or exaggeration...when somebody tries to write off post-revolver beatles as anything short of brilliant, that's essentially equivalent to forfeiting their opinion. it's like standing up and stating you have absolutely no appreciation of music as an artform.
it's one of those things where you might not love it, but you've gotta appreciate it as what it is. the only excuse is willful ignorance and conscientious artlessness.
thecountofbasie
I never said it wasn't brilliant...guess it's more accurate (as well as safer, for want of a better word) to just say I enjoy (and am far more likely to pull out to listen to) the earlier material
I Kill Communists
The Sonics and the Velvet Underground.
deathtokoalas
the velvet underground were not a punk band, they were pretentious "modern art" garbage. andy warhol and punk rock are the exact opposite of each other in terms of operating ideology.
Liam White
Way to have an open mind, brah.
deathtokoalas
it's not a question of having an open mind, it's a question of understanding what andy warhol & the vu stood for (which was music as a meaningless commodity) and what punk rock stood for (which was music as a vehicle for social change) and realizing they're entirely opposite things.
