60 years ago today....

[o0Ampy0o]

4 hours ago, Geoff Grace said:

...none of us is guaranteed a long life. All any of us can do is try to increase our odds.

 

If you are old and living this second you are guaranteed a long life even if vaporized a split second from now.

[AROIOS]

1 hour ago, Geoff Grace said:

...I don’t know a lot of Gen Z’ers, but the ones I know don’t pay much attention to today’s hits...

I'm glad to hear that. Unfortunately, most of the GenZ/Millenials I come across have boring tastes. It's not their fault at all, just a result of what they've been conditioned with from early on.
 

1 hour ago, Geoff Grace said:

...Back in the ’70s, a music history professor of mine lamented that we students had missed most of the advances in Melody, Harmony, Rhythm, and Form, and that all that was left for us to explore was Timbre. His words have proved to be mostly true...

He deserves a big hug from me. Even on a forum like ours, lots of folks just don't or choose not to see it.

[uhoh7]

One interesting aspect is how canny the Beatles were in knowing just how far they could go.....with the BBC. It was their BBC performances in the early days that put them in the public eye and set up their part of the invasion. They had to tone down the Hamburg identity a bit I gather.  Not an accident....I remember being really pissed my shows were interrupted by huge strange processions, horses with backward boots...went on forever I thought. Extremely boring. In contrast the civil rights riots in the south, water canon, police beating up unarmed old people...that was transfixing, and inspiring. By 8th grade I had a army jacket and wire-rim glasses. Hot pants, out of the blue, were allowed at school. I still have not got over that....

 

We had a riot, and occupied the library, after lunch one day. Half the 600 kids. What did we want? Freedom to shoplift downtown if we had a "free period" ie an hour free one day during school. We called it "Open Campus". Our Principal, a diminutive woman named Dr Dolcini, lead us to a ranting session that afternoon. No consequences. Next year: Open Campus. 

 

This was a college town, Davis, California. Hot pants, civil rights marches, student riots, long hair, and all kinds ot interesting music that shocked many older people. Staple Singers OMG Take me back there, please. 

 

Ed Sullivan reminded me of Richard Nixon.

[Greg Mein]

I was three years old but somehow I remember it, one of my earliest memories absolutely; my family in the front room in North Hollywood watching on the little B&W. It's almost certainly because of all the hype, hysteria, anticipation, discussion and coverage that it stands out in my mind more than the actual performance itself. 

 

I was an instant fan, my parents fell hard into the "Paul Jones camp".

[Theo Verelst]

I'm sure they could've used a better PA system..

[David Emm]

On 2/10/2024 at 12:49 PM, Floyd Tatum said:

Reminds me of Brazil - one of my favourite movies!

 

Likewise here, as a big Gilliam fan. However, I also felt it to be part horror movie, because it smelled a lot like the time I spent as a computer room drone at a bank.

 

I loosely agree with Bill Maher when he said "Religion is a group mental illness." The corporate environment is very similar. The demand for zombie-ism always sent me running after a while. High point: wearing a Walkman full of prog while wrestling a giant tape library. I found an amusing point of intersection there. "Karn Evil 9" is ideal fare for a computer room of the time. "The tapes have recorded their names...." 

 

When you give up too much of your right to independent critical thinking (where you weigh everything against everything else), you can begin to be framed as a heedless, needless victim. "Brazil" is a superior example of high cinema in several ways, but boy, is it a warning call.

[MathOfInsects]

As one of the people filling young people's heads with the terms melody, harmony, rhythm, meter, timbre, texture, and the like, I have to say that sometimes these ideas are deployed in the inverse of how we mean them. We teach these ideas as basic elements of Western music--names for the things we hear when we in the European tradition listen to music. It does not mean that if something doesn't have one or more of these elements, or if something highlights one or more of them in ways that are different than what we're used to, that it is "not music" or the like. It just means we have to describe or conceive of that practice a bit differently.

There are plenty of non-metric or non-harmonic or even non-melodic musical examples from within "the tradition." Essentially every cadenza would fall in that category.

We also fool ourselves a bit into thinking that melody defines the Western tradition. In fact, rhythm--how notes or events are deployed across time--is far more important to our tradition than melody is. It's just that we tend to deploy that rhythm with melody as the delivery device. We foreground melody and bury rhythm as a driving factor, but of the two, the rhythm is the more crucial element. 

Conversely, for the practices that are primarily percussive, we might "hear" them as rhythmic in the West, but in fact those "rhythms" are melodies in every sense of the word--often linguistic, carrying literal meaning in both the pattern and the pitch. In those cases, "rhythm" is foregrounded, but in fact the pitch (language) is the arguably more important element.

Funny how perception or cultural belief often portrays these two facts as the opposite of what they are. 

At any rate, we never teach that to mean, "without X, something is not music." It's taught from the "front" end: When you listen to music, at least that made in the Western tradition, here are names for some of the elements you will likely hear. 

[Mark Schmieder]

On 2/10/2024 at 11:37 AM, Floyd Tatum said:

Their vegetarianism may be a reason for their longevity.   But, they are also very wealthy, and can afford to have chefs on staff to cook them delicious vegetarian meals.   I've always suspected that's one of the keys to a good vegetarian diet - having someone around who knows a lot about how to combine and prepare that type of food.    If I were to try going vegetarian, I wouldn't have the slightest idea where to begin.   I'm not very good at cooking in the first place, but slapping together meats, vegetables, and dairy products isn't very difficult.  Mind you, this is just my opinion - I can't prove it.

 

I consider myself to be a better chef than musician or engineer (despite my patents). Perhaps when I retire, I should take up teaching vegan cooking to musicians. 🙂

 

George was a vegetarian also, but he never gave up chain smoking. I don't think Paul or Ringo did either, until George's death brought it home to them.

[BluesB3]

If I can be excused from pulling this drifting thread slightly back on topic....

 

I was already playing in a band at teen centers, even before I had my Mississippi drivers license. (15 y/o minimum age). Our set list consisted of songs we had either heard on WLAC from John R and Hossman Allen, or learned from other bands we admired. (Andy Anderson and the Rolling Stones or Lane Cameron)

 

The night after we heard the Beatles on Sullivan we knew that era of 1,4,5 and 1,6-,4,5 Rock'n'Roll was over. No more faking it. We had to step up our game learning the solos, harmonies, and changes from needle drops on the LP's.

[MathOfInsects]

12 minutes ago, BluesB3 said:

If I can be excused from pulling this drifting thread slightly back on topic....

 

I was already playing in a band at teen centers, even before I had my Mississippi drivers license. (15 y/o minimum age). Our set list consisted of songs we had either heard on WLAC from John R and Hossman Allen, or learned from other bands we admired. (Andy Anderson and the Rolling Stones or Lane Cameron)

 

The night after we heard the Beatles on Sullivan we knew that era of 1,4,5 and 1,6-,4,5 Rock'n'Roll was over. No more faking it. We had to step up our game learning the solos, harmonies, and changes from needle drops on the LP's.

But were you vegetarian???

[BluesB3]

11 minutes ago, MathOfInsects said:

But were you vegetarian???

Naw more likely quarts of Miller High Life and Krystal Hamburgers at 3:30 in the morning after the gig.

[AROIOS]

3 hours ago, BluesB3 said:

...The night after we heard the Beatles on Sullivan we knew that era of 1,4,5 and 1,6-,4,5 Rock'n'Roll was over. No more faking it. We had to step up our game learning the solos, harmonies, and changes from needle drops on the LP's...

Jazz aside, weren't Easy Listening (as a genre) way more sophisticated in harmonies and changes than what Beatles brought to the table?

Edit: Never mind. I soon realized that Easy Listening was much less relevant to your particular situation playing in a rock&roll band at the time.

[BluesB3]

39 minutes ago, AROIOS said:

Jazz aside, weren't Easy Listening (as a genre) way more sophisticated in harmonies and changes than what Beatles brought to the table?

Edit: Never mind. I soon realized that Easy Listening was much less relevant to your particular situation playing in a rock&roll band at the time.

Mantovani, Patti Page, etc. were on the mainstream radio and TV at the time but really had no impact on us. We thought it was "Square".

 

We'd been playing Mojo Workin' and Trick Bag so our tastes were more on the visceral side. We listened to Brubeck and Horace Silver but if it wasn't blues based, it was beyond our skill level. I do remember Sack'o'Woe, Summertime and Comin' Home Baby being on our set lists.  Cosimo Matissa's artists from New Orleans and Ray Charles were huge influence on us until the British Invasion.

[Mark Schmieder]

22 hours ago, BluesB3 said:

Naw more likely quarts of Miller High Life and Krystal Hamburgers at 3:30 in the morning after the gig.

 

What are Krystal Hamburgers, and are they legal? Meth-inks they are not.

[Polychrest]

15 minutes ago, Mark Schmieder said:

 

What are Krystal Hamburgers, and are they legal? Meth-inks they are not.

I think you can get them at your local Walter White Castle.

[Docbop]

One of the last groups I worked for was a insane cast of characters in a ten piece band doing all the danceable MJ, EW&F and similar stuff.  The band had been around for years and was originally an all Japanese band, but later on was only two original members one the keyboard player was the most straight arrow guy around and the rest of use crazy ass road dawg musicians.   The band still played main gigs in the Japanese circuit around L.A. we discovered this little coffee shop in downtown LA called the Swiss Alps or something like that that was now a Japanese coffee shop.  The Alps was open 24 hour on weekends so a popular place for drunk businessmen and some crazy musicians.   We'd go there after packing up from gigs and we'd get the big booth then usually the horn players would pull out a bottle of something to drink.  Dam horn players <grin> and we'd drink.  Then as we got comfortable with the place we started "smoke" at the place.  The college age weekend waitress would come by our table and get a whiff stop and just look at us.  They'd come over and say give me some or I'm telling the owner and he'll call the cops so we shared.  It was quite a scene with us chowing down on tonkatsu while drinking and smoking and the drunk businessmen so drunk they do head dives in to giant bowls of donburi. 

 

One of the best part of playing music was the crazy times after gigs going to eat at 3am somewhere and telling waitress wild stories to see if they'd believe them.   Almost as good as crewing on a tour for big name acts that good get really nuts after a couple weeks on the road. 

[BluesB3]

 

15 hours ago, Polychrest said:

I think you can get them at your local Walter White Castle.

You're partially right. They were (are?) the Southern equivalent of the White Castle hamburger. Little square patties with onions soaked in grease called "gut grenades" .

[SamuelBLupowitz]

On 2/9/2024 at 5:30 PM, ProfD said:

IMO, not really.   For the most part, music consumption is generational.

It's very similar to our parents and grandparents not really digging *our* music. It's a generational cycle.😁😎

I'd argue though -- it doesn't *have* to be, and while our favorites may remain for years and years, and we may have less time to absorb new music, that doesn't mean we have to become the resentful, arrogant voice represented by that article shared by the OP.

 

The music I grew up with was largely made by my parents' generation, though not all of what connected with me was to my parents' taste (they loved Elton John, Billy Joel, and the Beatles, though they never got obsessive about them the way I did; Led Zeppelin and Jimi Hendrix didn't really do it for them). I hear new music of all kinds regularly that blows me away. I think as artists, and especially those of us who grew up under the shadow of a "damn kids today don't know what's good for them" mentality, we have a responsibility to be more open-minded than those who came before us.

[Floyd Tatum]

2 hours ago, BluesB3 said:

 

Sorry to go off-topic a bit, but - wow, those are some weird-looking automobiles!   I love some old cars, but, man, some of those 60's fins are not beautiful.   I wouldn't mind owning that Falcon wagon, though, that's a pretty sweet-looking old car.   (I think that's a Falcon?)   I wonder if there are any original Falcon wagons like that that are in decent condition.   If so, they're going to come from somewhere with a dry climate.   Maybe the Vice Grip Garage guy will find one and drive it home! 😄  Well, I'll be dipped!  Oofta!

[BluesB3]

4 minutes ago, Floyd Tatum said:

Sorry to go off-topic a bit, but - wow, those are some weird-looking automobiles!   I love some old cars, but, man, some of those 60's fins are not beautiful.   I wouldn't mind owning that Falcon wagon, though, that's a pretty sweet-looking old car.   (I think that's a Falcon?)   I wonder if there are any original Falcon wagons like that that are in decent condition.   If so, they're going to come from somewhere with a dry climate.   Maybe the Vice Grip Garage guy will find one and drive it home! 😄  Well, I'll be dipped!  Oofta!

 

Since you asked...

left to right: Not a Falcon. Full Size  '59 Ford. Rust was pretty prevalent back then. '60 Buick (check out the roofline). '59 Ford. '53 or '54 Chev. These days it's hard to imagine there was a time before foreign automobiles existed in the US.

[ProfD]

2 hours ago, SamuelBLupowitz said:

I'd argue though -- it doesn't *have* to be, and while our favorites may remain for years and years, and we may have less time to absorb new music, that doesn't mean we have to become the resentful, arrogant voice represented by that article shared by the OP.

Sure.  Personally, I'm a huge proponent of remaining MOM (Musically Open Minded) especially among musicians. 

 

I think it's detrimental for musicians to set their internal dial to [insert decade here] and forget it. Just a matter of time before gigs dry up.

 

A lot of music has been composed and recorded over time.  No need to overlook that well especially when it comes to composition or rearranging cover tunes.  Put a fresh spin on *old* music.

 

2 hours ago, SamuelBLupowitz said:

The music I grew up with was largely made by my parents' generation, though not all of what connected with me was to my parents' taste (they loved Elton John, Billy Joel, and the Beatles, though they never got obsessive about them the way I did; Led Zeppelin and Jimi Hendrix didn't really do it for them).

 As I mentioned above, we grow up with old music from previous generations and current/new music of our own generation and sometimes beyond.

2 hours ago, SamuelBLupowitz said:

I hear new music of all kinds regularly that blows me away. I think as artists, and especially those of us who grew up under the shadow of a "damn kids today don't know what's good for them" mentality, we have a responsibility to be more open-minded than those who came before us.

Right.  MOM listeners and especially musicians never stop exploring the full range of XM radio stations, recorded music past t o present and YouTube videos looking and listening for musical inspiration and ideas. 

 

IMO, it's a sad state of affairs for musicians who start grumbling and complaining how much better music was during  [insert land before time].  They should sell their gear already and pick up Pickleball.🤣😎

[bill bosco]

i heard of them but never actually heard them before seeing them on Ed Sullivan that night . to my 12 year old ears , compared to what i was used to hearing , their sound

was bright , with some kind of new energy . seems like the whole world exploded with new music that year . i had a little second hand transister radio and it was like

every week new stuff was coming out . overnight , everyone i knew was playing guitar or drums . kept us out of trouble , or visa versa i guess . was an exciting time .

[KuruPrionz]

On 2/14/2024 at 10:25 AM, Floyd Tatum said:

Sorry to go off-topic a bit, but - wow, those are some weird-looking automobiles!   I love some old cars, but, man, some of those 60's fins are not beautiful.   I wouldn't mind owning that Falcon wagon, though, that's a pretty sweet-looking old car.   (I think that's a Falcon?)   I wonder if there are any original Falcon wagons like that that are in decent condition.   If so, they're going to come from somewhere with a dry climate.   Maybe the Vice Grip Garage guy will find one and drive it home! 😄  Well, I'll be dipped!  Oofta!

That is a Fairlane wagon, my parents had one. It is late 50's, the Falcon was smaller and first produced in 1960.

[Bill H.]

I can't specifically remember seeing the Beatles on Ed Sullivan (like when I saw them live) but the main thing I remember was that I had to start practicing singing! Before the Beatles, rock bands generally had a front to handle the vocals, with us guys handling the instruments. 

 

As a cocky 15 year old who thought he knew everything, my initial impression was mixed. I thought their 2 part harmonies were crude compared to the Beach Boys, and their covers of US R&B (mostly from the Vee-Jay album) was inferior to what I was hearing from Wolfman Jack on my 6 transistor radio at night. I quickly came around though. 

 

That pic of the Ford station wagon reminded me of the Plymouth Fury wagon that I used to haul equipment not long after. Full sized station wagons were cheap on the used market - much cheaper than sedans - and when gas was 24.9 (that's cents son  ) gas guzzling wasn't an issue. 

 

 

[David Emm]

8 hours ago, KuruPrionz said:

That is a Fairlane wagon, my parents had one. It is late 50's, the Falcon was smaller and first produced in 1960.

 

Ah, the 50s and 60s, the era that brought us Chem-Tone paint colors that looked like cartoon character barf after an ether/tequila binge.

[KuruPrionz]

2 hours ago, David Emm said:

 

Ah, the 50s and 60s, the era that brought us Chem-Tone paint colors that looked like cartoon character barf after an ether/tequila binge.

And LOTS of chrome, huge bumpers that looked like they would eat machines. Pretty much butt-ugly to a mud fence, it must have been a great time to design cars!!!

 

[Floyd Tatum]

On 2/16/2024 at 7:08 AM, KuruPrionz said:

That is a Fairlane wagon, my parents had one. It is late 50's, the Falcon was smaller and first produced in 1960.

That is a confusing sentence!

[KuruPrionz]

3 minutes ago, Floyd Tatum said:

That is a confusing sentence!

Which one? There are 2 sentences. Fairlane was a medium sized car, Falcon was a compact. Not the same vehicle.The big Ford was called a Galaxy in the 60's, not sure in the 50's.

[Floyd Tatum]

15 minutes ago, KuruPrionz said:

Which one? There are 2 sentences. Fairlane was a medium sized car, Falcon was a compact. Not the same vehicle.The big Ford was called a Galaxy in the 60's, not sure in the 50's.

Oops, my bad!   I saw Falcon and read Fairlane.   That's like dyslexia x 2!   And what's really strange, is that I looked at it a couple of times, and didn't notice my mistake.   Thank you, beer!

 

[Docbop]

The Falcon was the platform the original Mustang was built on, my family had a 65 Mustang.     They also made a Falcon small pickup truck, the first band I was in the singer's parents had one we'd use to move gear.