Hard Hitting Question

[dps]

Favorite Beatle? To be honest, I've always been partial to Ringo.

Are the Beatles over-rated? Depends on how you look at it. No doubt they had a bigger impact on rock-n-roll (and probably on popular music overall) than any other single artist except maybe Elvis. There's also no doubt that they had a big cultural impact. OTOH, I think the impact that 60's youth culture had on politics tends to be very much over-estimated.

Also, if you're talking about just how good their music is (or isn't), I personally don't think they're the best rock act of all time, or even of their time. It's not that I don't like them--I do--but I like the Stones or The Who better. Especially The Who.

EDIT: And I'm not going to weigh in on the music vs science debate, 'cause I've had a rough day and if I get into that one, I might lose my temper.

[Closet_Skeleton]

Well, that gets really philosophical. I don't believe in an afterlife, so the only meaning of life is living for as long as possible.

Quality vs quantity.

What's the point of a song if you're not going to be alive long enough to listen to it?

Someone else can listen to it. Why should I only care about how happy I am?

Your personal preferences for car rides in silence,

I never said I had a preference for car rides in silence, I said auto-mobiles and all they stand for can go to hell as far as I care.

The existence of music and it's applications in making us happy in no way trumps the staggering contributions that the sciences have done for the human species. Music is icing on the cake, like any other form of entertainment.

Science is too broad a category to compare directly to music. You can include music within science if you want to.

No doubt they had a bigger impact on rock-n-roll (and probably on popular music overall) than any other single artist except maybe Elvis.

Elvis didn't innovate much, he just did it better than all the other white people at the time. Singling out the performer kind of ignores all the producers, managers and others who were just as innovative in making him the first massive Rock Star.

The Beatles' supreme influence mainly comes from how many people who might have innovated more than them can still be tied back to them. Lots of stuff The Beatles did they did not do first, they just popularised it so you can probably drag out the chain a bit further.

Picking two white groups for the two most influential artists of the 20th century is highly problematic when the three dominant forms of American music in that century were Jazz, Rythem and Blues and Rap (and the most popular non-American ones are Reggae or derivatives of R and B).

Or you just accept that fame and profile is more important for influentialness than originality is and end up with The Beatles and Elvis

[Razade]

Someone else can listen to it. Why should I only care about how happy I am?

Because your question expressly stated the singular "you" and that's what I was answering. You want to broaden it to other people? What if they couldn't hear? Screw 'em? Ignoring any of this. It's hard to enjoy yourself if you're in miserable pain. Music isn't going to cure your cancer or mend broken bones or ward off a life threatening infection. That's what good medicine and technology is. It lets you live longer so you have a longer chance of enjoying the things you want to enjoy.

I never said I had a preference for car rides in silence, I said auto-mobiles and all they stand for can go to hell as far as I care.

You stated that car rides would be "utterly unbearable" without the radio or a CD Player. If that isn't a preference on how you ride in a car than I don't know what is. Your preference for automobiles period really doesn't matter a wit to me. Music making the ride better for you doesn't mean anything to the contributions of medical science next to a CD player in a car either, which is my point.

Science is too broad a category to compare directly to music. You can include music within science if you want to.

I'm aware however I would contend that most wouldn't classify music as "Science". We can quibble over definitions every other word but that sounds just as entertaining as discussing how we all feel about cars and the riding there in.

[Closet_Skeleton]

That's what good medicine and technology is. It lets you live longer so you have a longer chance of enjoying the things you want to enjoy.

Well duh, nobody was disputing that.

You stated that car rides would be "utterly unbearable" without the radio or a CD Player. If that isn't a preference on how you ride in a car than I don't know what is.

Its not a preference for riding cars in silence.

So I had no idea what you were talking about since your sentence made no sense and I could only assume you either mistyped or mis-read my post.

We can quibble over definitions every other word but that sounds just as entertaining as discussing how we all feel about cars and the riding there in.

I have no idea what you think I'm trying to argue (I'm not trying to argue anything, I was just looking at things from different perspectives).

[fanta5m1c]

Lennon. I don't much care for the Beatles, but Imagine is damn good.

[Eldan]

Quality vs quantity.

Hey... the alternative is oblivion. Living quality 0. No matter how bad, it's still better to be alive.

But then, I also don't understand why people want music running while doing something else. Too distracting. I have to switch it off while doing anything else, e.g. reading, driving. I also quite often switch off game soundtracks if I need to do anything complicated, like in strategy games.

Even less comperehensible is the existence of clubs. I'll never see the point of going out wtih friends to a place where its too loud to talk to anyone and I get a headache after three minutes.

[Closet_Skeleton]

I can imagine situations where oblivion is the better outcome and I'll leave it at that.

I generally stop being able to hear the music if I'm focused on stuff like reading, but they are some things I find very hard to focus on without music being present, mostly creative stuff like drawing and writing. I know if you have ADD audio-visual stuff is the easiest to pay attention to so it might be something similar among people without it.

I can say for sure that Blind Guardian does help a lot when you have to demolish a wall with a hammer.

I went to a club once. It was that terrible. Not only was it too loud to actually socialise but the drinks were all cheap luridly coloured tack.

[Eldan]

I do have a form of ADD, but it mostly just means that if I want to concentrate on anything at all, I need perfect silence otherwise.

[dps]

Or you just accept that fame and profile is more important for influentialness than originality is and end up with The Beatles and Elvis

I'd say that's generally the case, yes.