My Criteria For Art

[AfterHours]

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To anyone interested...

I updated the general descriptions of each ratings level (5, 5.5, 6, 6.5 etc).

Keep in mind that these are just giving a general idea, and like all such qualitative descriptions on the criteria page, are talking about Art as a whole (hence, terms and descriptions are generalized and all-inclusive, not about specific details of just an album and so forth...).

I also included a "caveat" statement in each section through 7/10 (probably not really necessary above that).

This is all in addition to the recent wholesale update of my ratings (the "half" ratings that can be combined to produce those).

I will possibly add more to the ratings categories descriptions -- if I think of further or better descriptors/traits that are wholly applicable to all (film, music, paintings...).
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Best Classical
Best Films
Best Paintings

[AfterHours]

@Rhyner

I did respond with some insights about The River not too long ago. May be of assistance...

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^^^ Re: The River

Probably the most important bullet point I would add to that is that Springsteen's arrangements and backing vocals are all expressive of the American Dream both consecrated in epic and communal energy, and fading into memory, loss, nostalgia. Each song and gesture, each instrumental crescendo, etc, are representative of the American spirit, the sense of patriotic glory, the notion and emblem of the America that revives itself at Political rallies, at community vigils, that was consecrated by how its citizens long for the 40s and 50s and the 60s before JFKs assassination, etc. His vocal characterizations too, in addition to whats described here and in the posts above, are both in the first person and eliciting the perspective of all the "ordinary" Americans working hard and facing everyday issues, facing the dying myth of their previously optimistic lives, dreams and their idealistic notions of their country.
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Best Classical
Best Films
Best Paintings

[AfterHours]

Thought the following might be of interest. Some very old answers Scaruffi gave to readers (circa 1989 - approx 2000). Some of these are hard to find unless one really looks back into the archives. Thanks to DelBocaVista for PMing this to me.

NOTE: TRANSLATION IS MEDIOCRE...

Piero Scaruffi - Answering Readers

You are biased against ... for this you speak ill of it.

I no longer respond to letters that accuse me of being prejudiced against this or that. I receive messages that, in reference to some of my criticism, accuse me of being biased against British rock, Seattle, techno, heavy metal, jungle, melody, jazz, blues, punk-rock, the stars , homosexuals, women, European folk, Italian rock, the complexes whose names begin with "S" (I swear!) and, last but not least, American rock. I leave you to imagine how much I care to read against what is prevented according to you. And how much crediblity can have a letter that simply tells me "you're biased". If that's all you can say in defense of your favorites, you answered yourself.
An answer that I had given long ago and that is still good: if I speak ill of your darling, it means that I am biased against that group, or against that genre, or against that whole nation. I speak badly of the Beatles because I am biased against Great Britain (I speak well of the Rolling Stones, but this does not matter). If I speak badly about Soundgarden, I'm biased against Seattle (I'm talking about Earth, Pelt Melt, Sky Cries Mary, etc, but that does not matter). And so on to infinity. Since I have spoken badly of all rock musicians at least once, I am prejudiced against all musicians, against all genres and against all nationalities. I admit.

Why are you biased against ... glam-rock, synth-pop, dark-punk, etc? Almost all the exponents of the genre ...

First of all, it depends on how you define these genres. If Reed and Fowley are glam-rock, I'm a glam-rock fanatic. If glam-rock means Bowie and Glitter, then I'm not a fanatic. If the GDPs are dark-punk, I'm a dark-punk fanatic. If you mean Siouxsie for dark-punk, then they are not. I suspect that you of every kind of music choose as exponents only the most commercial and ignore the most artists. Then you take judgments based on my cut short commercial musicians of that kind. But maybe I'm not killing that kind, I'm cutting commercial music. As if to say that since I do not like Coca Cola, I do not like drinks.
Second, you did not count how many of the folksinger of the 60s, the progressive complexes, the country-rock complexes, the psychedelic complexes, the noise-rock, the disco-music, the industrial music, the blues-rock, etc etc . If you were a fan of grunge instead of dark-punk, you would have read the card on Pearl Jam instead of the one on Siouxsie and you would have accused me of being biased against grunge; and viceversa. At least you could list another 30/40 genres, not just those three, of which I criticized the majority of the exponents. At that point I would probably just answer you that you're right: I'm biased against all kinds of music. Maybe in all genres I try to make it clear that there are only 1-2 genes and then many mediocre and then a lot of consumer products?
You've just taken the genres you like, and some particularly commercial musicians of those genres, and you've been looking for a subliminal explanation for why someone like me does not care.
Third, I receive daily emails of this type. The genres that I am accused of "discriminating" change according to the tastes of the writer, ranging from punk-rock to grunge, from Merseybeat to country-rock, from disco-music to hard-rock.

In the last two volumes of rock history and on your website you speak well especially of complexes that nobody knows ... always favor unknown musicians ...

When I wrote the first version of rock history, the complexes I spoke of well enough (Doors, Grateful Dead, Velvet Underground, Zappa, Beefheart, Buckley, ...) hardly knew anyone. When I wrote the second version, the one published by Arcana, I dedicated great space to other musicians who did not know almost anyone: Tom Waits, Brian Eno, Robert Wyatt, ... Not to mention the last volumes, in which I talked about musicians altogether strangers like Enya, Nick Cave, Sonic Youth, REM, ...
These musicians today know them in many. Are we sure that the unknown musicians I'm writing about today will not be as respected tomorrow as the Doors and Nick Cave? Or are they simply unknown because the great artists rarely end up at the top of the sales charts?
The phenomenon is the same in all the arts. Rarely a great work of art immediately finds a great success with the public. What is very successful with the public is what is driven by marketing. But the few who know the work of art nurture great respect, and spread the word slowly, while consumers who have been influenced by the marketing campaign soon forget that product. Yesterday and Obladi Oblada(to mention two of the Beatles' masterpieces ...) they were at the top of the charts of half the world, but from year to year those who had those discs are more and more embarrassed and certainly do not go to recommend them to anyone else. Instead who had the first record of the Doors has continued to talk about it and to recommend it. And statistically an impressive percentage of those who listen to him in the following years find it brilliant. While every year that passes an impressive percentage of those who listen Obladi Oblada finds it an abysmal stupidity. Every year that passes the Beatles have less fans and the Doors have more. It is less and less the songs of Michael Jackson that you listen to the radio, more and more those of Enya that you listen to the radio.
Do you think a music critic must write about musicians who have already been made famous by advertising campaigns, or musicians who are not famous and will not be for twenty years but who have made records of great value?
On 2 February 2002 I had the pleasure of receiving this email from "Federico 83": "Many rock stars are given merit solely because they are famous, you say it on Bowie, but you see, the fact is that when you go to look at your rankings in the first places I find all names more than famous: Captain Beefheart, Velvet Underground & Nico, Robert Wyatt, Popol Vuh, Pere Ubu, Royal Trux, Faust, Nick Cave. " I was rarely pleased with a letter of criticism. These were, of course, all unknown when I dedicated them rivers of ink. Now there are those who think they are stars. Mutatis mutandis, are we sure that today's "strangers" are so negligible?

Why are you so strict? It seems to me that you speak badly about everyone.

(First of all, you read my Smiths and U2 cards: if I had read those of Gallon Drunk , Eat Static and Pram , to name other British groups, maybe I would have thought you were less strict).
The short answer is that experience has taught me to be strict: in ten years there will be very few records that will increase the votes, there will be many those whose votes will be lowered. It's true for all the music critics of the world, and I think it's true for you too. The vast majority of discs that today consider "masterpieces" in a few years (not a few centuries) will seem simply boring. I prefer to be strict today than having to change too many votes tomorrow.
If anyone in this world is interested in my judgments, I suspect that it is because "I speak badly of everyone". If I spoke well of all, I suspect that nobody would be interested in my judgments. To speak well of all is to maintain good relations with the record companies, the distributors, the musicians themselves. To talk badly about everyone is to save the listeners money.
My primary goal is to treat rock music (and so 'the cinema) as a major art, in which only those who have done something really salient and original and' worthy of being considered an important artist. In all the Italian literature there is not a single writer of which I would speak well unconditionally. There are only three (Dante, Leopardi, Montale) of which I would speak very well, and three others (Ariosto, Svevo, Pirandello) of which I would speak mainly well. I do not see why I should speak unconditionally well about a rock musician if I only speak well of six Italian writers. The reason why a classical music critic laughs when someone asks him to listen to a "masterpiece" of rock music and because there are thousands of such masterpieces. There were only ten, I think he would listen to them carefully. If this criterion of mine also serves to save my readers money, so much the better.
Anyone who buys all the records of the Moody Blues or all the country-rock records or all the brit-pop records has to curse so many critics, but not me. Those who trusted my ratings only bought a country-rock record, a best of Moody Blues and a couple of Brit-pop records. You can discuss the goodness of my opinions, but not about the goodness of the financial results.
Once I saw that in a newsgroup someone write "even piero scuffi gave him an 8". According to you if you wrote "even X gave him an 8", where X is the critic who has spoken well of all the records of the Moody BLues, of all the records of the country-rock and of all the records of the Brit-pop (beyond the 'skill of the critic), that sentence would have the same meaning?

Your grades are too low compared to those of other critics. A critic gave 8/10 to a record that you gave a 6/10 ...

Pay attention to the averages and the meaning of those 8: many critics give an 8 to mean "I liked it". Of course, if you give them a dozen a month, they do not expect you to buy them all. My 8 means "disk to buy now", and then I try to give one or two at most three a month, and there are months when I do not listen to any disc which I recommend immediate purchase. My 9 means that it is one of the records that I recommend to fans of classical and jazz when they ask me "recommend ten records of rock music from its origins to today". And by definition, there should be no more than ten. A critic who has given many 9 in his career obviously has a different meaning.
On my scale, very few musicians have done more than three records that are worth 7/10. On someone else's scale, all the musicians have made at least three records worth 7/10. They are simply different scales.

Negative consider the melody, the song, the pop ...

It is not me who considers melodic music inferior, it is the melodic musicians who do it. As soon as a melodic musician records a less melodic record he himself declares to journalists "this is not the usual song of songs". They are themselves, from the Beatles to Claudio Villa, to have spoken badly of the melodic song.

You hate melodic music ...

No, I hate the banality.

Melt the disks of melodic music, exalt those of noise ...

You are using two different parameters. Strog (many) discs of both melodic music and noise, exalt (a few) discs of both melodic music and noise. But you're referring to "melodic music records that I know well" and "noise disks I've never heard of". If you knew the disks of noise that I cut off and did not know the melodic music discs that I have cut short, you would have a diametrically opposite view of the subscribers' tastes: you would think that I cut the "noise" disks. In short, you're talking about your musical knowledge, not about my musical preferences. (Incidentally, I think more of "noise" disks than melodic records: try to average the annual votes).
The definition of "noise" is then very subjective. Many of the records that today are considered melodic (Doors, for example) were considered "noise" when they came out. Simply, they were different from what was fashionable. Thirty years later they no longer scandalize anyone. (If by "noise" you mean dissonance, I doubt that there are many dissonances in my top 10 of each year, so if anything you are proving the opposite: I like the melody and I am prevented against the noise).

You criticized the songs of X because you are prevented against the melody ...

The overwhelming (almost total) majority of such messages refer to the songs of a well-known pop star in Italy (Beatles, Bowie). Almost never an Italian reader writes me a message of this kind about melodic musicians who are not famous (I know, the Flamin 'Groovies, or the Big Star, which I have treated much worse than Beatles and Bowie) or that are famous and respected in the rest of the world but not famous in Italy (Beach Boys and Mariah Carey, to mention the two most famous anomalies that come to mind, and not to mention the Supremes, whose songs seem to me the non plus ultra of melodism) . Moral: your statement has nothing to do with the melody, and certainly nothing to do with my taste. Your sentence is simply a way of saying "I care about X" and you care about X simply because he is very famous (no, I do not believe it is vice versa). My point of view on the melody has nothing to do with it. The fact that the piece is more or less melodic has no influence on my judgment. In my opinion, however, the fact that the author of that piece is more or less publicized by you has had a major influence on your decision to write to me: if that author was not so famous, his songs would be heart as much as you care about those (no less melodic) of the Supremes or Mariah Carey.

Consider the noise a positive fact ...

In my opinion, if you make a statistic, every year you cut into percent more "noise" disks (meaning experimental disks in which a free format and dissonant sounds are used) than non-noise disks. But, in my opinion, you base your judgment simply on those two times that I have spoken well. You're not talking about my tastes, but about yours: you're bothered by the "noise" and therefore every time someone speaks well of a disk of "noise" you deduce that he is to consider positive the "noise" you do not consider it "negative".
I also suspect that you consider "noise" almost everything that is "unusual" (which is not a three-minute melodic song), and therefore almost all of those I consider great rock music (I consider them great just because they did something unusual).
I have the impression that you have never heard of Boyd Rice, Zeni Geva, of the entire British industrial school, and so on, or at least that you have not read what I have written about it.
Mother Nature manages to compose great symphonies even without using the melody (neither the rustle of the trees nor the gurgling of a stream are melodic). A volcano and an earthquake can compose music much more distressing than Wagner without using the melody. Hundreds of populations have made music for millennia without giving a primacy to the melody. I do not see why we humans in Western countries should limit music to melody, just because the Catholic Church decided a few centuries ago.
In general I do not like the noise as an end in itself so as I do not like the melody as an end in itself or the rhythm itself. But there are records of pure noise (from Karlheinz Stockhausen to Anthony Braxton, to quote also classical and jazz music) that I consider great masterpieces. Just as there are compositions of pure melody (Mozart's 22 concert or Beethoven's Ninth) which I consider great masterpieces.
Much of modern classical music and jazz are based on "noise".
(Incidentally, I often receive protests in the opposite direction: I am too strict with musicians who make experimental, avant-garde records, etc., while I do too easily with songwriters and melodic groups.

Spread as many brilliant records that are simply unlistenable ... I listened to the first record of the Red Crayola and it seems crazy ... and then criticize the songs of the Beatles.

It depends on who made them. If the Red Crayola record had been done by the Beatles, books would have been written in order to explain the prescient magnitude of that record and you would beat it to demonstrate the genius of Lennon. If you do the Red Crayola, it's pure noise for you. The smallest minutia that smacks of avant-garde made by the Beatles is an important fact. But if the Beatles did not do it is a ridiculous, banal, unlistenable sound. (Incidentally, the reverse also applies: a trivial melody performed by a pop star is a masterpiece, while a song made by an unknown ensemble is simply a tune.For me a melody is brilliant or not regardless of how often the radio transmits it).
I try not to be influenced by the author's name. The Beatles had done it, that Red Crayola record would receive the same high praise from me. If the Red Crayolas did the Beatles songs, they would get the same criticism from me. My judgment does not depend on the name of the author but only on the music.
On the other hand, if the Red Crayola record had the Beatles done for you it would be a masterpiece, and if the Red Crayola had made the Beatles songs for you they would be mundane songs. Your judgment depends on the name and has nothing to do with the music. Your definition of "difficult music" and "noisy music" depends on how famous it is.

You do not like the melody, the tunes of "commercial".

The first and third Mozart concert 22, the unfinished Schubert, just to name two ... But certainly not the millions of trivial imitators of Schubert and Mozart, for how many gold records and magazine covers have behind. (And I do not want to name Beethoven here).
The melodic song has existed for some centuries. It is difficult to do something that has not already been done, and it is difficult to do it well. So it is not surprising that, statistically, most of the melodic songs are terribly boring and obvious. Unless, of course, you've never heard the songs of previous centuries.
Then it also depends on what one means by "catchy". In rock music, see my list of the best melodic music records. All those at the top of that ranking are, in my opinion, masterpieces. It is melodic music (rock) that I like. (If you do not know almost anyone, do not take it with me). But people generally think "melodic" only what has been widely publicized and has sold millions of records. For me the melodies of the Beatles (to mention the most famous in Italy of the melodists) are of a hallucinating banality. They were already centuries ago. The Sanremo Festival (without going to bother classical music) has produced hundreds of similar refills to Penny Lane and Across The Universe .
Perhaps you are confusing "melodic" with "commercial". Not all melodic music is commercial.
Commercial music, by definition, is highly publicized music. It is rarely the good one. Ask any marketing manager at WB, Capitol, etc. based on how they decide how to invest the millions of dollars in the budget. If they say the word "quality", I'll be muezzin. They will only speak words that come from the jargon of the economy and commerce.
You think that's melodic music, but in reality it's not even true. If you listen to Shoes or Green (those who are really great melodists), you will find out that they are more melodic than Michael Jackson and Backstreet Boys. No one has ever invested us a penny. Often for trivial coincidences (they did not meet the right people).
One of the most common mistakes is to confuse anything that is not commercial with everything that is not melodic. I leave it to a sociologist to explain why people often translate / confuse "I do not know that musician" with "it is difficult music".
And anyway your observation would still need some clarification, 'cause I gave 8/10 to records of melodic and commercial musicians like Alanis Morissette and Enya (I talked well even the first album of the Aqua ). In my opinion, in the end, your criticism refers only to the melodic and commercial musicians who like you and do not like me, and I suspect that it is always and only of highly publicized musicians.

It seems to me that you have it with the majors ... Demonize everything that is touched by a major ... The majors are not so bad ...

(Meanwhile it is not true: you, as often happens, you refer to the two stars that you like and do not like me, and ignore all the stars I spoke well because you do not like them or you do not care: how often happens, the premises are wrong).

The record business works like this. You listen and hear about what is advertised, as for all products. The toothpaste you bought at the supermarket is not the best in the world, it is simply one of the three or four that are distributed by the supermarkets in your area, and you do not have the time nor the possibility to do a research on all the toothpastes in the world and decide which one is really your favorite. The majors control radio programming, interviews in newspapers, tours, and everything that makes music news. The Xs (choose a random complex) are neither better nor worse than many other complexes of that kind. They are simply those who signed for a major. That major has the organization to make sure that their music is listened to, and be heard by me and by you, like it or not. Like it or not, we will have to talk about it. Like it or not, we'll have to say that that song is so and that other thing is.
In all this artistic merit counts very little. In many cases it does not matter at all: a major manager has asked someone to cast a complex that sounds like this and what. The employee took the case and turned a few locals looking for a complex of that kind (in some cases they put the complex together). The majors are ready to make them stars, they play what they play. No one (I repeat: no one) can be exempted from commenting on a record promoted by a major major. Even if you talk bad about it, talk about it. Of the vast majority of discs published by independent houses will not speak almost anyone (it will talk about thirty years later, but this is another story).
So there's a good chunk of the official history of rock (and your musical tastes) that depends solely on the business plans of the majors' managers. There are countless other ways in which the official history of rock is conditioned by record company managers (who often have not even listened to the musicians they promote). Most of their decisions are tied to the budget. The budget determines how many complexes you write, how much you spend to promote them, etc. A major company decides at the table how many copies it wants to sell a record. Sales are directly proportional to the investment, as in all industries. If the record sells more, it is a success for the manager. If the disc sells less, it is a failure for the manager.
The vast majority of records published by the majors sell exactly what the major intended to sell. Just apply elementary marketing models. Business plans specify even how many interviews will be made to the star and how many radios will play certain tracks. Convincing magazines and radios to do so is an implementation detail assigned to employees.
In all this the musician counts very little. As you can imagine, a musician who has a personality is more of a problem than a solution, and is unlikely to find a contract with a major. On the other hand, a musician who accepts to be treated like a toothpaste is the ideal product for a major label. The exceptions seem a lot but they are very few, if you count the number of musicians in the world.
Only those who have become famous "before" to be signed by a major have the possibility to sign a contract in which they maintain a minimum of autonomy. But even in that case (I'm talking about Smashing Pumpkins and Soundgarden) the majors have endless means to condition the artist: if you do not add at least one melodic song from the standings, I do not promote the record, or if you do not accept that producer (often the sound and `the producer, not the complex) or if you do not accept this selection of songs. Almost all musicians prefer to go down to some compromise rather than ruin a career.
In the end, the music coming from the majors is almost the same: the result of business plans and endless compromises. Hence the famous expression "sell out": just a complex signature for a major, its sound changes, and it never becomes more experimental, it becomes more and more banal. You can say that changes for the better (mainly because the major is spending a few billion to convince you to say so), but the fact remains that the sound has changed (directly or indirectly) the major, not the musician.
(I also add that, for those who went through the barricades of 1976, these questions make the hair stand on end: it is like accusing a partisan of having it with the fascists).
The situation was slightly different in the '60s, when there were "only" the majors. For long reasons to explain in five minutes, in the '60s some managers really listened to music, they really tried to identify with the times, and they accepted the risk of promoting independent artists. This does not alter the fact that in the 1960s hundreds of large complexes could not record records. The official history of rock (and your musical tastes) made it the majors, not the musicians.

How did you listen to so many records in so few years? Do not you fear having superficially treated many records?

I do not know what many or few mean. Listening to discs from time to time, not every day. I generally publish a review only when my opinion has stabilized and this is the reason why I have not yet published the review of records released two / three years ago. And for this reason I prefer to publish books that articles in magazines.
It does not seem very smart to do such accounts, but I would say that I review a 5/10 discs a week, depending on how important they are and how often I want to listen to them again before publishing the review. But I "listen" to dozens. Many will never review them.
(For those who have time to waste in these statistics, all the reviews from 1990 on are summarized alphabetically on this page. The year in which I reviewed more is 1996: 1300 and passes, including those just reported. The year that I reviewed less is 1990, about 600. The total for all the years '90 is about 9,000, or an average of about two a day. In the '80s and' 70s many many less, and in the years 2000 will return to be less).
Then it depends on the periods. There are months when I travel and do not listen to music. There are months when I do not work at the university and I listen to music all day long (but not just rock ...). Sometimes I keep only with the reviews, so I have to review more than normal (many more than I would like to review).
In the space of 35 years of music criticism, I do not know how much I do, I leave it to the accountants and the envious.
I have certainly treated superficially many records of little known musicians. Of course the records you can not cover superficially, even if you want it, are those of famous musicians, because you feel them in spite of you for months and months, if not years and years, and their fans write to you all the time. `minute minutiae.
It seems to me sincerely that you have a curious idea of ​​the music critic, as someone who decides "today I listen and I review the disk X". Actually this only happens when a magazine commissions the review of a newly released record; all in all, the kind of review you should trust less. The normal process is instead that one has listened to many records, and one day he starts writing his impressions on one of those records. The "writing" comes later, sometimes many months later, and is often conditioned by many other things you have heard before and during.
So how could I write a travel book by dedicating a "review" to each of the main monuments I have visited in my life. Every time you have to document a minimum on the data you do not remember, but you already have the substance in your head, it is only a problem to find the time to put it in writing.
It is questionable whether it is better to listen to a few records, but carefully or with less attention. Most of the judgments on which I disagree are due, in my opinion, to the fact that I have listened to more records, so I have a wider overview. If you only listen to the REMs, but with great care, you will write a very detailed essay on REM, but perhaps you will never find out that in the 60s there was a complex, the Byrds, doing the same music. And that around the world there are a thousand complexes that do a thousand different things from REM.
It will be a coincidence, but the people I know who listen to as much music as I share most of my most controversial opinions (and find them banal, other than controversial). Those who listen to little music do not share almost any of them.

You speak badly of a complex as soon as it becomes famous ... You tend to speak well of unknown complexes ...

Quite simply, my judgments are completely independent of the musician's fame. And, alas, in rock music rarely the publicity enjoyed by a musician is proportional to his artistic skills (unlike, for example, classical music). The publicity enjoyed by a rock musician is almost exclusively proportional to how much his face on MTV is sold or how much he adapts to the fashion of the moment. It seems to me that it annoys you above all the fact that my judgments do not take into account the fame of the musician.
Unfortunately, many complexes begin to play bad music as soon as they become famous. Confuse the cause and the effect. And many complexes become famous because they give up their personality and adopt fashion stereotypes.

I suspect that your question can be reformulated like this: "I am a lazy person, who does not want to listen to the complexes when they are still unknown, I only listen to them when the radio and the media in general suggest them to me already famous, and gives me It is annoying to read that they had been around for years and had made better records and there are many other less famous that do the same things and do it better. "

I'm sorry, but I can not help it if they had been around for years and they were doing better music. The cases in which the opposite happened are counted on the tips of the fingers.

You can not force me to write that the star on duty is better than many others when I know (and almost all the record industry knows) that the star is not worth a butt. If anything, the opposite: perhaps I have talked about it too well, also influenced by his fame.

(You'll see that, as soon as it stops being famous, even those who had spoken well will quickly reverse it).

Underestimate the light music

An impressive amount of people who write to me are passionate about light music. The fact is curious because obviously the undersigned takes care of anything else. With so many websites that deal with light music, why do you have to write to me? A surprising amount of people try to convince me to deal with light music instead. (A similar fact happens to a friend who is professionally involved in classical music, also haunted by people who want to make them listen to records of light music). With all the classical music, jazz and rock that I still have to listen to (with all the classical music, jazz and rock that I would like to re-listen more often), with all the books I have yet to read (with all the books I would like to re -read), with all the films that still have to watch, and with all the science and history that I have yet to study, it does not even pass me by the antechamber of the brain to spend two minutes two to deal with light music. Of course, you are free to listen to light music and drink Coca Cola and read rose magazines. Indeed, you have company: the vast majority of the human population does the same thing. It intrigues me that you want the "totality" of adhesion: a single human who deviates from that norm seems to provoke bewilderment and panic. I wonder what secret frustrations lead people to write to someone who does not deal with light music to ask him why he does not like light music, as if everyone is obliged to take an interest in the same things they are interested in. All in all, because do not you ask yourself why you did not read Bernhard's novels or listen to Part's music while you found the time to listen to Bacharach or what? Why Bacharach or what should I have priority in my limited free time on the latest Rushdie book or on the first Nolan movie? And why not ask yourself the opposite: why listening to that record of light music was more important to you than reading Rushdie's last book or looking for the first Nolan movie? Why should I be the anomalous case and not you? What makes you think that it is I who misses something beautiful and important, and not you? I am very worried about this attempt to establish a dictatorship of culture in which, in fact, culture would be forbidden. Should Bacharach have priority in my limited free time on Rushdie's latest book or on Nolan's first film? And why not ask yourself the opposite: why listening to that record of light music was more important to you than reading Rushdie's last book or looking for the first Nolan movie? Why should I be the anomalous case and not you? What makes you think that it is I who misses something beautiful and important, and not you? I am very worried about this attempt to establish a dictatorship of culture in which, in fact, culture would be forbidden. Should Bacharach have priority in my limited free time on Rushdie's latest book or on Nolan's first film? And why not ask yourself the opposite: why listening to that record of light music was more important to you than reading Rushdie's last book or looking for the first Nolan movie? Why should I be the anomalous case and not you? What makes you think that it is I who misses something beautiful and important, and not you? I am very worried about this attempt to establish a dictatorship of culture in which, in fact, culture would be forbidden. listen to that record of light music was more important to you than reading the latest book by Rushdie or looking for the first movie of Nolan? Why should I be the anomalous case and not you? What makes you think that it is I who misses something beautiful and important, and not you? I am very worried about this attempt to establish a dictatorship of culture in which, in fact, culture would be forbidden. listen to that record of light music was more important to you than reading the latest book by Rushdie or looking for the first movie of Nolan? Why should I be the anomalous case and not you? What makes you think that it is I who misses something beautiful and important, and not you? I am very worried about this attempt to establish a dictatorship of culture in which, in fact, culture would be forbidden.
In all my writings and in particular on this website the term "light music" is used in a derogatory sense, to indicate music without content.

Of course this implies that I do not share the opinion of classical critics that rock music is "tout court" "light" music. In my opinion there is light music in all genres. Also a couple of Bach sung are light music, and more of a Frank Zappa record is light music, and certainly a lot of jazz and light music, "light" as much as Bacharach, Peppino DiCapri, the Beatles and Britney Spears. I do not deny that there is much more "light" in rock music than in classical music.

(I hope it is understood that I do not care to discuss who is better in light music).

Do not you think that your judgments, so drastic, insult the readers?

First of all, I never use bad words, so I do not think that my judgments, however drastic, can be called "insults". Secondly, I think that my reviews are sufficiently articulated to support my conclusions (if one simply writes "this record is a shame" it could also be an insult, as written in good Italian, but if you first wrote twenty lines that analyze the record, you can not consider that conclusion as an insult). Third, psychologists teach that people read with the tone they speak: those who are accustomed to using a contemptuous tone tend to read other people's things in the same tone, but it is the reader, not the writer, who gives them a contemptuous tone. Those who know me know that I almost never lose my temper and speak in a very calm tone, even when I talk about the Holocaust. Fourthly, I believe there is a cultural factor. Italian is perhaps not used to hearing bread, because Italian politics and culture are made of vague statements, to be interpreted, dotted with many "a certain" and "some", while in the Anglo-Saxon world it is used a more direct tone. Italian is also unaccustomed to hearing drastic judgments because in Italy it is illegal: Fiat can not make an advertisement saying that Peugeot's cars are horrendous. But in the US it is very legal, and almost all advertising is set on the criticism of other people's products. Here there is nothing wrong with saying and writing what one thinks. Fifth, in some cases it seems to me a hugeness that in Italy we took seriously rock clamorous scams: I have received letters that reproach me for making fun of those scams, but they have made fun of them all, and perhaps those readers should first ask themselves if they have not been a bit of them (it is not an insult, I found it in the dictionary). I had not the faintest idea that in Italy there were so many fans of those phenomena, honestly I just could not imagine it.

Why do you ever consider a ten minute piece above a three minute song just because it's longer?

Meanwhile, I'm not doing it, but all the music criticism from the Middle Ages to today (I do not know a critic who puts a three-minute lied in the first place, generally they put symphonies and concerts and operas). Try to compose a symphony and write a song, and see if you require the same effort. (So ​​much so that thousands of musicians are able to write catchy songs every year, but very few can write a decent symphony).
Secondly, it is not clear to me why you write to me, since the majority of the top ten records in my rock chart are collections of relatively short songs.
Like all the critics of the world, I've cut out many more three-minute songs than twenty-minute pieces because of the simple fact that ... many (many many many many) songs are more than three-minute songs than twenty-minute pieces. Now that the twenty-minute piece is becoming more and more common, you'll notice that you're struggling more and more. Simply because there are more.
The overwhelming majority of the twenty minute pieces I listen to are not even mentioned on my website (no one complains about it). On the other hand I have to mention every single three minute song that ends on the radio, otherwise someone immediately complains that I have "forgotten" it. It is much easier to "forget"
The more music you listen to the more you get bored by the three-minute songs that recycle the same pattern you've listened to three thousand times. If the record companies begin to publish twenty-minute pieces in avalanche, and those pieces will all be identical, the reaction of those who listen to a lot of music will be the same.
I suspect that you do not care much for the musicians that make long pieces, so obviously you will never read my long pieces. The musicians treated in my discography of new age and electronic music they make up a lot of long pieces. If you look at the votes, the vast majority are an asterisk only (the lowest mark). But, in my opinion, you are not interested in any of those 500 musicians, and therefore you will never realize that I have given low ratings to 90% of their records.
For the rest, the same applies to the melodic song .
(Often these discussions have diametrically opposite origins: the reader points out to me that a certain pop star has made a long piece, I tell him that many other musicians had already made long pieces of that genre, and perhaps better He answers me "why the long piece is more important than the three-minute song?" But actually he had been using the long piece as proof that his darling is a great musician)
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[Facetious]

Most of the above "objections" to Scaruffi seem to be coming from someone who's only seen his Beatles page. He often ignores experimental masterpieces in favour of comparatively shallower mainstream music.

[AfterHours]

[RoundTheBend]

His mention of melody no longer being important is key to our disagreements. Makes so much more sense now. Thanks for posting this.

For me, if I were to use that logic, I'd have to say noise has also ran it's gamut. But I'm not using that logic.

[AfterHours]

More golden oldies from your friend, Piero Scaruffi:

Note: I find Scaruffi's assertive-could-hardly-care-less replies to Beatles fans or criticisms of his content, to be more amusing/comedic than anything else -- not because they are particularly "incorrect" (imo) but because it is still rather startling to see someone dismiss the Beatles so completely (even while agreeing with him about 75% of the way) ... and they can be insightful into his thinking ... I do understand that a devoted Beatles fan probably won't like them at all... I find Scaruffi's replies harmless because I find so many artists/albums/works/art more compelling and impacting than The Beatles and even the most extreme dissenting view of them would not bother me, but probably would have circa 2000 when they were my favorite pop artist... Also, even though I am posting these, this doesn't necessarily mean I agree wholeheartedly with the full "extent" of all his assertions/dismissals about the Beatles. I agree with the gist behind most of his points. I do think he engages in various partial exaggerations, presumably "to make a point to the reader that has just attacked his view" -- and I'm pretty sure he would agree that he has exaggerated a little bit if he were pressed on the issue -- but simply doesn't care because he doesn't think the Beatles were musically/artistically significant, and doesn't feel he needs to be particularly careful in criticizing them as they don't hold much qualitative importance to him...

I disagree on your analysis of the Beatles ...

The analysis is fairly long and detailed (much more than I wanted). If there are any errors in my cards, I always like to correct them. If there are no mistakes, well ... everyone draws his conclusions. I have drawn mine. (The card has existed for about twenty years and has been read by several thousand people: I suspect that there are no big mistakes).
I do not pretend to convince anyone (on this subject then I really care little). I believe, however, that you have done well to read my analysis. The world is full of magazines, books and websites that the Beatles were the first to do this or that (simply out of ignorance of what happened before). After reading my card, and having checked that there are no errors, perhaps the reader returns home with a more objective idea of ​​the Beatles phenomenon. If the songs continue to please him, nothing bad.

Hear the Beatles ...

The slightest "critique" (ie thorough analysis) to the Beatles is interpreted by the Beatles' fans as "hate": I leave it to the psychologists to explain this phenomenon.
To say that I hate the Beatles is like saying I hate stamps. I'm bad about the stamps because I'm still forced to buy them. If no one asked me questions about the Beatles, I would have written only one card in my life on their career. They made the history of rock as well as Salgari did that of literature. I do not write this sentence out of hatred, but simply because someone sent me an email saying that the Beatles made rock history. If people wrote me letters saying that Salgari made history of literature,

Only an incompetent can deny that the Beatles have made the history of rock.

I hope that on at least one thing we all agree: the less one is rock music, the more convinced that the Beatles have made the history of rock ...

Your judgments on the Beatles are due to the fact that you did not listen to their records "well".

It is difficult not to have listened to those records "well", since they are among the most transmitted of all time (or at least they were in my time). On the other hand, I suspect that the Beatles' fans did not listen "well" (or not at all) to the records of all the other musicians of the time. I suspect, indeed, that you even listened to the "rare" tapes of the very first Beatles performances, but you never took care to listen, I know, to the first (very rare) performances by Yardbirds or Standells. It is your judgment that is based on a partial (very partial) listening to the music of that era.

The Rolling Stone rock encyclopedia, very authoritative, only speaks well of the Beatles.

Forget to add that he also speaks well of all the other 2000 artists he treats.

In all the rankings that count the Beatles are in first place.

Of course the opposite is clear to me. The "that count" makes the difference. If you take away the "that matter", you're just telling me that the Beatles are very famous, which, believe me or not, was already known to me.

In any case, unlike the average Beatles fan (whose judgment depends only on how many people tell him to think so), my opinion would not change a comma if everyone else thought otherwise than me: my judgment is simply the conclusion that I draw from my analysis (fact that applies to all my cards, even the five thousand who will not tell you to read and on which therefore you will never write to me).

George Harrison is mentioned in the charts of the major guitarists ...

Just because it is a celebrity of the worldly magazines ... (Perhaps you should also specify that it is mentioned in the low positions of those rankings, to the point where most people would not know how to mention other guitarists anyway). It sounded like all the guitarists of light music of the '50s sounded like one who had completely lost the rock and roll revolution. I would be hard pressed to mention a less original British guitarist in the '60s ... I wonder which guitarist of the ensembles listed here is less original than Harrison. Then there are hundreds of guitarists of surf and rhythm and blues (not listed on my database) who anticipated Clapton, heavy metal and even punk. Only a total ignorance of rock music (before, during and after those years) can lead one to consider the less gifted and more traditional guitarist of the time to be relevant. (Once again, the incompetence of those who write about the Beatles is abysmal: with dozens of original guitarists of those years, largely neglected by myself, just Harrison must you write me?)
(Incidentally, those charts and magazines and critics list dozens of musicians that I do not agree with, and these Beatles fans do not realize they are declaring their ignorance when they only criticize the divergence of opinion about the Beatles, which often they are not even in first place, and not the divergence of opinion on many other musicians.It is canonical what made me notice a George Harrison in the 24th place of a ranking of others, without realizing that in the second place of that ranking there it was Jeff Beck, whom I totally ignored.The problem is that the Beatles fans often do not have the faintest idea who those other musicians are.

John Lennon was a great singer ... Paul McCartney was a great bass player and singer ... Ringo Starr was a great drummer ...

See above: the Beatles fans write so simply because they do not know any other singers and any other drummer . They were literally among the worst (or at least among the least original, and then you decide whether to be identical to one thousand others is a positive or negative).

They reinterpreted a series of relatively recent American hits in an absolutely new and lively way

They reinterpreted it as did all the light music singers of the world: turning them into songs, according to the forms of light music of the time. Almost all the masterpieces of the rhythm'n'blues of the '50s were brought to success by white singers who turned them into songs. The Beatles were among the last to do so.

The vocal mixture created by the Beatles was absolutely unique

It was identical to that of the Shirelles, similar to that of the Beach Boys and many others. Read my card .

Their first great merit is that they have been a constantly evolving group ... They changed style continuously ...

Like all light music singers, they simply pursued fashions.

almost all their songs are absolutely out of time

They are simply inspired by what had become fashionable the year before.

Great merit of the Beatles was to completely revolutionize the use of guitars and bass in rock.

Perhaps in light music. The rhythm guitar was used as they used it all in those years. The solo guitar was still passive, as in light music ante-rock'n'roll. It applies to all the light music complexes of the time, from the Beach Boys (whose bass player was definitely worth more than McCartney) to the Celentano accompaniment complex. It seems ridiculous to make analysis of the instrumental technique of the less original musicians of the time ... Almost everyone (see this list ) used more original techniques to the various instruments. I would struggle to cite a complex of the period whose members sounded more banal and conventional than the Beatles. Guys, these used to play three-minute songs, as if they were always played and always played.

With the Beatles I formed myself, I learned to understand what rock was, to feel emotions for music. And like me, millions of people all over the world.

Billions of people have formed with Sinatra, Aznavour, Julio Iglesias, Michael Jackson, Claudio Villa, Mike Bongiorno and many others. There will also be people who have formed with Lady Di, but that does not make Lady of a political genius.

Exaggerate the importance of Martin, at a time when the producers were similar to employees.

In reverse. In that era the producer was sometimes all. He not only decided the arrangement, he wrote the score, but even recruited the musicians. In many cases the song existed before it was decided who would sing it. In many cases the singer was not an artist, he was simply a face. It was not until the late 1960s that the idea that the singer was not a face, but an artist, and that there was not only the singer but also the guitarist, the keyboard player, etc., and that the group could write the arrangements by itself. It seems to me you've never heard of Phil Spector.

The Beatles records were all produced at Abbey Road studios, where EMI engineers gave their records that smoother sound than all the other British bands of the moment. The Beatles could never record, for example, the rough sound of the Stones, for the simple fact that the Beatles sound was a mixture of what Martin had in mind and what the engineers let him do.

The Beatles were the first to use the recording studio as an instrument ...

Until proven otherwise, the first to use the recording studio as an instrument was Joe Meek in 1961-62 (in London, and it would not surprise me if Martin had known him). Then it seems to me that you have not heard of Frank Zappa. Then it would not hurt you to study who Moondog had been in the 1950s.

The arrangements of 1965 were unique ...

It turns out to me that in 1964 the humble Jan & Dean used noise from tires and broken glass, acting and multi-tracked voices in Dead Man's Curve ; and in the same year the very humble Shangri-Las used more motorbike noise and more call-and-response in the Leader Of The Pack (to deliberately mention only two ranking ensembles). In other words: it was customary for years to use eccentric arrangements, and those of the Beatles were among the least eccentric.

The Beatles public is, by definition, the biggest audience.

Also that of Presley, Iglesias, Michael Jackson, Mariah Carey and many others who have beaten the Beatles records. Also that of Mike Bongiorno and Pippo Baudo. Just agree on what constitutes an audience. The Beatles' audience is that of Coca Cola and McDonald's, a distracted, lazy and naive public. The same as Mickey Mouse (Mickey Mouse). One day they will build Beatleland and thousands of families will be having fun in the Yellow Submarine pavilions and Penny Lane rollercoasters. Mickey Mouse is, in my opinion, a poor comic that has the merit of being the quintessence of indifference and expressing that "mediocrity" in which we recognize most of those who find it annoying art and culture ( it is forbidden to call them "bourgeois", otherwise they give you the communist). The only reason Beatleland does not yet exist is that these parks typically make them Americans (specialized in tapping money to the naive masses) and the Beatles were not Americans and in the US the popularity of Presley and many others is even higher . Stand in the queue.

I did not know the Beatles until a few years ago. Today I deepened their best albums and I made a judgment.

I wonder if you have deepened even the albums of other musicians of the time (especially the two thousand who were making the same music) and previous ones (in particular the one hundred thousand that made the same music of their own). And above all of those who "did not" do the same music. Otherwise how do you make a judgment? Let me guess: no, you only deepened their albums, because only for them was a massive advertising campaign.

The Beatles influenced this and that.

To say that the Beatles have influenced someone is like saying that Coppi has influenced me. Everyone has influenced everyone. It is necessary to qualify the "influence". Without Presley, maybe rock music would not exist: if Presley had not sold billions of records, the record industry would not have released rock and roll records and perhaps the melodic song would still reign. But Presley did not invent anything and it seems to me incorrect to write that Presley influenced someone (artistically speaking). Presley was a phenomenon that sold on a large scale a very sweetened version of rock and roll that was being born. On the contrary, Presley was created especially for those who wanted to oppose to that rock and roll a more traditional music, and, in those days (in which witches were still burned), more reactionary, conservative, bourgeois. Paradoxically, it was the success of this anti-rock artist that favored the advent of rock artists. Mutatis mutandis, in twenty years someone will write that Britney Spears has influenced a generation of teenage singer-songwriters: without their success they would never have existed. True. But she did not invent anything: the influence is the Britney Spears phenomenon, not Britney Spears the artist (who does not exist).
The only indisputable merit of Presley, Beatles, Jackson and Spears is to be telegenic. Otherwise the recorders would not have invested a penny. (And you can endlessly discuss whether the history of music would have been better or worse).
For you to choose who to attribute the merit: a commercial phenomenon built around a telegenic star with the specific purpose of resizing the music to which the star was inspired, or the musicians (much less known) who invented that music.
(I used Presley as an example because I know that in Italy few are scandalized if I speak badly about the "king" of rock.In the USA I use the Beatles to explain Presley: country that you go ...)
Note that the "influence" works in both directions, and I'm more interested in the second: the Beatles' success influenced the Jefferson Airplane in the sense that they allowed them to find a recording contract, but the acid-rock of the Jefferson Airplane influenced the Beatles: it was not the Jefferson Airplane who began to write catchy songs, it was the Beatles who started writing songs that were more or less long and more or less abstract (Hey Jude, Revolution No 9). It was not the JA that started playing like the Beatles complexes, it was the Beatles who tried to imitate the complexes like the JAs.
Last but not least, Leopardi's poems that are influenced by Monti are just the least important. When a song is clearly influenced by melodic groups (the Beatles being one of those, not the first and not the best), I generally think it is inferior (and not just me). Among the many influences, it is not precisely the one to boast about.

To waste even a sentence talking about the influence exerted by a traditionalist group like the Beatles, we really must have never listened to classics like Animals, Yardbirds, Stones, Kinks (to mention only groups of the same age and of the same nation). It should be obvious that, from garage-rock to punk-rock, those groups have exerted much greater influence. On the contrary, I find it difficult to fish a complex so irrelevant as to have had less influence than the Beatles. Even the Searchers (anticipated folk-rock) and the Troggs (forerunners of hard rock) were more influential on the course of rock music. At most, George Martin's productions were influential on the lambiccate productions of the '70s (which, personally, I consider mostly deleterious).

Dylan decided to abandon the acoustic folk after listening to the Beatles ...

As always in the case of the Beatles, the most minute minutia becomes worthy of a history of human civilization.
Dylan decided to write "Knocking" after seeing some cartoon on television. This does not make that cartoon a masterpiece of music. Dylan will have been influenced, like everyone else, by the Beatles' "success", but I doubt he has spent more than a second listening to their "la la la ye ye ye". We must be deaf or fanatical to suppose that only one note of Dylan was influenced by what was and remains a group of songs. (Of course, the Beatles were influenced, like everyone else, by Dylan, at least in those three songs less cretin of their usual that had texts engaged and in their concept album Sgt Pepper ,Blonde On Blonde , and in songs like A Day In The Life plus Lennon's career).
I hope it is clear that the electric guitars had not invented the Beatles ... nor had they been the first to use them ... nor had they been particularly original in using them ... They had simply been among the first (and not even the first in absolute) with which the record industry had made a lot of money, showing that there was a vast market for electric sound.
Dylan was whistled by his audience when he hugged the electric guitar because in those days (after the scientific elimination of the rockers of the 50s) the electric guitar had become synonymous with light, commercial, retrograde music. Dylan was brilliant enough to reinvent the electric guitar instead as an alternative music instrument, just as it had been before Beach Boys and Beatles trivialized electric music with their class reels.
Incidentally, a few years later Dylan also absorbed the Texmex, but no Mexican pop music fan ever wrote me to say "Dylan was influenced by Mexican pop music".
Last but not least, to put the dots on the i, Dylan decided to abandon the acoustic folk after the success they had obtained the Byrds by performing his songs with electric guitars (and, before that, the Animals with House of the Rising Sun ). His style of 1965 is obviously the son of the arrangements of Tom Wilson (guitars jingle-jangle, country rhythm, gospel organ), which have nothing in common with those of the Beatles.

The Beatles' success influenced the rebirth of American rock music.

Certainly (eye to put "the success of the"). But it is a little incorrect not to mention all the others. It was the entire Merseybeat (and what in the USA called "British invasion") to cause the upheaval. The Beatles were not the first Merseybeat complex. All those complexes sounded more or less the same thing, Beatlemania or not. The style of Merseybeat existed before the Beatles, and was certainly very imitated in the USA (from complexes that I hope nobody puts into a rock history).

The Beatles style is completely different from that of the Beach Boys ...

To confirm the contrary, the most frequent mistake I find in rock music magazines (especially Italian) is to confuse one with the other. Often a melody or arrangement typical of Brian Wilson (perhaps even sung in falsetto, then with the explicit intention of imitating the Beach Boys) is defined by the reviewer "the Beatles" while he is "at the Beach Boys". Simply in Italy the Beach Boys have never been as famous as the Beatles and most readers would not know what "a Beach Boys melody" means.

The Beatles were the first to use a string quartet, the backward vocals, the sitar, the feedback ...

As above: the most minute minutiae, if made by the Beatles, are milestones of musical evolution. Johnny Watson used the feedback in 1953, and Willie Johnson perhaps even earlier (Lennon himself knew he was not the first, as I stated in an interview with Playboy in 1980). Link Wray invented the fuzztone in 1959. The Beatles' timid feedback was not much. For the rest, Sunny Goodge StreetDonovan's (1965) used trumpets, cello, double bass, flute and organ. The Tokens were the first to use a Neapolitan choir and an opera singer in a rock song (in 1961): so what? Del Shannon was the first to use a synthesizer simulacrum (in 1962): so what? Duan Eddy used the violins in 1962: so what? Sandy Bull used the oud (Arabic lute, a more original instrument than the sitar) in a suite of twenty (twenty) minutes in 1965. Graham Bond was the first to use mellotron: so what? In those years the Rolling Stones used everything from marimba to harpsichords, but I hope no one considers them great just for these trivialities. And the Moody Blues who first used (1967) an entire symphony orchestra what were they then, the rock Beethoven?

The Beatles were the first to use backward tape loops ...

It seems to me that this is the main one, because all the Beatles fans keep repeating it like a mantra, as if it were the maximum of the inventions of the history of music (to say, the Negativlands were the first to use certain collage techniques, but the Beatles fans do not consider them great musicians, in fact they suspect that they do not know them at all). The tape loops of course had been used by many musicians before the Beatles used them for a few seconds in a pop song. And many other pop musicians had used other electronic techniques in other pop songs.

The Beatles were the first to use backward guitar ...

And so? Does it really have to be a guitar to be relevant? And the first to have used a backward organ? And the first to have used a backward flute? And must it be just backward to be relevant? And the first to have distorted the sound of the guitar? And the first to have distorted the sound, I know, of a harp? And the first to use fuzz? I bet you can not name any of these. Why is only the first person who used a backward guitar relevant? In my humble opinion, Dick Dale had done far more significant things a few years earlier, and Dick Dale receives only twenty lines on my website. I wonder why you send me an email to report the backward guitar of that Beatles song, but not an email to report the dozens of techniques invented by Dick Dale to play and record the guitar sound.

The Beatles were the first to use tape loops in a pop song ...

I think it's true (I have neither the time nor the desire to do a research). Of course tape loops had invented them in the '50s, and had been used in rock music at least since 1963 (Daevid Allen of the future Soft Machine). But in a pop song it's likely that the Beatles did it first (as well as, for example, the Beach Boys first used electronics in a pop song).

The Beatles were the first to use the sitar ...

I also hope the difference between the means and the end is clear. The Beatles used the sitar in a three minute song, like so many other light music singers who occasionally used an exotic instrument. In 1963 (years before) Sandy Bull recorded a raga (not a song) of twenty minutes (not three minutes), performed with guitar and banjo because, unlike the millionaire stars, Bull could not afford to buy a sitar. The fact that he used guitar and banjo (instead of a sitar or pipe organ) is a detail compared to the fact that he wrote a twenty minute raga. Then I leave it to everyone to decide whether among the three-minute songs inspired by Indian music is better Norwegian Wood , Paint It Black by Rolling Stones or See My Friends of Kinks (which was also released before): I think you have to be deaf (or stupid advertising campaigns) to not feel the difference.

The Beatles were the first to write their own songs ...

This has been written by many people: but where do you get these absurdities from? The Beach Boys were a year early on the Beatles, but then many rockers, from Berry to Holly, from Perkins to Orbison, wrote their songs since 1955. That I know, Bob Dylan ... Perhaps you refer to "the Merseybeat "...

The Beatles "invented the fashion of long hair" ... "invented the protest song of '68" ... "they were authentic punk" ... "they produced the first records of Captain Beefheart" ... "they were the first to use electric instruments "..." infuenced Miles Davis "..." they were the first complex with a name of a single word "..." they were the first to publish a 33 rpm "...

I mentioned only the most beautiful of the last months. But I get one literally a week and I'm thinking of doing a webpage only on the merits attributed to the Beatles. In Italy the Beatles is literally credited with everything, distorting chronologies and mathematical logic. Sooner or later someone will write to me that they invented jazz and that they were the first to decipher the Maya alphabet. They are also typical of how you can even flip the story (the Beatles' hairstyles were the exact opposite of the "hairy" of 1961-2, their lyrics were the most unique of the Dylan era, they were by far the less punk of the age, and naturally they did none of the other things).

Treat McCartney as if he were an idiot ...

Quite the contrary. McCartney is a genius of music, but not in the sense of who composes it. McCartney is a great music connoisseur. Every time he has expressed an opinion or has pointed out some musician he has always said things that few critics in the world can say. He would have been a great music critic.
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[Rhyner]

Do the changes I see mean this guide thing is happening?