any new Beatle fans because of the remasters?

Bongofury: "only the Beatles can claim the impact of dominating and defining a decade in the fashion that they did. You will never see that again, as music tastes now are highly fragmented and there is no persistent genre tied to this generation."

Very well stated. No one else will again attain that monolithic shaping of music and culture because Western culture itself has become diverse, multicultural, decentralized.

As for me...I was too young to appreciate the Beatles in their time. I remember listening to them as a kid in the sixties and liking their more accessible material, but the complex stuff didn't resonate with me. I remember listening to Abbey Road and liking it, but my favorite song was "Octopus's Garden", so that gives you an idea of my mental development at that time.

It wasn't until my early teens that I realized there was an entire alternate music world out there...

Since buying the remasters, I have definitely discovered a new-found musical appreciation for this seminal band.

It's incredibly hard to create true art that speaks to people. How many authors write more than one great book? How many directors have more than one great movie? How many bands are even one-hit wonders, let alone create one good album, let alone produce an entire series of great songs and great albums.

The Beatles a true anomaly, a group comprised of talented musicians and brilliant songwriters who came together and became an artistic, political and social phenomenon unlike anyone before or since.

Like them or not, none of us remain untouched by their influence.

"...none of us remain untouched by their influence. "

Not even Chasmal. He is not a pop/rock music guy in general I'm inferring from his posts, but subconciously, I believe he really likes them more than he will admit and is in denial.

What say you, Chasmal?

Yeah, I like some of the Beatles later material. I intensely dislike the early stuff.
I just think there was much better rock n roll from that period, and I think their influence is blown out of all proportion. But yeah, I like them all in all.

" I think their influence is blown out of all proportion"

It is ironic how the BEatles, as well as other BRitish Invasion bands of the early-mid 1960's took late 1950s American Rock and roll and its related genres, repackaged it, and then sold it back to mainstream America, where it had originated several years earlier and had by then already largely gone its way and faded in popularity.

Then those nasty BEatles became artists as well and led the charge to take rock and roll to new horizons where it largely lost the "roll" part and became more of an artistic form created for listening as much if not more so than it was for dancing, as was original and true "rock and roll".

And yes, the origins of the BEatles music, which they openly have always acknowledged, was what used to be known as American "race" music, before Elvis, Stoller/Lieber and crew, etc. made it more digestible to the American mainstream (in the form of R&B as well as R&R).

My only regret is that I wish many more of the black musicians that helped create these new forms of uniquely American music in the first place could have benefited as much as the Beatles and many others did later.

Well Mapman, I think you will find the answer to this puzzle in the great repositories of record companies like chess, king, and sun, and many others. You certainly won't find any trace of it in today's popular black music. However jazz IS still alive...