Quoted from Michelle Revolution

It's just John I think

Quoted from Wordno

I'm pretty sure its Paul. Raxo should come along soon with the thread of "Who sang the 'Aahhs' in A day in a life'.

Quoted from Wordno

I'm pretty sure its Paul. Raxo should come along soon with the thread of "Who sang the 'Aahhs' in A day in a life'.

Quoted from Michelle Revolution

Yes please.

Quoted from Michelle Revolution

Thanks.

Quoted from Michelle Revolution

Thank you again I'm glad you like my balloons.

By the way underlining is no less annoying than italicising. Just my opinion.

Quoted Text

40 years ago Friday, 'Sgt. Pepper' taught radio to play LPs

"Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band," the landmark record released 40 years ago Friday, may or may not have been a good thing for lonely hearts. But it was definitely a bad thing for singles. Remember singles? Those cute little 45-revolutions-per-minute records with the big holes that, several media lifetimes ago, were the common currency of the music world? After the Beatles released their history-making album on June 1 (in the United Kingdom) and June 2 (in the United States) in 1967, the focus shifted to LPs, said North Jersey radio veterans.
"I think it was a watershed for radio and the recording industry, because from that point on they began marketing albums, as opposed to marketing singles with the album as a sort of afterthought," says media consultant Larry Berger, a Fair Lawn native. As program director in the early 1970s, he was one of the pioneers of a new radio format that grew directly out of "Sgt. Pepper" and its successors: AOR (album-oriented radio). "Now it's gone full circle, because people are back to a more singles mentality with the iPod," Berger says. Before "Sgt. Pepper," record buyers and deejays thought in terms of individual songs. Sure, there were rock LPs -- even a few stabs at concept albums -- but the single remained the basic unit of currency.
Once "Sgt. Pepper" hit the record racks, and Beatles fans had their minds blown by the celebrated Mr. Kite, Lovely Rita the meter maid and a high-flying Lucy and her diamonds, many listeners were no longer satisfied with AM radio's top 40 hits, tinny sound and motormouthed deejays who jabbered about "7 SOARING SINGLES!" and "WHERE THE HITS GO ROLLING OUT!" "["Sgt. Pepper"] pointed the way forward," says Roseland's Vin Scelsa. Post-"Sgt. Pepper," listeners began taking rock records with a new seriousness: listening to them cover to cover, as it were, and analyzing why cut X was at the beginning of Side Two and why cut Y closed the album.
"Sgt. Pepper," which became the first rock record to win a best-album Grammy, proved that an album could be more than just a piece of vinyl with 12 songs. Everything in it could be unified by a story, a theme, a concept. For instance, A Lonely Hearts Club Band, led by a certain Billy Shears (Ringo Starr). "The Beatles are taking you on a ride," says Shelli Sonstein, a Ringwood resident. "Or a trip, as we would call it then." And there was more: the packaging, the famous cover photograph of the Beatles surrounded by their cult heroes, the cardboard cutouts inside the album sleeve, the printed lyrics (a new idea for a rock album) all made "Sgt. Pepper" seem very different from any previous rock record.
So did the carefully crafted sound. Those weird tape-loopings in "Being for the Benefit of Mr. Kite!" and the nuclear-accelerator climax of "A Day in the Life" helped push rock radio in the direction of FM. "What happened is, a lot of people would hear 'Sgt. Pepper' on their home stereo and then hear it on AM radio and realize what was missing," says Lee Abrams. "That was the case with many albums. They're unlistenable on AM. On FM they sounded great."
It was a 16-year-old Abrams who, as a Chicago high school student in the late 1960s, wrote a 20-page manifesto that many consider the basis for the AOR format. "I was constantly nagging stations out there that were not targeting me and my friends and my whole generation," Abrams says. There had already, in the wake of "Sgt. Pepper," been pioneering "free form" stations like New York's WNEW-FM. The AOR format, Abrams says, codified what these free-form deejays had been doing by instinct. The key ingredients: an artist-based (rather than song-based) playlist, a 16- to 24-year-old target audience and low-key, conversational deejays. Once AOR made its commercial debut on Jan. 1, 1971,it was a whole new ballgame. "We were able to respect the album as a whole," Scelsa says. "Frequently you'd find features on radio stations where they'd have the album of the week, and they'd play the whole album, respecting the artist's vision for the sequencing of the songs."
At the height of the format, around 1979, nearly 1,000 stations -- 10 percent of the nation's airwaves -- were AOR, Abrams estimates. Taking their cue from "Sgt. Pepper's" wall-to-wall hits, none of which had been released as singles, AOR deejays took to culling albums for breakout songs that might catch on with listeners, 45 or no 45. Indeed, many of the songs that AOR helped turn into top hits were never issued as singles, including Pink Floyd's "Comfortably Numb," Elton John's "Funeral for a Friend/Love Lies Bleeding" and that anthem of anthems, Led Zeppelin's "Stairway to Heaven."
Many radio veterans look at the short golden age of albums and AOR -- roughly 1971 to 1989 --, a brief shining hour that may never come again. "After that, it really became more about the single again," says Jonathan Clarke, a Glen Ridge native. Starting in the 1980s, new venues and formats like MTV, CD and ultimately iPods and downloading made the concept of the "album" increasingly irrelevant. At 80 minutes long, CDs became bloated with filler that made any unifying "concept" difficult to sustain. And futile besides -- listeners could shuffle or skip songs at the touch of a button.
As for radio, Abrams says, only about 100 to 200 stations nationwide could today be described as AOR (in New York, which still has occasional "album side weekends," is virtually the only one). Could another "Sgt. Pepper" emerge in today's single-serving pop-culture environment? Maybe, says Sonstein. But only if the pendulum swings the other way, and a new age of albums begins. "It might be discovered online," Sonstein says. "But if an album as good as 'Sgt. Pepper' emerged, I think it would have just as much penetration and be just as powerful."

Quoted from Kevin

[...]I know this isn't going to be very popular (that's obvious from the paragraph above) but I think it may well be the most overrated album of all time.

OK, before we get into this, let's just back up a minute. Regular readers will know I have a bit of form here. I got the slating of my journalistic career on the MSN Music messageboards some months ago for daring to suggest the Beatles themselves were overrated. [...]

Quoted from raxo

The 'Most Overrated Band' is the guys, tho we don't like to admit it, but if we think about it's the kind of thing associated to them and we should be proud of it.
They were (and will be) the best band ever but even being the best they were not gods, tho usually they seem to be gods by the way and the things that are said.
Everything about them has been exaggerated so much that they are overrated, and at such a level that no other band could ever be (or ever imagine).
I do think we must open our eyes and minds a little more and don't be fundamentalists like some religious are.

P.S. I think I'm not suspect. They asked me 'Love Me Do' and I do.

That's all brothers and sisters, ...  peace and humility.

Quoted from Kevin

I would almost stick my kneck out and say the most influential thing The Beatles ever did was A Hard Days Night The Movie.
How many acts (especially american) site that as their reason for picking up a guitar.
Be gentle with me, because I haven't thought this through at all.

Quoted from The Fox Drummer

At the moment, I'm also wearing Beatles shoes, my Rubber Soul shirt, a Sgt. Pepper hat, and a scarf from India, no less.

Quoted from Kevin

We demand a picture now! Before someone calls an ambulance.

Quoted Text

And don't get me started about A Day In The Life. It's two half-arsed songs welded together with a stupid ending.

Quoted from andersonCouncill

It's been so long since I listened to it, or much of the The Beatles at all really, that I'll probably listen to it over and over again.

It makes me sad to think how long I forgot my favorite music, the sixties stuff, because I've been buried in old-school punk lately.

Quoted from tangerine

but don't you find that then when you come back to listen to it, it is kind of exciting and refreshing? I have been known to force myself to abandon the sixties stuff briefly because I know how much I love coming back to it. And that gives me a chance to explore more of the great music that is out there and, well, expand my horizons I guess  

Quoted from Kevin

I don't think Christ gets this much coverage at Christmas.  

Quoted Text

While a good album, it is my opinion that there is a lot of undeserved hype about Sgt. Pepper brought on, I think, by the definite change in the band's image. The four went from neatly-presented, suit-wearing moptops to mustachioed, fluorescent 'soldiers' who were already beginning to visually identify themselves in slightly different ways. This, of course, was a precursor to the post-Pepper years, where the bandmembers could hardly be linked by phyiscal looks alone

Chronologically, this album probably marked the middle of major turning point in their sound, but I wouldn't call it the event itself - the first real changes in their music definitely began with Rubber Soul, whereas Sgt. Pepper was just further experimentation. Thus, the recognition of Sgt. Pepper as very definitive, very unique album seems misplaced: at the time, Sgt. Pepper was a new phenomenon, but in the broader scope of Beatles music, the award could easily go to albums like Magical Mystery Tour, which has perhaps the most unique sound out of all their albums, The White Album, as one of the most topically- and lyrically-diverse, or even earlier albums that contain the Beatles sound the world fell in love with in A Hard Day's Night or Help!

As a (very!) dedicated Beatles fan, I can confidentally state that Sgt. Pepper's biggest affect on me was 'A Day In The Life' and that the album, while still enjoyable, is not my favourite. While this is a matter of opinion, it seems to me that Sgt. Pepper is still not the most deserving album to be so talked about - just because the 'twenty years ago today' bit makes a quotable current event for the anniversary doesn't make it a fantastic album.