The "Incredibly Impossible to Derail This Thread" thread | Page 655 | Fab Forum | The Beatles Bible

Pineapple Records said

Thanks Zig for that incredibly detailed “college try” (I recall you were practically the only person to give me a good rebuttal many moons ago to that strange theory about the Beatles’ usage of the word “friend” for ostensible romantic lovers).  I think the main cogent points you laid out deal with how important musical genre is to you.  A telling indication of where you and I stand respectively in this regard may surprise or even shock you, but I have never been into Aerosmith, Kiss, or Pink Floyd — and over the years I have positively avoided them.  I thus have no real exposure to them.  However, in the last year or two, I have been trying to broaden my horizons and give time to music I used to think I would not like (e.g., I’ve been listening to lots of blues, which in years past bored me to tears). 

In this regard, my attitude for decades has been that I don’t really like rock & roll per se — I only like it when the Beatles do it (or when Santana or Chicago did it — and in a few choice songs by the Stones: It’s Only Rock & Roll, Brown Sugar).

What would be interesting is where our respective tastes in Beatles songs intersect, given our pretty radical differences in genres.  I think the Beatles more than other bands produce songs where people of different tastes can find agreement — but not always. 

However, here’s a crucial point:  I myself don’t care for the genre which Temporary Secretary is supposed to emulate (whatever one calls it — techno pop or whatever)!  So to me, I’m liking that song not because of the genre, but because of some McCartney aesthetics that are in it.

P.S.:  I forgot about “Coming Up ” when in the other thread I said I didn’t care for that album.  That is a great song, to me clearly superior to Temporary Secretary for sure.

meanmistermustard said

Going back to @Zig’s post two above this idea (from his friend) that it wasnt a ballad or rock and knowing what you were getting; is that a bad thing? 

The Beatles were always doing trying new sounds, not doing what was expected or what had been before. ‘Rubber Soul ‘ is different to ‘Help ‘, the same with ‘Revolver ‘ to ‘Rubber Soul ‘ and then you got ‘Pepper’ which took it further than anyone was expecting, and when folk thought they were going to be even more experimental they were hit with ‘The White Album ‘. For Paul ‘McCartney II ‘ was vastly different to ‘Back To The Egg ‘ and ‘London Town ‘ and pretty much everything that had gone before.

There were tons of Paul ballads on all of the albums before, and Paul was getting a reputation for them and being soft (tho there are ballads on ‘McCartney II ‘); ‘Back To The Egg ‘ has plenty of rockers (tho pretty feh they are). Paul doing something different and getting out of that expected zone i’d have thought was a good thing.

I love Emmylou Harris but the issue is a lot of her stuff nowadays you could switch from one album to another and rarely be able to tell and the same can be said for many bands. The same can be said for her material back in the 70’s; take one track from an album of that era, replace it with another and you wouldn’t be sitting there wondering what happened. 

The fact that ‘Temporary Secretary ‘ (and ‘McCartney II ‘ as a whole) and is so different is why i like it so much. Its not the Paul you expect and what folk presume him to be.

I won’t belabor this, because the last thing I want is to be argumentative. This is meant to clarify my position as your responses lead me to believe I have not done well enough in doing so yet.

1) The only thing “genre” has anything to do with is the fact that I truly dislike synthpop.

2) We did not know what we were getting, because we had never heard synthpop from Paul before. Even IF we liked stuff like that, we would not go to Paul for it any more than I would have gone to Kiss for a syrupy ballad (‘Beth’).

3) When someone you admire and respect releases something that you absolutely hate, it is very disappointing – especially when they dabble where they had not previously dabbled. Somewhere in the Forum archives, someone once posted that they were kind of glad The Beatles broke up before disco came along because if they had fallen into that passing fad, the suicide rate among Beatles fans would have risen at an alarming rate. That is not to say that disco was bad (I personally was “Meh” toward it). It is more to the point that you don’t turn to The Beatles for disco music. That was best left to Donna Summer and (yes, disappointingly) The Bee Gees.

Those points together, not one alone, combine to fuel my feelings of the song we are discussing.

mmm’s point about the evolution of The Beatles is something I’ve always found fascinating. Most bands start out playing music THEY want to play and end up selling out, or pandering in the interest of commercial gains. That is where those bands end up losing me as a fan – see my rant for only three of many examples. The Beatles (I am not the first person to say this) actually sold out first to become famous, and then started playing music THEY wanted to play. History tells us that when ‘Strawberry Fields Forever ’ came out, a good percentage of Beatlemaniacs were appalled – pretty much saying the same things John and I were saying. Fortunately for me, ‘SFF’ was one of the first songs I had ever heard from The Beatles as a four-year-old. As I slowly discovered more of their back canon, I was delighted to hear more of their “straight” rock because I love that kind of music. I honestly don’t know how I would have reacted had I grown up on the early stuff and then had been exposed to songs like ‘SFF’, ‘A Day In The Life ’ and the like.

And now for something completely different…