galt54

Well, I will never reach omniscience. And I am too smart to worry my head about that fact. The best procedure is to think in principles.

On the basis of rational principles, I say that it makes sense that people whose minds were crippled by modern education would only be able to achieve less in all fields, including songwriting, than in earlier years. So my impression that there is less good pop music around today than in former years makes eminent sense.

Also, I know on the basis of rational principles that it does not make sense to hypothesize that there might be a lot of good pop artists out there who have been neglected by the commercial music industry. For music industry executives who neglected anything as good as, or better than, The Beatles would be guilty of leaving an awful lot of money on the table for no good reason. And why would they do that?

Surell

I'm still very confused by the concept of the crippled education system. You're insisting that a more available education system would result in a a generally less educated public. You infer from your own education, and the fact that you enjoyed such a thig when it was more luxurious, means that everyone had such an education, is not a rational conclusion. Because you were a part of such a fortunate circumstance, I'm sure you knew people of a similar sort, and indeed may have been surrounded by them. Do you really think the whole of a country had such luxuries, when your hypothesis relies on an education system not readily available to all? How could it follow then that education was universally better and thus able to produce more able musicians?

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galt54

I am aware of the fact that there were school districts and school districts. Kids in the slums got an even worse education than us kids in the prosperous suburbs.

The trouble is that when the government provides "free" (i.e. tax-financed, i.e. financed by the looting of your fellow citizens) education - that not only makes "education" availible to the poor - it also destroys education for everyone.

The solution to this problem is capitalism. Abolish the government's involvement in education. Education would not cost very much at all on a free market.

Ask yourself the simple question: What is necessary for a kid to get a good education?

Answer: A classroom, some simple furniture, a competent teacher and some decent books. That is all.

So private education would be much less expensive than the public schools America is cursed with today. But of course socialists would be unhappy about the fact that the parents would have to pay out of their own pockets for their own children's education!

The poor would have access to education in a capitalist society. They do not have access to education worthy of the name today. The kids in the slums and in the suburbs of America today often do not even learn to read and write decently!

DriveYourCarDownToTheSea

John Lennon and Paul McCartney went to public schools, during an age when socialism was quite popular in Britain. According to your theory they were unlikely to have written good music due to an inferior education. Brian Wilson also attended public schools. I'm sure that means he wrote crap, too.

I don't see why this thread has to be ruined with a political discussion.

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Stop and find a pretty shell for her
Beach Boys vs Beatles comparisons begin here

galt54

OK, strictly speaking politics is off topic. But the subject came up.

And I am serious - I do believe that the deterioration in the schools can explain the deterioration in popular music.

As for John Lennon's, Paul McCartney's and Brian Wilson's education in public schools - my entire point was that the schools (both public and private) are still worse today than they were in the earlier decades.

Those three musical geniuses went to public schools in the 1940s and v1950s. Their minds were certainly not nearly as screwed up by their "education" as the minds of kids who went to school in the 1980s and 1990s. The schools in the entire western world have gone from bad to worse.

Neapolitan

The Rock bands that immediately follow the Beatles weren't exactly Pop groups. It seems the music industry ignore these underground Rock bands, but maybe that only pertains to the Top 40 format. The industry made plenty of money on a lot of non Top 40 bands through selling albums and also with concert revenues as well. They were bands still part of the recording industry but were not bands on the Pop charts. As far as musicianship they were better than the Beatles. The Beatles were good for what they did, but they were not better than musicians found in most hard Rock and Prog Rock. The Beatles of course had more hits, but that doesn't mean they were better underground bands that didn't have any Top 40 hits.

The Beatles went from a unknown scruffy pub band to a Pop band for screaming girls back to experimental and underground music. There is two sides to their music. The Pop songs and the rest of their catalogue. Besides being on the charts, The Beatles seemed to be on the vanguard of underground. But most of Rock went that way underground during the late 60s. I'm not saying the Beatles lead the way or split music into Pop and underground. There has always been a divide between very popular music which was tracked on the Pop charts and an underground of less familiar music to the public as a whole, which was the case even in the Jazz era. And when speaking of underground Rock music of the late '60s, '70s Jazz had a far reaching influence. The Beatles really didn't delve into Blues or Jazz like hard Rock & Prog bands did. Rock music didn't get worse after the Beatles, to many it improved and got more sophisticated with things the Beatles didn't bother with or couldn't.

Sometimes I go back and forth whether the bands that were in the Pop charts after the Beatles were for the most part industry's choice and were not always as good as the Beatles. I do & don't agree depending on the band/artist and what type of music etc.

It seems as an apple or orange comparison when talking about The Beatles that a fan knows everything about versus a bunch of groups that a (Beatles) fan knows very little about them. Is the Beatle fan comparing #1 hits or non-singles of The Beatles to a song on the Top 40 chart? How can one say The Beatles are better than so-and-so when all they heard is that one hit?

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