I should probably leave this thread before my brain explodes.
Compare him with everything that came before (and a lot that has come since).
It’s predictable in the same sense that Shakespeare is full of cliches.
Moderator speaketh:
ianzin: you’ve been around long enough to know that personal insults are not permitted in this forum. You may insult the artists, entertainers, etc all you want, but you may not insult fellow posters. And making statements about what you imagine another poster’s background or knowledge to be are certainly in the realm of insults. Please refrain.
For anyone who is not aware of our rules on insulting other posters, I recommend reading: FAQ - Rules for Posting at the Straight Dope Message Boards and note especially Post #10 in that list of Rules; and also, for this forum, please read Forum Rules and especially Post #3.
Please tell me this is a woosh.
I apologise to you and to Triple Tee.
And so am I. And so were many people at the time, and so was everyone in the industry. But earlier you wrote that the writers of the Coke song were ‘anonymous’. Can you now agree with me that you used the word ‘anonymous’ incorrectly, or inappropriately? Or are you using a definition of ‘anonymous’ that is somewhat unusual?
I was using anonymous in the sense that the writers are not known by the general public. I suppose I could have used another word. Unknown writers I suppose. I didn’t expect my word choice to upset anyone.
If nobody under (I’m guessing) 40 has heard the song, and nobody remembers who wrote it, how is it “as enduring” as the works of the Beatles?
This thread appears to have turned into a “the beatles are crap” “no they’re not” contest.
Believe me, you missed nothing by not studying Milton. My Freshman Year English Lit teacher was a delightful, witty lady. She was also a Milton scholar. After a lecture about Paradise Lost, I’d apply myself to The Great Work. And I could* not * see the attraction.
Robert Graves did a wonderful hatchet job on the old grouch in Wife To Mr Milton.
I agree that Star Wars, by any decent measure, should be classified as just a pretty darn good movie. Personally, I railed against the prequels not for anything like you said, but just because they were stupid, dumb, and not fun.
But… but… but… I mean, come on, Jar Jar Binks! You gotta think he’s cool!
Gee , whodathunkit?
Wow, I was reading through this thread ready to name Gatsby as belonging here. I read it a few years ago (as an adult). Talk about a snooze-fest. Holy crap, nothing happens, nothing, absolutely nothing at all, for pages and pages. And then when something finally does happen, it isn’t even spelled out (yeah, I know, that’s “great writing”. Sure it is.). I read it in a creative writing class, and the teacher tried to explain why it was a great book. Ooo, Gatsby is such a tragic character, ooo. I read a one-dimensional character who I couldn’t bring myself to care about if I was paid. Total waste of paper.
To be fair, The Illiad is predictable because 95% of literature that came after it rips it off in one way or another.
Really, people, is it that hard for the entire board to spell Iliad?
I’m not so sure I’d call them overrated, since every other girl trio of their day tried to sound just like them. (The rest of you can try remembering girl harmonies in Fleischer and Warner Bros cartoons of the 30s to know what we’re talking about.)
Connee could really sing, too, and had that Courageous Because She’s In A Wheelchair thing going for her.
How does that prove that they weren’t overrated? If anything, that just means they were more highly-rated, regardless of whether or not they actually deserved it.
They were commercially successful, highly regarded, and extremely influential at the time. Dismissing the Boswell Sisters, who created one of the signature sounds of the 30s, as overrated today, with their records removed from their context, is historic revisionism. It is the same with Shakespeare, the Beatles, and Chaucer; at the time they blew people away. Yeah, these days the Beatles are seen as adequate musicians who wrote musical pabulum, but if you were there when they hit, and could compare their sound with their contemporaries’ in 1963, you could understand why some people would disagree with claims they were overrated.
I wouldn’t call the Boswell Sisters overrated for another reason: only a handful of people today know who they were, and most of them probably post here. It’s like calling a restaurant in rural Manitoba overrated–most people would say, “So what?”
Not if it’s true that they were overrated in the 1930s. Of course, you won’t convince me, since I have no idea who they were and I don’t give a rat’s flying arse about any music from the 1930s that wasn’t jazz.
I am one of those people, so I actually understand it quite well, thank you. 