Why do *some* music fans get so angry...

Yeah, this is it, really. If someone doesn’t cite being influenced by the Beatles, it’s most likely because they don’t even know they’re influenced by them. They changed popular culture to the point where literally everything that came after them was influenced by them, and they’re sort of in a class by themselves in that regard.

Well, the Beatles got it from Chuck Berry. Or Bo Diddley. And of course they were influenced by lots of, well, influential people.

And you’re not allowed to not like any of them.

Judas Priest formed in 1968, the same year as Sabbath, Purple and Zeppelin. Their first album may have been a bit later, but they were there at the beginning of heavy metal.

I’m sure I could make a stronger argument for The Who or The Kinks, especially since I personally like both bands a lot more than Led Zeppelin, but Led Zeppelin was the example I was responding to. Otherwise, **Jackmannii **has already said basically what I wanted to say:

The Beatles didn’t come out of nowhere, they had their own influences. If we’re going to count indirect influence on the history of pop music, then anyone who influenced The Beatles must outrank The Beatles themselves. If we count direct influence only, then I suspect there are quite a few bands that are more commonly cited as influences than The Beatles.

This isn’t to say that The Beatles are not important, just that the question of which artist is the MOST important is not one that has a totally objective answer. What it means to be “important” is itself somewhat subjective.

You just went against your own original point. First you say people shouldn’t knock others’ tastes, and hold their own tastes up as if they are “FACTS.” Then you ramble on about people “latching onto the Beatles . . . not because of the music they make, but because of the people who make the music.” So in other words, the music really is bad, because you can’t stand John Lennon’s voice, and I only latch on to theBeatles because I’m interested in the personalities and stories behind the personalities. Whatever. I really love John Lennon’s voice, and I believe that the work that he and Paul created was very original, revolutionary, and (here’s the opinion part) so damn good. If you don’t like it that’s fine, but don’t speak for my reasons for liking it.

As YogsoSoth has pointed out, a lot of people associate musical genres, and to lesser extent some bands, with a particular class of people.

Which is unfortunate and has nothing to do with the quality, or lack of, in the music.

As a young lad I was right in there, so worried I would be perceived differently than I wanted to be. Trying to use my music to project an image.

Over the last 30 years, I have aged, my tastes have moved around and expanded, and I have learned that it is far less work and pain to just be who you are than to try and project an image.

So now a lot of bands that I once “hated” I now find interesting. With the Beatles, I still am not moved by much of it, but I do find some of their more experimental and intricately arranged tunes very much to my liking.

Sure, but they weren’t metal then. They played something closer to progressive or psychedelic rock.

That’s kinda required around here. :stuck_out_tongue:

I may yet like the Beatles someday, but not this day.

And I do believe that with something as subjective as music, it very well is defined, in part, by what and who you associate it with

Music isn’t math. 1+1 will equal 2 regardless of whoever came up with that. It’s quality is objective. Music isn’t. You can’t say a 40 piece orchestra playing Beethoven is objectively better than Rebecca Black’s Friday which was half done on Autotune. Subjectively, they’re both just sounds, you like one and/or the other or neither, nobody’s going to call you wrong.

What a person can’t be wrong in is why they like or dislike it. It may be that I’m a pretentious prick and think listening to classical music makes me seem smarter. It may be I don’t like the Beatles because I don’t like the fact that John Lennon’s name sounds like Lenin. So they are not the 50’s band I thought they are, but they still sound terrible to me. Maybe I don’t like them because I consider them my parent’s music and I’m rebelling against them. The point is that it doesn’t matter why I dislike them, I just do. They may be more influencial, original, creative, and popular than an artist that I like such as Lady Gaga, but I don’t care, I like Gaga better than the Beatles.

Same as most fields. You don’t have to know anything about music to have an opinion. You do have to know something about music to have an *educated *opinion.

No band was playing anything recognisable as metal in 1968, that was my point!

I really, really can. Simply look at the amount of skill needed to write and perform it. In history, there’s probably been one 13 year old capable of writing music worth hearing, and it’s not Rebecca Black.

Although a 40 piece orchestra probably couldn’t do justice to Beethoven, a larger one would be necessary.

I’d say “Helter Skelter” by The Beatles or the first Blue Cheer album would qualify.

The amount of skill needed to write and perform something doesn’t make it objectively better. I’m sure someone like Joe Satriani or Emerson, Lake and Palmer are more technically proficient and put more “skill” into writing their material than The Clash (or even The Beatles) did, but most people don’t think it makes them better.

“Lover Of The Bayou” by The Byrds is closer to metal than “Helter Skelter”, and is still nothing like it. The reason Sabbath were so revolutionary is that their first album sounded like nothing else. I’m not sure there was any band that made metal, as distinct from prog, before Priest’s second album, although there’s probably something I’m overlooking. Not Uriah Heep!

It does make it obectively better, in that it’s a clearly measurable difference. What it doesn’t do is make it subjectively better.

I think there’s a lot of merit to the concept that a person’s opinion of a band/musical genre is pretty much shaped as much by the person’s experiences and current mental situation as it is by the music itself.

I mean, a terrific filet mignon served on a paper plate at a gas station by a woman missing some teeth isn’t going to have the same impact as the exact same steak on a nice plate in a posh restaurant served by a good professional waiter.

For example- I’m not a Nirvana fan. Never have been. Not because I think their music’s bad, but because I’d gone through high school listening to Metallica, Megadeth, Slayer, and early Alice in Chains and Soundgarden, and then seemingly out of nowhere in my first semester of college, Nirvana hits it big with “Smells like Teen Spirit”, and all the bandwagon fans of metal/grunge jumped on that bandwagon.

Turned me right off of Nirvana, it did. Now that I’m older, I still think that Alice in Chains, Pearl Jam and Soundgarden were better in that genre, but don’t quite dislike Nirvana as much as I did.

Had I listened to more poppy stuff through high school, I suspect I’d have thought Nirvana was awesome, like many other people did.

I like some Beatles songs, but I can’t say I’m a blanket Beatles fan either.

Depends on what you’re defining as “metal”, I guess. I imagine lots of people would argue that Led Zeppelin was metal, and they predated Sabbath. Some might even go so far as to include The Stooges or The MC5. Personally, I’d consider “Helter Skelter” a lot heavier and darker than a lot of later stuff that qualifies as metal.

No, it makes it objectively more difficult/complex/time-intensive. Those are measurable. “Better” is not.

Well, I’ve seen Bon Jovi described as metal, so you may have a point.

In some contexts, “better” is measurable. If you’re claiming that there can be no objectively good or bad art, I guess we’ll just have to agree to disagree.

Well, except for The Beatles, of course.
September 9th, 1968, to be specific. It was a song written to be as loud and powerful as possible. It’s got a distinctive heavy beat to it that counts as a crushing feel. Loud, distorted guitar.

And, of course, it is inherently linked with mass murder.
I’VE GOT BLISTERS ON ME FINGERS.

(Aw, someone said between me opening the window and me posting. Ah well. I can add that Ozzy was effing blown away by the Beatles, and they’re what got him really into music.)

By that argument, the likes of Charley Patton would count as metal. But he’s not, and neither are The Beatles. There may be songs before Sabbath that are metal, but Helter Skelter’s not one of them - it has more in common with garage rock, especially as performed a few years before by The Who or The Kinks, than it does with metal.

If you wanted to say it was an early punk song, you would have a point.

I don’t think I’d disagree that some artists aren’t better technically than others at all. That can be easily measured. But to say a work of art is objectively better than another just because the artist was more technically proficient? That’s where I’m not on board. Plenty of highly skilled artists have produced absolute crap, and plenty of people with a rudimentary grasp of their trade have put out works of beauty.

Music is the pleasure of the human soul experiences from counting without being aware that it is counting. - Gottfried Leibniz

connections between math and music

Can’t really argue with the rest of your response, other than to say how a person presents their opinion might have a lot to do with the angry responses.