Paul Wesley

Was going to bump the thread to post this one, but I saw you beat me to it.

Yeah, maybe. I don't know. Traditional folk music wasn't "new." And the banjo was an African instrument, not a European one.

* I'm aware that the "new" genre that Elvis brought to Americans was a straight-up ripoff of black music. You could write a pretty persuasive thesis statement that every *new* American genre of music since the Civil War followed exactly that same pattern.

Beatles played to an America where 28% more households had a TV. But the Beatles' audience was only 22% bigger than Elvis'. And that doesn't even account for the fact that the Beatles' *potential* audience was WAY bigger - by maybe 20 million people, AND thanks to the post-war baby boom, they had a much bigger % of that bigger audience who were teens. TV viewership just seemed like an easy and fair metric for "popular." If the question is "most influential," I agree it's the Beatles. If we wanted to compare their number of #1 hits, Elvis is going to do very poorly. Consider that he was drafted and joined the army a mere 2 years post Ed Sullivan, and then his manager sent him off to Hollywood for a decade of schlock and cringe. The 2018 documentary "Elvis the Searcher" on HBO spent a lot of time on this, and I think that's the lens I've always seen him through: he was gorgeous, he had an A+ voice, he was charismatic, he brought a new genre to Americans in a way that a single person has never done before or since. He had the most widely recognized name on the planet for a time... and then he just sort of pissed it away, he missed out on the musical explosion of the 60's, and he returned as a fat drug addict in a sequined jumpsuit, and since America loves nothing more than a profound fall from a really high place, he was the punchline of a million jokes from that day forward.

Yeah, that’s fair. But also, how many 15-year old girls - who are arguably the peak demographic of pop culture - were alive for Elvis compared to the Beatles? Beatles came along right at the moment that the huge bump in population (boomers) were adolescents, so the wave they surfed was much bigger. You could take that as an argument for either artist… I’m just saying that the world changed an awful lot in the decade between.

Here’s a data point: viewers of their appearance on Ed Sullivan: 1956 Elvis 72% of US homes had a TV 60 million viewers —- 1964 Beatles 92% of US homes had a TV 73 million viewers Does not control for total population, but just eyeballing those numbers… It’s Elvis Again, that’s just one data point, but that’s a pretty fair apples to apples, I think. We’re also looking at different eras… the world changed a LOT from peak Elvis to peak Beatles to peak Michael (who I would say peaked with MTV airing “Thriller” every hour).

Funny, I was going to say either Elvis or the Beatles. They introduced an entirely new genre (at least for whitey), and they did it at a time when the country (and world) all consumed popular culture at exactly the same moment. For a long time, the most recognized words on the planet were (allegedly) Elvis, Jesus, and Coca-Cola.

My wife just had her Spotify station playing and this song came on. Right from the beginning, I was like, "Wait, did he just say fentanyl?" Yes, he did. "He bet I couldn't take them all, And if I did and didn't die, He'd teach me how to fall, 'cause he can't teach me how to fly."

This. I mean, MJ is the GOAT, and he should get all the accolades. That said, he did NOT win a championship in roughly 66% of his NBA seasons. The 95 Rockets were one of the hottest playoff teams in history. They played the four teams with the four best records in the league, were on the road all four times, and left NO doubt in each series who the better team was. Olajuwon bettered Malone, embarrassed Robinson, edged a young Shaq (whose supporting cast just wilted vs Horry/Cassel/Drexler/Smith). Those Rockets swept the Magic team that had just beaten Michael and the Bulls. “But Jordan wasn’t in shape in 1995.” Horse shit. He was a pro athlete in the prime of his career. His other career? Pro athlete. How many months was it going to take to get into such unbelievable shape that Hakeem was no longer going to be guarded by Bill Fucking Wennington and Will Fucking Perdue? How many months until BJ Armstrong would have outplayed hot-shooting Kenny Smith and Sam Cassel, or until Harper would have outplayed the younger, more athletic (and also red-hot) Robert Horry? The 1995 Bulls weren’t winning shit.

So I’m genuinely curious how a story like this is reported by Daily Beast on a Friday, and then it just disappears. If the bigger media outlets reported it, I didn’t see it. (Of course, I understand that Fox isn’t going to tell their viewers) Why does that happen? I just missed the stories from other outlets? The whole thing was bullshit? Daily Beast has a leaker that they trust, but no other organizations can confirm it? Seems like someone would run a “daily beast is reporting that…” story.

Arkansas and Nebraska. OU obviously. I mean, you had the Iowa State offensive lineman this year saying, "Since I've been here, it's just Iowa and Texas (as Iowa State's main rivals)" I cannot imagine Yormark and his K State cohorts getting more fired up for a game than the one vs Texas. It ain't just in-state schools. Fans all across the shithole flyover states hate us. Give us some fucking credit, man.

Possibly the bravest “truth to power” since a Chinese man faced down a column of advancing tanks. RIP

I think maybe when you pick a band instrument in 6th grade, the worse your decision, the more likely you'll own a Les Paul at some point. Very impressive on the Michigan scholarship, jimmyjazz.

There used to be this super cool store on 35th Street called Radio Ranch. They had a lot of old scientific artifacts like chemistry lab equipment from the 50's, a super old x-ray machine with giant knobs, etc. Anyway, they had a beat-up old horn there that I bought for like $50. Turned out it was a marching mellophone, which I guess is a straightened-out French horn. It was very hard to play... much harder than a trumpet, I think. I sounded horrid. I have had other equally unsuccessful "pretty sure I can play this instrument" adventures.

Trombone or French horn? Those seem like the two hardest to nail a pitch.

Side bets on what band instrument Celery played? I played alto sax. Hard to get less cool than that. The fucking oboe section was kicking my backpack down the hall.

Me: Data from lobbyists should be viewed with some skepticism. Criminals should be prosecuted. Slorch: “Fairy tales with massive plot holes!!!!”

1. Definitely not what I said 2. You’re quoting “data” from a lobbying group who advances corporate interests. They have an agenda. 3. I tried to make this point clear, but despite my caveats, it only took a few minutes to be misquoted: in a nuanced issue, multiple things can be true at once. We don’t have to choose one or the other. For example: a). Mark Furman is a perjurer and a dishonest cop who dropped N-bombs on a daily basis. b). OJ is a murderer. Both true. In this case: a). The NRF is a lobbying group that represents billions (?trillions) of dollars of private corporate interests, and their data should always be viewed with that in mind. b). Property crimes should be prosecuted and punished.

(I haven't read to the bottom of the thread yet, so apologies if someone already made this point) When I was a kid, one of the refrains of the corporations was that their ability to conduct business was under assault from frivolous lawsuits. The narrative was everywhere. The "hot coffee" victim was a national punchline. Every late night comedy show monologue for half a decade, "Look at this stupid reckless person who did something stupid and was stupid and is now trying to get money. Outrageous!" Except that when you look at the facts of that case decades later, you have to admit that the company (McDonald's) was doing something reckless -- handing people boiling hot coffee/water in a little paper cup with a marginally secured lid -- and numerous people had already been injured, and the company knew that, but the company kept doing it despite their awareness of those earlier cases. Anyway, this whole "PEOPLE ARE STEALING EVERYTHING FROM US!" from the retailers... that feels like an eerily similar corporations-as-victims claim, and I'm going to apply a small bit of skepticism when they present their alleged data. I think this latest round of corporate propaganda is even more powerful because we've got actual videos of actual criminals doing brazen smash-and-grabs*, and this lines up perfectly with other ecosystems of thinly-veiled racism and "lawless cities!" propaganda. *since nuance is dead, let me say that for sure that those property crimes very much need to be punished

The Hole in the Wall episode with Don Henley is one of Austin's finest legends, IMO. The RS article references it with this link: https://www.austinchronicle.com/music/2014-06-20/don-henley-must-die/

Sure, I’ll concede that’s true. But you’d have to also agree that it’s the other kind of “terrible” that we’re actually subjected to on a regular basis. You aren’t getting the Shaggs in elevators, dental waiting rooms, commercial breaks, etc.

I hear you, but there are different kinds of "bad." There's "bad" like no musical talent at all (Shaggs), and "bad" like really talented people creating commerce that tries to pass itself off as art (pandering). (edit) Arguably, there's another kind of bad, which is adopting some kind of silly affectation and using some sort of pressure/trick to get everyone to agree that the action has artistic merit.

I feel like the Doors are one of those stages-of-life bands. Sort of like discovering Kerouac or Hunter S Thompson, there's a point in life where the Doors *seem* to be rebellious or counter-culture in a way that appeals to a youthful brain. And only later do you get more breadth and depth of experience that allows you to accurately reclassify those artists according to their actual artistic merit (read: "meh"). For the Doors specifically, reading "No One Here Gets Out Alive" and considering Morrison to be a genius -- that time period will coincide with the one where you're still a gawky virgin, but you carry that same condom in your wallet for an entire fucking year. Someone should start a "bands you outgrow" thread.