DrAwkward wrote: Sun Jan 04, 2026 10:18 am
This sort of counts:
Because of a number of factors -- a dumb obsession with hair metal in high school, moving from that directly to grunge/punk/alternative in college -- I never really had a Beatles Phase like so many do. I worked in oldies radio after college and my mom was into them, and of course, they're
The Beatles, so I absorbed all their songs via osmosis, because how could you not if you live in Britain or America? But it was only a few years ago (I'm 51) that I finally listened to the Beatles'
albums, starting with
Rubber Soul on. I understand that they were considered more of a "singles" band (it seriously weirds me out that "Hey Jude" isn't on a proper album release), but goddamn,
Revolver is insane! Had that on repeat in the car for awhile.
Funny, I was going to mention the Beatles, too. I listen to them from time to time, in passing, sometimes an album. But in recent months, I actually spent time listening to what they were doing as far as song writing and recording goes, and I've gotten to appreciate them more. Also, in my older age, I find myself drawn more to McCartney than Lennon. McCartney is an amazing musician, Lennon is an incredible artist. However, McCartney's skills are just unfucking deniable, he's one of the most proliferate musicians of his era.
I appreciate the fact that Ringo and George are well placed as understated accompaniments. I remember watching a random video of a drum instructor talking about overplaying and the importance of servicing a song. He played a Beatles song that Ringo played on, and then played the same song, but overbearing. It just crystalized the importance of this.
Anyway, I was listening to a mono recording on my big towers. I don't normally listen to mono recordings, I still prefer stereo. But wow, just really interesting ways to mix music at the time when they had a lot of limitations. I also appreciate the fact that they never were pristine in their recordings. I was reading a recent breakdown of one of their recording sessions, and the engineer noted that Lennon was singing slightly out of tune in the song, but it made the whole thing much better (it was comment on how imperfections can make recordings special, as opposed to the ways music is disinfected in the digital era with auto-tuning, quantizing, etc).