Thursday, November 12, 2015

Beatles Reality Cheque


Photo by Luiz Fernando Reis (Bealtes cor 36 on Flickr) 
Creative Commons License -https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/



There was a time when one group had so much creativity within the band members, and created such amazing and iconic songs that still resonate with us now, five decades later in some cases, that they quite literally changed music history, and even popular culture.

When you think of the talent of each individual band member of the Beatles, and you see how they were able to work with one another, feed off of one another's energy and creativity, putting aside the potential pitfalls of ego in order to produce something beautiful and, it seems, eternal, it is inspiring. All the more so, on many levels, when you consider how sadly the band fell apart in the end, with no individual member happy, and with apparent jealousies and desires to do something different, to go their own way, prevailing over what had been their special moment in the sun for one all too short moment.

Still, how brightly they shined during that moment! Beatles fans like myself are thankful for that, and I was not even around yet when the Beatles were a band.

It has become quite cliché to speak grudgingly about the death of quality music today, and how it is all about obscene amounts of money, usually going to subpar pop bands all about the look, the image, and not about substance, about the quality and creativity of the music. Indeed, when you look at the stars ruling the music scene today, with prime examples in Justin Bieber and One Direction, it is hard to suggest that there is not at least a small grain of truth to these arguments.

Amazingly, the Beatles received surprisingly little for some of their songs. I mean, they obtained ridiculously small amounts for certain songs, and yet they kept on going with their musical genius. So, while there is validity to the viewpoint that the music industry (what a term that is, as if the creation of music, or art, could ever really be considered an "industry") is in serious trouble, with easy access to cheap or free downloads, and with Youtube and other sites allowing essentially free access to music, and record sales in serious decline because official downloads of individual songs trump album sales, and so on and so forth, I do believe that some truly great bands with great music can still emerge. If it is top quality music, people will keep coming, will keep listening and, yes, eventually, keep buying the music.

Let us remember the example of the Beatles, who again, received absurdly small amounts for some of their songs. Take a look at the checks, or rather, cheques, by clicking on the link below. Also, I figured I would add the link to the Grammy's Salute to the Beatles, which has some video links, as well as a few other interesting things that should prove appealing to Beatles fans:



Beatles  7 royalty cheques that’ll make you lose your faith in the music industry Mark Teo  Feb 11 2014:

http://www.cbs.com/shows/the-night-that-changed-america/

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