Fear and Loathing in Phoenix
Our loyal friend Anonymous, outspoken critic of the dreaded FF menace and seeker of truth and wisdom, has given us a great gift: a paper he wrote for his English class. The prompt was “How I gave something away of value.” Unbeknown to him, the professor was a closet beatlehead. He got a D. This short exercise introduced him to the fierce oppression which faces every free thinking music fan who turns a deaf ear to the cloth eared. It has inspired him to battle on, and write his semester paper on why the beatles are the most overrated band ever. A valiant goal. He will undoubtedly fail English.
You’re Welcome, Mom: Giving Away Something of Value
For this prompt I did not actually give away something of value. Over the Thanksgiving break I drove to Phoenix with two brothers, a sister-in-law, and a dog. My grandmother lives there. My parents and another brother drove to Phoenix from Texas. Before I continue it is important to explain that I have a burning hatred of the beatles, so much so that I do not capitalize the name. I grew up assuming they really were as great as everyone made them out to be. But after listening to the Number Ones album in my 11th grade art class for several weeks, I realized that that was not the case. The more I heard, the more I realized that not only are they not a good band, they are awful! After researching the band, I only found more and more evidence that the members were generally terrible people and marginally talented musicians who were supremely over-hyped by hordes of brainwashed music journalists. I hate the music, the people, the legacy and most of the fans I encounter. I hate the beatles at the loss of friends, relationships, and possibly in the future, jobs.
Back to the story: while we were driving through the streets of Phoenix, for no apparent reason, my mother tossed a beatles boxed set of CDs onto my lap. My mother has exquisite musical tastes; everything from the intimidating genre of classical music to the folk-pop groups of her youth. (She even admits to liking “Stairway to Heaven.”) Despite such a fine musical pedigree, she claims to enjoy the beatles’ early music for nostalgic purposes. She is well aware of my enmity towards the terrible Brit-pop quartet, and I suppose she anticipated a humorous outburst by confronting me with her boxed set. I’m used to people bringing up the beatles in conversation in order to be entertained by an inevitable vitriolic diatribe. Personally I think this practice is rather sadistic. But no more digressions, back to the story: without hesitating, or even considering what I was doing, I opened the car door and tossed the box set out. We did not turn around to retrieve it. As far as I know, the boxed set of the beatles’ early years to this day lies somewhere on Shea Blvd.
So I did not give away something of value. I threw away something belonging to someone else, whose value, according to the Manufacturer’s Suggested Retail Price, was $69.98. My suggested retail price for the same item would be slightly lower than the price of a small bag of garbage. What I did may be construed by some as inconsiderate and destructive, but I know that what I did was perform a highly valuable service. My quick action saved my mother from the burden of owning music by the most overrated band of all time. She would no longer be forced to hear their syrupy melodies, treacly ballads and just plain boring songs. No more would the mind-numbingly bad refrain from “I Want To Hold Your Hand” waft through her office, deadening the senses of the coworkers and students who stop by. No longer would such perversions as the “tit-tit-tit-tit” chorus from “Girl” grate on the ear drums of passengers in her car. Never again would our home, a veritable Heaven On Earth, be polluted by the somnambulistic anthem “Love Me Do”. You’re welcome, Mom.
At least in my mother’s defense, her former box set contained only the beatles’ early albums, before they begat the truly egregiously bad songs, such as “Maxwell Silver Hammer,” “Yellow Submarine,” or “Obla di Obla Please Shoot Me”.
After I freed my mother from the shame and guilt of owning The Capitol Albums Vol. I, I saw a stunned look on her face. Perhaps she was not ready to confess and forsake that miscarriage of music. Perhaps she wondered how her sweet third son could have developed such an intense hatred for anything. However she felt at the moment I do not know. I knew that with time she would come to appreciate what I had done for her. And I was right. Later she admitted that their music was starting to get on her nerves.
can the operator of this website please help me? i need information on what steps need to be taken to remove a post. this is very important. thank you very much.
First, stop smoking pot. Then, destroy all of your beatles tapes and memorilbila. That includes the 8 tracks you cannot figure out how to play anymore. Then chant over and over……….I HATE THE BEATLES AND THEY WERE THE WORST AND MOST OVERRATED BAND SINCE THE BIG BANG THAT CREATED OUR UNIVERS……….and all of your wishes will come true. Then beautiful fairies will come flying out and circle your head, while strumming on a harp the theme songs to Metallica or something better 🙂
Oh, and he is the ADMINISTRATOR, not operator. And you sound like a fisherman to me looking to plant a bot or something. Check into this DAS.
The beatles are awesome. You can suck my balls if you think their not.
The beatles are not awesome but please keep your prepubescent balls to yourself.
I’m a Beatles fan, but your site’s really funny and well-written. You pulled me in. Besides for somebody who hates the Beatles you know a lot about them, so I’ve learned some new Beatles trivia. Win-win.
That was a butt move for that guy to throw his mom’s box set out the window though. She could have at least recouped some loss by selling it on Craigslist or e-bay when she got sick of it.
Logical thinking is awsome, the beatles are not. I also bet your balls are really small from marijuana use.
you all are just jealous bastards you all wish you could be as good as the Beatles they where one of that bands that kept people at peace while they where coping with the war. learn how to play some instruments. learn to sing. and you start a band.wait… you can’t because all you are is a FUCKING FAT ASS website maker that maybe 40 people in the whole wide world agree on. you try sucking your own balls for a chance?
If I could suck my own balls this site probably wouldn’t exist. I didn’t know the beatles went to war! Please tell me more, my eloquent new friend.
Ok. Listen up, I love The Beatles, and you guys, really need to shut the f*ck up, you have your own taste of music, yeah, FINE. So stop hating on other peoples taste of music. You are just a couple of trolls sitting home, all alone! Just waiting for someone to respect and love you. You know what? If you continue hating on other peoples music, or just other people, it’s never going to happen.
I say, shut the freaking website down, and make a fanpage about the music YOU like. instead of hating!!!
PEACE OUT!
Louise! Thank you for being so unabashedly self-unaware. Your rambling post contains both “Shut the fuck up” and “Peace out”. This highlights perfectly the addled state-of-mind the typical beatles fan occupies. Get help, darling.
(and I don’t mean the shitty beatles song), I mean seek counseling!
You are a good son and that courageous deed will be appreciated by your mom more and more as time passes.
The beatles blow. I love this blog.
I don’t know what makes the Beatles became so famous and the type of music they have became so popular. They really have the charisma that attracts people to pay attention to their songs.
.-= Ron´s last blog ..Man Boobs and Alcohol =-.
Well Ron I agree with you a little about the Charisma, but the fact of the matter is a lot of bands that suck get a lot of attention, simply because people are sheep. Especially in the 60’s with all the massive drug use, and people just wanting to be part of the “in” thing. And I like your blog about man boobs. Good for me though, my wife has been thinking about turning lesbian, so now she won’t leave me. Wait, maybe I do want her to leave.
You know that Maysles Bros documentary about the Beatles’ first visit to the U.S.? In the Making Of special feature, they have all this cutting floor interview footage of some of the kids among the screaming hoards at JFK airport when the Beatles plane landed. At least half the kids interviewed said they didn’t see what all the fuss was about and that they thought the Beatles were okay at best. They just went to the airport I think out of curiosity for all the media hype.
I’ve read somewhere that those kids were bussed in by the record company to create hype. I think they were paid to act like that.
?e prostovoljno poslušate glasbo The Beatles, je pozdravil kot drek, ki ti?a v možganih. Bili ste pravilno zavržemo teh CD-jev.
Tudi v slovenskem, nismo prepri?ani, kaj govoriš.
it is clear this site is just a troll site, it gets most of its traffic from people who come here to argue with you. and clearly this site makes absolutely no difference in the world (aside from you feeling clever when you get to make a smart comment while a Beatles fan is cussing you out)
ps. It’s easy to make people sound foolish when you put them in an emotional state by pissing them off. But if it makes you feel THAT good then do what you have to do to get by. happy trolling.
There is nothing that makes anyone sound more foolish when they proclaim that the beatles where the greatest band ever, and influenced every other band in the universe, with their original music! I cannot even get them to top that, even if it was possible.
You do realize that the reason he got a bad grade was because:
a) The word Beatles us a proper noun, capitalizing words is not an honor, its just proper English.
b) It was not of emotional value, the idea was he gave away something of emotional value.
and c) He didn’t give it away, he threw it away.
Just because he writes an essay which says he dislikes the Beatles doesn’t mean he got a bad grade because the professor likes the Beatles. He used poor grammer and did the wrong assignment.
Well, I can vouch for the proper noun spelling practice myself, that we here as beatles haters (I actually coined this practice) refuse to capitalize the word beatles. Because they are not proper, important, or relavent to anything in society.
I though suck my beatles created it? https://suckmybeatles.com/2007/10/06/reason-491-spellcheck/
I can’t take credit, it’s a meme.
It’s okay to capitalize beatle if it comes at the beginning of a sentence, depending on how strongly you feel about it. Go with your heart.
You are absolutely incorrect Das when you say it is ok to capitalize beatle at the beginning of a sentence. That is referring to the group The beatles, because it would have to start with “The.”
I can see your point, but what if you had to write a sentence like this: “Beatle fans run amok, horrifying citizens with bloodthirsty cries of ‘She Loves You! JaJaJa!’ “
Well, in that situation then, the proper grammar to use is to say “Dirty filthy patuli smelling, stale urine and shit reaking, bong toting, Mescaline dropping,(Mescaline capitalized)Salvation Army clothes wearing, dreadlock sporting, tree hugging, change bumming, volkswagon bus living, wife or girlfriend swapping at the campgrounds burnt out hippie scum beatle fans run amok, horrifying citizens with bloodthirsty cries of ‘She Loves You! JaJaJa!’ “
How’s that for a better point on proper grammar when it comes to the beatles? 🙂
Not to be a killjoy or anything, but I’m compelled to bring this comments thread back to the essay that we’re here to comment on. I’m a huge Beatles fan. They have always been my favorite group, and none of the bands I’ve listened to over the course of my life so far have threatened that position. As far as being the best group in the world, how the hell can anybody quantify that? There are way too many bands currently performing in the world right now, and no one person can claim to have heard them all. Even to narrow it down to those who have recorded output, there are thousands of recordings made each week (probably tens of thousands, but maybe only thousands are worth listening to) that no one person can gather, let alone listen to. Multiply this by the fifty years since the first Beatles record, and try to figure out the odds. So, the theory of The Beatles being the best or worst band in the world – not a statement rational enough to theorize.
I just wanted to get that out of the way before I admit to my own folly. Now to the point of this post; I bought the box set described in this story. The albums in the box were the ones issued by Capitol in America as the music was becoming available. They were different from the British releases on the following points: The British releases had 14 songs each, and new single releases were not included on the full length LP’s. If you bought a Beatles single in England, you were not expected to buy the songs again on the next album release. In America, they took all those individual songs, grouped them together arbitrarily and released them on singles and EP’s and albums they made up, each album never having more than twelve songs (but usually only eleven). As a result, American collectors spent a lot more money for a lot of repeated music and/or filler (ever heard of the album The Beatles Story?). Capitol knows a market when they see one, and knows all the right strings to pull. However, when you lived in the states when the music was happening, this was how you heard it. When CD’s were first introduced, someone at Capitol had the wherewithal to release the British versions, which were what the band originally intended and would clearly be a better value for the consumer. But for the older fans, the British releases had the wrong songs in a weird order and it took some getting used to. We wanted the old albums, with their different mixes and running order because that’s how we loved them in the first place. So, twenty years after the CD’s were released, they decided to release limited quantities of these old LP’s on CD’s, exclusively as two separate box sets. Nostalgia can be a powerful thing. Despite the fact that I knew these CD’s would not be as good as I was hoping, I was still compelled to buy them. Upon opening them at home, I wished I knew who at Capitol to strangle for the gyp. The box itself was a cheap, cardboard longbox (remember those?) which opens in the middle like something that should be used to hold french fries at some fast food joint. The CD’s came in individual “LP replica” cardboard envelopes, which I hate because they scratch up the CD’s and don’t look good on the shelf. The artwork from said CD covers was copied from someone’s old LP’s and looked pretty pathetic. Oh, and it came with a “collector’s edition booklet” that had no useful information, pictures that we’d already seen a thousand times, and was the size of a CD, making it too small for any real enjoyment. This whole package came at a retail price of $69.95. The only thing they got right was that the stereo and mono mixes were both on each disc (being as the running time on these releases was less than half an hour, this was the least they could do). Most people don’t really care about that sort of thing, but I do. Of course, there are channels that I could have gone through to get those mixes, but I just had to have the “real thing”. So I paid full price for a CD box I could have made myself for fifteen bucks in a decent print shop.
The side of the road in Phoenix is a fitting place for this box set. I do hope that someone found it and kept it, because I imagine that if I had gotten it for free, it wouldn’t be laughing at me from my CD shelf every time I turn on the light. Thanks to Capitol for being a bunch of money hungry bastards, and for reminding me how much of a sucker my collecting habits can turn me into. Oh, and just in case someone from Capitol is reading this, I’m not falling for your “Limited Edition Beatles Stereo Vinyl Box Set” shit either. It’s all been digitally processed, so listening to it on vinyl is a waste of time. And the list price on this item is three hundred nineteen dollars! Are you out of your fucking mind? Well I’m not, so you can suck it.
Thanks for letting me vent, Das. If you ever make a Suck My Stones website, let me know. I’ve got a lot of venom for that empire as well. Ah well, another tirade for another day.
Take care!
It sounds like beatlemart pulled a real number on you Scott!
It must be hard as a beatle fan, always hoping for new material and getting so much repackaged material and nonsensical filler. Let it be – the musical (no joke!), a tribute on Glee (album sure to follow). Live from the BBC vol 2 is due out soon, more live beatles (everyones favorite!) playing more covers. It will coincide with the release of a new book, produced by the BBC: The Beatles – The Archives: 1962-1970. You also got some funky dance music remixes of Love me do, and the long awaite re-re-re-release – on bluray no less, of Help!, Yellow Submarine, and Magical Mystery Tour.
While I’m on the subject, is there anything else that can really be written about them anymore? There are new biographies released bi-monthly. A quick look on Amazon shows: Tune In: The Beatles: All These Years, The Beatles Are Here!: 50 Years after the Band Arrived in America, Writers and Other Fans Remember, How the Beatles Changed the World.
A while back Jimi Hendrix’s estate put out some unreleased material which was actually unheard studio recordings of new songs. I can’t vouch for the quality of the material but the one song I heard was pretty impressive. If anything like that existed in beatlemarts dungeon, it very likely would have been milked by now.
Thanks for dropping by again. Suck my stones is a great idea which I would fully support, right along with Suck My Zeppelin. If you have the time and useless knowledge I’ll even help you launch it!