Moral Panics

the term moral panic was created by stanley cohen, the beatles can be classed as one. a moral panic is "A sudden increase in public perception of the possible threat to societal values and interests because of exposure to media texts." (http://www.medialit.org/reading_room/article565.html)

During the 1950s and 1960's there was widespread concern over the influence of rock 'n' roll music with fears that it led to promiscuity and anti-social behaviour.

If a moral panic is a sort of hysterical mass paranoia, then its opposite might be a mass hysterical enthusiasm. the bealtes caused teenagers (and some adults) to simply loose control, if you look at video footage from beatles concerts in the early 1960s you will see that you can hardley hear the band all you can hear is screeming fans.

tomorow never knows


has been called to most socialy influenced song that they had released - it is all based around A lsd trip that john lennon took - listen to the lyrics "turn of your mind and float downstreem" this song reflects the drug culture at the time. the beatles were at the front of this, they had songs banned by the BBC because they mentioned sex, it is amazing that the BBC did not ban this song.

a defining moment of seeing the beatles as a moral panic took place in america, in 1969 John Lennon gave an interview in which he appears to have been misquotes but he did say that at that moment the beatles were bigger than god/jesus. this created a backlash against the group. not so much in the UK but in america there were mass beatles burnings of records, books, posters and everthing with there faces.
ringo starr said about the incident on the beatles anothologgy that people were buying beatle records to burn or burnt them and bought them again so in many ways it worked out ok for them. but lennon has death threats to him self and his young son julian because of it, the media took it and used it as a way to bring them down. america being a relgious country used it to say see we were right they are nothing more than ordinary. nothing can challenge the authority of religion.

Adorno

Adorno argued that popular music is just a simpulification of the older musical idioms of the classical and romantic style. Adorno argued that “capitalism fed people with the products of a 'culture industry' - the opposite of 'true' art - to keep them passively satisfied and politically apathetic.” (theory.org.2008) Emerging mass culture of popular music weekend the critical consciousness and manipulated the working classes”. (Maconis&Plummer, 2002, p116) According to Adorno, the people who listened to popular music showed infantile characteristics, he argued that people needed to listen to what he called real music but were unable to as the continued to listen to popular music. Adorno argued that the” popular music produced by the culture industry is dominated by two processes: standardisation and pseudo-individualisation” (Strinati, 2004) He argued that the culture industries “shaped the tastes and preferences of the masses, thereby moulding their consciousness by instilling the desire for false needs” (IBID)

Sociological studies of the beatles songs follow adornos theory. many dissmiss there music as just simply popular music with no meaning. however those that listen to there music will discover that there music places them at the top of the musical elite of the 20th centuary.

Adorno had nothing to do with the Beatles and was horrified by their repetitious and over-simplified songs

A random piece of internet rumor found on the internet was that Adorno from the frankfurt school wrote the beatles music untill his death in 1969 which can be seen in the below video



of course this isnt true 99% of beatles songs were written by john lennon and paul mccartney under the northen songs production company,

Swear in Hey Jude

Something interesting i read today thanks to the BBC website: http://timesonline.typepad.com/comment/2009/04/having-read-a-huge-amount-about-the-beatles-i-thought-i-pretty-much-knew-all-the-quirks-in-their-recordings-how-wrong-i-was.html

at about 3 min into Hey jude paul Mccartney swears off mic but it is audiable, never in all the times i have listend to this song have i nor it appears anyone else has heard this on the track.



this isnt the best copy to listen to but its still odd, that in the 1960s this managed to get past the censors.

resession helps music?

Found an interesting quote from Liam Gallagher from OASIS

"I hope the financial crisis gets a bit worse - at least we'll get a few good albums out of it," he told That's Shanghai.

"When we started in the early ‘90s it was a pretty grim time when the Conservative [party] was still in power.

"Times of crisis usually bring out the best in music and fashion and politics and things like that."

Source: http://www.digitalspy.co.uk/music/a148518/gallagher-recession-is-good-for-music.html

Free as a Bird

The Beatles anthology was a massive thing, they made 8 eps charting the beatles from birth untill the end of the beatles (controversial in its self to some 1969 to others 1970 when final album was released)

Free as a bird was a solo song recorded by John Lennon in the 1970's however the recording was just john a piano and a tape recorder, he never recorded it professionaly. Yoko Ono gave the recording to Paul Mccartney and he and the other remainging beatles at that time (Ringo and George) set about with there producer George Martin to create the first beatles song for years,

what free as a bird did was very clever, it was advertising for the anthology but also it reminded people of of the beatles, Dawson argued that what it did was show people nostalia and contrast in its recapturalisation of the beatles career.

"The video conveys a strong sense of contrast between the present and the past. the present is the bird and Mccartneys near by voice. the past is what the bird sees Lennon's distant voice. Meadiating the two tenses is much of the liverpool footage from the TV series (Beatles Anthology) it appears that all the footage of the beatles is old, they reapear throught the video moving from location to location reminding us that they may still be wizzards and the dream may not be over" (burns. 2000: P181: as cited by Bennett, A. 2005, P155)



on of the best things about the video is the references to beatles songs, there is a version on youtube which has them all in it.




Reference: Bennett, Andy (2005). Cultures of Popular Music. Issues in Culture and Media Studies. 3rd ed. Berkshire: Open University Press. Available online: http://www.myilibrary.com/Browse/open.asp?ID=113164&loc=22

Not compleatly related to sub cultures and things but Daniel by Bat for Lashes is not just a stunning song, it uses recording techecues that were pionered by the beatles, its worth posting for its amazingness