For a change of topic the two most important rock bands to come out of the 1960's were Black Sabbath and Led Zeppelin and not the Beatles. Pop music would have ended up in much the same place with or without the Beatles but Sabbath pretty much invented the heavy metal genre and Zeppelin popularized heavy guitar driven rock. They basically created new genres. Sure there were bands like Cream who predated them and had some heavy guitar sounds in some of their songs but Sabbath and Zeppelin are the ones who really popularized it and drove others to follow.
I can guarantee that.
Never mind that you don't have the mid-period Sabbath Mellotron tapes without the Beatles bringing the Mellotron to greater acclaim during their career. Same goes for Led Zeppelin's use of the Mellotron.
As for "Important", I always wind up thinking that The Kinks are probably more important than The Beatles. Not as groundbreaking, but probably more important. Same sort of argument could be made for The Byrds.
Last edited by numberthirty; 05-10-2019 at 04:57 PM.
"I rhyme with tyre - And cause pollution - I think you'll find - It's the best solution: What Am I?"
"And that's the essential problem with 'Planetary' right there. When Elijah Snow says, 'The world is a strange place'... he gets Dracula, Doc Savage and Godzilla... When we say it, we get The Captain Fire-Cock Rock 'n' Roll Spectacular."
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Ok, I guess I don't disagree much, but I would argue that the Beatles heavily influenced pop music in their time and for some years after. There's the obvious thing of the commercial trend they set when the were mop-tops, but post Revolver they influenced the way people thought about sound and the way people made albums and that includes people who played different genres of music. I agree that Zep and Black Sabbath pretty much built the Highway for what we think of as Metal today, but you needed The Yardbirds, Creem, and Blue Cheer ( and The Who) clear the path somewhat.
There's 3 groups of people when it comes to the military:
They're murderers of black and brown people overseas!
V.S
Don't blame them!!, They're just Desperate poor people that was conned into joining the military with promises of free health care and college. So don't blame them!
V.S.
The America Fuck YEAH! Crowd. Basically my country right or wrong types.
U.S. military service (and foreign policy in general) is a muddy grey area. That's explosively divisive, ever since Vietnam
For me at least, while I will always respect and support the troops on the ground, it's impossible not to pick up on the fact that within living memory they are pretty much always fighting offensive wars against severely overmatched opponents, so the question is not whether or not they can win but whether they can do it without killing thousands of civilians in the process. And it's pretty clear that these wars have nothing to do promoting democracy and freedom and everything to do with protecting American corporate interests. It's very hard to think of a future where we'd look back on the history of American military adventures and conclude that we were in fact the good guys throughout all of this.
History will spin it that way though. At least American history will. American history that is taught is basically just propaganda, and probably not very objective/academic. To this day we still have bitter debates over the founding fathers, the civil war, Lincoln, reconstruction, the war on drugs etc etc etc...
I believe America will have a varied label in parts of its history regarding whether or not it's a good guy or a bad guy. Just looking at the last half century, we've seen considerable shifts in judgment on many parts of history. There will, of course, be some resume padding by the winners, but there will also be a recognition of flaws and mistakes.