Dissecting the Beatle

I loved my logic classes. Logically, I can't just tell you that and move on, so let's be civilized.

Last night was a bonafide Symposium. Maybe I'm using this word differently than it's intended, so, a symposium, literally, is a drinking party. As the drinks are consumed there is a test of the strength of the human mind, usually involving a logically based argument, where language flourishes are awarded extra points. And here's how it started.

Andrew and I do a lot of things together, we're practically an AmeriCouple. We even started talking like Walter and Perry from Home Movies recently:
"I got a slip of paper!"
"let's share it!"
Together- "yeah! We'll share it!"
(excessive hugging and laughing)

So Andrew and I went to Mickey's where crates of CDs lined the walls around three of the largest baldest creepiest DJs. I decided on the Beatles. After pointing sarcastically to some easy listening, I settled on Magical Mystery Tour.
"No, pick Fool on the Hill, that's the best song on the album."
"Not the right atmosphere, Darling" yes I do say that

The DJs accidentally played Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds first, another hit from the same album. Beautiful song. Jamie came over.
"Here he is, Mr Beatles are overrated" Andrew likes picking fights too, which is why we get along. We'd had the discussion many times before, but this time it wouldn't end so quickly.
"Dude, all I'm saying is if you're the number one band of all time, you can't be underrated." I had to agree. Nobody disagreed that the Beatles are considered the best band of all time, so we had our first fact in an argument, the Beatles cannot be overrated. "However," I like to make things complicated, "There are people who like the Beatles just because other people like the Beatles. They might know the hits, but they don't really understand the songs. In that sense the Beatles have an inflated fan-base they don't deserve."
Andrew: "You could say that for ANY band!"
"So every band is overrated. Would you agree?" Good ole' Socratic method which Anna identified as she entered the conversation.
Anna: "Only popular bands MUST be overrated, which is why they're popular. I like the band that you like, makes it popular." Good GOD I love my team. I kept saying this through the night as a mantra.
The conversation shifted but as we took jaggerbombs and mini-pitchers back to the table we never drifted into that hazy fumbling place. We were ignited.

"The Beatles and The Rolling Stones are two sides of the same coin. One choice pop, one chose the grunge of the era, but both could not have existed without American Delta Blues; Otis Redding, Muddy Waters." God I love my team. Mike joined in too, my roommate who had no connection to these people. He talked about Led Zepplin and the Doors. Jamie touched on the Who. Andrew and Mike riffed on Bob Dylan. We travelled in time through this popular revolution, and then it came back to the first song we'd heard that night. We agreed, there were a few kinds of Beatles, best characterized as "Hold My Hand" Beatles vs. "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds" Beatles. There are places in the middle, and some that don't fit into these categories like "Imagine" or maybe "Martha My Dear", but the divide came from the fact that they took LSD.

"The Beatles HAD to write those earlier songs to propel them into the spotlight. They wrote Pop, and when they'd achieved fame from films and crossing the ocean, they wrote the songs that wouldn't have succeeded if not for their prior fame."
Don't get me wrong, I think they would have been popular, but if Magical Mystery Tour was the Beatles first album, it wouldn't have made it to the states. Not for many years.

We asked who was the most influential Beatle? John Who was the most musically talented? Paul Who was the lame duck? They all said Ringo, but fuck that, Ringo is amazing All night long. People entered, people left, but Andrew and I stuck it out to the end. Eventually it shifted to something else.

Anna had said earlier that she liked all kinds of music.
Jamie: "That's bullshit. That's a bullshit answer, because you have to like one more than another. Don't tell me you like them all, that means you don't like any of them." I agreed.

And so we stood at a crossroad at the end of the night and I don't know how we got there. I stood on the side of Grunge and Punk, Andrew stood on the side of Electronica. He gets touchy with his music, like myself, and didn't appreciate that everyone doesn't understand why electronic music is lumped into one group, stereotypified as a dull bass thud and high-hat. And so I told him: Allow me to exaggerate a memory for you
"Music is music is music, it's all the same. The difference is how we identify. I like grunge, so I'll understand it more than you. You like Electronica, so you'll understand it more than me. Now that's not to say you don't like grunge, but you'll never be as enveloped as me." He nods. "The power behind the Beatles is they were right there with everyone. They might have been playing 50s music in the 60s, but by the time Magical Mystery Tour came out, they were playing 60s music in the 60s. They identified an entire generation of youth who in turn identified them. For a moment, the mirror in the face of pop culture was perfectly centered back in the face of the very people it represented." He smiled. "I'll never completely understand the Beatles, because they don't play 2009 music in 2009, but I can respect the impact they made on society, in the same way I can respect the impact your music makes on you."

Of course this isn't exactly how it went. You can't really hold onto an epiphany when you're drunk, which of course is the challenge of the Symposium. I remember speaking for a full minute over Nickelback or some shit, and at the end Andrew put his hand forward for me to shake. I did a full arm-pump, "Yes."

Remember how I started this? How I love logic?
One of my greatest strengths is to see from the point of view of many sides. Through the whole night, while they disagreed, my team made valid points of view none of which were incorrect. It made me think of Sid Meyer's Civilization. If you don't know you play the game to take over the world, either by brute force, culture, intelligence, or by reaching Alpha Centari. Every once in a while the other cultures approach you with an army. They're going to kill you if you don't give them gold or knowledge or whatever, and your advisors will say your army is more powerful and not to listen, or maybe that educating the world isn't so bad and it's not worth the fight. There's no option for reasoning with these people.
I wonder if that's the way our world really works. Sometimes I think it would be best to lock the leaders of the world in a room with crayons, instruments, books, and drugs and tell them to go to town. Maybe then after they've had some way to identify with these other people who don't speak the same language or have the same eyes they'll be able to work out a way for everyone to win, not just the one who makes it to Alpha Centari first.

I watched a movie this morning, "Sunshine" by the director who did 28 days later. It's a visual masterpiece, every shot is beautiful. The Sun is about to go out unless a ship with an atomic bomb the size of Manhattan jump-starts the sun into second life. A mission had gone out before this one, and disappeared somewhere behind the solar winds in the dead zone of Mercury's orbit. Eventually the crew hears a transmition floating in space from the commander of this first ship. He has sabatoged the mission so that humanity can die. He says there will be a point in time, a single point, when there is one last man left on the brink of destruction, just the one man and God. They'll live there for a very long time, speaking out of time and space, and the time will pass, and humanity will be gone, every trace of their existence erased.

In short, I could see where this man was coming from. Many of the girls from other teams who watched with us said "He's crazy," but really, he's not. Crazy to want to kill the entire human race? He says, "When he decides that we should die, man should not stand in the way of God." Why do I like that? Logically sound, but emotionally stunted. There's a lot to think about there.