Many times, I have stated that the heroes of the past in sports, music, and countless other fields could not, for the most part, outshine our current heroes.
For example, Michael Jordan beats Wilt Chamberlain, Lots of people beat Roger Bannister, Britney Spears beats Tiffany, Hawking beats Einstein (Don't argue), Today's Poor Chinese Commie beats the Poor Chinese Commie of the 1960s, Goth kids beat... Wait, Goth kids lose, actually, to hippie kids, but that's like comparing a few Apples with identical clothing and too much makeup to a happy, sunshiny orange grove full of wacky oranges. Finally, Eminem beats The Beatles. You can't compare those two, you say? Well, they're both "musical acts" that sell albums to confused teenagers. Any other difference between the two determines what kind of musical act they are, or how silly and immature the fans were / are...
So, they're comparable, and here I go!
The only argument to any of the above statements that I'll accept is that the relative talent of the past hero was clearly so far above and beyond the environment of their time that the hero's legacy is deserving of "all-time greatest" status.
What this means, then, is that any comparison of past and present superstars must include an accurate understanding of the environment in which the heroes rose to greatness, and the extent to which the person or group transcended its peers.
So let's do that. (By the way, I almost started posting about the current competitive environment in baseball recruiting in order to discover the greatness of Barry Bonds as compared to Hank Aaron, but, while doin' a little research, I realized that any possible contribution I could have to the argument would be the equivalent of spitting into the Sea of Tranquility. That reminds me of one o' them "I like my coffee..." jokes: I like my women like I like my Apollo moon landings: ... Actually, never mind...)
The Hippest, Hoppinest Group of the Past, The Beatles, vs. The White MC Hammer, Eminem
Who better to pit against The Beatles than another white superstar capitalizing on black musical roots? Ooh, that hurt...
Allow me to put everything in list form, as I seem to have a habit of doing:
1. If The Beatles released all the songs from their "1" album today, without previously releasing them, they'd be competing with bands like Muse, Modest Mouse, The White Stripes, Smashing Pumpkins, Plain White T's [That band can eff itself, by the way, for improper apostrophe usage (see #8)], and whoever the hell Finger Eleven is. This is, according to all the fans of these bands, pretty stiff competition.
I admit, these bands are not amazing, but neither was the recent remake of Godzilla. However, if you traveled back in time with a copy of the high tech masterpiece (You know, the Ferris Bueller's Day in Washed-up Hell version) and showed it to the 1960s Japanese, they'd blow their effin' brains from the inside out with atomic, upward-traveling Gojira-induced spermatozoa. Incidentally, the Japanese also loved the Beatles, which, I think, was part of an international trade agreement we had where we'd trade untranslatable art to each other. Consequently, the Japanese extras in the original Godzilla movies were the sole inspiration for Americans' greetings of strange foreigners coming in from (across) the ocean: --EVIDENCE--
The point of this is that our modern ability to create art is infinitely better than it was 40 years ago. So what, you say? Well, go listen to of one o' them George Harrison guitar lines in any Beatles song and imagine it in a crisp, clear, focused and scrutinizing high definition digital recording, and you'll see that there's a very objective argument for saying that the Beatles, at least music performance-wise, were not very talented. Writing the chord progressions and lyrics might be a different story, right? Well, compare who wrote the songs, back then and today:
2. If The Beatles were together today, recording their music with a similar outside-of-the-box mindset that they had in the 1960s, would their originality, creativity and ability to make music that sells like hotcakes be on par with that of multi-billion dollar record companies? This, I think, is the most important question of all. Although competition from self-propelled bands and independent labels is clearly quite tough, trying to outsmart corporations that employ thousands of high paid music "professionals" whose sole duties are to discover what music the populace most wants to hear is, by definition, statistically impossible.
So, given that the modern day music industry behemoths didn't exist in the '60s, I think it's fair to assume that the Beatles faced a substantially easier competitive environment during their heyday.
3. Another sign that competition was weak in the 1960s? Not all the animal names were used up... (Beatles, Monkees, Turtles, Ducks, etc...)
4. And here's a little hypothetical: Say you wanted to record an album. Could you do it? Yes - for less than a few hundred bucks, and it would sound pretty amazing. And to distribute it? Search MySpace for "Independent Label" and I'm sure you'll get about 750,000 people who say they are music producers. Some of them gotta be, right? Then get online and make a website. Next thing you know, you'll be bigger than Sunday Afternoon!
And in the 1960s? The only small time "bands" makin' it big were The Oneders, according to that documentary I saw the other day... Everyone else had to pay out the wazoo for shit on a stick and no hope of distribution...
What does this tell you? Again, the only barrier to entry to gettin' your songs on AmieStreet.com and being a "part of the music biz" is the extreme competition you'll face.
So on one hand we've got the lax, unexplored, noncompetitive environment that allowed The Beatles to convert blues into rock and roll a couple of times, then repeat the process with some variation to create the majority of their first few albums. After they stumbled onto that success, the rest of their careers were based on experimenting and being hippies. Capitalist hippies, though, I'll give 'em that...
On the other hand, we've got Eminem. A perfect mix of Kubrick-style juicy human and corporate machine. He's a rapper, but he's also got fun music videos. And he's white. He talks his crap about fellow rappers, but he also does the family stuff that inspires sales of [censored] albums at the Disney Store, or Wal-Mart.
So why is Eminem more of a "diamond in the rough" than The Beatles were? Simple: In an era of almost complete saturation of musical styles, competing with literally millions of musicians, each with equal access to music-making technology, he is the musical equivalent to Neo in the Matrix. Why? This sucks, but I'll say it anyway: Marshall Mathers is the physical manifestation of both powerful human intention and statistical anomaly, a "one in a billion chance," but, nevertheless, an inevitability that represents more of what the people want to hear and see, more efficiently and on a "tighter" and larger scale than The Beatles ever achieved.
(This also goes for some other modern acts, like Julio Iglesias and even Madonna...)
Essentially, The Beatles were an accident that benefited HUGELY from the lack of other, similar accidents - i.e. even though their music sucks by modern standards (If you're thinkin' about arguing, read the Godzilla paragraph again...), their greatest hits album was 15th on the all-time best selling list. ...And for what reason, I ask! The nostalgia of buying British goods? (They were expensive, too: A Beatles album, if my sources are correct, used to cost the equivalent of about $31.00 in today's money. How much was the "1" album? If I remember correctly, about 30 bucks...)
Actually, here's why everybody spent money on The Beatles greatest hits album: (Remember: Present expenditure on the Beatles does not necessarily reflect the band's staying power due to talent or creativity - it just means that people like to listen to the same music for 40 years and force it on their children.)
"It brings a lot of memories of the past and I can not say enouhg on how the service was great and I really enjoyed the CD a lot thank you"This one's me fave:
2509jeffrey, on some website, reminiscing on his early days, when punctuation and sobriety were optional
"I bought this cd becuz my old one was so scratched that i couldn't play it. I don't know what i dislike about it.i don't really like all the songs on thier, but i love most."The best part is when Izqueen43 subconsciously proves that Beatles fans don't actually like the band's music, but somehow feel compelled to keep buying CDs, after destroying the albums they currently own.
Izqueen43, same site, taking pride in proving many of my points in this post all at once...
...So, for every successful artist created by the major record labels, there are thousands of failures. That's the best the companies can hope for, apparently. The very fact that the established industry chooses this method proves that the most efficient path to profit is to exploit all the nooks and crannies, rather than focus time and creativity trying to find the most original and groundbreaking, and risky, artists. While the strategy of The Beatles was an accident, or a natural experiment that led to an increased atmosphere of innovation among artists, their luck was rewarded to an excessive level, due to the strategy never being used (exploited) before. Eminem, on the other hand, is a relatively undervalued, low-risk investment that pays off as it should: modestly. However, if Eminem's Frankensteinesque success were transported to the '60s, we'd all be going to Emineducation instead of school (With the Marshall Mathers III School of Business), Emineminical Services instead of church, we'd watch Eminentertainment instead of TV, and eat Eminems instead of M&Ms. He'd not only be bigger than Jesus, he would be Jesus - or Eminaesar, or something like that...
The true comparison between the two comes when you recognize the value of being lucky (And very talented!) in a non-competitive, talentless environment compared to the value of being a well-thought out, high-payoff ($1.2 billion so far) strategy in the most talented and competitive environment mankind could possibly create.
Eminem wins! Praise Eminesus!
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For the record, I don't like Eminem and I love The Beatles...
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