Sorry, Beatles fans, but I think the group sucked. The main problem early on was that I remembered the songs they were covering so badly — and they were AWFUL! Then they heard Frank Zappa's Moog synthasizer, jumped on that bandwagon and did bad copies until they heard sitars and other eastern instruments and then tried those. The sound they finally came up with was a gutless hodge-podge of noise overlaid by whimpy vocals of pointless lyrics. Never saw the attraction, myself — but then I don't understand soap operas and reality TV, either.

I listened to some Elvis a couple of months ago and, although I no longer particularly liked him, was reminded again of what he did for music — he (and, to a greater degree, Jerry Lee Lewis) kicked the first bricks out of the wall between white and black music in North America. If they hadn't recorded the songs they did, a lot of people would never have gone looking for the originals.

cheers,

david