Hey, look, Beatles!

So, this past weekend I was tootling around on my computer and got a craving for some Farscape episodes.  Most of the time, when I get movies or TV shows online, I use my PC, since my Mac has decided that video memory should be kept for its own nefarious purposes since I can't seem to find any usage of it in the system monitoring.  I load up iTunes and hit the iTunes Store button and, lo and behold, like a great beacon of light to the disenfranchised iTunes users who had begged and pleaded for years, a large banner and a transformed front page scrawled with The Beatles!

I nearly wept openly.

Finally, after years of being neglected, iTunes has finally welcomed the Beatles to its internet store and with quite the welcoming mat.  All of the Beatles albums are there, plus a "bundle" set that contains all of their songs, plus behind the scenes videos and the like.  While getting the *entire* Beatles library appeals to me, I'm not about to drop $150 on it in one go.  Not at the moment, anyway.  Still, I had to download Help since it is, in my opinion, the first leg of the Trinity of Beatles albums; the other two being, of course, Rubber Soul and The Beatles (fine, the White Album - despite the fact that the real name of the album is The Beatles.  And yes, I am being slightly petulant about this, eat me).

If anyone says that Revolver should replace The Beatles, I will hit you.  While Revolver is awesome, I just don't think it's as good as The Beatles; nor can it hope to touch Help or Rubber Soul. 

So, after managing to overcome my catatonic glee, I downloaded Help and proceeded to listen to it for a good two hours.

The strangest thing I found was the relative absence of negative comments on iTunes.  Usually there are a few dissenters when it comes to the Beatles.  There are many out there who don't like them, for one reason or another.  Many of them, I have found, think their songs are too simple musically and wonder, constantly, how they got so big.  Then there are those who just like being contrary or rebelling against their parents' musical taste.

Still, maybe there were just that many people making positive comments to drown out the dissenters.  Whatever the case, I was glad there weren't many.  It got me thinking, though, about how much of my musical taste is a direct result of my parents' musical tastes.  Growing up, my siblings were exposed to The Beatles, the Who, the Moody Blues, ELP... so many bands (I could list them all, but I think I would hit the character cap for blog post).  My point is, I didn't think too much of "contemporary pop music" while I was in junior high and high school, preferring the music my parents liked.

There were some contemporary pop songs I liked, don't get me wrong.  But when I compare my knowledge of 90's music to, say, my sisters', or most of my friends in college, I am woefully inadequate.  Even when I did decide to become more "current" with my music in college, I chose heavy metal as my genre of choice (which has alienated many of my friends and my parents!  Sweet!), so I still lack "pop music" knowledge.

Through it all, though, has been the music I listened to growing up.  I sometimes get strange looks when a song like For Whom the Bell Tolls is followed by Eleanor Rigby (weirdest coffee shop conversation, ever).

My final word on the matter; if I ever have to lose one of my senses, I hope I would never lose my ability to listen.  Music, as some say, is the language of the soul, and I could never do without it.