ULTRAKILLBOT

In recent days the marketplace has been overtaken by Beatlemania again, and instead of young girls screaming at the top of their lungs for the foursome from Liverpool, the adoration has come mostly from journalists of all sorts. Critics who pride themselves on their knowledge and dedication to particular fields of cultural production have, without fail, gave their approval the re-release of the entire Beatles catalogue as well as the release of the new Beatles: Rock Band. Both have been a long time coming, and both, for their part, are long overdue.

In respect to the catalogue, the last time the recordings were touched by a sound engineer was in 1987 – so 22 years ago. Having remastered tracks does often improve the sound, much in the same way there is a distinct difference between low-quality 128kbps MP3 varies from a 320kbps or FLAC file. Yet, ask many a layman, and they will testify to noticing very little in the way of changes. The improvement mostly comes for the audiophiles, and considering I have never met one in person, my guess has to be that they are a minority in the overall scheme of things.

Similarly, they redid the packaging for the albums, as well as created a massive box-set with all sorts of pictures, liner notes and other junk that feeds the inner consumer in all of us.

But beyond the technical and physical alterations to the collected works of The Beatles, their music remains much the same. It is as great, or as mediocre, as you remembered it last week – and the band’s status in pop culture will not have changed.  People already know if they like the band or not – and it’s not as if they doesn’t have enough books written about them already.

If anything, it seems that a measured response to this re-release was needed – a concerted effort on those in the critical community to acknowledge the importance of the Beatles, but to put that aside and reflect on the improvements made in the remastering, as well as in the packaging. That’s what was released, not anything else. Instead, what seems to have happened is the critics getting caught up on the fetishization of the band itself – to be drawn into the storm of adoration that flows not from the conscious mind but from the Ego. The need to keep the band that was put on the pedestal by the Boomers in its “rightful” place; to re-confirm what has already been said. “The Beatles were the best rock band in history” and “they created a catalogue of music that eclipses everything else since.”

This storm came to a head in a number of places, and not just with the re-release of the catalogue itself, but also with Rock Band: The Beatles. The New York Times, in its review of the new music game, said that the game “may be the most important video game yet made.” The writer, Seth Schiesel, felt that the game, which has only songs by The Beatles, and which is just a sequel to an already established franchise of video games, becomes a “transformative experience” because of the content, and not the mechanics of play. Basically, the game is special not for breaking any boundaries, rules or ground, but because it re-visits the cultural territory of the parents of most video game players. By uniting children and parents alike under the umbrella of a shared love of The Beatles, we might just turn out okay after all. Hyperbolic? You bet.

Ian Bogost, co-author of this year’s fascinating book about the Atari 2600 Racing The Beam (which I am reading right now), and assistant professor of Communication & Culture at the Georgia Tech wrote several days ago on his blog:

The Beatles: Rock Band represents the apotheosis of boomer nostalgia. It is memory created from scratch by their children, as if to affirm, “Yes Mom, The Beatles really are the pinnacle of music and culture, just like you always suspected.” It is a game that says, implicitly, “It’s still 1969 in everyone’s heart, even if we couldn’t all be there.”

…So I ask: must we appreciate The Beatles? Must we reminisce with the newly aged about their privileged lives as naive youthful radicals, and then later as greedy yuppie centrists, and then finally as truculent conservative majority? Must we give them their final thrill in the medium we popularized, and which they spent decades not only failing to understand, but also deriding as useless and insolent? Must we allow them to celebrate not through change, not through novelty, but through utter sameness?

Pitchfork, the oft-disputed, but still taste-making extraordinaire spent the entire week focusing on the re-released material, as well as running their own review of Rock Band. If you have looked at some of the reviews, it becomes rather clear that they too, were only reconfirming the myth of The Beatles. In the process no fewer than 6 individual albums received perfect scores – which isn’t to say that the albums aren’t good, but that the 10s, as well as numerous high 9s and 8s, all reconfirm something: The Beatles are untouchable.

Carles of HRO asked the introspective question “Does my life ‘make more sense’ now that PitchforkMedia.coms have reviewed the Beatles?”

My perception of the world finally makes sense. Like I finally ‘get’ music history since I can compare the Beatles to modern indie hits.

Since I have never heard the Beatles’ music, this is a huge relief. Now I have the opportunity to ‘accept them in2 my life’ since I know how 2 judge them appropriately.

Can’t believe ‘Yellow Submarine’ was a mediocre bust, sort of like a lackluster Of Montreal album or something.

I feel better about 2k9, like I know where the ‘best’ albums of the year stand [via in a historical context].
I finally know that ‘Let it Be’

is slightly worse that AnCo

but slightly better than

‘Everything in itz rite place.’ – the Radioheads singing a song about the world making sense”

At times like this the naked truth about criticism comes to bear, all of our tools of influence out for everybody to see. Ratings. Numbers. Colourful language and a developed knowledge of pop culture history. The Beatles aren’t a real band anymore: they are a nostalgia coated fetishized idol of that us critics keep running back to again and again. We don’t love the music or the people in the band insomuch as we love the idea of the band. It’s comforting because we “know” we’re right, but are we?