Discover Top Posts Tagged with #jean jackets

Let’s get a bigger opinion on this because I just realized the other poll I did was not long enough

What the fuck do you wear with jean jackets (blue jean jackets specifically)

Matching jeans

Different color jeans

Leggings (wrong choice)

Voting ended onFeb 10

#help #fashion stuff #fashion #Jean jackets #what do I do with them #I don’t know how to wear them #I really want to tho

Mixed feelings about First Gen Beatles fans

I have a lot of mixed feelings about first generation Beatles fans. On one hand, I really enjoy reading about/seeing their experiences when the Beatles became famous. I still intend to read Dafydd Rees' book The Beatles 1963: A Year in the Life for the interviews he conducted for it. The interviews with the Beatles' early fans were some of the best parts of Christine Feldman-Barrett's book, A Women's History of the Beatles. While it definitely had issues, I thought that most of the interviews in "Beatles '64" with fans talking about what the Beatles meant to them were worthwhile, although it would have been nice if they would have found more average people instead of people like Jamie Bernstein, not that I disliked what she had to say.

However, I find that sometimes they have a sense of entitlement about the Beatles, especially first gen male fans (aka "Jean Jackets" - thanks @anotherkindofmindpod!) This was really brought home to me when I watched a Parlogram video on the new "Anthology" releases. I thought Andrew did a really good job of being even-handed about it, especially when he said that he thought that Apple is prioritizing new/younger fans over older fans. I'm not going to go into a lot of details about what he said, since I've linked the video, but overall he said that the focus on streaming the music and the cleaned-up Anthology series was to capture new and younger fans who will never purchase physical media, rather than on older fans who are into collecting. Also, let's face it, most of those older fans who are collectors are men. On cue, in the comments, a lot of them were complaining about why they were upset because Apple wasn't doing this or that for them. One person even said that he was upset that first gen/older fans weren't the priority for Apple. Of course they're not, because I hate to say this, but that generation is dying off, and Paul, Ringo, and the Lennon/Harrison estates want to be sure that the Beatles are capturing new fans.

One of the things Andrew mentioned was that he thought that the pickings were pretty slim for Anthology 4, with tracks such as Carnival of Light being left off. There were quite a few people who said they were glad that it wasn't on there because "it's shite". Of course, those people haven't heard it, and there were some people who called them out on that. The ones who said it was crap said that they were just quoting Mark Lewisohn (<sigh> how about thinking for yourself, to quote George?). There was an 18 year old who said (he?) wants to hear it, and the number of older fans who jumped on him about that were ridiculous. I think that what a lot of these older fans don't understand is that most Beatles fans aren't obsessive collectors of every bit of minutiae and they own neither a turntable or a CD player, so they're not the market for the box sets. They are more casual fans who will watch Beatles stuff on TV (hence cleaning up Get Back/Let it Be/Anthology and putting them in 4K streaming, since that's what young people will expect), and will stream the albums, which is a great reason to remaster the albums to sound more modern and good on headphones. It seems to be the case that, if young people know any Beatles songs, they're generally ones from 1968-1970, and especially Abbey Road, which sounds the most modern of all of the albums.* And even if they do become big fans of the band, they're still not going to buy physical media. Therefore, prioritizing a project (the Anthology) that introduces the Beatles to a new generation of fans over a Rubber Soul box set makes sense to me. I want more young people to discover them, and if this strategy is what's going to make that happen, I'm fine with it.

I also think that these older male fans have dominated the Beatles fan culture for such a long time that they can't imagine not being the first priority for Apple. It's shocking to them that they're not #1 anymore. Well, this shouldn't be a surprise to them, because Apple has been making an effort to capture new fans since the Anthology was first aired in the mid-'90s. Yes, older fans ate it up, but there are so many stories from GenXers and Millennials who say that they became fans when the Anthology aired back then. Apple's just doing the same thing, 30 years later, to capture GenZs and Alphas.

As for me, I already own all of the Anthology stuff, most of which (CDs/45s/the book) I bought in the '90s when it was released, then I bought the DVDs to replace my VHS tapes after I got rid of my VHS player. I'd likely buy a Rubber Soul box set (CD version), and I still need to get around to buying the White Album, Abbey Road, and Let it Be box sets. I have both the Sgt. Pepper and Revolver boxes. I'm always on the lookout for Beatles 45s at record stores, and I've also purchased on Discogs original albums I didn't already have. I only need to get Please Please Me and Beatles for Sale at this point. (BTW, I always loved them, from when I was very small, but I would characterize myself as a casual fan until the Anthology aired, at which point I started buying a lot of Beatles stuff, so it worked on me!)

However, I have no intention of buying the Anthology CDs again as I'm totally fine with streaming the remastered versions, including Anthology 4, since that's how I'm mostly going to listen to them, especially since the packaging is going to be the same for the new ones as the ones from the '90s. I would like a Blu-Ray of the Anthology, though, since I don't want to be held captive to Disney+ for that. I haven't gotten around to buying the Get Back Blu-Ray, but I will because I dumped Disney+ (I'll sign on again in November to watch the Anthology then ditch it again) so I won't have any other way to watch it. I wish that Disney had listened to Peter Jackson and provided a few more hours of extras, like he wanted them to, and also included Let it Be. My only other "dream" release would be a cleaned up "The Beatles' First US Visit" with more of the Maysles' footage added in. What we saw in "Beatles '64" looked great, and I would consider buying that in Blu-Ray form too, just for those scenes.

*Andrew's wife is a teacher and he tagged along to the school's senior class picnic in order to ask students if they'd heard Beatles songs, and every single song they mentioned that they knew was from that era. Oddly enough, most of the songs they said that they knew were McCartney songs, but the only Beatle whose name they knew was John Lennon. Maybe that's because he was murdered?