I didn't realize it...The Four Seasons are the SHIT.

I didn't realize it...
but The Four Seasons are the Shit.


This article compares and contrasts The Four Seasons with The Beach Boys
http://allmusic.com/cg/amg.dll?p=amg&sql=11:h9fuxqq5ldte~T1
I was just reading this article and remembered how someone said that the 50s ended when JFK was shot-63, and I believe musically this is true as well. Basically before 63: when the Beatles landed, was one side of the line and After they did is, well, the 60s.im talking about the U.S. 60's of course. This period, right at the end of 'our 50s' stands as a sort of pre-sixties-60s and the last few years of an era. the era of singles. this is before the concept of The Album As Statement. like the article says, 'if you didn't have an album, you were just a singles act.' so a type of hierarchy started to form. these days we just take albums for granted but back then it was a singles world.
and some of the shit the singles talked about was dark. the obvious one is the Crystals singing phil spector's 'He Hit Me and it Felt like a Kiss', but 'Ragdoll' and 'Dawn' are kind of deep bummed out songs for what I think of the 50s being. Dawn? That shit is depressing, 'Dawn go away I'm no good for you' cause I'm poor as shit and couldn't even begin to make you happy ...damn. thats some hard teen shit. Meanwhile The Ronnettes were dark in that they were fuckmachines. well its really just ronnie. not since helen of troy was a girl this hot. 'baby i love you' is the marching anthem to Complete Fucking Take Over, you came you saw you conquered. listen to it and dont think about fucking.
The sound of music in the end of our 50s was kind of intense, its what they colored within the lines of incredible restraint. its the dark teen soap opera that shadow morton wrote for ronnie spector's enemy no.1, mary holyfuckthisgirlishot weiss to sing with the shangri-las like 'Out in the Streets', '(Remember) Walking in the sand' and of course 'Leader of the Pack'. 50s-noir pop music.
i dont think the era died a natural death either, like ronnie spector says in Girl Groups: a Sound, the british invasion happened over night and boom out went the girl groups. personally, i wonder where this was going, if anywhere. i mean you go from 'Ragdoll' and 'You Don't Own Me' to 'I Wanna Hold Your Hand' and 'Wouldn't It Be Nice?'. the 'Dawn' situation is heavier than 'Caroline, No'. Caroline cuts her hair and the guy gets bummed out- big deal. there's a certain complexity in mainstream pop music before the british invasion. it's a prologue world before bands wrote their own songs, its the end of the 50s right before the big british bang, before the album became Statement, and basically and simply, before the beatles; Thats the shit. reminds me of american new wave cinema and punk, in some cases borderline no-wave in its content, before the 80s and new wave. cycles.