Wednesday, March 02, 2005

In the year of the Beatles

Yep, I was born in the year of the Beatles, and my birthsong is Louis Armstrong's "Hello, Dolly." That just about says it all--on the cusp of the new, still looking back at the old:

And then it explodes. One minute the pop universe is dominated by There! I've Said It Again, the third of four #1 hits by the Polish Prince, Bobby Vinton, and the next minute the Beatles descend on America with their funny hair and accents, and it's like the Big Bang of Elvis all over again. And to add insult to injury for the shattered remnants of the constellation Old Guard, the Beatles conquer the world playing music inspired by and sometimes literally lifted from the very sources that Pat Boone et al. had tried to extinguish in the late 1950s: Little Richard, Chuck Berry, Fats Domino. Born in the midst of a dramatic conquest of the popstrological firmament by a foreign invader, do the children of the first Beatles generation bear the mark of the conquerors, or the mark of the conquered? They probably bear the mark of something in between-of the type who joins many battles in life without winning any decisively but also without ever being utterly defeated .


Find your popstrological year and song here. (Via Yellow Dog.)

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