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Re: The Who Mailing List Digest V4 #287



>From: KHanc1965@aol.com
>
>Alan Mackndree signs his post with the quote "The Rolling Stones are the
>Microsoft of Rock".  Is there a point to this statement?

It's from a post to the list last September by James Sethian.  My
interpretation of the statement is that both the Stones and Microsoft
produce products which are lapped up adoringly by lemming-like millions who
ignore clearly superior alternatives.  Here's Mr. Sethian's entire post so
you can form your own (interpretation).  His sentence starting "They
jump..." is especially applicable to Microsoft:

>Date: Thu, 25 Sep 1997 06:42:22 -0700 (PDT)
>From: sethian@math.berkeley.edu (James Sethian)
>Subject: Re:  The Who Mailing List Digest V4 #243
>
>The Rolling Stones have *always* been about money first, second, and
>third. Go track through their records, starting with Miss You, and you'll
>see an interesting trend: always six months behind the latest craze,
>trying to jump on the bandwagon.  The Stones do disco (Miss You), the
>stones do punk (shattered), the stones do S&M (undercover), the stones do
>soul (just my imagination) the stones do anti-gulf-war music (can't
>remember the name of that one they released about missles and weapons),
>it just goes on and on and on.
>   Their positioning is also brilliant; the Beatles are too clean - they
>position themselves as the "bad boys" - altamont is all their fault,
>and they position themselves as the "harbingers of the end of the 60's".
>They jump into anything that seems to have a spark of creativity, and
>crush it with mediocrity.
>
>   In short, the Rollings Stones are the Microsoft of rock. Why do you think
>they traded songs ("start me up")?


Alan