Found this on AOL and had to share it -- wonder where the Who fit in.

[Kmcherry@aol.com]

HARRISBURG, Pa. (Reuter) - A philosophy professor known in academic circles
as a pioneer in quantitative aesthetic theory has developed his own
mathematical forumla for judging rock bands and their music. 

And according to the calculations of Crispin Sartwell of Penn State
University, the Rolling Stones are a better rock band than the Beatles. 

The basic reason, says the 39-year-old professor, is that the Beatles
departed from rock 'n' roll's African-American blues traditions in order to
become avant-garde artists. The very symbol of their downfall, he says, is
the seminal ``Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band,'' an album Sartwell
describes as ``truly bad.'' 

``It has a very European tonality. It is Umpah-band stuff,'' the professor
says. 

By contrast, the Rolling Stones rarely presented themselves as anything but a
straight blues band, Sartwell explains. 

``Mick Jagger never mistook himself for Pavarotti or T.S. Eliot. Keith
Richards never tried to do anything but make great little riffs.'' 

However irksome this may be to aging Beatle fans around the world, Sartwell
says his conclusions are no simple matter of opinion. Rather they are
distilled from an empirical analysis that turns on a pair of principles
appropriately named, Sartwell's Laws. 

Sartwell's First Law dictates that the quality of a rock band is inversely
proportional to its pretentiousness, with pretentiousness expressed as a
ratio of artistic ambition to artistic accomplishment. The higher the rating,
the professor says, the worse the band. 

In this manner, the Ramones, with a ratio of 1:8, come out better than The
Talking Heads, with a 7:7 ratio. Nirvana, at 3:9, is exactly as good as Pearl
Jam is bad, at 9:3. 

Sartwell also offers a specific warning about the quality of early U2 and
early Bruce Springsteen, saying both were in the habit of taking simple
ditties and mounting them with ``an elaborateness usually reserved for
Wagnerian opera''. 

But where the Beatles fell short was under Sartwell's Second Law. To wit, the
quality of a Rock song varies inversely as the square of its distance from
the blues. 

White pop music performers from Benny Goodman and Elvis Presley to the Stones
and the Beatles have succeeded by taking African-American music and
repackaging it for mass audiences, Sartwell says. And the closer they have
remained to the real thing, the better their music has been. 

``'Twist and Shout' and other early Beatles songs sound like they were
recorded yesterday. But 'For the Benefit of Mr. Kite!' sounds like the relic
of an extinct, incomprehensible culture,'' he says. 

The Rolling Stones do as well as the Ramones on the Sartwell system with a
ratio of 1:8. ``That's about as good as it gets,'' the professor says. 

On the other hand, the Beatles of the Sgt. Pepper era wind up with a rating
of 8:2. 

``In '64 or '65, the Beatles were one of the best R&B bands ever to play. The
stuff was wonderful and I'd put it in the same category as the Stones. It was
with ``Rubber Soul'' that they really started to slip,'' he said.