“I Think [The Beatles] Are Underrated”

Two superfans there!

From a podcast last month, here’s Mike Myers talking Get Back with Dana Carvey and David Spade. Starts at around 9:45:

https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/mike-myers/id1603639502?i=1000558832620

I was watching the Bollywood Beatles clip in an earlier thread and I agree with this:

The Beatles came along at the precise moment for Western popular culture to have maximum impact all around the globe. Not only were the economically dominant cultures of the U.S., U.K., and Europe producing a monoculture, the process of de-colonization was still in its infancy. So first, the UK went mad for The Beatles in a way that wouldn’t be possible ten or even five years later. Then that madness was shared with its ex-colonies (the US foremost among them), where it got amplified, then reinterpreted. In India, this is what was produced; in the States, The Byrds and electrified Dylan.

That movie clip is an odd performance to be sure, even more fun (for me) to watch with the sound off. But I was reminded of the Tielman Brothers from Indonesia, who came before and who were definitely not odd.

The Tielman Brothers was the first Dutch-Indonesian band to successfully venture into the international music scene in the 1950s. They were one of the pioneers of rock and roll in The Netherlands, and are credited with releasing the first Dutch rock and roll single, “Rock Little Baby of Mine” in 1958. The band became famous in Europe for playing a kind of rock and roll later called Indorock, a fusion of Indonesian and Western music with roots in Kroncong. At the height of their career, in the 1950s and early 1960s, the band was hailed as one of the greatest live-acts in Europe.

Here they are in a 1960 TV appearance:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=muKkVufgkAE