Beatles cover music QUESTION

In my tradition of playing the music that I own, I have divvied up my Beatles music thusly:
In October, in honor of John’s birthday, I play the canon. In this case, the British CDs (including Magical Mystery Tour, which became adopted as such), plus the two Past Masters CDs of singles, B-sides, EPs cuts and oddities.
In February, in honor of George’s birthday, I play the American albums. George, visiting his sister Louise, was the first of the Beatles to visit the U.S.
In June, in honor of Paul’s birthday, I play the more recent items: Live at the BBC, the Anthology series, and Love, e.g.
In July, in honor of Ringo’s birthday I play Beatles covers. After all, Ringo’s All-Starr bands are known to cover the hits of the contributing musicians.

And I have LOTS of whole albums dedicated to Beatles covers. Some are of whole albums: Big Daddy doing Sgt. Pepper, a MOJO collection replicating Revolver, George Benson taking on Abbey Road. There are whole soundtracks: All This and World War II, I Am Sam, Across the Universe.

So what are your favorite Beatles covers? I am fond of these:

Come Together by Tina Turner; Aerosmith’s take is fine, but too close to the original
Eleanor Rigby by Aretha Franklin (she puts it in the first person); though the pure excess of both the Vanilla Fudge and Rare Earth versions always made me chuckle.
Got To Get You Into My Life by Earth, Wind and Fire; one of the only good things to come out of the Sgt. Pepper’s movie debacle.
In My Life by Judy Collins; though there are other fine versions, notably Johnny Cash’s.
We Can Work It Out by Stevie Wonder; I once bought an LP just for that song.
You Can’t Do that by Harry Nillson, which segues in other Beatle tunes in a most delightful way.

Special kudos to Joe Cocker, who made several Beatles’ tunes his own. but the one I’m currently most fond of is You’ve got to Hide your Love Away

And there undoubtedly others. The readers of Rolling Stone magazine pick their favorites.

What’s your least favorite Beatles covers?

There’s a whole slew of older artists of the Beatles era trying too hard to be hip and relevant but feeling like the lounge singer Bill Murray used to play on Saturday Night Live (or a slightly more current reference, the Sweeney Sisters).

Still my thumbs are down to two pop music legends of the 1960s. The Supremes doing A Hard Day’s Night, originally on an album I owned called A Bit of Liverpool. “It’s ben a hard (hard) day’s (day’s) night.” Disliked it on first hearing. the other is Elvis Presley doing an off-key and listless version of Hey Jude; just unpleasant to listen to. (Though not eligible for consideration, Mitch Miller’s version of Give Peace A Chance is a HOOT.)

ROG

Don’t Tread on Me

Ever have something seemingly minor drive you utterly bonkers? Well, that happened to me last month. But in retrospect, it was building up for a while.

My five-year-old daughter and I were flying from Albany, NY to Charlotte, NC on Friday, June 12. I was pretty sure I couldn’t bring the six-ounce juices my wife packed – I looked up the 311 rule and she stayed near enough to the security gate that the TSA employee could hand the drinks back to her. Then we did the shoes-off thing. They determined that my daughter and I did not meet the profile of terrorists. In any case, as a society, we have tacitly agreed to allow the process. Still, I fly infrequently enough for the process to be disconcerting anew.

Monday, my mother, two sisters and I go to my niece’s high school graduation. It is held at the Bojangles Coliseum, formerly the Charlotte Coliseum; the naming rights are from the food chain. We’ve received instructions on what not to bring into the venue, which included balloons (understandable – could obstruct the view of others) and noisemakers (likewise a reasonable decision). The sheet also said, vaguely, “no gifts”. So we go through security. Something about these quasi-official folks doing stuff similar to the TSA screeners, including us going through both the metal detector AND being wanded, was mildly unsettling.

Then I was told that my daughter could not bring in her stuffed kitty cat. Why not? Because it’s a gift. It’s not a “gift”; it’s my child’s toy. Doesn’t matter. Thus, I had to schlep back to the car – and having gotten there early, it was some distance away – to return the forbidden feline.

Monday, after the graduation, we go to this – I guess you’d call it an outdoor mall in downtown Charlotte that had a variety of stores, restaurants and activities, including a movie theater.

My sisters, mother, niece, niece’s boyfriend and niece’s friend all went to this burger joint. But the daughter and I couldn’t go there; the food is cooked in peanut oil and the daughter is allergic to peanuts. (The first tip-off that this venue would be a problem: the barrel of peanuts in the entryway.) So she and I ordered from a nearby competitor then sat down at the table outside, soon joined by my sisters, with food from the peanut oil place.

Some young woman comes out of the place where I had ordered my food – not the person with whom I placed the order – and announces, “I’m sorry but I cannot allow you to sit there.” One sister asks why, and she’s told that it’s a space for their customers only. But my brother IS a customer, and he’s waiting on my food from YOUR establishment, and he’s waiting with my family to do so, one sister explains. Confused, the young woman went back into the establishment, never to return.

Actually, I was mildly sympathetic to the employee’s position. I’m sure the establishment pays rent for the tables in front of the place; this was not a common food court setup. And subsequent to that interaction, ANOTHER woman from the peanut oil place sat in front of the place – one could tell by the distinctive red and white cups. However, there was NO signage either on the tables or in the windows of the establishment, so it’s their failing, I say.

After eating, we wandered around, seemingly aimlessly, waiting for niece and friend to drop off the boyfriend. They ultimately return and I come across a little shop that is selling, among other things, snacks I could take on the plne the next day. A bag of Cheetos – $1.29 plus nine cents tax.

We come upon a bowling alley, and people decide to go in. I have the daughter in one hand, my drink from supper – actually just ice at that point (it was hot and humid) in the other; one of my sisters is holding the Cheetos. Apparently, though there’s no sign outside and I didn’t see one inside, there’s no “outside food” allowed. So my sister hands over the Cheetos. I walk over to the person at the desk, snatch the Cheetos back, and say, “I don’t agree to this,” and walked out with the daughter.

When the rest come out of the bowling alley, my sister asks why was I making such a big deal about a bag of junk food. I couldn’t really articulate it, and I just snapped, “Because I just don’t like it.”

In retrospect, it’s quite obvious what the issue was: control, or lack thereof.

[Musical interlude]

My sister had inadvertently ceded to a dubious authority what little power I had in the situation.

And not only in the circumstances already alluded to, either. Dinner at 8:30 pm when my daughter should have been in bed the first night. I forgot my daughter’s glasses at the house on Sunday, but after two church services and after-church receptions, instead of going to the house to get glasses, we’re at Wal-Mart (Allah help me) for 3.5 hours. Now part of that was waiting for a photo shoot that, because the photograph never even acknowledges us 45 minutes after the appointment time, we never have taken. And there was other stuff. As I was losing control of my circumstances, and more importantly, my daughter’s circumstances, I was losing control of my temper as well.

[When I explain the scenario to people face-to-face, they seem to understand. Wonder if I seem like a crazy person as I put it in the written form.]

I try to make a point not to go to places that have signage that makes you leave your bags at the door. Their message: we want your patronage, but we don’t trust you. I especially hate the stores that check your store bags on the way out. Their message: we HAVE your patronage, but we STILL don’t trust you.

I haven’t been to Crossgates Mall, near Albany, in years. Last time I was up there, there was a sign at the movie theater entrance: no backpacks allowed. I thought this was fine; they don’t want people sneaking food in. And since I almost always have my backpack, I just won’t attend movies at your theater. Everybody’s happy. I have control of the situation.

Thus ends my report, My Summer Vacation. At least Part 1.
ROG

My grandfather and his brother

I never knew my maternal grandfather, Clarence Williams. He died when I was two or three years old.

But my mother didn’t really know her father as well as she ought to have, either. Apparently, my grandmother’s mother Lillian had a whole lot more control on her kids, even as adults, than she should have, and somehow essentially caused the breakup of Clarence with my grandmother Gertrude, though my mom knew her dad to some degree. My mother was primarily raised by Lillian, Gertrude and Gert’s siblings, my great uncle Ed and my great aunt Deana.

My sister was going through some photos and came across these:

Top row-4th from left is Clarence Williams
Seated on right end is his brother, Charles Williams

I had heard vague stories of my grandfather and his brother playing in the Negro Leagues, but I never got any sense of the time frame. And, as this article notes, there were LOTS of teams named the Giants.


Top row 2nd from Left is Clarence Williams
Top Row 4th from left is Charles Williams

This is Charles. He has a daughter, Barbara, who my mom has befriended only relatively recently.

If, by chance, someone knows more about these guys, I would love to hear about it.

ROG

Y is for Yes, Yoko


I’ve thinking about Yoko Ono a lot lately. Part of it is the fact that last month was the 40th anniversary of John Lennon & Yoko’s famous (or infamous, depending on your POV) bed-ins, the first at the Amsterdam Hilton, as people who have heard the Beatles’ single The Ballad of John and Yoko can tell you. A second bed-in was in Montreal, where Give Peace A Chance was recorded.

But as an ex pointed out to me a long time ago, before she knew Beatle John, there was Yoko Ono, the avant garde fluxus artist. I recently discovered a retrospective of her work took place between 2000 and 2004, called “Yes Yoko Ono”, including at MIT in 2001. Indeed, it was, famously, “yes” that attracted John to Yoko. In the mid-1960s, John went to an art gallery, climbed a ladder leading up to a small printed YES on the ceiling which one looks at through a magnifying glass; it was the positive message that drew him in.

The notion that she “broke up the Beatles” is no more true than Linda Eastman breaking up the Beatles when she married Paul McCartney; perhaps an element of truth amidst many, many other factors.

Yeah, sometimes she screams when she sings. Although the very first time I heard Remember Love, the GPAC B-side, it was more childlike in delivery. (Note: the video has visuals that may offend some.)

The blogger Samurai Frog quoted Any Major Dude with Half a Heart in noting that “Even after 28 years, her husband’s murder must be a horrible pain to bear, but Yoko Ono is marketing — exploiting — her widowhood a little too publicly and cynically, exemplified by that ‘John would say…’ shtick, as if Lennon was a sage-like Confucius rather than a complex man with some serious limitations. No matter how swell Yoko thought her husband was, it is nauseating. It perpetuates the false notion that Lennon had special insights into the human condition.”

And she can make artistic decisions that are disturbing to some. The Lennon items that are part of a new exhibit that launched a couple months ago at the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame Annex for John Lennon: The New York Years includes Lennon’s famous New York City T-shirt, his upright piano from his Dakota apartment, a posthumous 1981 Grammy Award for the couple’s album “Double Fantasy”, but also John’s bloodied clothes from December 8, 1980.

Not incidentally, her biggest commercial single, Walking on Thin Ice, came out after that tragic event. It and Kiss Kiss Kiss from Double Fantasy were also dance-hall favorites.

Still, the enmity Yoko brings on is quite remarkable in its vitriol. June Chua, writing about Yoko’s 70th birthday a few years back, noted: “In a Watch magazine article about her 1996 CD, Rising, the reviewer suggested John’s killer ‘could have saved us all a lot of grief by just aiming one foot to the right.’ The violence in this statement is reprehensible. Yoko watched the person she loved slaughtered in front of her. She had to hold his dying body as life drifted from him…Yoko didn’t fit the stereotype of rock star girlfriend/wife.”

Yoko and Olivia Harrison, the other Beatle widow, seem to be getting along well, at least in public settings such as the opening of the Cirque du Soleil performance of Love, which featured Beatles’ music.

Meanwhile, Yoko is still making music in her own name and offering scholarships in John’s.

Music namechecking Yoko:
Oh Yoko by John Lennon from the Imagine allbum
Dear Yoko by John Lennon from the Double Fantasy album
Be My Yoko Ono by Barenaked Ladies
***
Allen Klein, former Beatles manager, died July 4. Link to picture of Allen, Yoko and John.

For ABC Wednesday

ROG

MOVIE REVIEW: Up

On Sunday, July 5, I realized that I hadn’t seen a movie since late April, So I looked at the listings for the Spectrum, my favorite theater and discovered that Up, the new Pixar flick, was in its final week. Reluctantly, the wife and I agreed to the split movie date, which involves one of us going, then later that day or soon thereafter, the other one attending. The first cannot reveal anything other than a generic thumbs up or thumbs down. The flaw with this, besides the inability to share the moments in real time, is that on at least three different occasion, the first person went, but then the second couldn’t for some reason; I know I got sick once and never saw a film Carol saw and liked.

Anyway, I opted for the noon showing of the movie, in 2-D. First up, the previews. I really would like to see the new Hayao Miyazaki film, Ponyo; great voice lineup in the English translation, including Cate Blanchett, Matt Damon, Tina Fey, Cloris Leachman, Lily Tomlin, and Betty White. And surprisingly, I think I’d like to see the new Harry Potter film; I suppose, having seen only the first one, I should catch the subsequent ones beforehand.

The short is Partly Cloud. It was pretty much a one-joke bit, with lots of old Warner Brothers cartoon violence. I enjoyed it less than some of their previous efforts, though at least I learned about procreation.

Then the main event. I must say that I got caught up (i.e., became a little verklempt) in the whole backstory of Carl and Ellie; as others have noted, she looks quite a bit like Elastigirl from The Incredibles. Indeed, there was also a documentary style that also borrowed from that earlier Pixar film.

Carl (voiced by Ed Asner) finds a reason and the means to uproot himself, and his home along with it. But he is not alone. Will Carl get to South America, as he promised Ellie they would?

The rest I don’t know how to describe without spoiling it except there is a character who looks a lot like Kirk Douglas but is voiced by Christopher Plummer who has a major role. Also dogs; lots and lots of canines, not all of the friendly kind.

I previewed this in part to see if this would be the first movie Lydia, the five-year-old daughter, will see in the movies; it will not. If we see it on video later, the pause and fast-forward buttons will be used at least a couple times. Now other kids may react differently, but I know my child.

This was a good Pixar film. It had more depth in the characters than I would have imagined. And the house is definitely one of the characters. Yet part of the problem, I realized, had to do with little things – continuity problems regarding some important plot details – that distracted me. But it was most definitely worth seeing, and I’d give it an A- or B+.

Did I mention that I was the ONLY person in the theater? One might think I would have appreciated the private screening, but I like to hear where others laugh and gasp and cry; but for the size of the screen, I might as well have been home.
***
Little girl’s last wish: to see ‘Up’. Tip o’ hat to Jaquandor.
***
I check Rotten Tomatoes now and then, because I love seeing, for instance. The Hangover (78%) rate better than the more prestigious Public Enemies (65%). Up, BTW, got a 97%
***
Today, Ringo Starr turns 69. Please don’t send him anything to sign; he’s too busy.

ROG

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