Beatles Archives - Page 32 of 35 - Ramblin' with Roger

Beatles Island Songs, 163-154

Some Beatles fans have fantasized about what the next Beatles album might have sounded like, had the band not broken up in 1970; or if they’d taken a break, then gotten back together.

JEOPARDY! Answer du jour – SPORTS STARS: Born in 1980, this [former] world champion figure skater was named for a Beatles hit. The question is below.

The rules of engagement

163 I’m a Loser from Beatles for Sale (UK), Beatles ’65 (US). Another downer from the Beatlemania period.
162 Something from Abbey Road. A nice, though overplayed song. But I was always a bit peevish about the way Harrison stole the first line from James Taylor when he was signed by Apple.
161 Little Child from With the Beatles (UK), Meet the Beatles (US). Nice little early tune. At some level, the earliest songs, with few exceptions, will fare less well than the middle period work. I didn’t buy Meet the Beatles album until about when Revolver came out, and as I recall, it came from my record club in STEREO when I had a mono player. At the time, these things just did not mix. Eventually, I said, the heck with it and played it anyway, to no discernible harm.
160 Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da from the white album. Another Macca dance hall song. Fun enough.
159 Only a Northern Song from Yellow Submarine. My favorite thing about this Harrisong is the title, referring to the company that published Beatles’ songs.
158 Not a Second Time from With the Beatles (UK), Meet the Beatles (US). Really like the bottom of this Lennon song.
157 Honey Don’t from Beatles for Sale (US), Beatles ’65. A nice Ringo vocal on this Carl Perkins song.
156 Cry Baby Cry from the white album. A moody Lennon tune.
155 Anna (Go to Him) from Please Please Me (UK), Introducing the Beatles./The Early Beatles. A nice Lennon cover of the Arthur Alexander song.
154 No Reply from Beatles for Sale (UK), Beatles ’65 (US). Yet another downer. I had a discussion of misheard lyrics re this song with my father at the time.

Some Beatles fans have fantasized about what the next Beatles album might have sounded like, had the band not broken up in 1970; or if they’d taken a break, then gotten back together. I was never one for such idle speculation but here’s one take and here’s another.

Dick Cavett interviews John and Yoko in 1971.
***
JEOPARDY Question: Who is Michelle Kwan? (My wife’s all-time favorite skater.)

Beatles Island Songs, 173-164

Just watched on PBS How the Beatles Rocked the Kremlin, about how Beatles music was smuggled into the Soviet Union and represented freedom.

JEOPARDY Answer of the day: ROCK & ROLL HISTORY: The name “Beatles” was inspired by the backup group of this singer. (The question below.)

The rules of engagement

173 It’s All Too Much from Yellow Submarine. The niftiest part of the Harrison tune is the guitar intro.
172 Yesterday from Help! (UK), Yesterday and Today (US). When my father, sister, and I used to perform together when I was a teenager, it was in my sister’s repertoire. It’s a perfectly nice song, but for the life of me, I don’t know why it’s been covered 2500 or 3500 or however many times it has, especially since most of them sound not dissimilar to the original. I also realize the song made me, and my office mate at the time, peevish when two versions of it showed up on Anthology 2, not that far apart on the album, and I would tend to skip past it. “Scrambled Eggs,” indeed.
171 Baby’s in Black from Beatles for Sale (UK), Beatles ’65 (US). One writer suggested that the songs of this period were rather melancholy because of the stress of Beatlemania – touring, movies, plus recording. Maybe. I like the black/blue imagery, but much of the rest sounds like Lennon/McCartney circa 1962.
170 Why Don’t We Do It in the Road? from the white album. Rather funny, if insignificant song by McCartney.
169 I Me Mine from Let It Be. This is the title of a Harrison autobiography. A slight song, I do like the change of rhythms.
168 I Wanna Be Your Man from With the Beatles (UK), Meet the Beatles (US). A ditty McCartney and Lennon gave to the Rolling Stones but also had Ringo sing.
167 Girl from Rubber Soul. It’s OK, but the album is filled with much greater songs.
166 Old Brown Shoe. B-side of The Ballad of John and Yoko. It’s OK, in that laid-back Harrison style.
165 You Never Give Me Your Money from Abbey Road. This is actually HIGHER than I had planned. I thought the reprise of this song in Golden Slumbers would allow this track to be in the 200s, but the song argued otherwise.
164 P.S. I Love You from Please Please Me (UK), Introducing the Beatles/The Early Beatles. A pleasant enough story song.

Just watched on PBS How the Beatles Rocked the Kremlin, about how Beatles music was smuggled into the Soviet Union and represented freedom. It also talks about the myth of a secret Soviet performance by the Beatles, generated by the song Back in the USSR. see it HERE or the first part HERE, with subsequent parts on the sidebar.

JEOPARDY! Question of the day: Who was Buddy Holly? (His backup group was called The Crickets.)

If it was 30 years ago, why do I remember it so well?

“The Beatles, lead by John Lennon, created music that touched the whole of civilization.”

Unfairly or not, I always associate John Lennon’s death with the breakup of my girlfriend the week before. It was Monday, December 1, 1980, and, unlike all of those “grownup” breakups in the movies of that time, this was painful and acrimonious. About the only cinematic aspect of it was the line from near the end of the Woody Allen movie Annie Hall, delivered by Alvy Singer (Allen): “A relationship, I think, is like a shark. You know? It has to constantly move forward or it dies. And I think what we got on our hands is a dead shark.”

So when the FOLLOWING Monday night came around, it was incumbent upon me to do whatever I could that would be contrary to what I would likely be doing with her. The choice was clear: I needed to watch Monday Night Football. It’s not as though I never watched the game, but it was usually a bit here and there. This time I was going to watch the whole damn thing.

And, if I recall correctly, it was a pretty close game between the Miami Dolphins and the New England Patriots, when announcer Howard Cosell said at about 11:15 p.m., “One of the great figures of the entire world, one of the great artists, was shot to death horribly at the Dakota Apartments, 72nd Street and Central Park West in New York City. John Lennon is dead. He was the most important member of the Beatles, and the Beatles, lead by John Lennon, created music that touched the whole of civilization. Not just people in Liverpool, where the group was born, but the people of the world.”

Here’s a snippet of the broadcast after that point.

So the first thing I do is call my good friend Karen, who had written, for our sixth-grade newsletter, a fantasy story about winning tickets to a Beatles concert, and who, that very fall, was working for his record company and promoting his and Yoko’s album, Double Fantasy. But her line was busy. I called my ex-girlfriend and told her; she was appreciative of the fact that I told her. I called Karen several times after that, but the line remained busy. I began to listen to my favorite radio station, WQBK-FM, Q104, and listen to the requests pouring in. It was either that night or the next morning that I asked for, oddly, The End by the Doors, and they played the whole 11-minute version.

Eventually reached Karen at about 1:40 a.m. When she heard my voice, she just cried for 10 minutes. We talked the next day, when I went out and bought, at lunchtime, Rock ‘n’ Roll; there wasn’t a copy of Double Fantasy to be had.

And thinking about time period STILL fills me with a surprising amount of sadness.

JEOPARDY! factoid: Calling him a Revolutionary, in 2000 Fidel Castro dedicated a statue of John on the 20th anniversary of his murder.

I was watching LENNONYC this past weekend – it’ll be repeated on my local PBS station tonight – and it was a good portrait of John’s life from 1971 until the end. Much of the info I knew, but a few bits I did not, such as Yoko going back to the studio after John died to listen to his outtakes.
***
Denise Nesbitt remembers.

Beatles Island Songs, 183-174

Listen to the Coverville Thanksgiving podcast; nothing but Beatles covers!

The rules of engagement

183 Honey Pie from the white album. More dance hall McCartney. This was apparently the music he learned from his father.
182 Polythene Pam from Abbey Road. Another 48-second song, which would have fared better in the medley. In fact, the link is to the medley.
181 Blue Jay Way from Magical Mystery Tour. An interesting Harrison song about Los Angeles.
180 Kansas City/Hey, Hey, Hey, Hey from Beatles for Sale (UK), Beatles VI (US). Not one of their strongest covers. And it annoyed me that the Little Richard latter part wasn’t credited at the time.
179 Revolution 9 from the white album. This is too interesting, too weird to go out in the bottom 10. But ultimately too weird to keep.
178 Misery from Please Please Me (UK), Introducing the Beatles (US). As with There’s A Place, never on a US Capitol album until something called Rarities, long after the group’s demise. So it was largely out of my consciousness.
177 Flying from Magical Mystery Tour. Only instrumental in the canon, attributed to the 4 Beatles. Disposable filler.
176 Happiness Is a Warm Gun from the white album. I have no real idea what this Lennon song is about, though it apparently has something to do with sex and Yoko.
175 Savoy Truffle from the white album. A Harrison trifle. A truffle is a trifle.
174 Rock and Roll Music from Beatles for Sale (UK), Beatles ’65 (US). A relatively perfunctory version of the Chuck Berry song, compared with some of the other songs Lennon covered.

The most popular Beatles album downloaded in the first week on iTunes was Abbey Road, coincidentally the most popular vinyl Beatles album. Here Comes The Sun was the most popular individual song.

Listen to the Coverville Thanksgiving podcast; nothing but Beatles covers!

T is for Thirty-Three and a Third

I put my LPs in full order in 2010, for the first time since we moved into our house in 2000.

As you may be aware, sales of physical manifestations of music have been dropping like a stone, in favor of digital forms. The Record Industry Association of America notes that from 2007 to 2009, the sale of digital music (i.e., downloads) grew from 23% to 34% to 41% of the market in the United States.

Yet the statistics also reveal a countervailing trend. The sale of long-playing, and extended play records (LPs and EPs), made from vinyl, has INCREASED over the same period, from 1.3 million units to 2.9 million to 3.2 million. These are minuscule numbers compared with the hundreds of millions of albums sold annually in the LP’s heyday in the 1960s through the early 1980s when compact discs were introduced. Still, it’s an interesting phenomenon.

Here are the Top Ten Selling Vinyl Albums of 2009:
#01 The Beatles – Abbey Road – 34,800 (#2 in ’08)
#02 Michael Jackson – Thriller – 29,800
#03 Animal Collective – Merriweather Post Pavilion – 14,000
#04 Wilco – Wilco – 13,200
#05 Fleet Foxes – Fleet Foxes – 12,700 (#8 in ’08)
#06 Pearl Jam – Backspacer – 12,500
#07 Grizzly Bear – Veckatimest – 11,600
#08 Guns N’ Roses – Appetite for Destruction – 11,500
#09 Dave Matthews Band – Big Whiskey… – 11,500
#10 Radiohead – In Rainbows – 11,400 (#1 in ’08)
Notice that big names such as The Beatles, Michael Jackson, and Radiohead share the pantheon with more obscure groups such as Fleet Foxes and Grizzly Bear.

And this is not solely an American phenomenon. Vinyl is also enjoying a renaissance in Great Britain as well.

Personally, I haven’t purchased vinyl since about 1989, a Ray Charles greatest hits album. The forces promulgating CDs made it too difficult for me to pass up the shiny objects by putting on an extra cut on the CD not present on the LP, e.g., Murder by Numbers on Synchronicity by the Police and This Is the Picture (Excellent Birds) on So by Peter Gabriel.

Yet I never gave up my vinyl. And when friends of mine did decide to get rid of their 12″ platters, they often gave them to me. I put my LPs in full order in 2010, for the first time since we moved into our house in 2000. I’ve discovered that I now have developed my collection of Frank Sinatra and Barbra Streisand, e.g. It’s also why I currently own multiple copies of Fragile by Yes; Deja Vu by Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young, and of course, Tapestry by Carole King, the longest-charting album by a female solo artist.

I think I’ll hold my LPs for a while. Some of them have tracks that I haven’t found anywhere. Maybe one day I’ll get one of those machines that turns vinyl into digital. Meanwhile, I’m enjoying playing my vinyl, looking at artwork that’s about six times the size of what you’d find on a CD.

(It suddenly occurred to me that younger readers may not understand the title. LPs are played on record players at 33 1/3 revolutions per minute, as opposed to singles, which are 45 RPM, and earlier vinyl recordings, which were 78 RPM.)

ABC Wednesday – Round 7