Beatles Archives - Page 34 of 36 - Ramblin' with Roger

Beatles Island Songs, 203-194

Unfortunately, I never heard this song much, since I didn’t have Introducing the Beatles on Vee-Jay until much later and it never showed up on an American Capitol album until nearly a decade after the group broke up.

The rules of engagement

203 Across the Universe from Let It Be. One of the Beatles songs performed much better by other people, but I never warmed up to the Lennon version.
202 Sie Liebt Dich, the German version of “She Loves You”. Quaint, but I’ll opt for the English version.
201 Till There Was You. My antipathy toward this song is not the Beatles’ fault. This is from With the Beatles (UK) and Meet the Beatles (US). WITH has six cover versions, including five rhythm and blues tunes, but MEET has only one, this tune from The Music Man. I was really annoyed with Capitol Records by this choice, and the song became the flashpoint of my disdain.
200 Everybody’s Trying to Be My Baby Beatles for Sale (UK), Beatles ’65 (US). Never thought much of George’s vocals on this Carl Perkins song.
199 You Know My Name (Look Up the Number), the B-side of the Let It Be single. This is a comedy song, funny in parts, but ultimately unsustainable.
198 Mean Mr. Mustard from Abbey Road. It’s from the medley, and I like it, but it’s 48 seconds.
197 Boys from Please Please Me (US), Introducing the Beatles/The Early Beatles (US). this is a Shirelles’ tune and Ringo sounds uncomfortable with the gender switch; it just doesn’t work for me.
196 Maxwell’s Silver Hammer from Abbey Road. Too silly. And Steve Martin’s version in my head doesn’t help.
195 There’s a Place Please Please Me (UK), Introducing the Beatles (US). Unfortunately, I never heard this song much, since I didn’t have Introducing the Beatles on Vee-Jay until much later and it never showed up on an American Capitol album until nearly a decade after the group broke up. Besides, it sounds a little out of tune.
194 Long, Long, Long from the white album. An underrecorded, seemingly unfocused Harrison tune.
***
The Beatles are on iTunes. This is great for the proliferation of the music, but having purchased it several times already, it affects me personally not a whit. Well, unless they release NEW music…
***
HAPPY BIRTHDAY, MOM!

The Meme with the Red Tattoo

Beatles, Joni Mitchell, Johnny Cash, Beach Boys, Paul Simon, Stevie Wonder

This is a music meme – I LOVE music memes, stolen from SamuraiFrog:

First album you bought – Beatles VI.
Last album you bought – Laura Nyro and Labelle – Gonna Take a Miracle.
Favourite debut album – Boston. Or America.
First album you listened to all the way through – the movie soundtrack to West Side Story, probably.
Last album you listened to – Lyle Lovett – It’s Not Big, It’s Large.
Favourite album of 60s – Beatles – Revolver. Or Beach Boys – Pet Sounds.
Favourite album artwork – Beatles – Sgt. Pepper. Or Beatles – With the Beatles, which has that same iconic picture as Meet the Beatles in the US
Most underrated album – Beach Boys – Sunflower.
Worst album you own – The Beatles at the Star Club in Hamburg. A really lousy recording.
Best album to dance to – a compilation called Sun Splashin’.
Favourite album of 70s – Paul Simon – Still Crazy After All These Years.
Album you like, but you never thought you would – there are two that stick out because friends hated them: Emmylou Harris – Wrecking Ball, and Joni Mitchell – The Hissing of Summer Lawns.
Most overrated album – I can go with Radiohead – OK Computer.
Best album to cheer you up – – any of the early 1970s Stevie Wonder.
Most disappointing follow-up album – Chicago at Carnegie Hall, bloated four-album set.
Favourite album of 80s – Talking Heads – Speaking in Tongues, largely because I saw the group on that tour at SPAC.
Best album to relax you – Beach Boys – Pet Sounds.
Favourite second album – Meet the Beatles, assuming that Introducing the Beatles was first.
Most listened to album – This is difficult because of the different US and British iterations of Beatles albums. Possibly Sgt. Pepper. Or Pet Sounds. Or Still Crazy.
Favourite album of 90s – Johnny Cash – Unchained.
Last album you recommended to somebody – Johnny Cash’s third American album.
Last album you downloaded – I don’t remember, but it was an artist I had never heard of.
Most pleasing follow-up album – Paul Simon – There Goes Rhymin’ Simon.
Favourite album of 00s – Johnny Cash’s fourth American album.
Favourite third album – The Jimi Hendrix Experience – Electric Ladyland.
Favourite fourth album – Joni Mitchell – Blue.
Favourite album of 10s* (so far) – Bettye Lavette – Interpretations: The British Rock Songbook
Favourite album of all time – probably Revolver, UK version.

* I take the possibly unpopular position that while 2000 was (obviously) the last year of the 20th century, it was also the first year of the 00s; no rule that the decade markers and the century markers need to coincide, which I explained here. So the 10s begin in 2010 (or 1910), the 20s in 2020 (or 1920), etc.

Beatles island song list

The interesting thing about this exercise is that I became aware, sometimes for the first time, some biases.

Ever have what you think is a really good concept, then you start actually DOING it, and you decide, “Well, maybe it WASN’T such a hot idea, after all”? So it is with this blogging project about the Beatles, clearly my favorite group.

The idea was to create my Beatles island song list. If I only had 10 or 20 or 50 or 100 Beatles songs available, which ones would I choose? First off, I had to find a list of all the songs that the Beatles recorded that are in the canon: the singles, albums, and EPs released between 1963 and 1970. No Star Club in Hamburg, no Tony Sheridan, no BBC or Anthology recordings. This list shows 215 songs, but lists Love Me Do twice (but not the other possibilities?) and also has Real Love, but not Free As a Bird. So I’m assuming 213 individual songs. It would be easy to just pick four songs from Revolver, four from Rubber Soul, and a couple others for my Top 10, but I tried, when I could, to be more diversified.

And let’s face it: making a list like this always depends on the mood so that a song at 93 on this list might be 103 or 83 if I did it again. Which almost certainly WILL NOT HAPPEN. I started working on this before February. Of 2009, for the 45th anniversary of the Beatles on Ed Sullivan, which I am old enough to have watched in real time. Someone coming to the group after the fact would surely hear the songs differently.

Know also that these are not entirely or strictly by most to least favorite, but more about both the (artificial) scarcity AND the diversity. One Lennon cover version rocker might push another one back; likewise, a McCartney saloon song, a Harrison tune with sitar, or a Ringo record.

The interesting thing about this exercise is that I became aware, sometimes for the first time, of some biases. Surely, I knew about my affection for Beatles VI, my first album. But I wasn’t as aware of my general antipathy for Let It Be, an album that always felt like the group’s musical funeral. Still, all things being equal, I wouldn’t give up ANY of the songs!

I also had to find videos for all of these; if you find a broken link, PLEASE let me know, as they all worked when I started this thing. Some of the sources are HERE at Beatles Box Set 2009 and HERE at BeatlesTube.net, the purpose of the latter site being “to organize all videos about The Beatles that you can find on Youtube.” But I DID find items elsewhere and used Beatles videos from the movies, were readily available.

To give you an idea of how my thinking went. On the list:
217. Across the Universe, the Wildlife version.
216. Love Me Do, the LP version which included Andy White, NOT Ringo on drums.
215. Let It Be, the single version, solely because the album version is longer
214. Get Back, the Let It Be album version, because the single actually ends, rather than “I hope we pass the audition,”, which IS a great line on a Simpsons’ episode, to be sure.
Because other versions of these songs appear elsewhere on the list.

So I’ll be doing these 10 at a time, at no particular set schedule. It’ll be at least once a week, but it might be twice or thrice, depending on what else I have in mind for the blog, and, of course, time.

My designation of the source album requires an explanation, I reckon. For the British albums, I limited myself to the original albums that the Beatles intended. Several of the early singles, EPs and the song Bad Boy appeared on A Collection of Beatles Oldies but Goldies, but it was their intent to put those songs out AS singles or EPs, so I’ve ignored it; all of those songs now appear on the Past Master CDs. Whereas for the US albums, I picked the Capitol albums, plus the Vee-Jay Introducing the Beatles and the United Artists’ A Hard Day’s Night, which had some overlap, because those releases, especially prior to Sgt. Pepper, were so convoluted. In fact, Introducing the Beatles was released at least TWICE, with 10 common songs, plus two on each album that don’t overlap; I’m not making the distinction.

Since I’m starting this on the 5th of November, I suppose I ought to provide a link to REMEMBER by John Lennon.

John Lennon Would Have Been 70

“No short-haired, yellow-bellied son of Tricky Dicky”

The Beatles were my favorite group, and John Lennon was my favorite Beatle. As I stated on Ringo’s 70th, I decided I would list my 10 favorite songs of each Beatle on his 70th birthday, or what would be his 70th. Here’s my JL list, with YouTube links throughout.

Crippled Inside – Frankly, I have lots of #10 choices, but this one jumped out at me this month playing all my Lennon CDs. Maybe it’s because of the juxtaposition between the title and the jaunty melody.

Mind Games – “Love IS the answer.”

Happy Xmas (War Is Over) – I had a girlfriend who thought this was the silliest Christmas song ever. (Had she heard Macca’s Wonderful Christmastime?) But I’m very fond, though I tended to cry when I heard it in December 1980. “War is over if you want it.” Idealist? Naive? Don’t care.

Cold Turkey – with its blistering guitar line, it FELT like drug withdrawal.

Love – very simple, some say simplistic, song.

Gimme Some Truth – I like this so much that I tend to sing harmony vocals, mostly a third above the melody, in the “No short-haired, yellow-bellied son of Tricky Dicky” section. Those particular lyrics always amused me.

Nobody Told Me – I wasn’t really paying attention. When Double Fantasy came out in 1980, I thought that was going to be it for John’s musical output. Then Milk and Honey came out posthumously in 1983, and I felt happy. And I can relate: “Nobody told me there’d be days like these.”

How Do You Sleep? – from the generally mellow Imagine album, it is a really nasty song directed as his friend and former writing partner. Long before the smackdowns rappers were doing on records, John was dissing Paul, and doing it so well! Love the strings; I even forgive the rhyme of Yesterday and Another Day, since it namechecks a couple of Macca songs. What did it mean that George appeared on the track?

(Just Like) Starting Over – the first single from Double Fantasy in 1980, I was so glad to hear John having fun after his five-year self-imposed musical exile. Of course, after he died, the irony of this tune became quite unbearable for a while. Now I think of it fondly, though the other, posthumous singles from this album (Watching the Wheels and Woman, et al) I just never listened to enough to really appreciate.

Instant Karma – always thought it was just the perfect single, from the first two notes, followed by the drum fill. In fact, the little drum solos through I rather like as well. Feels like a follow-up of sorts to the Beatles’ Ballad of John and Yoko.

You’ll note that Imagine did not make the list. I’m afraid that it suffers in my heart from massive overplaying, not just his version but many others, from the 9/11 tribute album to the Glee soundtrack. I’ve just ODed on it, though I always liked the piano part before the vocals come up.

Oh, and happy 35th birthday to John’s son, Sean, who I saw perform a couple years ago.

Picture courtesy of Google
LENNONYC – Preview Excerpt
Watch a clip from the AMERICAN MASTERS: LENNONYC, a new film that takes an intimate look at the time Lennon, Yoko Ono and their son, Sean, spent living in New York City during the 1970s. The film premieres nationally Monday, November 22 at 9pm on PBS.

Salon review: Sundance: John Lennon, angry young man; British hit “Nowhere Boy” delivers a compelling family melodrama about the future Beatle’s Liverpool teen years

Mitch Miller & The Gang – Give Peace A Chance

What if the Beatles were on Motown Records?: an imaginative fiction.

Julian and Sean Lennon Come Together; Having Grown Up Separately in the Shadow of a Beatle, the Half-Brothers Discuss Their Careers and Their Close Bond (CBS Sunday Morning)

Podcast: Coverville 710: The John Lennon Cover Story III

John Lennon: Working Class Mythmaker. I really like this piece. Interestingly, it has a clip about the Beatles and Jesus controversy; the subsequent clip noted the influence of the Ku Klux Klan in the protests.