music Archives - Page 243 of 258 - Ramblin' with Roger

Beatles Island Songs, 3-1

He’s utterly transfixed by the backwards tape, the chanting.

Before discussing my final three picks, I decided to rank the albums by adding up the ordinal values, then dividing by the number of tracks on the album; the lower the number, the better. I know this is particularly unfair to Abbey Road since those brief tracks didn’t make the cut, but the suite would have fared far better, and the album still did quite well. And comparing ordinals, with no other weights, is bad math. Whatever.

These are the British albums, so these are the British release dates:

# Title Release date

1 Please Please Me 1963, March 22 -137/125.86 (14)
2 With the Beatles 1963, November 22 – 126 (14)
3 A Hard Day’s Night 1964, July 10 – 62.54 (13)
4 Beatles for Sale 1964, December 4 – 136.29 (14)
5 Help! 1965, August 6 – 86.64 (14)
6 Rubber Soul 1965, December 3 – 87.64 (14)
7 Revolver 1966, August 5 – 59.57 (14)
9 Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band 1967, June 1 – 92.54(13)
17 Magical Mystery Tour 1976, November 18 – 96.91 (11)
10 The Beatles 1968, November 22 – 123.5 (30)
11 Yellow Submarine 1969, January 17 – 141 (4)
12 Abbey Road 1969, September 26 – 118.47 (17)
13 Let It Be 170.33/155 (12)
28 The Beatles Past Masters, Volume One 1988, March 7 – 107.89 (18)
29 The Beatles Past Masters, Volume Two 1988, March 7 – 96.13/88.6 (15)

My affection for Revolver is well known to me, but A Hard Day’s Night did amazingly well. I prefer Rubber Soul to Help! as an album, but I was feeling burned out at the time over some of the better tracks on RS (In My Life, Norwegian Wood, Michelle). And unsurprisingly, Let It Be did poorly.

Notes: Magical Mystery Tour was released in the US in 1967, but it wasn’t considered as part of the canon in the UK until nine years later.
Wow: With the Beatles, the album that spawned many of the songs from the US Meet the Beatles was released on the day of the John F. Kennedy assassination. The sociological implications…
The albums with two numbers involved me substituting a different version of the same song; all the second versions ended up at end of the list.
Album #8 is A Collection of the Beatles Oldies (But Goldies), 1966, December 10, which essentially served the same function as Past Masters 1 did years later.
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The rules of engagement

213-204
203-194
193-184
183-174
173-164
163-154
153-144
143-134
133-124
123-114
113-104
103-94
93-84
83-74
73-64
63-54
53-44
43-34
33-24
23-14
13-4

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3 Help! from Help! A little after 09/09/09, my daughter and I watched the movie Help!, her for the first time, me for the first time since watching a quadruple feature of A Hard Day’s Night, Help!, Yellow Submarine and the ever depressing Let It Be in the early 1970s. Help!, which I also saw when it first came out in 1965, was less good than I remembered it. But I fell in love with the music all over again. This specific song my daughter knows all the lyrics to, without either encouragement or prompting from me. Moreover, I connect with the notion of Lennon actually making the song a cry for help, overwhelmed by making records and movies, touring, et al. Also, if one were on an island, needing help seems quite appropriate.
2 Got To Get You Into My Life from Revolver. Imagine, if you will, a teenage boy home alone in the late 1960s playing a great album. This McCartney song comes on, and he’s enjoying it well enough. But as it gets to the final chorus, he starts slowly increasing the volume, making the horn so resplendent in his ears and down his spinal column that he practically weeps for joy.
1 Tomorrow Never Knows from Revolver. So the stereo is pretty loud when the last song, by Lennon, comes on, and he’s utterly transfixed by the backward tape, the chanting. Totally mesmerizing. Ultimately, the bass/drum section could be applied to any number of Beatles songs. Try singing A Hard Day’s Night or any number of other songs to it; it works. I realized this when I heard the LOVE album, and the mashup of Within You Without You with Tomorrow Never Knows really elevated my appreciation of the former, and in doing so, stoked my appreciation for the latter. Heck, it even goes with Jingle Bells. Some background on one of the most audacious recordings the Beatles would ever attempt.

Well, that was fun. Or something.

M is for Musical Format

LP sales are only a fraction of CD or download sales.

When I was a teenager buying music, the LP, the long-playing album played at 33 revolutions per minute, was the dominant recording format in the United States and elsewhere. Then the CD, the shiny disc, was introduced in the 1980s, and by the end of that decade, the compact disc had supplanted the LP as the dominant musical form. CD sales peaked in 2000 with 942.5 million units sold in the US but have begun a steady decline in the 21st century, losing out to digital sales.

It has been predicted that digital music sales will surpass CDs in 2012, although even digital sales in the US were flat in 2010, possibly because of economic unease.

But here’s the odd phenomenon: since 2007, vinyl sales have been on the rise. It’s nowhere near the LP’s heyday, but in an era where physical manifestations of music are on the wane, it’s a peculiar trend.

Top Selling Vinyl Albums Of 2008
1 – Radiohead – In Rainbows – 25,800
2 – The Beatles – Abbey Road – 16,500
3 – Guns N Roses – Chinese Democracy – 13,600
4 – B-52s – Funplex – 12,800
5 – Portishead – Third – 12,300
6 – Neutral Milk Hotel – In the Aeroplane over the Sea – 10,200
7 – Pink Floyd – Dark Side of the Moon – 10,200
8 – Fleet Foxes – Fleet Foxes – 9,600
9 – Metallica – Death Magnetic – 9,400
10 – Radiohead – OK Computer – 9,300

Top Selling Vinyl Albums Of 2009
1 – The Beatles – Abbey Road – 34,800
2 – Michael Jackson – Thriller – 29,800
3 – Animal Collective – Merriweather Post Pavilion – 14,000
4 – Wilco – Wilco – 13,200
5 – Fleet Foxes – Fleet Foxes – 12,700
6 – Pearl Jam – Backspacer – 12,500
7 – Grizzly Bear – Veckatimest – 11,600
8 – Guns N’ Roses – Appetite for Destruction – 11,500
9 – Dave Matthews Band – Big Whiskey… – 11,500
10 -Radiohead – In Rainbows – 11,400

Top Selling Vinyl Albums Of 2010
1 – The Beatles, Abbey Road -35,000
2 – Arcade Fire, The Suburbs -18,800
3 – The Black Keys, Brothers -18,400
4 – Vampire Weekend, Contra -15,000
5 – Michael Jackson, Thriller -14,200
6 – The National, High Violet -13,600
7 – Beach House, Teen Dream -13,000
8 – Jimi Hendrix Experience, Valleys of Neptune -11,400
9 – Pink Floyd, Dark Side of the Moon -10,600
10 – The xx, The xx -10,200

Again, LP sales are only a fraction of CD or download sales. Still it’s a growing trend when many believe the music industry is experiencing a slow painful death.

ABC Wednesday – Round 8

Beatles Island Songs, 13-4

I’ve long been of the opinion that this song, consciously or otherwise, evokes the Gospel of John 1:1.

JEOPARDY! answers (questions at the end)

BEATLES LYRICS $100: “Na na na na-na-na-na, na-na-na-na…”
BEATLES LYRICS $200: “All the lonely people, where do they all belong?”
BEATLES LYRICS $400: “Children at your feet, wonder how you manage to make ends meet”
BEATLES LYRICS $500: “There beneath the blue suburban skies”
BEATLES LYRICS $1,000 (Daily Double): “Dear Sir or Madam, will you read my book”
SONGS BY THE NUMBER $200: This Beatles song begins “When I get older, losing my hair Many years from now…”
BEFORE & AFTER $600: Beatles song about a “Talented Mr. Ripley” co-star
JEOPARDY! BOOBY TRAPS $600: This “Beatles drummer” was born in India in 1941
NEW AGE STUFF $800: In the ’60s your parents might have imitated the Beatles & visited one of these Hindu religious retreats
NO. 3 SONGS $100: The Beatles sang that he “doesn’t have a point of view, knows not where he’s going to”
FOR RICHARD $200: The Beatles we are all familiar with were John, Paul, George & the man born with this name
***
Beatles named #1 top artist of the last fifty years, as though there was a question about it. And in another poll, Paul McCartney is named ‘the best bass guitar player of all time’. What group had the #1, the #2, the #3, the #4 AND the #5 song on the U.S. Billboard chart, this week in 1964?

The Making of the Most Famous Album Cover – take a wild guess.

George Harrison’s Favorite Gibson Guitars
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The rules of engagement

13 For No One from Revolver. I find this McCartney absolutely beautiful. Simple yet devastating. Vocal, then horn solo, then vocal and horn. Stunningly effective.
12 The Word from Rubber Soul. I’ve long been of the opinion that this song, consciously or otherwise, evokes the Gospel of John 1:1. “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God” And in the song, the Word is Love. Ironic since it came out around the point when some people were burning Beatles albums because of a comment by primary composer Lennon about the Beatles being more popular than Jesus. Oh, and I LOVE the three-part harmony.
11 Day Tripper from a Double A-side single (UK), Yesterday and Today (US). You can tell that the intro is a solid hook by the number of times bands playing live will often finish it off with this familiar set of chords. Lennon, with McCartney.
10 Twist and Shout from Please Please Me (K), Introducing the Beatles/the Early Beatles (US). The song is the last song recorded for the album, done in one take, pretty much shredding Lennon’s voice. The harmony intro of ascending thirds is classic. Among the greatest cover songs EVER.
9 Good Morning Good Morning from Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band. The rooster at the beginning was supposed to suggest the Kellogg’s corn flakes cereal rooster. Somehow, I “got” Lennon’s joke. My affection for this song stems from the Britishisms, the changing time signature, and the blistering, yet controlled guitar solos.
8 While My Guitar Gently Weeps from the white album. And speaking of guitars, Harrison and Eric Clapton trade riffs on this cut. Jaquandor describes it, so I don’t have to.
7 A Hard Day’s Night from A Hard Day’s Night (UK). A made-to-order song made for the movie intro, based on a Starr malaprop Lennon overheard. That jangly first chord. The whole soundtrack was quite an achievement.
6 You Won’t See Me from Rubber Soul. I always saw this as paired with I’m Looking Through You. I only recently realized that it is the Mal Evans sustained chord on the Hammond organ throughout the last verse, last chorus, and outro that gives this McCartney song a special buzz. At the same time, I have definitely related to the notion of feeling invisible.
5 Drive My Car from Rubber Soul (UK), Yesterday and Today (US). McCartney played this song first in his NYC concert in 2009. Extraordinary chord structure. I’ve noted before that it was John Sebastian of the Lovin’ Spoonful, saying in a magazine that this was on Rubber Soul, which eventually led me to the realization that the UK and US albums were not alike, even when they had the same name.
4 I Want You (She’s So Heavy) from Abbey Road. Lennon seems to steal its first line from the song I Want You, the first Bob Dylan song I ever owned. I’ve probably told this story before, but bears repeating: I was at a very low point in 1975. I was listening to the first side of the album with headphones at the Binghamton Public Library, cranking up the volume over time. Suddenly, the music, as it was designed, stopped. And I thought, for a brief moment, that I had died. But of course, I didn’t. So hearing it makes me remember that I’ve gotten through worse things.

JEOPARDY! questions:
What is “Hey Jude”?
What is “Eleanor Rigby”?
What is “Lady Madonna”?
What is “Penny Lane”?
What is “Paperback Writer”?
What is “When I’m Sixty-Four”?
What is “Hey Jude Law”?
Who was Pete Best?
What is an Ashram?
What is “Nowhere Man”?
Who was Richard Starkey?

My new cellphone

I’ll admit it; I’d had real difficulty figuring out how all the fancy doodads on my previous cellphone worked.

But I just got my new cellphone – and it’s one I understand how to operate, compatible with my generally technophobic nature.

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The Top 100 April Fool’s Day Hoaxes of All Time

“Fool”ish songs of the 1970s:
Everybody Plays The Fool – The Main Ingredient (1972 – #3 pop, #2 soul on the Billboard charts)
Joe Jackson – Fools in Love (1979)
The Doobie Brothers – What A Fool Believes (1979 – #1 pop, #72 soul)

March Ramblin’

For my birthday this year, I had come across this Facebook thing whereby people could contribute $10 in my name to the American Red Cross. I picked them specifically, not only because they do good things, but because they helped me possibly save a life. Back in May of 1995, I successfully performed the Heimlich maneuver on an older woman in my church at the time who was choking on some meat, without breaking her ribs. I learned that at a Red Cross training that I took in high school.

Anyway, some people did this, some people were confused by how to do it electronically and instead gave me checks. Hey, it’s all good.

And that was before the Japan earthquake, and aid organizations such as the Red Cross in whatever country you are in can use your help even more.

Still, I got a couple of gift cards, one from Amazon, one from Borders. So I got my fix of new music for a while. From Borders, I got the greatest hits albums of the Guess Who (my previous copy had disappeared), and Peter, Paul, and Mary (I saw Peter and Paul at Proctors in the fall of 2010). And I was really pleased with myself with my Amazon purchase. I looked at my wish list and noted that a Sheryl Crow album had gone down from whatever to under $5. A Madeleine Peyroux album was down at least $3 to around $10. And Judy Collins’ cover album of Leonard Cohen songs, used to be $16+ but was down to under $11. The grand total was $25.15, plus 84 cents tax, for a total of $25.99, minus the GC for a massive charge of 99 cents to the credit card. ($25 was the minimum to get free shipping.) Oh, I may have purchased newish albums by Robert Plant, Mavis Staples, and R.E.M. as well.

Carol and I got to see an amazing percussionist, Dame Evelyn Glennie, with the Albany Symphony Orchestra at the Troy Music Hall, performing a piece written by Academy Award-winning composer, John Corigliano (“The Red Violin”). Thanks to our friends Philip and Marilyn who couldn’t use the tickets. In the same week, we also saw The Lion King at Proctors in Schenectady, which was great.

My wife was confounded as to what to get me for my birthday. She thought about getting a bicycle. But, using the $100 from the CSN stores I got from Lily Hydrangea, I bought a Mongoose myself for $59 additional. She thought to buy me a TV, to replace the one we have with only two volumes, inaudible and LOUD; but then my friend Uthaclena and his wife offered their spare set when they showed up with their daughter as a surprise on my birthday weekend; the following weekend, he brought up the set.

And the wife did buy me a book, the autobiography of Ed Dague, the local newsman I admire, but a friend from work had already given it to me.

So she let me have a card party, specifically a HEARTS party, on March 19. There was a period in the 1980s where a group of us would play hearts once, twice, even thrice a week, always at the home of our charismatic and maddening friend Broome and his “this woman is a saint” wife, Penny.

At the card party, I got to see my old friends such as Orchid, who I goaded by e-mail – “You HAVE an A game?”; Jeff and Sandy, Jendy, and of course Broome. As they say, a splendid time was had by all.

So it’s been a pretty good birthday month, thanks to many of you. Well, except for some major computer problems at work, but that’s finally fixed.

Second place in this crossword contest, by my boss, is not bad, especially when the winner was a ringer.

The Cheap Flights song, complete with dancing. And subtitles?

Lots of Elizabeth (“I hate being called Liz”) Taylor tributes out there; here’s the one from Arthur.

In answering my questions, Jaquandor says something shocking about Richard Nixon. Worse, I’m inclined to agree with him.
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My buddy Steve Bissette writes about D.W. Griffith’s two Biograph caveman movies, Man’s Genesis (1912) and Brute Force (1914), with a link to the latter.
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Diagram For Delinquents Kickstarter project:

“This is a documentary film about the most hated man in comics history: psychiatrist Fredric Wertham.

“Beginning in the late 1940s, Wertham began publishing articles linking comic books to juvenile delinquency. This work culminated in his now-infamous 1954 book, Seduction of the Innocent. Burnings of comics were reported across the United States, and Congress held hearings into the matter, which helped spur the creation of the self-censoring body the Comics Code Authority…”
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Google Alert finds – other people named Roger Green:

Roger Green Pt 1/5 ‘Feng Shui & Building Biology’ ‘Conversations with Robyn’
Roger has a background in Chinese Medicine and was a pioneer in introducing the ancient knowledge of Feng Shui to the western world.
This clip also shares some info on the harmful effects of wireless broadband on our health and sleeping patterns.

Custom Knives Created By Roger Green

Patients who walk through the doors of Dr. Roger Green’s clinic are eagerly greeted by Izzy, Green’s 5-year-old Basset hound.

One of those passengers at Narita Airport in Tokyo, on flight No. 276, next in line on the runway when the earthquake hit, was the Rev. Roger Green, longtime pastor at Grace Baptist Church in Middletown.