music Archives - Page 244 of 258 - Ramblin' with Roger

Beatles Island Songs, 23-14

“I’ll Be Back” was originally in 3/4, as the Anthology recordings reveal – and I’ve heard cover versions done that way – but was ultimately recorded in 4/4.

(Confidential to Uthaclena: “Macca”!)

JEOPARDY! answers (Questions at the end)

BEATLES LYRICS $100: “He got o-no sideboard, he one spinal cracker”
BEATLES LYRICS $200: “It always leads me here, leads me to your door”
BEATLES LYRICS $300: “Closer, let me whisper in your ear, say the words I love to hear”
BEATLES LYRICS $400: “Close your eyes and I’ll kiss you, tomorrow I’ll miss you” BEATLES LYRICS $500: “Love, love, love, love, love, love, love, love, love”
***
Beatles Release Debut Album 48 Years Ago

Macca solo albums expanded editions coming in June

In pictures: Abbey Road Studio Two
***
The rules of engagement

23 Lady Madonna, from A-side of a single (UK), Hey Jude album (US). Initially, I wasn’t positive this last Capitol single even was the Beatles. That McCartney vocal was so affected, in a good way. I liked being surprised.
22 Rain, B-side of Paperback Writer single (UK), Hey Jude album (US). Not sure that I liked this song at all initially – it was kind of out there – but now love it. Backward tape loops make this the progenitor of all that Lennon weirdness. And it lives on the bass line to boot. Another video.
21 Glass Onion from the white album. One could make the case that, for an island selection, it ought to be #1; after all, the Lennon song namechecks several other Beatles songs. I did consider it, actually. I’m also particularly fond of the Anthology version of the song. “It’s a goal!”
20 I’ll Be Back from A Hard Day’s Night (UK), Beatles ’65. In dealing with affairs of the heart, always found this Lennon song very moving. And I love the guitar strumming and the specific harmony. This was originally in 3/4, as the Anthology recordings reveal – and I’ve heard cover versions done that way – but was ultimately recorded in 4/4.
19 Think for Yourself from Rubber Soul. There are probably no three Beatle songs in a row on an album that I love more than You Won’t See Me, Harrison’s Think For Yourself, and The Word. Yeah, I know Nowhere Man’s in there on the UK album, but it’s not what I grew up with. Love the instrumentation – more bottom – and the message.
18 I Want to Hold Your Hand A-side of a single (UK), Meet the Beatles (US). Only the Lennon- McCartney song that first went to #1 in the US, which, as George Martin mentioned, Capitol Records was essentially forced to release, which led directly to their appearance on Ed Sullivan. Oh, and a great song, to boot.
17 Ticket to Ride from Help! This has been described as a perfect single. I agree, and stretching past the three-minute boundary that singles were “supposed” to be Plaintive. The very first line is among my favorites. Lennon, the primary writer, “claimed that it was the first heavy metal song given the droning bassline, repeating drums, and loaded guitar lines.”
16 Eleanor Rigby from Revolver. A moving McCartney story song. But even without the lyrics, it’s a beautiful song, as the Anthology version shows. It was covered way too often, with an annoying sense of the song’s IMPORTANCE, and it’s STILL ranked this high.
15 Golden Slumbers from Abbey Road. At some level, this pick and the next honor the whole second-side suite. But I DO love McCartney’s vocal on this.
14 Carry That Weight from Abbey Road. Whereas the vocal here, by the whole band, sounds a little like drunken sailors. But I love the You Never Give Me your Money reprise.

JEOPARDY! questions
What is Come Together?
What is The Long And Winding Road?
What is Do You Want To Know A Secret?
What is All My Loving?
What is All You Need is Love? (on the show, NO ONE got this correct!)

K is for Keys

Music touches on a few aspects of the word key.

I have become fascinated with the word key. It’s a short word, worth 10 points in Scrabble, but it has so many meanings. Reference.com shows some four dozen definitions. And while some are interlocking, most of them address some sort of structure.

There is that metal thing that moves a bolt that I tend to hate because I tend to misplace it. I have a couple of duplicates of my house keys, one outside the structure – no, it’s not under the mat – just in case. Someone told me a long time ago that the number of keys one has related to how important they were. The most important person I ever knew, by that definition, was my elementary school janitor.

Then there’s “something that affords a means of access”, such as the key to happiness. The word shows up at least a half dozen times in the Bible in this context, including Luke 11:52 (New International Version)- “Woe to you experts in the law, because you have taken away the key to knowledge. You yourselves have not entered, and you have hindered those who were entering.” Lawyer bashing has a rich tradition.

“Something that affords a means of clarifying a problem,” I would contend, would include the pronunciation key in the dictionary, the answer key to an exam, and like entities.

Things that look like keys, such as the islands known as the Florida Keys, or a part of the floor in basketball. Or something that is the center of things, something that’s important, such as the key to figuring out a mystery; Pennsylvania is the Keystone State.

Music touches on a few aspects of the word key. The keys on the piano or other instruments, like the keys to a calculator or computer keyboard, are the items that are touched; singer Alicia Augello Cook changed her last name to Keys in honor of piano keys. But the key is also “the principal tonality of a composition: a symphony in the key of C# major.”

Stevie Wonder recorded the 1976 Grammy album of the year, Songs in the Key of Life. It featured the big hits I Wish and Sir Duke, but also this minor hit As.

I came across this list of songs containing the word key. Thought I’d pick a few:
Way Over Yonder In The Minor Key-Billy Bragg & Wilco, featuring Natalie Merchant; a Woody Guthrie lyric completed by Bragg.
Key To The Highway-B.B. King and Eric Clapton.
Brand New Key-Melanie (live). “Don’t go too fast, but I go pretty far.”

ABC Wednesday – Round 8

Beatles Island Songs, 33-24

Well, those Central girls knock me out,
They leave the North girls behind.
And Central girls make me sing and shout.
That Bulldog’s on my mi-mi-mi-mind.

JEOPARDY! answers (questions at the end)
MUSIC OF THE ’60s $100: In 1969 “Something” became the only No. 1 hit he composed for the Beatles
HILLS $400: The Beatles’ Rocky Raccoon was raised in them
SWEET 16 $400: Billboard numbers it as the Beatles’ 16th chart album; you can’t tell anything by its cover
MOVIE SONGS $100: In this 1968 Beatles title tune, “Every one of us has all we need, sky of blue and sea of green”
FINISH THE LINE $100: The Beatles: “Yesterday all my troubles seemed…”
FINISH THE LINE $600: The Beatles: “I think I’m gonna be sad…”
CHORUS LINES $800: The Beatles sang, “Hold me, love me, ain’t got nothin’ but love babe” this often

Video: Steve Martin talks in collaboration with Paul McCartney on ABC-TV’s The View: “I’ve got to tell you, having Paul McCartney sing a song that I wrote has to be one of the greatest thrills of his life,” Martin quipped.

Yoko Ono and Sean Lennon will do a Japan benefit concert in New York on March 27.
***
The rules of engagement

33 I’m Down, B-side of Help! single. My friend Fred Hembeck says that this is just McCartney’s remake of Long Tall Sally, and he may very well be right. What hooked me on this song is seeing the ABC-TV broadcast of the live performance of it at Shea Stadium in 1965. So much so that when the compilation album Rock and Roll came out in the early 1970s, I bought the album largely for this one song, which I had never owned. I didn’t buy Beatles 1962-1966 for From Me To You, e.g.
32 You’ve Got to Hide Your Love Away from Help! Lennon does Dylan; I love this song. And it would be disingenuous to suggest that I didn’t relate to the sentiments in the lyrics more than once.
31 Don’t Let Me Down, B-side of Get Back (UK), Hey Jude album (US). Lennon does one of the finest B-sides ever. Jaquandor describes it well.
30 Get Back, A-side of a single. Sweet Loretta! The driving beat of this song, along with the jaunty solo on the bridge, made me feel almost as though they were the happy-go-lucky moptops of a few years earlier.
29 I Am the Walrus from Magical Mystery Tour. My daughter claims this is Lennon song is her favorite Beatles recording. Really. I had this friend Ray in junior high who wondered whether “standing in the English rain” was a pun on “English reign”, i.e., a reference to the monarchy.
28 Getting Better from Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band. I LOVE the STRUCTURE of this mostly McCartney song. It’s verse and chorus, but the chorus gets increasingly longer each time out. I thought it was incredibly clever writing, and still do. It’s also a song of redemption – “Man, I was mean, but I’m changing my scene.”
27 And I Love Her from A Hard Day’s Night (UK, US), Something New (US). McCartney apparently thought the “And” was important, and I agree. Lovely romanticism.
26 A Day in the Life from Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band. What I love about this song, which often shows up near the top on the list of the greatest Beatles songs – and it may be – is it’s a real Lennon-McCartney song, even if it’s the different parts. The not-so-good thing is that it, and the album in general, spawned some wretched imitators. (Exhibit A: The totally out-of-context middle section of Susan by the Buckinghams).
25 Back in the U.S.S.R. from the white album. The first song on the album with fun lyrics and Beach Boys harmonies, written by McCartney. In high school, someone (it might have been me, now that I think on it) wrote:
Back in BCHS, Ain’t you a mess,
Back in BCH, back in BCH, back in BCHS.
Well, those Central girls knock me out,
They leave the North girls behind.
And Central girls make me sing and shout.
That Bulldog’s on my mi-mi-mi-mind.
[Binghamton North was our archrival, and the Bulldog was the school mascot/emblem.]
24 She Loves You, A-side of a single (UK), Beatles’ Second Album (US). No song epitomized Beatlemania like this one. Critics specifically mocked the “Yeah, yeah, yeah” from this Lennon-McCartney song, but of course, it was THE hook. Also, the third-person perspective was very clever.

JEOPARDY! questions
George Harrison
Black Hills – specifically, “somewhere in the black mining hills of Dakota”> BTW this lyric is often misheard as “black mountain hills of Dakota”
“The White Album”
“Yellow Submarine”
so far away
I think it’s today
“Eight Days A Week”

Beatles Island Songs, 43-34

It speaks volumes of John and Paul’s opinion that it starts the album.

JEOPARDY! answers – questions at the end

GEOGRAPHIC PHRASES $300: Beatles song that includes the line “And when I awoke I was alone, this bird had flown”
HITS OF THE ’40s $300: The Beatles’ “Anthology” includes a version of this ’40s tune whose title is Spanish for “Kiss me much”
I’M JUST A “BILL” $500: The Beatles asked him “What did you kill?”
MANY LOVES $600: The Beatles asked, “Would you believe in” this type of love, & others have wondered too
IT’S ALL ABOUT “YOU”, ISN’T IT? $400: It’s the title reason the Beatles say “You know you should be glad”
PROFESSIONS IN SONG $200: This song covered by the Beatles says, “Deliver the letter, the sooner the better”
***
The Beatles were the original punk rockers.

Disney sinks Zemeckis’ Yellow Submarine Remake – should that reference to Aug 2009 be 2011?

Taking Control: How Paul McCartney Tried to Reinvent the Beatles, an excerpt from the new book Come Together: The Business Wisdom of the Beatles by Richard Courtney and George Cassidy.

***
The rules of engagement

43 Hey Bulldog from Yellow Submarine. I’m a sucker for a great bass line. And animal noises. This Lennon song has both.
42 Roll Over Beethoven from With the Beatles (US), The Beatles’ Second Album (US). From the group’s touring days. Maybe that’s why some of those early covers, such as this Chuck Berry tune sung by Harrison, are so solid. Possibly George’s most solid effort from the first half of their run.
41 Revolution from the B-side of the Hey Jude single (UK), Hey Jude album (US). It’s loud, it’s political. What’s not to like?
40 All You Need Is Love from Magical Mystery Tour. When it first came out, I used to stand. Aren’t you supposed to rise for the national anthem, even of France? The lyrics of the verses by Lennon are almost incomprehensible, but it matters not. Kudos especially for the She Loves You reprise.
39 Here Comes the Sun from Abbey Road. Absolutely gorgeous Harrison tune, which continues to be one of the most popular downloads on iTunes.
38 I’ve Just Seen a Face from Help! (UK), Rubber Soul (US). This McCartney song is first on the American Rubber Soul album, and it’s difficult to disassociate it from that collection.
37 Helter Skelter from the white album. Charles Manson be damned, this is a serious tune that McCartney has been doing on tour this decade.
36 Taxman from Revolver. Again, great bass line. It speaks volumes of John and Paul’s opinion that it starts the album, and George’s obsession with money.
35 I Feel Fine, A-side of aa single (UK), Beatles ’65 (US). The intro has often been called the first best use of guitar feedback. Lennon song. An alternative link, which is even more fun!
34 If I Fell from A Hard Day’s Night (UK, US), Something New (US).The myth is that Lennon was the serious one, with McCartney as the sentimental one. This song, mostly written by John, belies that.

What was Norwegian Wood?
What was “Besame Mucho”?
Who was Bungalow Bill?
What is Love at first sight?
What was She Loves You?
What was “Please Mr. Postman”?

Book Review: Where Did Our Love Go?

Georgia slave owner Jim Gordy had a son named Berry (b. 1854) by his slave Esther Johnson.

One of the strategic things I did on my train ride to Charlotte (and back) is that I did not bring any electronic items – no headphones and music, no laptop, except, necessarily, my cellphone. What I did bring were three books.

The first one I read, actually by the time I reached Washington, DC, was Where Did Our Love Go? – The Rise and Fall of the Motown Sound by Nelson George, which I purchased at a library sale. I should say that I’m a big fan of George, who has written about American black music (r&b, soul, hip hop, rap) for a number of years. Back when I had a subscription to Billboard magazine, he was a writer there. I even supported his recent Kickstarter project, Brooklyn Boheme: Fort Greene/Clinton Hill Artists Documentary.

The fact that the book was a tad disappointing may not be George’s fault. The reason I wasn’t as engaged as I might have been is that I had heard most of the narrative – about Berry Gordy writing music for Jackie Wilson, utilizing his family in the business, future stars serving as office workers or, in the case of Marvin Gaye, as a session drummer, the power of the songwriters to lay the same tracks on several artists, the ultimate push for more autonomy by Gaye and Stevie Wonder, and Gordy’s special relation with Diana Ross – before, quite possibly in articles written by Nelson George. So it wasn’t new, though it was complete and well written.

What WAS new for me was the ancestry of Berry Gordy. Georgia slave owner Jim Gordy had a son named Berry (b. 1854) by his slave Esther Johnson. Berry married Lucy Hellum, a woman of black and Indian heritage, who conceived 23 times; nine children survived, including another Berry, born in 1888. He married teacher Bertha Ida Fuller, and in 1929, they had Berry, one of the youngest of their seven children. These first two chapters about race in America were largely new to me, and, therefore, quite fascinating.

The book I recommend to people who know less about Motown than I do, which, immodestly, I suggest is most people.