Posts Tagged ‘John Lennon’

Bootleg City: Jethro Tull, 11/25/87

As election day approaches, it’s important for a political candidate like myself to line up celebrity endorsements. One of my opponents, David Byrne, has the support of famous people-slash-political activists like Jane Fonda and Danny Glover, while another opponent, Bob Marley, has lined up a bunch of dead celebrity endorsements, including Robert Palmer, Nina Simone, Mickey Rooney, and John Lennon, who would’ve turned 69 today. How am I supposed to compete with—

… My sources have just informed me that Mr. Rooney is still alive. I’m sure they’re wrong, but I don’t want to embarrass them, so I’ll check Wikipedia after I get home.

So far the only endorsement I’ve gotten is from Jethro Tull frontman Ian Anderson, who made the trip to Bootleg City only after I convinced him that I’d gotten my hands on the world’s oldest instrument, a 35,000-year-old flute discovered by archaeologists in Germany last year. Once he arrived, I explained that my e-mail contained a few extra zeros, not to mention a gratuitous three and five.

Mr. Anderson wasn’t thrilled about traveling thousands of miles to receive a brand-new flute made in the Little Germany neighborhood of Bootleg City, but he did seem to enjoy the flute whipping he gave me, which was apparently a first. I was inspired to create a new tourism campaign with the following tag line: “Bootleg City: Experience the Unexpected (Just Be Prepared for Some Violence).”

I convinced Mr. Anderson to stay and give a talk to all the children of our city about the consequences a rock musician faces when he continues to play flute solos into his 60s. I left the City Auditorium during his speech so I could send my condolences to all the former Mrs. Mickey Rooneys of the world, but when I returned, the children were gone.

Some of these kids’ parents are still waking up from that disastrous Wizard of Oz screening. What am I going to tell them? “Sorry, folks, but a modern-day Pied Piper whose band won a Grammy in 1989 for Best Hard Rock/Metal Performance, Vocal or Instrumental, has run off and taken every child in the city with him. It’s a mystery as to why. I mean, everybody knows that award should’ve gone to Metallica.”

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Bootleg City: The Beatles

Yesterday was a special day in Bootleg City. Every September 10 — or “One After 909,” as some folks call it — we celebrate Beatle Day, which kicks off early in the morning with one of the fabled creatures emerging from beneath a stack of old records to poke his head into the sunlight. (”Good day, sunshine,” the Beatle always says. It’s so freakin’ adorable.) If he doesn’t see his shadow, his group’s music will finally be made available online. The problem is, he always sees his shadow. Bootleg City could really use some overcast days this time of the year.

The loss of that online income has to be taking its toll on the two surviving Beatles, Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr, especially in this economy, which is why I extended an invitation to both of them to stay on my couch until the global recession is over. Each one responded by sending me a $10,000 couch. Spending money you don’t have — it’s a real sickness. And where the hell am I going to put these gigantic couches in my one-bedroom apartment?

The following tracks come from the bootleg “Rarer Than Rare,” with information about recording dates, concert locations, and other assorted Beatlemania minutiae included in the comments section of each MP3 file. Audio quality varies from track to track, but it’s the Beatles — what have you ever done for them?

More to the point, what have you ever done for me? Oh, by the way, I’ve got a couple of couches I need to unload. Each one costs $20,000. (You heard me …) And don’t say you can’t afford it, because those credit-card companies wouldn’t send you all those offers if they didn’t want you to use their money. Think about it. I haven’t.

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CHART ATTACK!: Beatles Edition

Well, Beatles covers, anyway.

As if you haven’t noticed, it’s Beatles Week here on Popdose. Hell, it’s Beatles Week all over the world. Well, far be it from me to stay away from any bandwagon, but as you know, I gotta give things a little bit of a twist. See, I could talk for days about the Beatles’ appearances on the Billboard Top 10. They hold a million records, too — “Hey Jude,” for example, was the first single in the history of the Hot 100 to enter the charts at #10, and stayed at the top for nine weeks, longer than any other Beatles single. But what can I really say about these songs that hasn’t been said before? So instead, I thought I’d present you with ten Beatles covers that appeared in (or at least hovered around) the Top 10. Okay, I’ll be stretching it a little: two of these songs were never recorded by the Beatles but were written by Paul and/or John. Still, I think it provides for a fun week. And as a little treat — every single song is available for download! (You can thank/curse me later.) Off we go with CHART ATTACK!: Beatles Edition!

10. Here Comes the Sun — Richie Havens Amazon iTunes
9. Goodbye — Mary Hopkin Amazon iTunes
8. We Can Work It Out — Stevie Wonder Amazon iTunes
7. You’ve Got to Hide Your Love Away — The Silkie Amazon
6. Got to Get You into My Life — Earth, Wind & Fire Amazon iTunes
5. I Saw Him Standing There — Tiffany Amazon iTunes
4. The Fool On The Hill — Sérgio Mendes & Brasil ‘66 Amazon iTunes
3. A World Without Love — Peter and Gordon Amazon iTunes
2. Lucy In the Sky With Diamonds — Elton John Amazon iTunes
1. Medley — Stars on 45 Amazon iTunes

10. Here Comes the Sun — Richie Havens (download)
Peaked at #16 on 5/22/71

Okay, I have to admit that I’m cheating a bit here: a spot in this Top 10 legitimately belongs to Anne Murray and her cover of “You Won’t See Me,” which peaked at #8 in July of 1974. But we covered that song back in July, and I honestly couldn’t bear to talk about it again. So instead, we’ll talk about Richie Havens’ song, which is a live version taken from his album Alarm Clock and remains his only single to reach the Top 40. Havens’ version features his trademark bordering-on-frenetic rhythmic guitar work, and definitely takes the song in a different direction; sadly, the lead guitar riff that is featured so prominently in the original (both in the introduction and the chorus) is gone, but Havens’ gentle, assured voice gives this version its own kind of peace.

9. Goodbye — Mary Hopkin (download)
Peaked at #13 on 5/31/69

In 1968, an 18-year-old Welsh singer named Mary Hopkin appeared on the British talent television show Opportunity Knocks. She sang “Turn, Turn, Turn” and won the competition. Twiggy happened to be watching the show that night, and called Paul McCartney to tell him about this fabulous new singer. The next Monday, Hopkin was in the studio with McCartney, recorded eight songs in a day and ended up with a contract offer at Apple Records. Her first single “Those Were the Days” (produced by Macca and recorded in English, French, German, and Italian) reached #1 in the UK and #2 in the US. Its catalog number was APPLE 2, behind APPLE 1, “Hey Jude.”

It was her follow-up single, “Goodbye,” that gives us a somewhat more direct Beatles connection — in addition to production, Paul also wrote the song (though, as with all songs at that point in time, it was credited to Lennon/McCartney). The 10th single released on Apple, it only reached #13 here but made it to #2 in the UK — held back from the #1 spot by “Get Back.”

I think “Goodbye” is a simple, sweet and charming little ditty. Hopkin’s vocal is pure and clean, and the percussion is quite charming. Paul’s demo, however, has a charm all its own, and in many ways, I prefer it to Hopkin’s version.

Paul McCartney — Goodbye (Demo) (download)

Here’s a promotional video for “Goodbye,” featuring Hopkin and McCartney in the studio. And if all that wasn’t enough, I found an absolutely stunning cover on YouTube. Check it out!

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No Concessions: The Film Four, or All You Need is YouTube

noconcessionsAs you might have heard, the Beatles albums have been remastered, in a format called “CD.” (“Compact disc,” right? I owned some of those back when I had hair.) Not that you would know from this site—Popdose has done a lousy job covering this.

Actually, as you well know, Popdose has been on the leading edge of the new Beatlemania. I’m just bitter: When I misidentified Mae West’s version of “Twist and Shout” as a “Beatles cover” I was thrown under the bus as our magical mystery tour meandered through all the hoopla. But no Blue Meanie can stop me here.

This week we look at Beatles movies. No, not A Hard Day’s Night, Help!, or Yellow Submarine, which by Popdose law you have to watch at least once per year. Nor Let It Be, which I haven’t seen in its entirety. Has anyone since before those DCs, I mean CDs, were introduced? The boys won Oscars for their song score, beating out the fearsome competition of The Baby Maker, A Boy Named Charlie Brown, Darling Lili, and Scrooge. Did recipient Quincy Jones hand-deliver the statuettes, or simply put them in the mail to the fractured four? Whatever—speaking words of wisdom, this is the time to free Let It Be.

I really wanted to include a clip from the 1976 curiosity All This and World War II, which sets Fox-owned footage of the conflict to Beatles covers in a desperate bid to win over the kids and the “nostalgia” audience that was hungry for the next That’s Entertainment! Only in the 70s, folks. But the movie is presumably such a seething mess of rights issues that not even the copyright banditos want to touch it. With a little help from my friends at YouTube, then, my focus is the non-Beatles movies JPGR worked on. (more…)

Political Culture: Gimme Some Truth

The words were spoken in London, casually, almost flippantly, and were directed at an audience that was sure to treat them in the spirit they were intended. It was not until the words traveled to the United States, and were heard by an audience of narrow-minded hypocrites for whom they were decidedly not intended, that they created a ruckus that led to censorship, destruction and even death threats.

No, silly, I’m not saying that Natalie Maines is bigger than John Lennon (or Jesus, for that matter). What I am saying is that both of them – all three of them, actually – learned one very important lesson the hard way: Speaking your mind can be a very dangerous business. It can even get you killed.

Here at Popdose and throughout the Western world, this week’s (admittedly consumerist) Beatlemania revival has offered plenty of opportunities to reflect on their music, their influence … the astounding greed of their record label over a 45-year period … (Did EMI really have to sell the stereo and mono mixes separately, particularly considering that every album from Please Please Me to Revolver was short enough that they could have easily crammed both versions onto a single CD?) But as long as we’re sitting around dissecting the effects of the remastering process on “Happiness is a Warm Gun,” or tapping colored buttons in time to the scrolling visuals on the Rock Band version of “Revolution,” we may as well pause to marvel at the historical import of the Beatles’ efforts – and John’s in particular – to use their stardom to advance causes and engage in social commentary. In this, as in their music, they created a template that has been imitated and amended by generations of celebrities in their wake, for better and for worse. (more…)

Basement Songs: The Beatles, “Rubber Soul” (remastered)

basementsongs

51hTOQ67LyL._SCLZZZZZZZ_[1]During the summer of 1990, I entered the Record Exchange, my hometown indie store, to buy my first Beatles album. Hard to believe that an audiophile like myself didn’t own a single Beatles LP at all. At one time I copied a friend’s parent’s scratched up White Album on to cassette, and I once recorded the second side of Abbey Road off the radio when Akron’s WONE played it in its entirety during one of those late night “album sides” half hours of airtime, but I had never made the commitment of laying down my own cash and purchasing one of their albums. Perhaps because so much of the Fab Four’s material was consigned to the oldies station, I didn’t take an interest. In 1990, I was a wreck, unsure of who I was, unclear of my place in the world, uncertain about my career choice. I was a 20-year-old college student, confused and lost. (Huh, imagine that.) (more…)

CD Reviews: The Beatles Remasters

Let me say this at the outset: if you think that the release of 14 remastered Beatles albums is some sort of marketing gimmick, think again. If you can’t hear the difference in sound quality, you’ve either never heard the original versions or you should be visiting an audiologist soon. This set of stereo remasters instantly takes its place as the holy grail of Beatles music. Nothing that has come before can possibly do for the true fan anymore.

The Popdose staff split up the duties on this project, and I was lucky enough to have first choice of what I wanted to cover. I took the first Beatles album, Please Please Me (Yes, it was the first Beatles album EMI released in England. In the U.S. the album was originally released on VeeJay Records, and was the second one that we got), the last Beatles album, Abbey Road (Yes, it was recorded last despite the fact that Let It Be was released last), and one in the middle, Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, that remains a landmark recording in the history of pop music.

The Beatles - Please Please MeSo let’s start from the beginning. Please Please Me features three songs that are stone cold Beatle classics, the leadoff track “I Saw Her Standing There,” the closing track “Twist and Shout,” and the title track. These are early days for the band, but they’ve put the craziness of the Hamburg days behind them, and the insanity of Beatlemania looms. If anyone tells you the Beatles weren’t really a rock band, this is as good a place to point them as any. Please Please Me finds the band with a lot of their raw energy intact.

The sound of the remastered album is revelatory. The chance to hear George’s Harrison’s guitar playing in all its crystalline beauty alone is worth the price of admission. Add the crisp sound of Ringo Starr’s drums, the rugged chugging of John Lennon’s rhythm guitar, and the vocal interplay between John and Paul McCartney, and you have an album well worth hearing. The key thing about Please Please Me though is that if you want to fully assess the Beatles as a band, charting the development of their songwriting and playing, this is where you have to start. –Ken Shane (more…)

Dw. Dunphy On… The Easy Way Out

dwon banner

I was over a friend’s house recently when his son burst into the living room proclaiming he was going to start a rock band with his friends. It was a scene I participated in many times during my youth, the thrill of the larger-than-life expectations undiminished yet by that dreaded “real world.” Being a supportive “uncle” I offered to show him some guitar chords and a few tricks he could probably get by with. Lord knows how some of these golden fakes served me.

The young boy looked at me with the most quizzical eyes, as if I had just recited The Iliad in Esperanto while standing on my head. “What are chords?” he asked.

“He’s talking about forming a ‘Rock Band’ band, not a real band,” his father confided to me. The boy gnashed his teeth and spun out of the room, infuriated by his father’s distinction. Yes, this kid was talking about forming a digital equivalent of a band with his friends through his X-Box, not the actual process of writing and performing songs but, in his mind, the two were one and the same. “Don’t be offended. He gets like that lately.”

I found the whole concept depressing. A few generations ago, the story went that The Velvet Underground weren’t huge but everyone who saw them play formed their own band. Although Nirvana was a lot more successful, they too spawned a legion of guitar slingers with this notion that it could be done. The thought that those days were past us and now the act of creativity was relegated to just as much vector spaceships spinning to blast ‘asteroids’ weighed heavily on me for a good long while. I’m not alone in this either. By doing a little reaseach – well, okay, more like a little web-surfing – I’ve found an undercurrent voicing this same opinion, that creative, artistic expression is slowly being co-opted by facsimile. Some go as far as dubbing it “art porn” though that may be too harsh. (more…)

CD Review: The Jayhawks, “Music From the North Country: The Jayhawks Anthology”

Jayhawks - Music From the North Country: The Jayhawks AnthologyThe Jayhawks, Music From the North Country: The Jayhawks Anthology – Deluxe Edition (Sony Legacy)

In the grand history of pop music, there haven’t been all that many voices that blended perfectly. Oh sure, there’s been lots of harmony singing, but what I’m talking about is two voices that just sound like they were born to be together. There were the Louvin Brothers, the Everly Brothers, and the Wilson brothers, but those are kin. In the non-related category, I’d offer Bobby Hatfield and Bill Medley of the Righteous Brothers, David Crosby and Graham Nash, and John Lennon and Paul McCartney as examples. I’m sure that you can add your own favorites. Since they were not related, they had to find each other, and the stories of how that happened are often the stuff of music history.

Gary Louris and Mark Olson belong in that category. The story of how they met is really nothing that special. Both were kicking around in different bands in Minneapolis, and when the timing was right in 1985, they got together. Along with bassist Marc Perlman and drummer Norm Rogers, they formed one of the most important roots bands in American music. Call it alt-country, Americana, or No Depression, The Jayhawks were pioneers in the movement. Together with Uncle Tupelo, and later Wilco, they forged the path that many, many artists have followed over the years. Named not for the fabled bird as many suspect, but as an homage to the Dylan-backing Hawks, who became the Band, the Jayhawks have been through some changes over the years, both in their music, and in the band’s membership. They’ve never really achieved the sort of success that they’d hoped for, but they have soldiered on.

Originally inspired by the Sweetheart of the Rodeo-era Byrds, the Flying Burrito Brothers, and anything else that Gram Parsons had to do with, the Jayhawks added something of their own to the stew, and eventually had a sound that defied categories, and ignored trends. They were originally signed to a local Minneapolis label, the legendary Twin/Tone Records, and in 1988 their early demos were spruced up and released on an album called Blue Earth. The beautiful sound of Louris and Olson’s voices blending together became their trademark, and the songs that the two co-wrote were no small part of the equation. In 1989 the august Village Voice called the Jayhawks “the only country rock band that matters.” (more…)

CD Review: Cocktail Slippers, “Saint Valentine’s Day Massacre”

Cocktail Slippers, Saint Valentine’s Day Massacre (2009, Wicked Cool)
Purchase this album at Amazon.com

Isn’t it funny how quite often the finest practitioners of rock and roll—that most American of art forms—are those whose passports originate from outside the U.S.? I’m not just speaking of the Beatles, Stones, or Sex Pistols—we regularly extol the virtues of artists from lands unreachable by car from the bottom of my driveway. The best straight-up rock and roll band in the world right now may very well be the Hives, or maybe The Soundtrack of Our Lives, both of whom hail from Sweden, of all places.

But Norway? We’re expected to believe that the land of Vikings, the ‘94 Winter Olympics, and Henrik-freakin’-Ibsen has provided us with anything any more rockin’ than the wood John Lennon spoke of in that Beatles song? Well, in a word, ja. Leave it to Little Steven Van Zandt, the garage rock godfather, to find, promote, and produce not just a slammin’ rock and roll band from Norway, but a slammin’ all-female rock and roll band from Norway—Oslo’s own Cocktail Slippers.

Saint Valentine’s Day Massacre gives us a kick-ass rock band donning the costumes and playing the part of an early-60s girl group, like the Crystals or the Shirelles or the Ronnettes, with really loud guitars and the echoed thwap of a heavy-armed drummer. “Sentenced to Love” roars out of the gate with snarl and a backbeat the Strokes should kill for. The band’s “I-yi-yi-yi-yi’s” come from the best syllable-stretching rock and roll tradition (think Axl Rose with lipstick; or better yet, don’t), and the ‘Slippers bring forth the mighty thunder of a band onstage, trying to break the mirror behind the bar from across the room. (more…)