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…)
“But there was something else tugging at Garcia as 1964 turned into 1965. For one thing, like half of America under the age of 25, Jerry had been seduced by the Beatles, especially their film, A Hard Day’s Night, which depicted life in a rock and roll band as just about the most fun that could be had on planet earth. the Beatles were deliciously irreverent and in-your-face anarchic; untamable gadabouts on an endless lark, always living in a completely different universe than the pitiable straight forces that were constantly trying to control, or at the very least, restrain them…” –from Garcia: An American Life by Blair Jackson
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.
So 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…)
Four poor kids from Liverpool formed a band and became the greatest rock group of all time. And they made a lot of money. Although most musicians make their big money on tour, the Beatles have not performed live since 1966. Two of its members are dead, so there won’t be a reunion tour (although that hasn’t stopped Pete Townshend and Roger Daltrey).
But the money rolls in, and for all of the members or their heirs. To celebrate the release of The Beatles: Rock Band and the release of remastered and mono boxed sets of the Beatles’ albums, this week’s Numberscruncher will look at some of the band’s money matters.
Musicians are paid several ways. They are paid for their professional services whenever they perform, which is why touring can be a good deal for a band with a loyal fan base. For a recorded performance, the artist may have received a one-time fee or may be eligible for a royalty from each sale or play. Then, if they wrote the song, they receive a payment for the use of it, whether when performed by the band or by someone else. That songwriting royalty is split in half, with a share going to the songwriter and another share going to the publishing company that handles the licensing and distribution of the song and the sheet music. Publishing involves a lot of clerical and administrative work that most musicians are not interested in doing, so the separation makes sense. (more…)
Two of pop’s most studious classicists, Neil Hannon (The Divine Comedy) and Thomas Walsh (Pugwash), converge on what could only be considered a monumental summit for UK pop fans, bestowing on the listening public a concept album – about cricket. Not about some girl named Cricket, but the veddy European sport thereof.
This could be very bad.
Fortunately it isn’t; in fact, it’s very good, and good news for anyone who likes their music tasty on the ear and cheeky with the tongue. The very notion of a conceptual album devoted solely to cricket as being a ridiculous idea is not lost on the boys, but at the same time, they are respectful and reverent to the whole thing, playing it less like a Monty Python farce and more like a Rutlesian good-natured poke in the ribs. They came not to bury but to praise. The Rutles inference is apt as both Hannon and Walsh have appropriated the Beatlesque in the past, and the opening “The Coin Toss,” for all of its minute and eight seconds, knocks your guard down straight away. After that, “The Age of Revolution” slips into a fine groove complete with a skiffle-jazz sample and a treatise on how the upper-crust sport of cricket opened up to the common man and the fields at Lord’s were never the same. (more…)
“When a movie cuts to a beach shot with waves breaking in the background, it matters not how dramatic the cinematic moment, how drastic and ingenious the plot turn — my mind is immediately absent from the narrative proceedings. I’m off on an imaginary surf check, assessing the size and health of the swell up there on the silver screen, noting the wind direction and state of the tide, maybe muttering for the actors to please step aside a moment so I can see if that boomer behind them holds its shape through the inside section.
“For a surfer, this Sea of Cortez beside which I am camped is an altogether different sort of piece of water from the Pacific Ocean, the illusoriness of the boundary distinction notwithstanding. (Big Blue is a contiguous presence, worldwide.) This is despite the fact that the two may appear identical to an observer standing on the beach — both are wet and stretch to the visible horizon.
“There is a corollary to the assertion that the sea is at any given moment capable of being something other than what it is: bodies of water, like human beings, are not created equal, in terms of what they may be. The Sea of Cortez, for example, is largely incapable of producing good surf, due to its limited breadth. This narrowness results in what surfers and oceanographers refer to as a short fetch; “fetch” is the reach of unbroken water across which wind can blow in order to raise a groundswell.
“By contrast, the Pacific Ocean has a fetch of many thousands of miles. Looking south from my last west coat campsite, for example, there is nothing of any significance to impede the production of a groundswell until we come upon the pack ice of Antarctica, some 8,000 miles distant. So even when the sea is flat, you may still find yourself gazing horizonward with an alertness in your surfing soul, for — however many miles out there, however many days’ journey away — there likely is a slew of waves in transit in your direction at that very moment.”
Nighttime and an electrical storm in the Mexican heat flashes, high on acid, the lightning breaking out – there! – there! – and the electricity flows through him and out of him, a second skin, a suit of electricity, and if the time was ever now it is – Now! – and he hurls his hand toward the sky to make the lightning break out where he points – Now! – we’ve got to close it, the gap between the flash and the eye, and make it, the reentry into Now … as Superheroes … open … until he falls to the beach and Mountain Girl finds him holding his throat and choking as if he is gagging on sand …
Beyond acid. They have made the trip now, closed the circle, all of them, and they either emerge as superheroes, closing the door behind them, and soaring through the hole in the sapling sky, or just lollygag in the loop – the loop of the lag – Almost clear! Presque vu! – many good heads have seen it – Paul telling the early Christians: hooking down wine for the Holy Spirit – sooner or later the Blood has got to flood into you for good – Zoroaster telling his followers: you can’t keep taking haoma water to see the flames of Vohu Mano – you’ve got to become the flames, man – And Dr. Strange and Sub Mariner and the Incredible Hulk and the Fantastic Four and the Human Torch prank about on the Rat walls of la casa grande like stroboscopic sledgehammer Cassady’s fons et origo ::::: and it is either make this thing permanent inside of you or forever just climb draggled up into the conning tower every time for one short glimpse of the horizon:::::
It’s not something that I’m particularly proud of, and in retrospect, it was remarkably short-sighted, but when Laura Nyro, unhappy with attempts to market her as a celebrity, announced her retirement from the music business in 1971, I lost track of her until many years later. This despite the fact that she came back five years later with a brand new album called Smile *. Hell, five years is no retirement at all these days. It’s merely the normal recording cycle for major artists.
All through the late ’60s and early ’70s there was no more important musical voice in my life than that of Laura Nyro. For me, she was right up there with the Beatles, Bob Dylan, Neil Young, and Joni Mitchell. Still after her 1971 covers album Gonna Take A Miracle (recorded with Labelle), an album I adore, Laura left the music business, and when she came back I had moved on to other artists. It’s a damn shame, really. After Smile there was the live album Season of Lights in 1978, and Nested in 1978, and then another long break before Mother’s Spiritual in 1984. Then came Laura: Live at the Bottom Line in 1989 *, and Walk the Dog and Light the Light * in 1993. As I said, I missed a lot of great music. What’s worse is that Laura was no longer on my radar when she died of breast cancer in 1997. She was only 49 years old. Hers is a death that haunts me to this day. (more…)
Parlour to Parlour begins today with Episode 0. This footage, filmed in San Francisco, CA, during the weekend of November 14-15, 2008, on my grandfather’s old analog Hi8, was “just practice” and not originally intended for the series. But we liked it so much that it deserved a place in the series, even if it was out-of-concept in that it was the band visiting me, rather than the other way around. Hence “Episode 0.”
The Parlour to Parlour “concept” wasn’t completely set in stone yet, nor had I begun the process of putting together a production schedule for the series, when Chris Robley & The Fear of Heights were passing through San Francisco last November. But even in its formative stages, P2P was always meant to begin with Chris. (more…)
![51hTOQ67LyL._SCLZZZZZZZ_[1]](http://popdose.com/wp-content/uploads/51hTOQ67LyL._SCLZZZZZZZ_1.jpg "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…)
![61D9kn-ws3L._SCLZZZZZZZ_[1]](http://popdose.com/wp-content/uploads/61D9kn-ws3L._SCLZZZZZZZ_1.jpg "61D9kn-ws3L._SCLZZZZZZZ_[1]")
Two of pop’s most studious classicists, Neil Hannon (The Divine Comedy) and Thomas Walsh (Pugwash), converge on what could only be considered a monumental summit for UK pop fans, bestowing on the listening public a concept album – about cricket. Not about some girl named Cricket, but the veddy European sport thereof.
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