This just has me hyper.

I haven’t talked to Mark Corcoran, illustrator of Star Wars: The Mystery of The Rebellious Robot since I got back in touch with him in September to chat about the 30th anniversary of the book’s release. At the time, the Booth house was caught in a massive wave of Beatlemania from the build-up to The Beatles: Rock Band – and Mark & I talked awhile about the Fab Four’s movies and albums and how cool it was that my 12-year-old daughter can drop quotes from “A Hard Day’s Night” and debate the merits of “Revolver” vs. “Rubber Soul.”

In the mailbox this afternoon, I was surprised to find a small envelope from Mark.

Inside, this hand-drawn Card of Sheer Awesome:

R2-Bea-tle.

I was just rendered spastic and went into giddy geek convulsions rushing to show it to Jenn & Kelsey. The Beatle ‘do, the scissors clutched in R2’s extender arm, and the quote from “A Hard Day’s Night,” – to say nothing of Mark’s gorgeous attention to detail – it just gave me this rush of delight.

Inside was a note reading “Hey Booths” – with, no less, “Booths” rendered in a perfect echo of the famous Beatles logo! – “Happy Krimble!” – a reference to the band’s 1963 Christmas message to its fan club.

I mean, seriously: I can’t get over just how amazingly neat this is.

VERDICT:
8/10 Heartthrobs

It’s hanging out with The Beatles for an hour and a half. Awesome.

A Hard Day’s Night is pretty much about The Beatles having to go on tour to promote their new album as the play gigs, run away from all their screaming teenybopper fans, act presentable at press junkets, and keep the band together all the while having to babysit Paul’s creepy, horny grandfather so that he doesn’t cause any more trouble for them.

My life in a nutshell.

I’m gonna go out on a limb here and assume times have changed in the world of rock and roll lifestyles since ‘64, but this was a simpler time, a time when bowl cuts were hot, when it was normal for a band to put out seven albums in a year (that trend needs to come back), when music was just straight-up fun. Man, I miss that time.

I’d heard this movie was good going into it, but I was still pretty skeptical considering all the other Beatles movies are supposed to be garbage. But hey, looks like all the rumors are true.

So there’s not much of a story here, nor is there much conflict or character development, but, for once, that’s beside the point. Director Richard Lester knows that The Beatles aren’t actors, and since no one’s going to see this movie hoping to see John play King Lear, everything works out just fine as a result. They have their lines to deliver – all of which require zero acting chops – but you can tell that they’re just trying to be themselves without putting on a show for their audience. It ends up being a really cool kind of insight into the normal, jovial personalities of the biggest band in the world, an insight that you really don’t get from listening to their albums.

It’s also cool, if not somewhat sad, to see the guys at a time in their career when they were simply a group of clean-cut friends still getting used to their newfound fame. Makes listening to Let It Be that much more bittersweet.

Then again, the music is as much a part of this movie as anything else. It’s The Beatles, what did you expect? And considering that all the Beatles albums’ are freakin’ phenomenal, soundtracks don’t get much better than this either. Seeing the movie probably isn’t as good of an introduction to the band as it to just listen to the album, but that’s just me, either way you’ll hopefully be sold.

But the most surprising thing about this movie is that it’s actually really funny. A lot of the dialogue is really witty and the plot ends up being an excuse to go from one great gag to the next and I couldn’t believe at how many times I found myself laughing out loud. Not only does it work really well in shedding a new light on the band, it also shows that they had a great sense of humor to boot. Either that or the script is just really funny, but I like to think it’s a little bit of both.

And strangely enough, I actually ended up liking Ringo the most. Still not my favorite Beatle, but way to go Ringo all the same.

A Hard Day’s Night is just a fun, lighthearted movie that doesn’t feel dated over fifty years later and serves as a really cool inside look into the personalities of the Fab Four that I never knew were there. Even if you’ve never heard a single song by them, even if you have George’s face tattooed on your chest, this movie is a great time that also serves as a wonderful little document to the personas of what a lot of folks would argue were the greatest band of all-time.

Like I said – awesome.

Another week, another blog post.  Yay.

I learned how to play the Beatles’ “Norwegian Wood” on Thursday.  I’ve been waiting to do that for months.  I have the chords in a book, but it’s more complex than just chords.  I found a video tutorial of it and learned it that way.  So I can play that on my new acoustic guitar that I got back on Monday. 

In other musical endeavours, I also started teaching myself piano.  I learned how to play (most of) the Zombies’ “This Will Be Our Year”.  I’m left-handed, so I’m probably not using the correct fingerings, but, hey, it sounds good.

Also on Monday, NaNoWriMo ended.  I’m proud to say that I finished… two days early nonetheless.  My novel probably isn’t very good, because, well, for the simple reason that it is a NaNoWriMo novel.  I still have to go through and edit it and revise it and whatnot, but I’m being held from that by obstacles.  Obstacles known as homework.  How I hate homework.  Like, if it were interesting, I wouldn’t care, but it’s boring and, for the most part, pointless. 

I have to write an outline for a literary criticism paper on Huxley’s “Brave New World”.  yay.  I also have to get that done to-day, regardless that it’s Saturday because tomorrow I’m going to Illinois, which basically takes up the whole day.  I have physics homework as well, but that’s not due until Tuesday.

Yester-day, I went to FYE because it’s going out of business.  In my area anyway.  So I got some CDs, paramount of which are two Zombies CDs (“Greatest Hits, Greatest Recordings” and “Live from the Bloomsury Theatre, London”) and the jazz opera Porgy & Bess.  This last was only $5, how could I pass that up!?  Presently, though, I’m listening to my weekly album.  This time around it’s The Very Best of the Boston Pops directed by John Williams.  It’s ironic because we talked about John Williams and the Boston Pops in my Music History & Appreciation class (which I’ve abbreviated to M’HA).  That class is pretty fun.  It makes me feel more musically smart than I would’ve felt had I not taken it.  It kind of brings together all of the disparate threads of my musicality. 

My movie for to-day is American Graffiti.  I haven’t watched that for a long time.  I think it will feel weird watching it though.  It’s supposed to be a happy movie that occurs around the summertime, and here I am bummed that I have to write an outline and freezing in the onset of December.  It still hasn’t snowed yet, which I find odd, but welcoming nonetheless.

I had a dream to-day too.  It was something about how I travelled across the ocean to a far-away magical place where there was a retirement home.  I was sneaking around trying to figure out what it was (I suppose).  I was playing “A Hard Day’s Night” on the ukelele, which I don’t own nor really know how to play.  Some old man saw me and at first was yelling at me to leave.   I started to leave, and then he told me to remain there.  Eventually, I left, though I know not how, and went back across the ocean in a boat, still playing the ukelele.  I distinctly remember a type of land bridge under which I had to go. 

Needless to say, this dream wasn’t one of the best, nor one of the clearest I’ve ever had.  My good dreams have already occurred.  Now when I do have the luck to remember one, it isn’t very good.

I can’t think of much else to type, even though I would like to just keep typing on this to save myself from doing my outline. 

So remember: Pirates Need Vaccines Too!

One afternoon during the summer of 1986 I happened to be stuck indoors waiting out the rain. This was the August that I turned 13 and the last of the fleeting, swaggering, pre-teenage years. I always felt that before the awkwardness of adolescence really took hold, I commanded the world of childhood at 11 and 12 years old. On this afternoon I seem to recall that there was nobody in the neighborhood to fight, I’d been kicked out of the drugstore for loitering one too many times and there was no access to any sort of sex education. For some reason that I can only accredit to God smiling down upon me, I found myself on our four season porch where the turntable was kept. Pulling out an LP that I’d never played before, my dad’s American release of A Hard Day’s Night, the world opened up to me on that afternoon. The lone F chord that opens A Hard Day’s Night changed everything in my world. I’m not just saying this out of some poetic romanticism for a childhood moment gone by. Nooo. I was a Beatle fan for life with that one chord. After playing the album once through, I plugged in the big, spaceman sized Shure ear cans, layed down in the middle of the floor and played the whole shebang again. Little did I know then that the boys had put out 12 studio albums and I’d spend quite a bit of my lifetime (just as I am now) with the cans strapped to my head, hanging on every turn of a phrase, every melodic hook.

This is where I divulge my reason for tripping back to my childhood. In the beginning, the Liverpool foursome of Lennon/McCartney/Harrison and Starr and their producer George Martin put out a dozen full length albums in eight years. Mark Lewisohn in his notes for the double album  Past Masters pointed out that if you owned the albums plus that set, you’d have every recording the Beatles ever officially released. So, I roll my eyes every time McCartney and John Lennon’s widow Yoko Ono release another little bit of revisionist history. Sometimes they get it right and manage to not tarnish the band’s legacy. Beatles Rockband is actually worth spending the time playing and if any band deserved to be featured in a playable format, why not the boys? Some of the material the Paul and Yoko partnership has signed off on over the last few years has been lame at best. The mash-up derby Circue Du Soleil Beatles Love soundtrack was the bastard child of George Martin and son. The show itself might have been a stunner, but I had a tough time with the idea of splicing up Beatle classics and releasing whatever came of it. This is the mind-boggling world of the nearly 70 year-old former Beatles and their wives still out selling the brand to a new generation of kids used to it as the elevator music of their lives.

I suppose its a form of comeuppance for the Beatles. As provincial twenty-something year olds they had the audacity to become the first commercially viable pop band to write and produce truly enduring, well crafted songs. At that age they forced the public to rethink music and culture at large. As worldly senior citizens the Beatles are pushing product for products sake. Me? I’ll do what I’ve always done. Granted, I can carry their entire oeuvre in my pocket, but I still keep the ear phones firmly planted where they’ve always been. The remaining Beatles can release whatever they want. I can’t hear ‘em anyway.

Since I’m in a very random mood, this will be yet another of my trademark bullet posts.

• Hyderabad is totally growing on me. There’s still a lot that I find to crib about but as we get more settled, even the bitching becomes more routine than real.
• I know a lot of people who hate going in to work on Mondays and dread the long walk to their cubicles which will be their cages for the next week and so on. Somehow I don’t feel that way. Might have something to do with the fact that I work only about 6-7 hours a day. And I work Saturdays. So it’s not really a weekend hangover.
• I never in my life thought that Hard Rock Cafe would be the place we’d go to almost 3 times a week. Tiger beer with SP and Su and lots of The Doors, Led Zeppelin, and miscellaneous rock and roll.
• Kamikazes are deceptively mild and can have dangerous consequences.
• Being John Malkovich is a fantastic movie.
• Three cheers for Newsgate’s new messaging service. Production work has gotten new meaning, and alerts are the new way to communicate. Poetry can be written and friends can be found in the blink of an eye.
• It’s possible for old friends to become even closer by bonding over the unlikeliest of things. And it feels pretty damn good.
• You can spend about 13 hours a day with the same person for weeks on end without even feeling borderline annoyance or frustration. To the point where your family even starts adding her to their self-help mailing lists.
• The weekend (that is, quarter a Saturday and then the Sunday) is always over before you know it.
• Every person needs a flatmate to help you accesorise clothing and loan you pretty shoes.
• While the rest of the world appears to be saving, I’m now used to the month-end chill when I’m living off my last hundred bucks. Though I wouldn’t give up on my splurging on books and clothes for anything.
• I don’t leave home without my kajal and iPod. Even the wallet has been left behind on occasion. Priorities.
• Growing up apparently means chasing the plumber, giggling with the maid when she comes in and insults your hygiene, desperately avoiding the building manager, taking the baby gas cylinder for a stroll every month or two, paying our rent in what my father terms the most low-tech method possible (“use internet banking, for God’s sake. or at least a chequebook!”) and trying to keep track of the names of the many watchmen that people our building.

I like my life.

Title Source: Immigrant Song by Led Zeppelin

What makes for a great chord?  It depends on context and mood and purpose, obviously, but some generalizations can be made.  In jazz, Tin Pan Alley, and Broadway music there’s a well-trodden trail of chord enrichment.  You add the seventh note of the scale (as in blues) and then go on to add the ninth, perhaps the eleventh, conceivably even the thirteenth to color the base chord more and more with implied chords in neighboring keys.  It’s like blending ingredients into an amazing French sauce.  Here is the simplest version of the menu for enriching a C major chord:

BASIC CHORD NOTES
C (the 1^st)
E (the 3^rd)
G (the 5^th)

PLUS……………………. IMPLYING ALSO THE CHORD OR KEY OF
Bb (the 7^th)……………G minor
D (the 9^th)………………………and Bb
F (the 11^th)………………………………and D minor
A (the 13th)………………………………………and F

Popular music can accommodate complexity along these lines.  It’s how the luxurious opening chord in “A Hard Day’s Night” is built up, for example.  In art music, things can get weirder.  For a chord that’s all suspense, impossible to assign to any home key yet mysteriously longing to belong somewhere, try the “Tristan chord” from Wagner’s Tristan and Isolde:  F – B – D-sharp – G-sharp.

For a superchallenging chord with the strongest sweet-and-sour effect, try the “Petrushka chord” from Stravinsky’s ballet.  All the notes of a C chord are combined with all the notes of the maximally dissonant F-sharp chord, like a demented C 15^th.

If you long for just the sweetest and purest chord, I understand that, but an innocent C chord couldn’t be very impressive all by itself.  It needs to be tied to something else so that when you hear it, you are stretched or caught in the collision between different positions in the music-world.  Perhaps many would prefer to avoid Wagnerian or Stravinskian torture, but I think most of us enjoy a bit of a stretch, say between a C chord and an F chord nobly introducing it.  Here you not only experience a nicely consonant layering of the remembered F onto the new C, you get a bit of a thrill in being suspended between two ways of construing the F-C relationship, either F as the fourth in the key of C or C as the fifth in the key of F.  (If C dominates enough that you’re clear the F is meant to be the fourth of the C, the other possibility remains pleasantly on the edge of your awareness.)

Now let’s consider a song that starts in precisely this way, XTC’s “Another Satellite,” but then takes us on a journey to a much less common site of arrival.[1]

[Spacing is correct on the main Hooks page]

F…..C…………………………………………………………..F
…………..My heart is taken, it’s not lost in space

C………………………………………………………………………F
And I don’t want to see your moony moony face, I say

Eb……….Ab……………………Gb
Why on earth do you revolve around me?

The E-flat chord sounds sweet-tartly good—tastes like cherries, I’d say—because it shifts us from C to the closely related key of E-flat, a key that uses the notes C minor would use, except it’s major.  Keywise, it’s as though we’ve mounted up a level in a split-level house.  True, we also dropped down to the E-flat chord from F, as though going to the seventh in the key of F, which involves the feeling of a spring pushed down that will come back up.  And for yet another effect, the melody went from E-natural on “say” to E-flat on “why,” just a half step down, and changing keys while moving just slightly in pitch in the melody makes for a queasy feeling.  But in any case the melody of “Why on,” E-flat B-flat, is squarely in the key of E-flat, just as the earlier notes had reinforced the key of C.

Next in the chord sequence, going down to A-flat (“earth”) from E-flat feels logical, as A-flat is the fourth in the key of E-flat.  But since we only moved to E-flat a moment ago, we’re not all that firmly planted, and A-flat sounds so solid, so well supported by the melody, that we have to consider the possibility that it is our new key.  Maybe yes, maybe no:  we directly descend from A-flat to G-flat, which could be a move in the key of A-flat but could also simply be a routine whole-step chord change in some other key.  The next change after that is another whole-step descent, from G-flat to F-flat:

Fb
Aren’t you aware of the . . .

At this point we don’t know what’s going on, keywise; we seem to be in a free-fall of descending chords.  I wrote the chord as an F-flat because of the whole-step descent pattern we’ve been in.  But we’ll have to construe the F-flat in retrospect as an E chord (the notes are the same) because the next change is to an A, most naturally heard as either the fourth of E or else the first for which E is the fifth:

A
gravity . . .

We’ve already taken some adventurous steps to get to this A chord, which hangs in the air of our quite possibly now being in the key of A.  But the A is not (yet) our destination.  Abruptly we are modulated back to the original home key of C with the help of a G, C’s fifth:

………..G……………………C
Don’t need another satellite

—and that should be the end.  Yes, the return of C should mean the verse is over.  And the melody here sounds like it did at the beginning.  Uh-oh, the beginning . . . Now there’s a launch from C toward the strange true ending of the verse, a wild hair flying up over the last syllable of “satellite”:

C………………….G….A4aug!
satellite_______________.

We’ve pivoted on G again to go to A, which we once thought might be our destined home and maybe is after all.  But it’s not the pure A we heard before.  It’s got a fourth note added emphatically by the melody, not just as accompanying texture, and it’s not an ordinary fourth but a sharped (“augmented”) fourth, a D-sharp, which implies a B-major chord layered on top of the A-major chord for a very tangy polytonal effect—the auditory equivalent of double vision—and an exotic, dislocated sense of being “home” in the A.  (Imagine going home one day and seeing palm trees sprouting out of your windows.)  This is a possibility that you would find only on a much larger version of the jazz chord menu.

This A4aug wins my award for the greatest chord.  We’ve approached it in an invigorating sequence of harmonic reorientations, and when we round the last corner we come upon it as a darkly radiant thing, a light beaming from deep space in the extended last syllable of “satellite.”  Its unexpected D-sharp challenges us simultaneously as

(1) a flatted fifth in the A chord,
(2) a flatted third in our alternate home key of C major,
(3) the brash major third of the implied B chord on top of the A, and
(4) the first note of the E-flat that we took seriously as a home key possibility a few measures ago (for D-sharp is also E-flat).

In the event, this deftly prepared compound sounds like a cry of frustration and compassion:  the one who is urgently pushing the satellite away knows that the satellite needs even more urgently not to be lost in the void.

Because November is for Beatles, and because I think I’ve mentioned I’m poor, and because Nate-dawg came over last Saturday night to watch this and it always leaves me smiling for days afterward, here.  Have the cutest boys ever frolicking.  I almost can’t stand it.

L'ex-Beatles Paul McCartney

Tutti coloro i quali pensano che Paul McCartney sia ancora vivo e che non si tratti di un sosia come sostenuto dai seguaci della teoria PID (Paul is Dead) che verrebbero simboli e allusioni della prematura scomparsa dell’artista in molte canzoni e copertine di album dei Beatles, potranno ascoltare il cantante inglese a Parigi il 10 Dicembre.

L’ex membro dei Faboulous Four inizierà la sua tournée europea il 2 Dicembre ad Amburgo per finire il 22 a Londra. Questo tour, battezzato «Good Evening Europe», passerà anche per Berlino, Arnhem in Olanda, Colonia, Dublino e farà tappa a Parigi il 10 Dicembre.

Si tratta dell’unico passaggio in Francia di Sir Paul se non si considera il concerto che tenne all’ Olympia nel 2007

Palais Omnisport de Bercy
8, boulevard de Bercy
75012 Paris

10 Dicembre 2009

Currently watching A Hard Day’s Night on the tube.

I had a dream last night. it was a variety hr. show in a large football stadium. the opening band were the Beatles yet it was only Paul and Ringo (doi). It was so strange cause security were being mean to me and they didnt allow me to enter. i was still able to see the jumbo tron and hear Paul sing.

how’s that for random.

Have You Seen Grey’s Anatomy: Season 1 Episode 1 – A Hard Day's Night?

Episode Synopsis:

Meet Meredith Grey. Daughter of famous surgeon Ellis Grey and currently a first year intern at Seattle Grace Hospital. On her first day, she meets her fellow interns: Cristina Yang, a highly competitive Stanford graduate. George O’Malley, a quirky yet warm hearted guy. Izzie Stevens, a former model who’s always optimistic. Overseeing them is Miranda Bailey, dubbed by her coworkers “The Nazi”. Meredith also gets a surprise when she realizes that her one night stand from the night before is her new boss.

So what do you think of this episode?

If you missed it, you can watch it here.

Once in a great while, I get a terrible headache. It’s nauseating. The left side of my neck tightens up all the way down behind my shoulder blade. Usually I leave work when it starts, because I know it’ll get so bad that it’s not safe for me to drive. It’s not really a migraine, it’s just a terrifically bad headache. When I get home, I take some OTC painkillers, cover my eyes, and listen to some movies. There are five I choose, every time, and they’re all directed by the same man.

He only has 31 credits as a director, and he’s been working since 1954. That’s not particularly prolific. He’s been a composer, editor, cinematographer, actor, writer, and a producer. You can see a short biography of him here.

In 1964, he directed A Hard Day’s Night, a funny musical showcase for The Beatles. He’d already directed Peter Sellers and Spike Milligan, two of The Beatles’ favorite comedians. In 1965, he followed it up with Help!, another Beatles film. In 1966, he directed a cast of brilliant people (Zero Mostel, Phil Silvers, Michael Crawford, Jack Gilford, and Buster Keaton, to name a few), in the longest running comedy since the Roman Empire, A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum. His deft touch and relaxed hand with zany comedy led Alexander and Ilya Salkind to choose him for the 1973 The Three Musketeers. Technically, there’s only one film. During post-production, the Salkinds decided it was too long and released it as two films, with the 1974 one called The Four Musketeers. Those are the 5 DVDs I reach for when the headache strikes.

If you watch the earlier films, you can see the same comic touch guiding the musketeers movies. I sure can. Some day I may pick up a copy of Robin and Marian, Richard Lester’s 1976 Robin Hood movie that starred Sean Connery, Audrey Hepburn, Robert Shaw, Richard Harris, Denholm Elliot, and Ian Holm. It’s a splendid film, I just haven’t picked it up yet.

What I like about Richard Lester’s comedy is that it’s not in my face. It’s zany, but at the same time it’s very calm, self-assured, and character-based. Granted, the characters in the Beatles’ movies are personas created to sell Beatles records, but knowing what happened to the band doesn’t detract from them any more than knowing that Oliver Reed and Richard Chamberlain have passed on detracts from the musketeers. Richard Lester invites you to involve yourself in his movies, rather than forcing them on you. When I’m ill, I appreciate the choice to lay back, or to lean in.

So do yourself a favor. Discover the work of Richard Lester. After all, everybody ought to have a maid.

A hard day’s night y Help! son, además de dos de las más célebres canciones del cuarteto de Liverpool, los títulos de las dos primeras incursiones de The Beatles en el cine, ambas a las órdenes de Richard Lester. A diferencia de otros productos cinematográficos concebidos en exclusiva para el lucimiento de los cantantes de turno con fines recaudatorios, las dos películas de Lester con The Beatles son más que estimables. A hard day’s night (1964) es un pseudo-documental en clave de humor en el que se nos cuenta una supuesta rebelión del grupo contra su fama (huyen de sus fans, de los periodistas, de los managers, hasta de la música) que proporciona algunas de las imágenes más recordadas de Paul, John, George y Ringo. Help! (1965) se nutre de la libertad que impregna el nacimiento del pop en los sesenta y, apostando ya decididamente por la ficción aunque el grupo se interpreta a sí mismo, cuenta la historia de una estrafalaria secta india que viaja a Inglaterra para robar a Ringo Starr el gordísimo rubí que luce en su anillo (nótese que el vídeo musical es en realidad la escena que abre la película, repárese en el anular de la mano derecha del batería), imprescindible para una ceremonia de sacrificio a su diosa Kaili, lo que da pie a una serie de aventuras a lo largo de todos los tópicos británicos hasta acabar en unas delirantes islas Bahamas. Ambas películas tienen su gracia, pero el leitmotiv sigue siendo la música de The Beatles, cuyos mayores éxitos de este periodo inicial de fama mundial tienen su hueco en cada uno de los films. Documentos importantísimos tanto para acercarse al grupo de Liverpool como para estudiar la génesis de ese otro hijo bastardo del cine que se llama videoclip.

I know I’m a tad behind the curve talking about the new Beatles reissues that hit the shelves last month, but after much deliberation, I decided it would be remiss of me not to mention them somewhere on this blog.

Part of the reason for this delay has been my slow procurement of said CDs. 14 CDs x $12.99 = a lot of scratch. I still haven’t purchased them all (in fact, I’ve only bought half of them, spread out over several weeks), but this isn’t a bad thing. Buying the reissues slowly has given me the opportunity to approach each album with undivided attention and allowed me to absorb and dissect the wonderful remastering job done by the EMI engineering staff. I have to say, they haven’t disappointed yet.

One of the things that kind of blew my mind earlier in the decade was that the Rolling Stones’ catalog got the state of the art remaster/reissue treatment before the Beatles; nothing against the Stones, it’s just that they weren’t really known for their pristine production and creative sound layering back in the 60s, so it didn’t really make a ton of sense to punch up the sound of comparatively simple mixes.

But anyway… I love these reissues. The packaging is great, the sleeve notes are informative, the mini-documentaries encoded in each disc are interesting, and the sound just pops so much compared to the previous 1987 CD releases. Vocal and instrumental parts have more separation from each other now, sound crisper, and things that I never noticed or heard before are now audible. As I said, I’ve only picked up the first seven albums, so I can only imagine how much better the latter seven sound, with all their inherent bells & whistles. That said, these are my Top 10 moments from the first seven discs:

A Hard Day’s Night

The Beatles

1964

Parlophone

Well, I’m starting this off with A Hard Day’s Night by The Beatles, which is a rather obvious choice (don’t worry, I’ll hopefully get more obtuse in the future), being that it’s my favorite album ever by my favorite band ever.

No, A Hard Day’s Nightis not the greatest album ever, nor is it even the best from The Beatles, for that matter.  But it’s still amazing and hugely influential.  By early 1964, “Beatlemania” was in full swing.  Hell, this is the third album by John, Paul, George, and Ringo (If you don’t know their last names, don’t ever come back to this site. You won’t be welcome.), and the soundtrack to their first movie.  Got that?  They were so popular they made their first movie by their third album.  I’ll give you a second to contemplate that. 

And it’s not even like the album was a bunch of random throwaway songs for a movie soundtrack (Cough, Yellow Submarine, Cough).  A Hard Day’s Night is filled with great material, where every song keeps the audience’s attention.  Not to mention this is the first album composed of all original songs.

Ok, I’ll move on, and actually get to the songs now. 

“A Hard Day’s Night” is the first song and the second single from the album.  How many album openers are this memorable?  In fact, how many album opening chords are this memorable?  It grabs the attention right away, and John and Paul’s harmonies refuse to let go.  And the ringing guitar outro is stuff that would influence numerous 60’s bands that tried to emulate George’s sound. 

The second track is “I Should Have Known Better”, one of my favorite songs, which again focuses on tight-knit harmonies.  The song is composed of, what? Two, Three chords?  And yet, it still sounds fresh with it’s harmonica and simple guitar solo.  Proof that The Beatles did not have to be complex to be enjoyable.

“If I Fell” brings the album to a great ballad.  Here, Lennon shows off his maturity as a song writer, not only exposing his vulnerability, but his musical knowledge.  Almost every syllable of the melody falls on a different chord, in stark contrast to “I Should Have Known Better.”

The fourth track, Lennon and McCartney give Harrison a shot at vocals.  “I’m Happy Just to Dance With You,” is rather second-rate to most of the other songs on the album, probably why they allowed George to sing.  However, you can hear Harrison’s confidence start to build on this album, and he makes the song thoroughly enjoyable, if not all that great.

“And I Love Her,” is one of the more meaningful ballads from McCartney’s repetoire.  This competes with Lennon’s “If I Fell” for best ballad on the album, actually.  There’s even a shift in the key signature, after George’s tasteful guitar solo, that shows off McCartney’s musical maturity. 

The sixth song “Tell Me Why” does not hold up to the other songs based on musicality or lyrical development, but it serves as a nice foil to the ballad that comes before it.  And it leads up to one of the best songs on the album…

Which is “Can’t Buy Me Love”.  Here the Lennon / McCartney songwriting team takes everything they’ve learned that makes a hit single and put it into one song.  Like most of their early singles, “Can’t Buy Me Love” uses pronouns to appeal to their audience.  “I’ll buy you a diamond ring”, “If you say you love me too” , “But what I got I’ll give to you.”  It’s also an upbeat song, with an exorbitantly catchy melody, and tight harmonies.  What makes the song is that it opens with the chorus (a great suggestion by producer George Martin), automatically pulling the listener into the song.

Side Two  (yes, I’m using vinyl terminology, oh well) opens with “Any Time at All.” This song almost opens as memorable as “A Hard Day’s Night,” with its drum crack, and followed a cappella harmonies.

“I’ll Cry Instead”, “You Can’t Do That” , and “I’ll be Back” are three more Lennon numbers that all focus around his vulnerability and jealousy issues.  They each show a writer maturing and coming to terms with himself and his relationships.  Although none are included in the category of his best songs, they all show his development that would be realized later on.

Also on Side Two, the two songs “Things We Said Today” and “When I Get Home” fill out the track listing to a total of thirteen songs.  While the latter is just that, filler (compared to everything else – although still a decent song), the former again shows off McCartney’s musicality (changing from an F major chord to a B flat major contented the author).  However, John adds great harmonies, really making the song work extremely well.

Yes, in conclusion, A Hard Day’s Night, shows a band (the most influential band ever, just to get that out-of-the-way now), coming to terms with its development.  Each track flows into the next so nicely that after hearing the album so much, I now expect to hear the very next song come on a few seconds later (I get very disappointed when I finally remember that I’m listening to the radio (a very rare occurence, I’ll admit (What’s this? Parenthesis inside of parenthesis inside of parenthesis? Did I just blow every English major’s mind?)) and instead of hearing The Beatles, Metallica will come on).  One strange thing about the album: no token Ringo song.  However, it must be said, Ringo’s drumming is so amazing on this album.  He’ll be content with playing whatever he has to in order to make the songs work, even if it’s just playing the bongos for two minutes and thirty three seconds.  Anyway, A Hard Day’s Night serves as a great album, leading up to even greater albums.

Buy This Album

The Mersey Sound Wave crashed into the Cavern Club on Tuesday, September 22 as another massive step was taken towards achieving the dream of exhibiting 100 guitars that have all been played at the world famous Cavern Club.

Thanks to the hard work and dedication of teachers and children from Beacon CE Primary School in Liverpool, a fantastic show took place at the birthplace of The Beatles.

Children from Beacon became The Beacles for the afternoon as students from Years 4, 5, and 6 played guitars, sung, and danced to the classic Beatles tracks Yellow Submarine, With A Little Help From My Friends, Twist and Shout, and A Hard Days Night.

They thrilled their parents and watching tourists at the famous venue and their hard work was rewarded with souvenir guitars and badges.

Head teacher Sally Aspinwall pledged the school’s full support to Bill Hart’s idea and promised to help in anyway they can over the next 18 months to two years.

The school donated the guitars used during their performance for submission into Bill Hart’s exhibition which he hopes to display in 2011 at a location in Liverpool. Click here to find out more.

Look out for video interviews from the day coming soon on merseysoundwave.com!

I’m sticking with A Hard Day’s Night for my second tune this Beatles Weekend, highlighting one of my favorite songs on that album, and in the band’s entire catalog — ‘If I Fell.’

This is actually the second time I’ve featured ‘If I Fell’ on this blog. The first was back in April, when I chose Evan Rachel Wood’s version from the film Across the Universe as my 277th Song of the Day. I believe this song joins Ben Folds Five’s ‘Emaline’ (a live version and a cover) as the only songs to appear in two different Song of the Day posts.

I’ll go ahead and link up a third version of the song because I know Amy will if I don’t. Here’s American Idol contestant Jason Castro’s version with the added benefit of clips from one of television’s very best shows, Friday Night Lights.

And now, with all that housekeeping out of the way, make room for the main attraction… John and Paul’s harmony vocals on the definitive version of one of the best songs ever written.

The Mersey Sound Wave is headed for the home of The Beatles next Tuesday, 22 September 2009.

Bill Hart’s dream of exhibiting 100 guitars that have all been played at the world famous Cavern Club is taking shape with the help of children from Liverpool primary school.

The birthplace of The Beatles will play host to children from the Beacon Church of England Primary School as the youngsters take their own place in rock and roll history.

Students from Years 4, 5, and 6 (8-11 years old) will be playing guitars, singing and dancing to the classic Beatles tracks Yellow Submarine, With A Little Help From My Friends, Twist and Shout, and A Hard Days Night.

Their guitars will then be eligible for submission to Hart’s grand project to exhibit 100 guitars in the shape of a Mersey Sound Wave in Liverpool in 2011.

Sally Aspinwall, headteacher at Beacon Primary says: “The children are really excited to actually get to sing Beatles songs at the home of the Beatles!

“The Mersey Sound Wave project is a great way for children to begin to understand the impact that the Beatles had on Liverpool as a city and also how internationally the band helped raise the positive profile of the city.

“These children have only just started playing the guitar and this has really inspired them to practice and also get involved in live music.”

As well as the children, members of the public are invited to take part in the open day. They can come along, strum a few chords at the famous venue and then submit their guitar for inclusion in Bill Hart’s project.

There’s a pretty clear divide between The Beatles early, poppy stuff and their later more experimental music. Rubber Soul is where that split started to happen, and Revolver saw the transformation completed. Those are two of my favorite Beatles albums (I imagine they’re two of everybody’s). They showed the world that this wasn’t just a pop band but a serious artistic force.

Still, when I rank all of the band’s albums in order, it’s inevitably A Hard Day’s Night — one of those early, uncomplicated albums — that rises to the top. It lacks the ahead-of-its-time production techniques of later albums, the mind-bending lyrics, the complex song construction, but it makes up for all that in unparalleled pop songcraft.

Put simply, A Hard Day’s Night is chock full of songs that make you happy to be alive.

Released as a soundtrack to the seminal film of the same name, the album contains 13 songs that would be the best track on any other album by any other band. Among the finest is ‘I Should Have Known Better,’ a propulsive number written by John Lennon and featuring him on harmonica. The clip below comes directly from the film.

Do you ever wake up in the morning and just know that it will be a great big enjoyable day?

No matter what happens, your mood can’t be budged, bullied, or bothered.

Today isn’t one of those days …

but I was kind of hoping.

note: At the beginning of “A Hard Day’s Night” when John Lennon laughs at Ringo and George falling down … that’s how I feel on really good days.

double note: I’ve updated a few of the experiments, added a page at the top, and started something different at the bottom of posts.

 triple note: most days I feel like George and Ringo.

notes to myself #1

In Grade 4 when you make a deal with Peter to run over the “50 yard dash” finish line together so you can both get 1st place ribbons,  don’t do it. It’s a double cross!