- por Bernardo Brum

A era hippie acabou e agora todos estão trabalhando. Mas você sabe, às vezes tem um homem que pode mudar tudo isso.  Sem comunistas, agora no máximo podemos acreditar no discurso deste republicano ou daquele democrata. Mas às vezes existe um homem para provar como nós todos estávamos enganados. Tudo agora é baseado no dinheiro para a caridade, para as artes plásticas ou para fortalecer a máfia da pornografia em videotape, que não sabem mais o que é cinema. Só que as vezes tem um homem que não liga, chega e destrambelha tudo.  E esse homem que eu não conheço não é ninguém importante, mas você sabe que às vezes tem um homem que… Hum, perdi o fio da meada.

Eis Jeffrey Lebowski, O Cara, exímio jogador de boliche que junto de seus incapazes amigos – o cardíaco Donny e o psicótico ex-combatente do Vietnã Walter – é tirado do seu mundo de baseados, white russians e calorosos debates nos clubes onde bolas rolam e pinos caem para fazer as vezes de Sam Spade. Ou de Philip Marlowe. Para aqueles sombrios anos pós-depressão,  o homem era Bogart, gel no cabelo, terno impecável, cigarrinho no canto da boca e frases ferinas. Nesses anos de incrível ressaca moral, nós temos que deixar isso pra lá e buscar compensação por nossos carpetes mijados e nossas fitas do Creedence.

Esse é o dilema moral do Cara. Tomado por um milionário homônimo, tendo seu carpete mijado e tendo que sair por aí atrás de uma ex-atriz pornô casada com o tal Grande Lebowski – que, segundo o próprio foi raptada por uma gangue de… niilistas? E, claro, no meio do caminho tendo que aguentar moleques arrogantes, a filha excêntrica do milionário, o síndico afetado, o pederasta mothafucka’, agiotas do mundo pornô, a polícia, um taxista que é fã do Eagles, os ataques de Walter, e lá vamos nós.

Predileção dos Coen, O Grande Lebowski é um grande filme sobre o nada, a desinformação, a estupidez e a fragilidade da vida. Só O Cara que não parece ligar sobre isso, e em momento algum ele reina soberano – o mundo faz gato e sapato de um pobre vagabundo metido em uma conspiração digna de um O Falcão Maltês ou À Beira do Abismo que, no final das contas, surgiu apenas por causa do caos que faz de nossas vidas grandes campanhas em nome de coisa alguma e que só foram empreendidas, afinal, porque nós somos estúpidos demais para fazer qualquer coisa útil. Ou preguiçosos, talvez.

Aí, uma bola de feno sendo empurrada por aí pelo vento logo transforma-se em sonhos psicodélicos envolvendo garotas gostosas vestidas de viking em uma pista de boliche, ou cinzas de um defunto sendo jogadas em nosso rosto. É tudo muito frágil, ridiculamente frágil. E é tudo muito estúpido, hilariamente estúpido. O planeta é tão rico em oxigênio quanto em burrice, e assim segue o balaio das grandes epopéias dos inúteis, por gerações. Por que, às vezes, tem um Cara para nos mostrar tudo isso. Às vezes, tem um cara para acender uns baseados e ouvir uns rockzinhos safados antes de terem a cabeça afundada na privada. Às vezes, tem… um Cara.

5/5

Ficha técnica: O Grande Lebowski (The Big Lebowski) – 1998, EUA. Dir.: Joel e Ethan Coen. Elenco: Jeff Bridges, Julianne Moore, Philip Seymour Hoffman, John Goodman, Steve Buscemi, Tara Reid, John Turturro, Flea

via don’t touch my moleskine

The end of The Beatles’ “I Am The Walrus” includes a few lines from a dramatic reading of Shakespeare’s King Lear. The lines were added to the song direct from a BBC broadcast of the play.

21. “You Never Give Me Your Money” – Abbey Road

20. “Golden Slumbers/Carry That Weight” – Abbey Road

Few songs capture the same kind of feeling that the Abbey Road Medley does. Plus, singing “Carry That Weight” is fun. Seems like a bar song.

19. “Strawberry Fields Forever” – Magical Mystery Tour

18. “A Hard Day’s Night” - A Hard Day’s Night

Entertainment Weekly put this song at #1. Then, I stopped reading Entertainment Weekly. Great song, yes, as are all of these. BEST? Not by a long shot. Maybe it’s just because I’m not in love with their early recordings. I’m a Sgt. Pepper and beyond type guy.

17. “Birthday” - The Beatles (The White Album)

This song is just catchy. I’m sorry. That bridge is contagious.

16. “The End” - Abbey Road

If there’s a way for the greatest band in history to go out, this is it…well, that and “Her Majesty”, of course.

15. “Something” - Abbey Road

Unfortunately, George Harrison was just beginning to shine as a songwriter when the group decided to call it quits.

14. “Get Back” – Let It Be

While Abbey Road was recorded after Let It Be, making it The Beatles’ last album, many people believed that “Get Back” was the last song in their catalog because Let It Be was recorded, then shelved, then released after Abbey Road shortly after the band’s breakup.

13. “Hello Goodbye” - Magical Mystery Tour

…and here on display is Paul McCartney’s complicated wordplay that constantly keeps the listener guessing…”You say yes, I say no, you stay stop, and I say go go go…”

12. “Here Comes the Sun” – Abbey Road

More proff that three of the four Beatles could write an incredible song. Ringo’s still working on it, most likely.

11. “Elanor Rigby” – Revolver

Father Mackenzie seems like an awful man, and after hearing this song so many times, I am yet to realize why I feel the way I do.

10. “All You Need is Love” - Magical Mystery Tour + Yellow Submarine

Everything The Beatles were about summed up in five words.

9. “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds” - Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band

John Lennon said that he was inspired to write this song when his son Julian showed him a painting that he had made in school that he called “Lucy in the Sky”. The rest of the song was also inspired by Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds (LSD).

8. “Hey Jude” - Past Masters [recorded during sessions for “The Beatles (The White Album)”

This is the first Beatles song I ever heard, and I love it, everything from the everlasting chant to John walking in and saying “bloody hell!”.

7. “Revolution” - Past Masters [originally recorded for “The Beatles (The White Album)”

The B-side to the previous song. This actually did appear on The White Album, but in a more mellow tone rather than the real rock tone that this version delivers.

6. “Come Together” - Abbey Road

Rumor has it that each of the four verses describes one of them. I’m yet to discover which one has “toe jam football”, and I think they all would fit the “spinal cracker” definition. I think.

Wait, what the hell is a “spinal cracker”?

5. “I’ve Got A Feeling” – Let It Be

From the album that almost wasn’t, this track was recorded from the famous rooftop concert that The Beatles gave, which would end up being their last concert. After about 45 minutes, the police asked for the concert to be stopped. I bet they regret that move to this day.

4. “Glass Onion” - The Beatles (The White Album)

This song is basically a review of songs from Magical Mystery Tour, which happens to be my favorite Beatles album, this album being my 2nd favorite. The song shows that John Lennon did indeed have a sense of humor, confusing conspiracy theorists even further with this line: “I told you bout the walrus and me, man / You know that we’re as close as can be, man! / Well here’s another clue for you all / The walrus was Paul…”, even though John appeared as the walrus in the video for “I Am the Walrus”, sang “I Am the Walrus”, and appeared as the walrus on the cover of Magical Mystery Tour.

3. “Helter Skelter” – The Beatles (The White Album)

Paul McCartney’s one moment of recorded spaz became what is probably the first metal rock recording, and who can forget Ringo’s quote at the end of the song?

I GOT BLISTERS ON MA FINGAS!!!

2. “Don’t Let Me Down” - Past Masters [originally recorded for “Let It Be”

Probably one of the most under appreciated songs of The Beatles whole catalog.

1. “I Am the Walrus” - Magical Mystery Tour

Everything about this song is amazing. Enough said. This song makes absolutely no sense, but it proved that not everything has to make sense. Some things can just be interpreted as they are.

Four videos in a series of Philip Glass video resource dumping…

1. “Metamorphosis One,” from Solo Piano, and used in that episode of Battlestar Galactica. It was used quite effectively and also, in that one episode in the last episode where Starbuck jams with the piano player, if you didn’t think that guy was supposed to be her dad after having seen this episode, well…

…then again, with the butchering of “All Along The Watchtower” that was so heavily incorporated in the final cycle of that show, I think I have to remain incredibly happy that Glass was used at all. It gave this show a certain touch of class that so many people mistakenly thought it retained it’s entire four seasons (and well into straight-to-DVD money grabs). But I digress. See a little of how “Metamorphosis One” was used here and here.

2. The trailer for Glass: A Portrait Of Phillip In Twelve Parts, the documentary on the composer who is a master of “existential dread” and “repetitive structures” by director Scott Hicks.

3. Einstein On The Beach, the approximately five or so hour long opera composed by Glass.

…of which there is an excerpt above. The opera is where the Counting Crows got the title for their song, “Einstein On The Beach (For An Eggman)” from. I don’t really like the Counting Crows except for just a handful of songs, but there’s just something infectiously wonderful about that one.

Though, musical side note: When I think of their song, with that subtitle in parentheses, I can’t help but think of, of course, the Beatles’ “I Am The Walrus,” a lovely bit of juvenile Lewis Carrolling about and complaining abotu capitalism, and the eternal debate that followed over who exactly the Walrus was and who was the fucking Eggman. In “Glass Onion” on The White Album, it’s suggested that the Walrus was Paul, though in John Lennon’s solo song, “God,” naturally, he suggests that it was himself. But the Eggman was actually Eric Burdon.

4. How to play piano like Philip Glass.

Just fascinating. If I had ever taught myself how to play piano, well… now I’d be playing like Glass, wouldn’t I? Well, more soon, I imagine, but for now, enjoy the Phillip Glass. And… suck it, Michael Nyman, ha ha.

I am a little tired of dumb girl wednesday and some of my other days so I am going to start mixing things up starting with Walrus Wednesday. This will probably be a one time thing so please enjoy the videos, pictures, and facts about walruses.

Check out this video: Walruses love to hug their babies just like us!

Walruses are rock stars.

The males possess a large baculum (penis bone), up to 63 cm (25 in) in length, the largest of any land mammal, both relative to body size and in absolute terms.[3]

No wonder they are Rockstars with junk like that.

and finally Walruses hate Diabetes.

I hope you had fun learning about Walruses. I wonder what Wilford is packing under those comfort fit khakis?

Personally I prefer the mashup originality of Love to the disinterred perfection of the Remasters. The difference is fun! Whilst I am glad to have the Remasters I like the remix irreverence of Love and the story that Cirque du Soleil try to tell in the Las Vegas show. When I heard the album I thought, oh this is reclaiming the Beatles as a shared nostalgic experience. The way I Want to Hold You Hand is screamingly introduced is set up to reproduce their impact on the USA in 1964. Starting with “Get Back” the opening section is explicitly full of nostalgia and, in the show, John’s song about his mother Julia segues into I Am The Walrus which plays out to a Mary Poppins tableaux reflecting the Dickensian London out of which the Beatles thrillingly emerged. Post-modernism; don’t you just love it when music and history are in a mash-up!

Then the first of the great mash-ups which distinguish the album Love, Drive My Car (yep it is a VW Beetle) The Word / What You’re Doing. The great triumph of the remasters is the emergence of Paul’s bass as a key musical instrument across all the albums and here on Drive My Car it takes charge from the outset until the closing word “beep-beep”, yeah!

Cirque du Soleil are brilliant at what they do and have several shows running in Las Vegas. So it is unsurprising that the Being for the Benefit of Mr Kite mash-up is staged so well as circus is what they do; mind you I didn’t see Henry The Horse (unless it was that guy in Row Z?) The timings of the Circus Royale are brilliant and here is a video giving you a taste of their inspired high-wire antics in response to the poster Lennon bought near the Strawberry Fields of Sevenoaks in Kent.

I thought the mash-up set to be the single, Within You Without You / Tomorrow Never Knows was subtle, witty and danceable, but it wasn’t successful as a single, indeed Love undersold against expectations. Here is the official video and it works well enough for me; enjoy.

Now here is a surprise. In the Vegas show of Love one of the highlights is… Octopus’s Garden! The scene is set so that the audience seem to be sitting on the sea bed and the imagery lifts the song into a real highlight. No pictures from the show but here is the sharp mix that helps to make this a real highlight.

Famously The Beatles wrote and recorded Hey Bulldog whilst they were filming a video for Lady Madonna and in Love they are mashed up together then cleverly segued into Here Comes The Sun. Here is a quite brilliant video from Tony AB who uses that video for Lady Madonna against the Love mix, great stuff.

My favourite moment on the album is the edit from Come Together to Revolution. George Martin made of note of highlighting how good he through Come Together was after listening to it again for the remastering process and here someone with great ears pulls the opening drumbeat of Revolution into a dynamic prologue which, with a whip smart segue, unleashes the rock section of the show. On this video tonyab1708 gets the video editing just right and matches it perfectly.

Still a couple of more videos to add…

…we’re ready to go

click on image for source

wedding today.

so happy.

click on image for source

Não vou escrever um monte de coisas sobre o John Lennon, não gosto de posts gigantes, então vou só falar que é ele foi uma das figuras mais importantes da música no século XX, se não foi a mais importante. Junto com três companheiros fizeram a banda que moldou toda a história da música da década de 60 para frente.
John era o mais excêntrico dos Beatles e o mais ácido deles também. Para quem acha os Beatles uma banda que só fala sobre amor e coisas banais, é porque não sentiu realmente a mensagem que eles queriam passar, principalmente John Lennon. John me ensinou que o mais importante da vida é o amor em uma época em que eu não acreditava mais nisso, ele me mostrou que o amor é mais do que se ve em filmes, novelas e na maioria das letras de música.
Então parabéns John Lennon, onde quer que você esteja.
Ontem vi o mini documentário do Magical Mistery Tour, em que o John diz que aquele é um dos álbuns preferidos dele e que I am the walrus era sua música preferida, por isso, e por achar que essa é a música que representa o John nos Beatles, eu vou colocar ela aqui.

I Am The Walrus – The Beatles

PARABÉNS JOHN!

azi, john lennon si-ar fi sarbatorit ziua de nastere. dar nu am nevoie de un pretext pentru a pune pe blog asta:

So, another entry in the epic. First person to tell me where most of these take place, win my eternal gratitude.
The Monolith

And on a side note… Good lord.. Most of the narrators can be assumed dead… I need to get out of this phase.. Geez.

The Monolith
Part Six, Dedicated to… Just about everyone.
By Robert Gordon

So sit the great black stone upon the stoop of paradise,
Surrounded by a great eroded wall of faded bravery,
Where all seemed as if the only memory is that of the great slavery,
Dredged through these murky straights children,
Men,
Mothers,
Sisters,
All now hold their home in this rock seldom,
The sky is still dark, but it is only night that causes this change,
Oh what wisdom lay behind this great gate?
We approach with due caution,
For it is rumored that ghosts lay afoot,
The wall is not flat at its top,
But goes up like a great stairways to heaven,
One could follow this wall forever,
The monolith is dark on the inside,
A great dusty, arid smell purges our lungs as we open the door,
We finally notice the rumors validity,
And confined alone, with our stupidity,
As The Dead,
Began to Walk.

P.S. That last line has something to do with the last chapter of the Post Apocalyptic .W.I.P. So.. Ya.. See you on the thirtieth.

Stupid bloody tuesday

Ouvindo::Red Hot Chilli Peppers-Can’t Stop

Stomps all over the original.

Prince Valiant rides again, through the good offices of Fantagraphics Books. Over at Open Letters, Steve Donoghue  sings the praises of illustrator Hal Foster, one of the few comic strip creators who could really, really draw well.

Is it “goo goo goo joob,” or “goo goo ga joob,” or “goo goo g’joob”? More to the point, where did it come from?

Alexander Portnoy — still sexed up after all these years.

So the Iron Lady wanted to preserve the Iron Curtain. Why am I less than surprised, though considerably disturbed, by this news? What a relief this creep’s viewpoint did not prevail.

A snarky letter to the editor led to a gig writing a  weekly humorous political column for my local paper. After a couple of years, my editor said “you know, you’re a pretty good writer, why don’t you try a novel?” I looked at some of the dreck that was on the market and thought, “Hey, how hard can it be.” Isn’t naïveté a wonderful thing?

What the world needs now is — a collection of Bob Dylan songs done Kraftwerk style.

It may be the best J.G. Ballard adaptation ever filmed. Too bad it doesn’t get shown much outside the festival circuit.

If memory serves, I’ve already bought the white album six times: twice on vinyl, twice on cassette tape, twice on CD. So thanks but no thanks. On the other hand, if I watch every installment of this broadcast, I might end up changing my mind.

Life and art shared with PKD.

Aproveitando a notícia Beatlemaníaca de ontem, que tal um pouco de I am the Walrus? E ainda por cima, cantado por ninguém menos que Jim Carrey!

Falem o que quiser, mas que ele canta, canta.

A year or so ago I had the idea to run a series of pun-tastic posts called ‘It was plenty years ago today‘. Based on the success of those Beatles mastertapes that I had posted (when Plain Or Pan melted immediately and the internet police first cottoned on to this site) I would combine my expert textpert knowledge of The Beatles with some of their better bootlegs in my collection and post rare outtakes and the like on the anniversary of the track being recorded. For one reason or other, I never quite got round to doing it, until today.

Given that this weekend is Beatles Weekend on BBC2 and given that the remastered albums are out in the middle of the week (now there’s a novel way of promoting a computer game – cannae wait to play it by the way), this is as good a time as any to get things going. Plenty years ago today (42 41  (oops!) to be precise), a week or so after Brian Epstein’s death, The Beatles reconvened (at Paul McCartney’s insistence – the others, especially Lennon, had no motivation to continue) on the 5th September to start work on the Magical Mystery Tour project.

First up saw them tackle I Am The Walrus. Between the 5th and 6th and 27th, 28th and 29th September, The Beatles twisted and turned John Lennon’s gobbledigook nonsense tune into the psychedelic masterpiece you are no doubt familiar with. The tune itself began life in Lennon’s Weybridge house. Absent mindedly tickling the ivories one morning, Lennon heard the sound of a police car outside, noting how the ‘notes’ of the siren changed as the car got further away. He began replicating this sound on the piano, and this became the chord progression for I Am The Walrus. It should be noted here that JWL was heavily into LSD by this point in his life. Taking drugs to make music to take drugs to, as Spacemen 3 once said. Ian Macdonald’s excellent Revolution In The Head book dissects Lennon’s acid-soaked Walrus lyrics to the nth degree way better than I ever could. It’s a fantastic book. The last time I was in Fopp I think it was on sale for about £4! But I digress. Back to the music…

Over the course of the 5 sessions, the tune would go from instrumental (here’s take 7) to incomplete vocal versions (here’s take 16, minus the drunk-sounding strings at the start. Listen out for Lennon fluffing the ‘yellow matter custard’ line.), to alternate mixes (here’s one) to the finished item complete with a King Lear radio play and various bits ‘n bobs woven into the mix by George Martin. Achtung! Here’s the German mono mix.

The tracks above come from a 15 track bootleg called Walrus, Eggman and Pinguins. It varies in quality and, to be honest, many of the tracks sound identical, but it nonetheless charts the studio progress of one of The Beatles more interesting moments. You can download the whole shebang here. Goo Goo G’joob!

Also available for download, reissues (!) of those Beatles 4 track mastertapes that caused all the fuss way back when.

Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band

A Day In The Life

She’s Leaving Home

With A Little Help From My Friends

And also still available (in high quality flac form only – the internet police jump straight on board with their handcuffs and truncheons whenever the mp3 of this becomes available) is the previously unheard 10min + mix of Revolution. Possibly an outfake, possibly the real deal, I wrote about it a wee while ago here. It’s a good read, even if I do say so myself. On the other hand, if you’re only here circling overhead like a vulture awaiting your next musical feast, you can cut out all the crap and download it here.

*Bonus Beatle fact #1!!!

I Am The Walrus is in Gary Numan’s list of Top 20 songs ever.

*Bonus Beatle fact #2!!!

As well as recording I Am The Walrus on the 6th September, The Beatles also had a go at George Harrison’s under-rated masterpiece Blue Jay Way. Sadly I have no outtakes of this. If anyone does have, you know how to contact me…

*Bonus Beatle fact #3!!!

Did you know that at the end of I Feel Fine the studio microphones unwittingly picked up the sounds of some dogs barking outside Abbey Road?  Hear it here! Right after the last “ooh!” backing vocal. Now dig it out your own copy, listen to it, turn it up for the last 10 seconds and you’ll hear them. I wonder if the dogs’ll still be on the up and coming remasters?

Magical Mystery Tour

The feeling in the UK in the winter of 67/68 was that the Beatles had split up as they hadn’t released a new album for a few months. Consequently George Martin made the mistake of releasing the single Strawberry Fields/Penny Lane in February 1967 to cover the gap, and so scuppered the idea of the new album being a story about Liverpool. Even so by the time Sgt Pepper was released the Beatles had already completed 6 new songs, had a rough idea for Magical Mystery Tour, and the cartoon film Yellow Submarine in the works. Oh, and they released the single All You Need is Love a month after Sgt. Pepper.

Magical Mystery Tour, which will be an album in the 9/9/9 Remasters, was released in various forms at the time. I was given the UK double EP edition for Christmas, and it had very odd track sequencing, the three psychedelic tracks mixed up with the three “mumsy” tracks. The US album release not only included the recent, wonderful, singles and B-sides, but has a brilliant track sequencing which both make the magical “Mystery Tour” tracks flow and sets up the bonus tracks as musically logical consequences of them. John called it “one of my favourite albums because it is so wierd”. This time the Americans got a better deal and created this canonical version of the album, which my brother bought on import and always put a big sunny smile on our faces.

Opening with the bright and cheery Magical Mystery Tour, which almost made Sgt. Pepper and was consciously made to highlight the upcoming film, this is an amazingly upbeat opening track which, as is common practice on TV today, prefigures the sequences of the story. It only works as a set up though and is, in effect, the film’s overture. Paul’s beautiful Fool On The Hill follows, and was actually filmed separately in the limestone hills near Nice, France. The filming of the Magical Mystery Tour only lasted four days and was undertaken not long after Brian Epstein’s death. This had suddenly left the Beatles on their own and in charge of their own business dealings. Part of the reason for making Magical Mystery Tour was to get them working again. Part of the reason was that they had been dissatisfied with HELP! – “extras in our own movie” as John put it – so they wanted to explore in film the artistic freedom that they had recently gained in music. As Paul put it “after Sgt Pepper we got the freedom to be artists”

Great artists though they were even the Beatles couldn’t pick up film cameras, hire a bunch of actors and set off for four days and make a film to equal Hard Days Night without any preparation or script. Flying was a jam credited to all four of the Beatles and the backing film (!) plays with filters of some shots they took in Iceland. You were either on the Tour, or off it, or both in this case. On Blue Jay Way George sings about waiting for friends to turn up, lyrically a true story. He was waiting for Derek Taylor, lost in the LA Hills, to turn up for dinner, and by time he arrived George had written this. Honestly, so impatient those Beatles!

Paul often talked about how he would have liked to have been a songwriter in the 1920’s and was influenced by his own father’s performances, evident in Your Mother Should Know. My mum loved it straight away and it was an airplay hit at the time. In the film it was a big set piece number and all four Beatles ham it up in white tie and tails, and white everything else. Diverting enough, but sounds very traditional to me, in an English way, just like a nice cuppa tea.

On Anthology Paul defends the film of Magical Mystery Tour on the grounds that it captures their only performance of I Am The Walrus. Having finally seen it in 1979 I think the film is charming enough as a colour film, but I Am The Walrus works in 15.9m shades of colour. For me this is the Beatles magnum opus and captures their musicality, creativity and originality in a driving nonsense tone-poem that re-invents rock n’roll, and much else besides; sarcasm made melody Philip Norman calls it. Yeah I can’t be sensible about it so just enjoy the video; Paul does!

Side Two starts with Hello Goodbye, written by McCartney to show Alistair Taylor that he could write songs out of nothing. I remember it being played as a New Year party song that year, a kind of psychedelic first-footing greeting as people went from house to house. Dressed against the cold by The Fool in their all their Pepper finery, “bloody heavy” Ringo called it, with a rockin single here they are with a enjoyably recognisable video; check the coda…  

Then we let John take us down to Strawberry Fields; Forever. I first heard this on my parents transistor at half-term in February 1967 and I was utterly transfixed by its sound, imagery and setting; I wasn’t sure if I was high or low until Ringo drove us back from wonderland with his relentlessly booming drums; creative brilliance of a collaboratively divine quality. Here is a home made video that captures the lyrics better than the official video; I hope you enjoy both; definitely worth two plays…

The bright and breezy clean machine that is Penny Lane was written by Paul as the empathetic antithesis to Strawberry Fields and it is both a classic pop Number One single, and just as surreal in its imagination. The nostalgic imagery in the video Free As A Bird captures the scouse sense of the lyrics in both Strawberry Fields and Penny Lane far better than the official video at the time. See what you think.

Baby Your A Rich Man, one of the 6 songs completed before Sgt. Pepper was released, was explicitly written for Yellow Submarine, although actually rush released as the B-side of All You Need is Love, the worlds first global single. John’s part was typical of the affectionate teasing he subjected Brian Epstein to, and was also a dig at the Beautiful People of the Summer of Love. I heard it on the radio outside in the garden in July 1967 and loved it at once, but always found it hard to get hold of until it was put on the album; fine by me!

And so the third album of the Beatles psychedelic trilogy closes with All You Need is Love, apparently the highlight of Our World, the worlds first global TV programme. I wouldn’t know as it was shown when I was locked up in Boarding School and so missed it! No St Trinians wheezes for us. Nonetheless the perfect anthem for the summer of love, George called it the “theme tune”, and beloved by Beatles fans for its singalong quality ever since. I love John’s zen zapping lyrics; nothing he can sing that can’t be done. The black and white shot of George Martin at the start captures the moment when the BBC told him that they had lost the live feed of the playback; so this is the Beatles winging it live, yeah!

]]> http://fred6368.wordpress.com/2009/09/04/let-me-take-you-down/ Fri, 04 Sep 2009 17:14:07 +0000 fred6368 http://fred6368.wordpress.com/2009/09/04/let-me-take-you-down/

I was in the kitchen of our house in Germany, an Army Brat, when I heard the invitation for the first time. The transistor was on the mantlepiece in the main room and it pulled me right in and made me feel that Nothing is Real. This time it was more “bloody hell, this is the new Beatles single? Wow!” I don’t think any single Beatles track ever captured me with its imagery and its setting quite so thoroughly first time out. I leant against the mantelpiece listening attentively and was just about to move when the Ringo-driven coda kicked in. When I did finally move away from the fireplace I was dazed; not sure of what I had heard and wondering how I could hear it again. Almost five years of invention and this was, yet again, a completely new Beatles. Conversely, I remember Penny Lane lighting up the front room the following day back in February 1967 and being so breezy and clean that it made housework feel like fun.  

So here’s an anachronism in the back catalogue, after finally uniting the US and UK album releases with Sgt Pepper, Magical Mystery Tour was released as a double EP in the UK, it was, of course the best selling double EP that year and in all history, but as an album in the States, which my brother bought some years later because the bonus tracks make it a classic. I now see Magical Mystery Tour as completing the Beatles psychedelic trilogy following Revolver and Sgt Pepper.

In fact my own experience of hearing Magical Mystery Tour was as a double EP, with its fabulously glossy booklet stapled in, given to me as a Christmas present, just like Twist and Shout was exactly four years earlier. My story is about hearing I Am The Walrus, for some time now my all-time favourite Beatles track, on New Years Eve. As three of us went from house to house, cadging drinks, everybody was playing Hello Goodbye and I Am The Walrus. Especially abroad with Army families it was an act of faith to play the Beatles. Even when it sounded a bit “wierd”, as some people commented about Walrus, it was still a way of identifying with home.

At the time I found the double EP soundtrack somewhat mystifying, I Am The Walrus sounded like one of the greatest tracks of all time even then, especially then, but the rest of the tracks weren’t that strong. My Mum loved the title track and Your Mother Should Know, and the Fool On the Hill. She was very happy that she had bought it for me, and she loved playing the first EP on her record player. Unfortunately all the best tracks were on EP1, so I played Blue Jay Way and Flying on my own (stereo) record player whilst she played the Mumsy side. It was however a very desirable cultural artefact, out-packaging Sgt Pepper, and one to show off to your friends.

Being in Germany I missed the Boxing Day BBC TV transmission of the film, heavily criticised at the time because, as Paul says on Anthology, it was a colour film shown in black and white. I finally saw it when it seemed to be playing late every Friday night in the Student’s cinema at the University of Colorado in Boulder some twelve years later, and found it charming; especially the Walrus sequence. So my memories of hearing Magical Mystery Tour are that all the English families in Germany bought the single and played it repeatedly over Christmas, sometimes along with side 1 of the double EP (the title track and Your Mother Should Know). And it was particularly popular where families shared the record player where whole families sang along at parties all through Christmas and New Year.

When my brother bought the album the bonus tracks were impressive; Hello Goodbye, Strawberry Fields, Penny Lane, Baby You’re A Rich Man and All You Need is Love, plus they got the track sequence brilliantly right on Side One making the whole album flow wonderfully, and you didn’t have to change the EP three times. It was a feel good album that always cheered us up even though it drew a curtain on their psychedelic recording career.

At the time however it didn’t feel like it was the end of Beatles psychedelia, in fact psychedelia in popular culture seemed to reach a apotheosis with the film Yellow Submarine released in the summer of 1968. It is a brilliant summation of the counter-cultural tendencies of the Beatles, although psychedelia was presented as enabling us to realise our own faux-Edwardian pre-World War One ideal of listening to the Lonely Hearts Club Band playing on a bandstand all summer long; and defeat the Blue Meanies. It was a wonderfully twee and British psychedelia full of nostalgia for the wonderlands of our childhood, like Alice, and yet we still got home from the cinema in time for tea; thanks George.

I thought the new Beatles songs were as strong as those on Magical Mystery Tour, but the album was a soundtrack with one side of orchestral music by George Martin, so we didnt buy it. Where was an EP when you needed one? And it turned out that British psychedelia was to follow the childlike Piper at the Gates of Dawn anyway. However I remember being really impressed by Hey Bulldog when I saw the film in the summer holidays of 1968. Now I am impressed that it was the last track they produced collectively, taking just 10 hours to create it from scratch at Abbey Road whilst making a film to support the single release of Lady Madonna. But It’s All Too Much was probably The Beatles track that most captured the West Coast psychedlic vibe and the film sequence captured it perfectly. And my brother and I agreed on a Beatles track at last.

There is a YouTube version of this post at A Beatles YouTube Album.

So today, I write about a thing that has happened to me a lot. I have wrote several scathing critiques of figures both political and otherwise. Some might see these scathing, hard-hitting articles to defaming. So, if you wish for me to repeal said topic, contact me within two hours before or after.

At the Email listed here:
Rebellious.Robb@gmail.com

So yea. I’ll try to get in contact with anyone I write about beforehand, to see if they find the content liable to defame or assassinate their character…….. Tomorrow.. Health Care.

Also.. Friday may or may not contain my Fridays with Gordo article. Spread the word, and maybe.. Just maybe.. It will.

SIM, eu sei que a data de lançamento internacional do “9″ já chegou, mas ainda não apareceu aqui nos cinemas brasileiros, e provavelmente vai demorar umas semanas pra chegar aqui nos cinemas de Guará. Então parem de me pressionar pra dizer o que eu achei do filme. Santo deus (fumacinha de cansaço saindo da boca).

De qualquer forma, sem muitas novidades nos últimos dias, então vou postar esse vídeo, que estava guardando pra uma ocasião especial. Mas acabei percebendo que, sob um certo ponto de vista, todas as ocasiões são especiais:

Edit 1: “Eu tentei colocar todas as versões que achei do vídeo aqui no blog, mas elas estavam bloqueadas (só podiam ser assistidas no próprio YouTube), e as únicas que estavam liberadas tinham um som horrível. Então vou só postar o link para o vídeo aqui, e quem quiser acesse. A música é Fireflies, do Owl City:”

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H-4ln_sXty0

A única novidade que eu realmente queria comentar é que, além de dia do lançamento do “9″, hoje também foi o dia dos Beatles. E esse dia foi marcado pelo lançamento do game Beatles Rock Band:

Só o que eu sei é que o jogo com todos os acessórios custa na casa dos mil reais.

E que é o máximo.

E que se eu comprasse, as primeiras músicas que eu iria tocar seriam I Am The Walrus e While My Guitar Gently Weeps.

Oh bem, por enquanto é bom sonhar, não?

Edit 2: “Oh.

Meu.

Deus.

A introdução do Beatles Rock Band é fantástica. Essa atualização do post dispensa palavras, só vou colocar o vídeo aqui e deixar vocês tirarem suas próprias conclusões:

Os pinguins elementares dizendo ‘Woo’ foram o toque final. Raios, é nessas horas que eu realmente me arrependo de não poder comprar o game.”