Now I can’t waltz. I probably could if I put my head to it, like a lot of things. However, saying that, I began writing this blog 15 minutes ago, and so far I’ve only come close to justifying the length of time it’s taken to write a sentence which has no major influence on the rest of ‘said’ blog… FAIL!

The reason?

Uncontrollable infatuation. Like being in love. Sucked into a damp blanket of uncharted feelings, dripping with expectation, disappointment and resent in fear of loosing it all. I never chose for this to happen. If you told me I’d feel this way a year ago, I would have laughed in your face or expressed my shock with the phrase “DO be serious.”

I mean, who on earth, other than me, could be in love with two dead men and a couple of 50 year olds?

It seems these lot might be on the same wave length...

Well as it turns out, about many a million of other like minded women (and men) out there. The only difference is my love has had to ferment over time, like a good red wine or blue cheese. Yet ironically again, I’ve still yet to develop a taste for the latter. So why now?

I think things randomly come along don’t they? To test you and mess up your stubborn, fixed philosophies. As I metaphorically ‘eat my own words’, (mm Jaffa cake shaped words…) I’ve had to retract a statement of mine which has served me through many a heated argument with my peers :

“The Beatles are over rated”.

Fellow Beatles fans – I take it back.

Years on, and a month after blossoming the roots of my love affair with four Liverpudlian boys (don’t hate the player, hate the game), I’ve come to realise what an absolute naïve, immature, idiot I’ve been. A lot of people may still think the same, yet however rubbish I’ve been, I somehow feel kind of lucky to have not discovered the biggest pop band on the planet until this late on in my life. It feels like Christmas (quite literally), like I’ve discovered a new sound…

Shag, Marry, Avoid or Snog?

I now truly understand just how much hate is close to love. I hated The Beatles. I had no time for them and their stupid bopping mop top heads. Yet now, they’ve become strangely alluring. Their songs, their story, the obsession within their culture – it’s remarkable. I find myself with a Beatles screensaver on my mobile phone, and e-mailing my Dad with the list to whom I’d ‘Snog, Marry, Avoid, and Shag’ ( Ringo, Paul, George, Lennon) – two of whom are dead!! That surely can’t be healthy? Or sane? In fact, the thought must be illegal in some unknown country – perhaps the Philippines?!

With a large space on my wall, I’m even contemplating purchasing a Beatles poster, more so a t-shirt. What am I, 12? This is not 1960 Lucie! Wake up and spend your hard earned dollar on a picture of Jacob from New Moon, or This Mitchell and Webb Book… Yeah, right!

With the X Factor creating manufactured clones of popular short lived artists (I give Joe 6 months), it’s amazing to look at how organic The Beatles were in regards to finding a sound, picking up a fan base, and taking on the world. It wasn’t done over night. Nor was it handed to them on a plate – as such Syco Simon Cowell may portray. A song may suggest ‘The best things in life are free’, but they’re only free if time is dedicated towards such goals. As they say, Rome wasn’t built in a day. Establishing a foundation needs to remain the main source of focus before success is rewarded, and they most certainly did their ground work to achieve such stature and status in society.

Che-Lennon in Abbey Road as captured by Tim Roberts

Strange as it may sound, I feel as though I can relate to The Beatles. It’s like I’m currently living my own version their Hamburg experience – the light electronic, a speck of dust in a foreign city attempting to establish a sound, a trait, and a unique selling point without the foggiest idea where it will take me and who will follow. It’s kind of exciting, yet petrifying at the same time. Unlike them, I’m so busy thinking about the future I tend to forget to enjoy the present. Strawberry Fields conquer my dreams, but like Lennon says, it’s nothing to get hung about. Procrastination Station would be my Beatles song contribution, ironic as it sounds, because at the moment I feast on the gift of change. Makes me wonder what else is out there that I’ve overlooked, or am yet to discover.

Lucie in the sky with diamonds I most certainly am. And of course Henry the horse dances the waltz. Duh.

See... I told you...

]]> http://barefootrooster.wordpress.com/2009/12/12/the-perfect-combination/ Sat, 12 Dec 2009 14:27:46 +0000 barefootrooster http://barefootrooster.wordpress.com/2009/12/12/the-perfect-combination/

Spinning and reading, the heft of a pile of hardcover books and the squish of handspun skeins, superwash merino and the late nineteenth century…

I was so excited about how this was looking that I stopped plying to grab the camera.

This is 170 yards of super squishy heavy worsted 2-ply from the second 4 oz. of Crown Mountain Farms superwash merino in the Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds colorway. LOVE. Love so much that I could set aside my writing and grading and cast on for mittens for me right now. But I’m not going to. Why? Because I don’t have to do what the yarn says all the time. Really.

Actually, I spun this with a particular as yet not fully formed human being in mind, but now that I see it all skeined up, all that pink might get in the way of my plans to knit a non-gender specific baby something. Thoughts? (Sorry guys, if you were hoping to be completely surprised. While I’m sort of banking on the fact that you’re too busy prepping for the big day and might not read this, I do need the advice of the internets.)

Which brings me back to my love affair with my wheel, and my decision last night to start spinning some FLUFF superwash merino in Beach Day.

(Artificial evening light above, natural morning light below.)

I think what I really need to do is swatch to see how the colors look all knitted up. And keep spinning this bee-yoo-ti-ful FLUFF fiber. Oh, and keep writing. Perhaps in the reverse order.

What’s the matter, big dog?

If you’re worried about the fact that I spent my first hour today doing this:

Don’t be. I’m not going to ply it with the first bobbin until I make sufficient progress on that other stuff. Really.

And don’t worry, we’re still going to take a nice W-A-L-K today.

Happy Friday, folks!

Let me explain: I did spend a few hours on my writing yesterday, but in a “pretend productive” kind of way — you know, the kind of productive where you don’t actually increase the word count. Now, I would argue that one of the challenges in grad school — and really, academia more broadly — involves coming to terms with what it means to be productive. Sometimes, even when I don’t write anything down, I do some really important thinking that makes it possible for me to write something  substantial when I return to the project. That’s not what I mean by “pretend productive.”

“Pretend productive” is when you read comments you’ve received on drafts, track down citations, request books that you know you should look at from the library, rearrange the piles or files you’re working from…and then (and this is key) derive a false sense of accomplishment from these tasks — and stop working.

I was “pretend productive” yesterday. I don’t really have pictures of what that looks like, but I think you get the idea. I do have pictures of fibery productivity, though.

First, my friend H (you may remember her as the recipient of the purple ishbel/springtime bandit brokeknits mash-up wedding shawl) came over to make applesauce and do some knitting. Boh assumed his supervisory role, and did a very good job of keeping our feet warm.

As you can see, this hat is way too big for me — which is a good thing! It should be perfect for my dad. (Apologies for the blurry photos.)

This is the largest size of the seaman’s cap, knitted even longer than the pattern called for, and made out of my handspun — Southern Cross Fibres polwarth, spun as a worsted weight 3-ply. (I still have about 80 yards left, so I may try to incorporate stripes into mittens or a manly cowl or something. We’ll see.)

H. asked me to show her how my wheel works, and because I had emptied all of my bobbins, we had to decide what I would spin next. I decided on the second 4 oz. of Crown Mountain Farms Superwash Merino in Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds, spun as a fatter 2-ply. I started it to show H., and found it so captivating that late last night, I made myself a cup of hot cocoa and kept going.

I am in love with this, and all I want to do right now is spin the second bobbin. Alas, today I MUST be “real” productive. I received some great advice last night about how to get work done when there is really fun knitting in the house: lock it in the car. I may have to banish the second bobbin’s worth of fiber to the backseat today…

Stay tuned for pictures of the buttons that perfectly answered yesterday’s personal ad, as well as (I hope) a triumphant report about my productivity…

As students, we are constantly being made aware of the results of plagiarism. Plagiarise and you’re out of University. But all of a sudden we are being told it is OK to borrow or rather be influenced by other peoples work. In today’s lecture we looked at the Coen Brother’s film ‘No Country for Old Men’ and I was amazed to see much the film is influenced by poetry, 14^th century stories and paintings. Worried about Plagiarism, I’ve always tried to make my project my own trying not to rely on other people’s work. Having watched the second chapter of the film in the lecture in which there are only six lines of dialogue, it was evident that the Coen Brothers had clearly done their research. They have proved that they can make their ideas work by ‘borrowing’ the ideas of others to create their pieces of work. Having seen quite a few Coen Brothers film, it is evident that their research has a profound effect on their films.

Quentin Tarantino is a notorious candidate for borrowing ideas from other films especially music. In Kill Bill Volume 1 he used Luis Bacalov’s The Grand Duel (Parte Prima), a piece that was scored for the 1972 Spaghetti Western Storm Rider. The music is used in conjunction with the murder of a characters family and works extremely well within the scene. The majority of music within Tarantino’s films is selected by him because of the influence they have on him and his ability to tell a story.

There is also evidence of borrowing from songwriters. The Beatles song ‘Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds’ was written by John Lennon after he saw a painting his son Julian drew of his classmate Lucy O’Donnell. The song was released on the album Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, and album that is considered one of the greatest albums of all time and their Magnum Opus.

Family Guy and South Park are animated sitcoms that are intended for maturer audiences. Both ‘rip off’ popular culture and Family Guy have recently created feature length episodes that tell the story of Star Wars.

Humour is created through quips and observations such as ‘Why are they called Tie Fighters?’ Star Wars is clearly a serious science fiction film and without the humourous inputs, the Family Guy version is basically an animated version. We take pleasure from the Family Guy version because it basically takes the piss and infuses modern day references that clearly have no place in ‘Star Wars.’

South Park episodes work in the same way. They use popular culture as means of comedy. With the re-emergence of Superhero films such as The Dark Knight and Watchmen, the episode ‘The Coon’ reflects the audiences current desire for these types of films. 

These intertexual references however have no meaning if you haven’t seen the original text. If you have not seen the Dark Knight or Watchmen, the humour that is created for the audience is lost. This applies to the hundreds of thousands of texts that are out there.

It is therefore evident to me that I need to rely on influences and ideas that inspire me in order to create a piece of work that is on par with the Coen Brothers or even that of The Beatles. I realise that most things out there are all influenced by one thing or another whether obvious or not and is therefore important for me to adapt my work according to my influences. I need to step out of my box and through the looking glass and draw upon my influences as other media producers alike have done. As often stated ‘nothing is original.’

There are all types of ways to incorporate entertainment into online fundraising, however large or small the charity or cause.  I read on Billboard.com that chronic disease Lupus is being giving some fundraising support by Julian Lennon who is donating a portion of the proceeds from his new song, “LUCY,” to fund research.  Lucy Vodden, a childhood friend of Lennon’s who recently passed away at the age of 46 after a long battle with lupus inspired the song. The same Vodden was also the subject of a drawing that Julian created which inspired his father to write the memorable Beatles hit song “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds.”  

Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds

I have some personal involvement with the subject of Lupus as my mother founded the first lupus support group Lupus UK. after being diagnosed with the illness in the 70s. Well done mum and well done Jullian Lennon for raising the profile of the much misunderstood condition.

Es ist ein offenes Geheimnis, dass sich die Musikindustrie mit dem Weg ins digitale Zeitalter mehr als schwer tut. Es hat lange gedauert, bis sich die Konzerne an iTunes und Amazon gewohnt haben, die Konzerne hätten gerne eigene Vertriebsstrukturen. Aber: Der Vertrieb von CDs bringt die goldene Zeiten der Schallplattenindustrie mit ihren Superhits nicht mehr zurück.

Die Gaming-Industrie liegt dagegen mehr im Trend. Es werden in den USA mehr Spiele verkauft als Kinokarten. So ist es nur sinnvoll, Musik und Games miteinander zu verbinden. Die Guitar-Hero-, Sing-Star- und Rock-Band-Serien machen es vor, wie es geht, um digitale Dollars zu verdienen. Queen, Abba, Metallica – alles gute Produkte, die Spaß machen. Jüngstes Beispiel für mich persönlich seit September: Beatles Rock Band.

Die Pilzköpfe gehören zu den Kulturgütern der Popmusik und ich habe mich sehr gefreut, als Rock Band Beatles für die PS3 erschienen ist. Gleich gekauft und abends jammt die ganze Familie “Lucy in the sky with diamonds”. Das bringt Stimmung, das macht Spaß und die Musikindustrie darf vorerst weiterleben.

Heute gibt es was Neues für John, Paul, George und Ringo: “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band” erscheint als zweites Trackpack für The Beatles Rock Band.

“Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band” ist nach “Abbey Road” das zweite für The Beatles Rock Band erhältliche Komplettalbum seit der Veröffentlichung des Spiels am 9. September 2009. Darüber hinaus ist “All You Need Is Love” ebenfalls im The Beatle: Rock Band Music Store erhältlich und mit bisher mehr als 100.000 Downloads überaus erfolgreich.  Mit den Erlösen aus der Rock Band-Franchise setzen Apple, MTV Games und Harmonix ihre Unterstützung der Hilfsorganisation “Ärzte ohne Grenzen” auch in Zukunft fort.

Die komplette Trackliste des Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band Trackpacks sieht wie folgt aus:

Fixing A Hole

She’s Leaving Home

Being For The Benefit of Mr. Kite!

Within You Without You

When I’m Sixty-Four

Lovely Rita

Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band (Reprise)

A Day In The Life

jokes

that probably wasn’t very funny… huggles and sozzles

If I was dead I wonder what clothes I could be buried in? hhmmm

maybe my egg bathers, my puffy skirt and my lil bro’s tshirt I wonder if Coco Chanel will be inspecting the golden gates… hope I don’t get sent to hell for poor fashion sense

what words should be on my tombstone… maybe ILYLABF… maybe I could suck up to God so he would let me in

But I guess I should be prepared for the possibility of hell; twilight, miley cyrus, country music, maroon uniforms…

I LOVE YOU JESUS- LOTS- DON’T SEND ME TO HELL

Headstone Epitaph ideas greatly appreciated in comments and also flower ideas

Music: Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds- Beatles, Quelqu‘un m’a dit- Carla Bruni, Somewhere over the Rainbow, Sting- Fields of Gold and Alice by Lisa Mitchell ? anymore ideas

And you can all eat cupcakes and mushrooms and drink magical unicorn power liquid

If I do die- please know I love you all- except John Howard

no ‘fence mate but what did you expect?

laters

alice xx

ps not planning on dying anytime soon

Honestly, they’ll make a ‘TV Movie’ of anything. Here, for your viewing pleasure, is a 1973 rendering of Go Ask Alice, the American Broadcasting Company’s visual rendering of that time-honoured playground-contraband paperback shocker ostensibly relating the Jefferson Airplane-refracted diarised recollections of a normal schoolgirl who gave into temptation and smoked that crazy acid, leading her down a dark path towards casual sex and seeing a table from lots of different angles at once. It’s full to bursting with esoteric confectionary that you only ever saw in advertising in imported DC and Marvel comics, brilliantly rubbish Top Of The Pops Album-like re-recordings of erstwhile Hits Of Psychedelia, Magic Garden Of Stanley Sweetheart-esque overuse of coloured tinting to indicate far-out hallucinatory ‘drug trip’ sequences, and as if all that wasn’t enough, a headlining appearance by none other than William Shatner (whose rendition of Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds sadly fails to make it to the soundtrack).

Judging from the IMDB, it seems there’s hardly a single book in print that hasn’t been adapted as a TV Movie at some point. Here’s to the imminent unearthing, then, of the small-screen cinematic versions of You Can Do The Cube, Robert Morley’s Book Of Bricks and The Doctor Who Technical Manual…

One of my loves is jewellery. But I don’t like to wear just any old jewellery, I find myself drawn to unusual, beautifully crafted pieces. I wanted to share with you a small selection of my favourite places to find said items, and show you why I love them! So my first stop is a shop you might find on your high street.

Accessorize

Frilly Airline Brooch, £8 – I’ll definitely be looking for this one next time I pop into Accessorize.

Jingle Owl Long Pendant Necklace, £12. This was my last buy from Accessorize and I am completely in love with it. It’s even better seeing it for real!

Now for three of my favourite online shops!

Rock n Rose

Rock N Rose on Twitter – @rocknroseuk

The Exclusive Collection: Pocket Watch – £25. This has a gorgeous mirror on the inside instead of its expected clock. Makes a fantastic alternative to your regular compact mirror!

The Exclusive Collection: Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds – £17. Vintage. Parisian. Gorgeous.

Sugar Mouse

Sugar Mouse on Twitter – @sugarmouseshop

Матрёшка Doll, £10. The great thing about this item is that each doll is a different colour and you get a surprise doll! I love that!

Hello, Sailor!, £10. The nautical theme is in, and this fulfills the trend wonderfully!

This Charming Girl

This Charming Girl on Twitter – @tcgjewellery

I’m Late, I’m Late, £8.50. Love it! Plain and simple! Its very ‘me’!

Treasure Chest, £12.50. This opens us and just made me go ‘wow’. This Charming Girl turns 3 years old tomorrow (9th Oct 09) so to mark the occasion there is free P&P all day! I’ll definitely be ordering a couple of things!

Julian Lennon's drawing of Lucy in The Sky With Diamonds when both he and Lucy O'Donnell were four. John Lennon incorporated the picture into a song on The Beatles' iconic "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Heart's Club Band" album (Courtesy: Daily Mail)

No, it wasn’t about acid, just like Puff the Magic Dragon wasn’t about marijuana. It was about this little girl who was Julian Lennon’s playmate at nursery school. She only came out as the Lucy two years ago.

Lucy O'Donnell at the time she was Julian Lennon's favorite friend (Courtesy: Daily Mail)

Julian [Lennon] later confirmed this: “I don’t know why I called it that or why it stood out from all my other drawings, but I obviously had an affection for Lucy at that age.

“I used to show dad everything I’d built or painted at school, and this one sparked off the idea for a song about Lucy in the sky with diamonds.”

Beatles biographers and account by band members confirm that she is the most likely source of the song.

But Lucy said she hated the song because she couldn’t see herself as a little girl running about with kaleidoscope eyes. “It doesn’t make sense,” she said.

The real Lucy, all grown up, photographed two years ago (Courtesy: The Times)

The song owes more to Lennon’s experimentation with psychedelics and being influenced by Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll. The old don, mathematician and photographer was said to have experimented with hallucinatory drugs, but more likely he was probably epileptic and a migraine sufferer which could account for his experiences, written into the children’s book, of altered consciousness.

The Times related:

The little blonde girl in Julian Lennon’s watercolour sketch grew up with a love of children. Illness prevented her having her own, but she studied nursery nursing and worked with special needs children, running a specialist nanny agency until she began to suffer from the autoimmune diseases psoriasis and lupus in her thirties.

She married her childhood sweetheart, Ross Vodden, in 1996, and Julian Lennon, whom she had seen only once since their nursery days, sent a note to the wedding.

The Voddens were two days into their first holiday in eight years when Lucy developed an infection and was taken to hospital in King’s Lynn, where she died last Tuesday with her husband and family at her bedside, including her father, the writer and doctor Michael O’Donnell. Her elder sister, Fran, said: “She had been so excited about the holiday that she drove herself half the way there, which is incredible, but she got the infection and with no immune system there was absolutely no chance of her beating it at all.

“She is utterly irreplaceable in my life and I have a nine-year-old son who thinks his life is over without her in it. I have had hundreds of e-mails and every single one says they all remember her smiling and laughing.”

Cynthia Lennon, who is said to still possess the drawing, and Julian Lennon issued a joint statement that they were “shocked and saddened” by Lucy’s death. The two former nursery schoolmates had kept in touch recent months after Julian heard she was ill. “I’ve been able to help out a bit,” he said earlier this year. “I was so upset to hear what had happened.” He tried to raise her spirits by giving her gift certificates to purchase plants at local garden centers; she had indicated that seeing them grow and prosper gave her a sense of hope.

“It was lovely of Julian,” Mrs Vodden said at the time. “We were two very energetic school kids. He would say, ‘Come on, Lucy’, to get me to do things. He was the bravest boy in school.”

No, hon. You were brave. You, too, were brave.

And Julian Lennon has lost someone else who was part of his memories of his father. I feel for him and his story; there is very little that he has of his father, and he lost his father just as he was coming to terms with his parents’ divorce.

And I loved that album when it came out in 1967. A Granada TV documentary, It Was Twenty Years Ago Today, which was shown once or twice in the U.S. and never again, is one of the best that captures that particular time with The Beatles, and how Sgt. Pepper was actually the culmination of a lot of influences and borrowings. It was based on the reminisces of Derek Taylor, The Beatles’ press agent, and it was made to coincide with the publication of his book in 1987. Granada has never put out the documentary for sale. I’m wearing out my lone copy, but there are bootlegs abounding.

The song that made Lucy Vodden famous will not be played at her funeral.

This is COROT-7b, a planet discovered on my birthday in 2009 by the French and European space agencies. The planet orbits COROT-7, a star less large, less warm, and less ancient than the sun, although now no less interesting.

COROT-7b is closer to its star than Mercury is to the sun, which gives it a 20-hour year and has it tidally locked so only one side of the planet ever faces the star, similar to only the near side of the moon facing Earth. The side exposed to the sun has temperatures of nearly 2000 K. At these temperatures, minerals vaporise into the atmosphere like water does on Earth.

They include corundum, whose crystalline forms are ruby and sapphire (the colour comes from impurities); enstatite, which when weathered forms the gemstone bronzite and when polluted with chromium forms the gemstone chrome-enstatite; and spinel, which forms part of both the British and the French Crown jewels.

The atmosphere itself acts as a fractionating column, becoming cooler and richer in lighter components at higher altitudes. Eventually, and mostly on the dark side, the minerals condense. Not just condense, but condense in their crystalline forms. They turn into clouds of minute jewels levitating miles above the surface of COROT-7b.

Then they rain.

—

Suggested names for COROT-7b:
- Lucy.
- Antoinette (because eet ees French and covered with jewels, non?)
- Fëanor (forged the Silmarils from the light of the Two Trees of Valinor… wait, none of you have read Tolkien’s mythology? Oh. God.)

Arrivo sempre in ritardo, lo so, anche nel dare questa notizia…

Se ne è andata, lo scorso 28 settembre, all’età di 46 anni Lucy O’Donnell, uccisa da una malattia autoimmune. Il nome forse non vi dirà nulla ma questa donna, nel 1967 ispirò una delle canzoni più famose della storia del rock: Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds, dei Beatles.

Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds, scritta da Lennon, pubblicata nel album Stg. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, è passata alla storia anche e soprattutto per i riferimenti (sempre smentiti da Lennon) all’ LSD. Secondo molti infatti, la sigla si ritroverebbe nelle iniziali delle parole Lucy, Sky e Diamonds.

La vera storia della canzone è un’altra. John Lennon, prima di sposare Yoko Ono, ebbe un figlio da Cynthia, la prima moglie. Il ragazzo di nome Julian (a cui è dedicata fra l’altro anche Hey Jude), frequentava la stessa scuola di Lucy e i due erano molto legati. Raccontò la O’Donnell che i due disegnavano uno di fronte all’altra e spesso si tiravano la vernice, scatenando le ire del bidello. Un giorno Julian portò a casa uno dei suoi disegni e quando il padre John chiese che cosa rappresentasse, il figlio rispose semplicemente che quella bambina era “Lucy nel cielo con i diamanti”.

Lennon rimase colpito da quella frase da bambino e ne costruì uno dei testi più conosciuti e particolari dei fab four.

Picture yourself in a boat on a river,
With tangerine trees and marmalade skies
Somebody calls you, you answer quite slowly,
A girl with kaleidoscope eyes.

Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds – The Beatles

Nunca había escuchado muchas de las canciones de The Beatles hasta que un día me entere de que iba a haber un concierto de la Orquesta de la BBC de Londres con otro grupo…la verdad no lo recuerdo muy bien a presentar un espectáculo en la ciudad basado totalmente en el grupo. La idea, la combinación y que fuera basada en los Beatles a pesar de que yo los conocía poco o casi nada me llamada mas la atención pero obviamente no quería gastar en ir a verlo. Fue por eso que me había ya hecho a la idea de que no iba a asistir al concierto, cuando vi que en periódico local estaban regalando entradas al contestar unas preguntas, me di la tarea de buscar las respuestas, las mande y a las pocas horas me dijeron que me las había ganado. Así fue como si pude asistir al concierto, con canciones la mayoría nuevas para mi, pero la que mas se me quedo grabada que dudo que la haya escuchado antes de eso fue esta canción “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds” y que ahora con el The Beatles Rock Band se ha vuelto de mis favoritas. La ritmo y la canción en si es igual de alucinante a la referencia a la que hace la letra…vale la pena-

Aquí encuentran el video extraído de la película de “Yellow Submarine”.

The audience wants a groove.  You can add interest to a song by changing the rhythmic figures in it, but if you mess with the very bottom of the groove, the tempo, in midstream, you ask your audience to make a difficult adjustment.  Why would you want to do that?  Well, for experiment’s sake, or for variety’s sake, or maybe to make an expressive point.  But tempo is more fundamental than anything else in determining what feels right in a piece of music.  How, then, could you shift tempo in a way that felt exactly right?  And—to make the challenge even harder—how could it be done without a transitional acceleration or deceleration?[1]

The tempo shifts in “Suite: Judy Blue Eyes” (Crosby, Stills & Nash) are nice, and by now we can all easily follow them, but the point is, it’s a suite.  It’s like listening to several different songs in a row.  In fact, many of the songs I can think of with nice tempo shifts are like suite experiences.  I’m looking for an example of a tempo shift that unarguably makes a single-song experience great.

If there is a cogent tempo shift, do you suppose it follows some implicit mathematical law, some Golden Proportion?  Halving or doubling the tempo would feel smooth, but those changes are pseudo-changes—they just make different selections from the ticks that were ticking all along.  How about two-thirdsing or 150-percenting the tempo?  Does anyone know how that would that feel?  (I’ll tell you:  it feels like slowing way down and speeding way up.)

Mathematics is out the window with the clearest example I know of a tempo shift that we consciously expect and enjoy, the verse-to-chorus shift in The Beatles’ “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds.”  It’s also a shift between a circling 3/4 and a loudly marked, linear 2/4 or 4/8, so the faster tempo of the chorus feels like a well-organized blast-off.  The increase in speed here conforms to no elegant proportion that I can detect.  It’s just . . . faster, not gauchely too much faster or indecisively too little faster; it’s a let’s-get-going faster that we can handle just fine.

For students of time structure, “Lucy” makes a great exhibit of the interdependence of beat, pulse, and measure.  Beats are the elementary units of rhythm, the ticks you can keep track of.  Pulses are the primary emphases, the whoomps.  (Often people call pulses “beats” and measure them in “beats per minute,” as I did myself in the “Killer Tempo” post, but never mind that now.)  Measures are the basic units of wholeness in rhythmic structure; a measure is your trip to a place where you feel you’re starting over.  In “Lucy’s” tempo shift, the beat count goes roughly from 134 per minute to 188, about a 40% change.  But that doesn’t mean the tempo is 40% faster, because the pulse rate and the measure structure change at the same time.  The new measure that most closely corresponds to the old 3/4 measure is four eighth-notes in two pulses, so we’re talking about measures of 4/8 or 2/4 (corresponding to “Lucy in the” and “sky with”).  The length of this four-beat, two-pulse measure is about 1.28 seconds; that’s just a little quicker than the 1.34 seconds of the previous three-beat, one-pulse measure.  The pulses of the new 2/4 are close to double-timing the pulse of the 3/4.

THIS JUST IN: Lucy Vodden, the Lucy that John Lennon heard about, died in London on September 28.  Meanwhile, a newly announced East African fossil ancestor of humanity, “Ardi,” is more than a million years older than the great Beatles namesake “Lucy” the Australopithecus.  Do you feel an evolutionary tempo shift?

News reaches me that, at the premature age of 46, Lucy Vodden has breathed her last and floated off to the great marmalade cloud in the eternal sky.

Lucy who, I hear you ask?

Lucy Vodden, née O’Donnell, was the Lucy of the Beatles song Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds. John Lennon wrote the song, inspired by a painting his four-year-old son Julian did of his nursery playmate.

The girl with kaleidoscope eyes.

Thankfully Julian didn't follow a career in art.

Lucy Vodden, the woman who inspired the Beatles classic ‘Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds,’ died last Tuesday at the age of 46. Vodden, a childhood friend of Julian Lennon, passed away after losing a fight with the autoimmune disease lupus, according to an announcement made Monday by the St. Thomas’ Lupus Trust Charity.

John Lennon took the song title from a picture Julian had drawn of Vodden at school. “That’s Lucy in the sky with diamonds,” Julian told his dad when he brought the artwork home. Due to the psychedelic feel of the song, from the Fab Four’s iconic 1967 album ‘Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band,’ many fans felt the song’s title was an allusion to LSD.

“I remember Julian and I both doing pictures on a double-sided easel, throwing paint at each other, much to the horror of the classroom attendant,” Vodden — who’s maiden name was O’Donnell — told BBC radio in 2007. “Julian had painted a picture and on that particular day his father turned up with the chauffeur to pick him up from school.”

Sgt. Pepper was an important event for “my generation.”  And Lucy was on of the best songs on the album.  Lucy Vodden was the “Mona Lisa” of Sgt. Pepper, the mortal inspiration for an immortal work of art.
There is also a heart warming angle to the story.  Julian Lennon either kept in touch or reconnected with his childhood friend.  He corresponded with Lucy and telephoned her. Julian and Lucy shared a love of gardening and Lennon would send Lucy gift certificated for her to use at a local gardening store. In June, it was reported that Julian Lennon was supporting Vodden during her fight with the disease. According to the charity, Lennon and his mother, John’s first wife Cynthia, were “shocked and saddened by the loss of Lucy and their thoughts are with her husband and family today and always.

The real Lucy from “Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds” has died. Lucy Vodden died in a London hospital after a long battle with lupus. She was 46.

Vodden was friends with John Lennon’s son Julian, who came home from school when he was 4 with a picture he drew. He told his dad it was Lucy in the sky with diamonds. That’s what inspired the song.

Vodden and Julian Lennon lost touch, but they reconnected recently when Julian found out

Vodden was sick.

Vodden told The Associated Press in June when she was a teenager she told her friends she was the Lucy from the song, and they didn’t believe her because their parents told them it was about LSD.

(Copyright 2009 by The Associated Press.  All Rights Reserved.)

El martes de la semana pasada murió la niña que le dio el dibujo al hijo de Lennon e inspiró al padre de éste a componer la canción “Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds“.

La mítica canción que aparece en el disco Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, fue compuesta en plena pscicodelia de los Beatles. Algunos dicen que en realidad hace referencia al ácido LSD. Pero John Lennon aclaró siempre que fue el dibujo que le trajo Julian, su hijo, lo que le hizo componer ese bello tema.

A continuación les dejamos el link al artículo que publicó ayer en su portal de internet el diario Times de Inglaterra (en idioma original).

Real-life ‘Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds’ dies at 46

Bugünün şarkısı, geçtiğimiz günlerde hayatını kaybeden Lucy O’Donnell anısına.

Lucy O’Donnell, The Beatles’ın “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds” şarkısına ilham verdiği düşünülen kişi. Aslında hatırı sayılır derecede büyük bir kesim, şarkının LSD’ye atıf olduğunu düşünmekte (..nasıl söylerim sana, baş harflere baksana..)

Diğer yandan, John Lennon’un konuyla ilgili açıklaması oğlu Julian’ın yuvada yaptığı bir resimden etkilendiği, hatta oğluna “kim bu kız yavrucum?” diye sorduğunda “lucy in the sky with diamonds” yanıtını aldığıdır.

julian lennon'un çizdiği resim

Hangi sebeple yazılmış olursa olsun, şarkı bir klasik. Her zaman dinlemeye değer. Buyrunuz:

Não tinha como ser mais psicodélico, não? Mais colorido? Poxa, de quem foi a idéia absurda de que essa música fazia alusão ao LSD? Esse povo parece que bebe chá de cogumelo!!!