Folks, a longtime HD commenter pointed me to some recent Beatle-related musings on their Substack, which I liked enough to repost here. Enjoy. —MG BY WABI SABI • My favourite music reviewer, George Starostin, has been writing about the Beatles for a long time. On his old site, he takes on both the naivety of the Beatles superfan who thinks the band did everything first, and the pedantic factchecking of the rock snob who points out there’s very little the foursome are credited with that hadn’t been introduced to the scene a couple of months earlier by someone less celebrated. (Not that I [...]

Folks, in the midst of scrubbing the pot/CBD-links from our posts, I came across some posts by Karen Hooper, who used to post here. I always found Karen's contributions interesting and valuable, and I would encourage you to browse them. In subsequent years, it seems that Karen's gone one to co-admin Erin Torkelson Weber's fascinating site; and I see they did some podcasting together here. I haven't delved into any of that work, but I suspect if you do, you will find it very worthwhile.

Frequent commenter @meaigs recently expressed some thoughts about sexual politics and public perception of Paul McCartney, which I asked her to expand into a post. I hope you find her insights as interesting as I did; for me, some things snapped into place that had never made much sense.—MG Paul, facing the Press about LSD, 1967 P aul McCartney is a man who gets treated as though he were a woman, and that is weird and bad. Not because being a woman is bad, but because women get treated badly. Before watching Peter Jackson’s Get Back I was a casual [...]

Folks, this is part 2 of Faith Current's unique, challenging interpretation of The Beatles mid-60s masterpieces. If you haven’t read part 1, do so now. You'll get more out of this post. Enjoy!—MG  Ringo, John, Paul and George looking with the eyes of love, 1967. BY FAITH CURRENT—By December of ‘66, the Great Global Revolver Freak-Out is over. The Beatles have freed themselves from the restraints of touring, but they’re still confined--this time in the studio and this time, voluntarily. They have unfinished business with us. They’re busy remaking Revolver. I don't mean track for track, although there are concordances. [...]

  George and John boxed up backstage, Busch Stadium St. Louis, 1966. Large chunks of the Beatle catalog are so celebrated they've become hard to perceive. (Try writing about "Yesterday," for example.) So when someone comes to me with a new angle, I immediately take notice. I find Faith's vision of Revolver and Pepper as twins to be an interesting, challenging idea. I hope you agree. --MG The greatest of blessings come to us through madness, when it is sent as a gift of the gods.” -- Socrates A little before midnight and I’m not sleeping. The edible from an [...]

This from our dear Ed Park: Mike Myers, Beatles superfan, discusses "Get Back" and his latest project. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lG6w2X5byt4

  Our John Lennon circa 1971, haunting Gary Abernathy's dreams. Because she knew it would get a rise out of me, commenter @Tasmin sent me this cringeworthy Op-Ed from The Washington Post today, which I pass along out of a need to trauma-share. The Bezos-owned WaPo, for any foreign readers, is ostensibly the liberal-est of our oh-so-very-liberal American media, which means its opinions range from far-right, all the way over to center-right whenever the boss is up in space. I do not blame WaPo for this, any more than I expect a man who owns cattle to own a newspaper [...]

Last night, I had the most amazing dream, one of my favorites ever. I was flying on a jumbo jet from New York to Los Angeles, with my brother and father. That's not important. What is important is that the jet was an amazing flying museum of all these wonderful Beatle artifacts, like a flying exhibition. In addition to all sorts of personal items and memorabilia, there were amazing photos I'd never seen before, and even life-size mockups of the stages at the Kaiserkeller and The Cavern. Then, we landed in Dodger Stadium, smacking into some things. I thought, "Oh well, this [...]