Caption contest
The Fab Four as you've never seen them before!
Nilsson’s "Isolation"
Some people get Mania, others get Pandemonium Brother/good influence Jack Gerber just sent me this great cover of John Lennon's "Isolation" by JL's close friend/bad influence Harry Nilsson. It was unreleased until 2008, when it appeared as a bonus track on Aerial Pandemonium Ballet. Lennon covers almost never come close to the original; Lennon's paramount gift was to make his material feel so personal, indubitably his. It bothered him, especially post-Beatles, that fewer people covered his songs than covered Paul's, but you can understand why -- who could possibly equal his originals. Still, this version of Isolation holds its own, [...]
Talkin’ Beatle books (and our Dev!)
You forgot "Fluoridation" This afternoon, while trolling the internet for something to listen to while I was in the bath, I stumbled upon this podcast from rockcritics.com, which proved to be a very interesting roundup of Beatle tomage by Tim Riley, author of Tell Me Why (and a bio of John Lennon which I will doubtless purchase and read). Our own D. McKinney is singled out and glorified, rightly so. Anybody reading Dullblog who hasn't read Magic Circles should go do so immediately. I move we should assemble a essential Beatle Bookshelf. Any seconds? PS--In finding the photo for this [...]
Pillow talk
I must confess, I did not own the album A Hard Day's Night until fairly recently. So when I finally did get a copy, I discovered with pleasure that there were still a few new-to-me Beatles songs out there, namely "Any Time at All" and "When I Get Home" (which didn't make it into the movie). The latter pops up on my iPod Shuffle now and then, and every time I hear it, this lyric makes me snort: When I get home tonightI'm gonna hold her tightI'm gonna love her till the cows come home What I love about these lines is [...]
People who hate the Beatles
Nyah! My 2c: People who hate The Beatles should really be hating all the musicians that came after The Beatles. It's not James Joyce's fault that nobody's topped Ulysses in that form, nor is it The Beatles fault that Revolver still kicks ass when it comes to the three-minute rock song form. I like Amy Mann, but my being bored with The Beatles doesn't make her music better than theirs. It just makes me bored with The Beatles, and especially receptive to something else. It's a drag, but there it is; maybe it was a coalescing of talents that hasn't [...]
Me on Lennon on Huffpo
Lennon on the cover of Newsweek, Dec. 22, 1980. Guys, just wanted to let everybody know that an essay I wrote on the 30th anniversary of John Lennon's murder--and what I plan to do to commemorate it--is up at The Huffington Post. Welcome fellow Dullblogger Devin McKinney to The December 8th Project!
Kate Powers on McBroom Photo
[This morning, as we were listening to Breakfast with the Beatles, my wife Kate launched into a long analysis of the Beatles photo that Apple has been using for its campaign, the McBroom session of April, 1969. I thought what she said was really funny and interesting, so I asked her to share it.--MG] Thanks to the combination of the Apple/iTunes Beatle campaign and the fact that I was reloading the Apple site every five minutes on Thanksgiving night (looking for the Black Friday discount that made it possible to buy the spiffy new laptop on which I am writing this email), [...]
Are you the Fifth Beatle? Or the 16,928th?
Stolen from Brian Epstein's closet. Dullbloggers, I made these t-shirts for myself a while back and thought that some of you might enjoy them, too. I'm still figuring out which service to use for all these ideas--CafePress, Zazzle, Printfection, or others. Any opinion?
A brief interlude…
I hope our Dear Leader, Mike, will excuse me for posting this...I was flipping through a recent-ish New Yorker and came across an article about parodies, written by Louis Menand. Reviewing the anglocentric new Oxford Book of Parodies, Menand cites Bret Easton Ellis and continues: "Many other Americans could receive nominations: Framk Cammuso for 'Glengarry Glen Plaid'; Michael Gerber and Jonathan Schwarz, for 'What We Talk About When We Talk about Doughnuts'..."What a great piece that was! It appeared in The New Yorker's pages; here is the "abstract" from the magazine's archives. It is pretty hilarious even in this abbreviated form—a must [...]
Prove Violence Doesn’t Work: Do Good in John Lennon’s Name This Dec. 8th!
This morning I had a great idea: "Wouldn't it be great if everybody who loved John Lennon and The Beatles did something nice in his name on December 8th? Something that he might've done, if he were still here with us...like donating to the ACLU; eating organic (or even macrobiotic) for a day; spending some extra time with a kid; making some art that showed love for people and hope for the world...Wouldn't it be wonderful to turn a tragic anniversary into something awesome? And wouldn't that show, once and for all, that violence doesn't work unless we allow it to?" Like [...]