Devin McKinney • Hey Dullblog, the Beatles fan blog

Admiral “Recovers” The Beatles; or, A Genre Waiting to Be Named

By Devin McKinney|2014-12-30T21:31:46-08:00April 3, 2014|alternate history, Covers|

DEVIN McKINNEY • You have your cover versions of Beatles songs, and then you have your “recovers”—songs rendered as The Beatles would have done them, had they done them completely differently, or, in some cases, at all. One of the earliest and best entries in this imaginative and as-yet unnamed subgenre was It’s Four You (1994), by Australian soundalikes The Beatnix, which recovered, in authentic Beatlesque, Lennon-McCartney songs written for others. Apple Jam’s 2012 EP On the Wings of a Nightingale likewise restyled three songs by solo Beatles in various Beatles and post-Beatles styles. (AJ’s previous album, 2009’s Off the Beatle Track, [...]

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Critics at Large reviews “The Fifth Beatle”

By Devin McKinney|2014-03-08T11:09:37-08:00March 8, 2014|alternate history, biography, books, Brian Epstein, Reviews|

DEVIN McKINNEY • While the world waits for the sunrise, and Hey Dullblog for the opinion of honorary Brian Epstein Fan Club president Mike Gerber, take a look at David Kidney’s review of the fantastic-seeming graphic novel The Fifth Beatle: The Brian Epstein Story, by writer Vivek Tiwary and artists Andrew Robinson and Kyle Baker. Posted over at my “other” blog outlet, Critics at Large, Kidney’s review gives enough flavor of the visual and textual of the book to get you wondering how much you’d be willing to spend on one of its numerous permutations: Standard; Deluxe; Super Deluxe Limited Edition, signed; [...]

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Happy birthday, George!

By Devin McKinney|2014-02-25T05:48:04-08:00February 25, 2014|birthdays, George, George Harrison|

HEY DULLBLOG • He’d have been 71 today. All the world is birthday cake, so take a piece, but not too much.

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I’m So Tired: Responsive Notes on the Phenomenon of Beatle Fatigue

By Devin McKinney|2014-02-22T06:34:28-08:00February 21, 2014|Beatles Criticism, Beatles on the Web|

There's no fatigue like Beatle fatigue. DEVIN McKINNEY • Beatle Ed points me to this most interesting, warmhearted, clear-eyed essay by James Marcus, “Letting Go of the Beatles,” posted yesterday at the Harper’s site. Even we, the besotted, must accept the validity, as we cough the exhaust fumes of the recent 50th-anniversary ballyhoo (which Hey Dullblog did its share to amplify or perpetuate), of a certain feeling of fed-upness with all things Fab. So Marcus’s piece gets me, and probably a lot of other Beatleheads of considerable duration, thinking. To delve into all the points where he and I are [...]

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The Beatles Invade America: CBS News celebrates the 50th Anniversary

By Devin McKinney|2022-05-09T09:02:59-07:00February 5, 2014|1964, Beatles on the Web, Beatles tributes|

DEVIN McKINNEY • To mark the 50th anniversary of the Beatles’ arrival in America, a mere two days away, CBS News plans a live multimedia event from the Ed Sullivan Theater in New York, site of a certain world-claiming triumph on February 9, 1964. In anticipation of both anniversary and event, CBS has amassed an impressive collection of video and audio chronicling the happy invasion, and commissioned a number of new pieces from Fab Four scholars, chroniclers, and analysts—among them John McMillian, Larry Kane, Bruce Spizer, and (eep!) yours truly. (The title of my squiggle, “From moptops to hippie chic,” is not [...]

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Variety agrees with Hey Dullblog: 2014 is the Year of Ringo

By Devin McKinney|2014-01-29T13:36:36-08:00January 29, 2014|David Lynch, Ringo, Ringo Starr, Todd Rundgren, Transcendental Meditation|

"Peace, wall." DEVIN McKINNEY • Ringo is on the cover of the latest Variety, heralding a celebrity profile by Assistant Managing Features Editor Steve Chagollan that is not only indifferently written but, typical for an age in which basic compositional standards are plummeting faster than an anvil lofted from the Empire State Building, is dotted with stylistic and factual boo-boos. (Ringo’s wife is referred to as “the actress formerly known as Barbara Bach”; what is she known as now, The Actress?) Still, the piece offers a brand-new, piping-hot array of Ringo opinions (he thinks Di Caprio is a lock for [...]

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Starrtime: Defining Moments from Ringo’s non-Beatle movies (1)

By Devin McKinney|2015-10-21T20:19:44-07:00January 7, 2014|1960s, 1968, alternate history, comedy, Film merde, Psychedelia, Ringo, Ringo movies, Ringo Starr|

The two dozen or so films Ringo Starr has made outside of the Beatles may constitute, more than any other legacy, a hefty bequest to the genre known unofficially as film merde. In spite or perhaps because of this, a surprising number of the all-star extravaganzas that make use of our favorite drummer’s amenable presence and recognizable nose have generated cults of some size (at least, if you believe Internet commentators who themselves, rather than stating existing facts, may merely be hoping to originate such cults). If nothing else, some of them offer a window on that passage in cultural history when, [...]

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George Harrison: Early Takes: Volume 1

By Devin McKinney|2016-11-30T07:29:45-08:00January 1, 2014|1970, All Things Must Pass, Bob Dylan, bootlegs, Eric Clapton, George, George Harrison, Living in the Material World|

DEVIN McKINNEY • Note: These are not new impressions, but ones jotted down in May 2012, the day Early Takes: Volume 1 came in the mail, and embellished more recently. George, in a photo taken in a Bahamian pool during the filming of Help!, holds his head above the water’s crystal surface, his face the perfect expression of the solemn young seeker braving the eddies and tidepools of the material world: a Siddhartha for the ‘60s. The image is rich, quiet, suggestive, like George at his best. It’s beautiful wrapping on a gift that isn’t quite there. Olivia Harrison, Giles Martin, and [...]

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George and Ringo, the forgotten Beatles: A preamble and provocation for 2014

By Devin McKinney|2014-01-02T07:27:21-08:00December 31, 2013|alternate history, George, George Harrison, Living in the Material World, Ringo, Ringo Starr|

Imagine there's no ... DEVIN McKINNEY • Offered in spirits of love and objectivity: One notices that the talk at Hey Dullblog tends, in a broad sense, to revolve around, or devolve toward, precisely two subjects: John and Paul. (Or John or Paul; or John versus Paul. Or John. Or Paul.) Start at virtually any discussion point, and reader heat will amass itself around their two heads—as if they were not just the most interesting of the four, which they are, but as if they were the four in total, which they are not. It’s only natural, in a sense, [...]

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The Beatles US Album Box Set: “Yay” vs. “Wait a minute”

By Devin McKinney|2013-12-17T10:26:24-08:00December 13, 2013|alternate history, Reissues|

DEVIN McKINNEY • Capitol Records announces today that on January 21, it will reissue the Beatles' America-only LPs in a box set. Surely, thoughts of the 50th anniversary of the band's touchdown at JFK inspired this felicitous notion. First thought: Yay, another Beatles toy! Second thought: Wait, they've done this already, haven't they, more or less? The Capitol Albums Vol. 1 was released in 2004 (40th anniversary time), Vol. 2 two years later. Both boxes covered the US-specific releases up through Rubber Soul, excepting the Hard Day's Night soundtrack (released on United Artists) and The Beatles' Story, a 2-record Capitol-cooked documentary that's a [...]

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About Devin McKinney