From Faith Current: The Subversive Madness of Sgt. Pepper

By |2022-06-06T18:19:20-07:00June 6, 2022|Uncategorized|

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. [...]

From Faith Current: “The Divine Madness of Revolver”

By |2022-08-30T12:25:10-07:00May 29, 2022|Uncategorized|

  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 [...]

“Imagine” better Op-Eds

By |2022-04-13T15:18:39-07:00April 13, 2022|Uncategorized|

  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 [...]

Beatle Dreams!

By |2022-04-10T12:26:05-07:00April 10, 2022|Uncategorized|

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 [...]

Desperately Seeking: Paul’s Striped Jacket in COLOR?

By |2022-03-19T00:04:36-07:00March 19, 2022|Uncategorized|

Hey folks, in another of a series of really questionable financial decisions, I'm looking to get a modern reproduction of this wonderful striped jacket worn by Paul in early 1967. Does anybody know of a color photo? I seem to remember one, and I think it's red with cream and blue? In a preliminary search, I unearthed this wonderful site called Beatles Style, which offers a large selection of reproductions of Beatle clothes. I WANT that Penny Lane jacket in hunting pink. This is important to me—such things are the only reason I became an adult; I made a deal with 12-year-old [...]

New commenting rules!

By |2022-02-22T13:48:56-08:00February 22, 2022|Uncategorized|

Hey there, folks. Last night, I had an epiphany—I was sitting here typing away at 12:30 am, crafting long, thoughtful, hopefully thought-provoking responses to a person I didn't know and would never meet, about a topic I've probably written 100,000 words about. They didn't seem to like me, and my considerable personal affability (ask anyone!) was beginning to wear thin. Why? Because I'd been here tens, hundreds of times before. I knew that nothing I'd write would ever convince them, and that if necessary they'd just switch the topic to some other thing -- some other fact, some other era, some other [...]

Lennon Murder Conspiracy Open Thread

By |2022-02-02T21:08:28-08:00February 2, 2022|Uncategorized|

Folks, I've been noticing certain topics growing like wild vines over the comment sections of various unrelated posts. So in the interest of housekeeping, I'd like to experiment with Open Threads. Ideally my goal is to have the comment sections hew fairly closely to the original post, so that lurkers and other quiet readers can use the comments to learn in greater depth on that topic. This Open Thread is for discussion of conspiracy theories related to the murder of John Lennon; I will not be participating, nor will I even read this thread very closely, as I find the topic quite [...]

Moving past fandom

By |2022-01-08T14:45:36-08:00January 8, 2022|Uncategorized|

Folks, I'm increasingly churlish on this site, and it bugs me. It bugs me because I love The Beatles, individually and as a unit, love what they made, love their time and place, and like all of you. My churlishness comes from the exact opposite place that it seems to come from; it must seem critical, but it is…fundamentally positive and supportive? There's something important I haven't expressed well enough, despite all my words, and I'm going to try to address it here. After a certain number of hours logged listening, reading, and thinking about The Beatles -- or any other cultural [...]

A quick note about celebrity journalism

By |2021-12-04T15:22:59-08:00December 4, 2021|Uncategorized|

Starting in the mid-50s, television has fundamentally shifted the balance of power in the US. Other people would have to talk about other countries, but here all power now resides in the hands of celebrities. The impacts of this shift on our culture are practically incalculable. In politics for example, it began with JFK; the famous factoid is that people who listened to the Kennedy-Nixon debates thought Nixon had won, whereas people who watched them were strongly for Kennedy. The story of the 60s, 70s and 80s was an unprecedented mixing of celebrity with traditional sources of power. Whether it's John and [...]

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