"Love"
What do you think? I could listen to Priscilla Ahn sing the phone book. (I like her cover of VU's "Afterhours," found about 5:30 into this vlog post.)(And remember her cover of "Julia"?)
The Beatles First American Concert
The moptops in action amid a hail of jelly babies, February 1964. Last night, I was lucky enough to see the closed-circuit film of The Beatles' first American concert, given February 11, 1964, in Washington, DC. The film was broadcast in March, 1964, to movie theaters all across the country--then languished in somebody's basement until the mid-90s, when it was [...]
Caption contest
The Fab Four as you've never seen them before!
Thoughts on "Paperback Writer"
Thinking about "Paperback Writer" — it's a thousand pages, give or take a few?!Heard this one with fresh ears recently and began thinking about 1,000-page debut novels (paperback or no): Are there any?Not sure. But then I thought about that scene in Wonder Boys (the film based on the Michael Chabon novel), in which novelist Grady Tripp (Michael Douglas) is typing a [...]
The Casey Black album
You'd think "Eleanor Rigby" would not be an ideal song to cover...but I dig my former student Casey Black's rendition: http://www.youtube.com/v/MiOy2gr0klU?fs=1&h More than once, one of Casey's originals has popped up on the ipod and I've thought: some Springsteen song I forgot? Check out this one: "The Sarge." (At the very least, he finds something to rhyme with "hippocampus.")POSTSCRIPT: Just noticed via [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]