The Beatles and Gettysburg: Forward into the past

By |2013-08-13T22:37:53-07:00July 31, 2013|Abbey Road|

DEVIN McKINNEY  • Our town of Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, recently hosted festivities and commemorations around the sesquicentennial of the Civil War battle that occurred in the fields all around us. Tourists, there were many; and where tourists gather, chatchkis will be sold. Among them, this arresting item: Lincoln, Pickett, Lee, and Meade crossing a road made famous little more than a century after the battle that brought them together. Figures of the past are called forth to recreate a tableau, utterly independent of themselves, that to us is itself an image from, and of, the past; yet the combination propels both a bit [...]

The Beatles Writings of Joshua Glenn: “Origin of the Pogo”

By |2015-04-26T06:12:25-07:00July 1, 2012|comedy, Guest blogger|

The fourth in our series of guest appearances by Beatles scholar-investigator Joshua Glenn could be subtitled “or, Ringo Observed in his Natural Habitat.”  Following on from ideas—or suspicions—about the secret lives behind familiar Beatles-associated faces first elaborated in “Big Mal Lives!,” Glenn uncovers the identity and unravels the agenda of the flamingo-like gentleman seen dancing sociably with, or at least in proximity to, Ringo in the nightclub scene of A Hard Day’s Night. Who but Glenn would have suspected this brief, rather happy scene was a window on the dark doings of anthropologists and punk rockers—the two most wantonly antisocial groups of [...]

The Beatles Writings of Joshua Glenn: “Big Mal Lives!”

By |2022-03-03T14:24:58-08:00May 2, 2012|comedy, Guest blogger|

Part 2 of our series highlighting the Fab scholarship of Joshua Glenn requires a leap of the kind every agile imagination should be willing to take now and again. The flight is high, the loft long, and the landing safe. Best you simply begin. Let me only say that, though his findings seem incredible, given the givens of Beatle history as conventionally written, Mr. Glenn assures me his researches are not fabulation but "straightforward journalism. 100% true." — D.M This piece was first posted at HiLobrow on January 12, 2012. BIG MAL LIVES! Thirty-five years ago today, on the night of January [...]

The Beatles Writings of Joshua Glenn: “The Argonaut Folly (Pt. 3)”

By |2015-04-26T06:22:13-07:00April 22, 2012|comedy, Guest blogger|

And now for something completely different:  It’s my pleasure to introduce you to the work of Joshua Glenn, who joins the short and exclusive list of non-co-founders invited to be a Hey Dullblog contributor. Over the next several weeks, we’ll be posting Glenn’s Beatles-related writings as a sort of serial immersion in the perspectives and conclusions of a writer whose Fab mediations and meditations are unlike any others. This small but intense body of work has been available previously, but is being airlifted in full from its home site(s) for the entertainment and enlightenment of a readership that may not know it, [...]

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Prudence and the Penis: A Mystery

By |2013-09-02T08:03:39-07:00April 3, 2012|1968, Paul McCartney, Ringo, The White Album|

We know who wrote it. But who is on the Dear Prudence drum track? DEVIN McKINNEY  •  Mike's Facebook posting of isolated tracks from "Hey Bulldog" led me to seek out other examples of stripped-down Beatlesongs. This is among the more interesting, for both the music and the controversy. The mystery of the Dear Prudence drum track Did Ringo play the outro drums on "Dear Prudence"? One tends to forget that Paul is credited with drumming this track (recorded during Ringo's brief angry White Album hiatus), because its climactic passage is so utterly Ringoesque. (Plus, recordings like "The Ballad of [...]

As I go round and round in circles

By |2013-08-13T22:55:00-07:00March 31, 2012|books, bootlegs|

DEVIN McKINNEY  •  This seems terribly solipsistic of me—and it is—but Mike asked about this a long time ago and commenter Craig asked about it lately and I got curious for a look back and here it is and it might entertain a couple of you and for the rest at least provide one answer to the question, “What did Mike Gerber mean when he subtitled this blog ‘People Who Think About the Beatles Maybe a Little Too Much’?” A-way back in the Clinton years, I was writing a book about the Beatles and began idly compiling the track list for an [...]

An Innovation in Guerilla Marketing: The Photo-Blurb

By |2013-08-13T22:57:34-07:00October 14, 2010|books, John Lennon|

DEVIN McKINNEY  •  In case you didn't know, our own Mike Gerber has published a fanciful and fantabulous fantasy novel re: the Beatles, John Lennon, murder, mystery, memory, and the whole mishigas. Here is another plug of support from a fellow co-founder of this blog (cropped above and below to honor the subclause of our bylaws requiring co-founders to maintain facial anonymity as we walk among our subjects). Kudos, Mike, on—as JL often referred to a PM song he particularly liked—a damn good piece of work.

You know my name

By |2015-02-15T12:41:33-08:00September 11, 2010|Beatles tributes|

John and Paul and -- aha! the old switcheroo! You've probably seen the Experimental Jetset T-shirt design with the Beatles' first names written in Helvetica. It is "an attempt to create an archetypical shirt by stripping down the concept of a rock band to its bare essentials," according to the creators, and I own it in limited-edition tote-bag form (as seen here), thanks to my fashionable friend Betz. I carry it around the city a lot, because it's a perfect just-in-case-I-buy-something bag (holds a lot; folds up small). And because it's attention-getting, people tend to stare at me, or rather [...]

“Paperback” Trail; or, The Hunt for Mark Shipper

By |2014-07-23T16:52:15-07:00September 14, 2009|books, comedy, John Lennon, Paul McCartney, Rutles|

DEVIN McKINNEY  •  Note from the future (2013): Refreshing this post four years after assembling it, I find that a couple of the hyperlinks are no longer functional—one doesn't exist, while the other exists but doesn't yield the indicated information. But this is the story of a few hours' Internet idling, a mesh of the long-gone afternoon, and rather than rewrite it to excise the dud links, I let it stand. The links once worked, and they said what I said they said. Honest. As I commented on "The Best Dancer" below, thinking about Chuck Klosterman's piece got me thinking about Mark [...]

You Say it’s Your Birthday (Or Was Yesterday)?; or, How the Beatles May or May Not Have Destroyed Rock ‘n’ Roll

By |2014-07-05T11:24:19-07:00June 19, 2009|books, Paul McCartney|

DEVIN McKINNEY  •  Again showing our contrarian streak, we thought we'd differentiate ourselves from everyone who wished "Sir" "James" Paul McCartney (jus' Paul to us) a happy birthday yesterday—which, true enough, was his actual date of birth, but isn't it always nice to get something the day after too? (Or is that Christmas?) Sorry for the miss, Paul. But you and we are like an old married couple, and one of us is bound to blank on an anniversary once in a while. Beatleheads may celebrate Paul's lifespan and selfishly luxuriate in his giftings over at 30 Days Out, which has agglomerated [...]

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