These happy days are yours and—?!

By |2014-07-23T11:56:35-07:00July 12, 2013|1970s, 1974, John Lennon, Ron Howard, Television|

DEVIN McKINNEY  •  This comes by way of Tom Sutpen's If Charlie Parker Was a Gunslinger, There'd Be a Whole Lot of Dead Copycats, which I've more than once called "the best blogsite there's ever been, ever." It appears under the heading "When Legends Gather." (For the irredeemably trivia-minded, I'm pretty sure that's Jerry Paris with half of his face cut off at the right side. He was Rob and Laura's neighbor on The Dick Van Dyke Show, plus he directed 200 eps of Happy Days.)

Indiana, Indiana, Indiana

By |2014-07-23T16:22:32-07:00March 20, 2011|1964|

DEVIN McKINNEY  •  This is some of what the Beatles did on their trip to the heartland (see Ed's audio post of the Indiana State Fair show below). John's laugh looks a bit, er, forced. Derek Taylor is already framing the priceless prose in which he'll one day memoirize this moment. Miss Indiana State Fair looks taller than all of them ("Milk. It does a body good"). Where is Paul? Probably off securing a private room for himself and Miss I. S. F.

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 [...]

Pizza, Pooh & Magpie

By |2014-07-23T16:53:05-07:00March 17, 2009|1965, Beatles tributes, Lennon|

This just begs for a funny caption. DEVIN McKINNEY  •  The following was spotted recently in the liner notes of Peter, Paul & Mary's LP See What Tomorrow Brings, released December 1965, simultaneous with Rubber Soul. The notes spend needless time defending PP&M for not being "hip" like Dylan, or "electric" like the Beatles; and then assuring us it doesn't matter 'cause they do their own thing anyway. Then you get to this: Their message is the same as that of any artist through the centuries, a sermon of truth and beauty in the context of their times. And the [...]

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The Vision of Joe Orton

By |2014-07-23T16:53:37-07:00March 22, 2008|1966, books|

DEVIN McKINNEY  •  The missing piece in the Beatles’ movie puzzle, the wild card in their deck, is Joe Orton. This enfant terrible of the British theater, in between epatering the ‘60s bourgeoisie with the likes of Entertaining Mr. Sloane and Loot, wrote a screenplay for the Beatles at the commission of producer Walter Shenson. Adapted from an early, unpublished novel and suggestively titled Up Against It (Brit-speak for “under the gun”), the script was violent, sexually transgressive, defiantly sui generis—part Fellini freakshow, part black Ealing Studios farce, part prophecy of every late ‘60s anti-establishment decadence-and-destruction fantasy from How I Won the [...]

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