The Beatles Were A Pretty Good Little Band
Lately, I've been listening to The Beatles a lot while I've been working on the beginnings of my memoir. I'm just old enough to say that I was a Beatle fan (a very young one) when the band still existed. I've been going through the entire catalogue, but I've been especially focusing on The White Album. That was the record (and SGT Pepper, which my stereo-sound-challenged stereo cannot play in its full overrated glory) which played every day in the first hippie house I lived in. Sides One and Two of the album, especially, put me into slightly stoned five year-old reveries.
It's a real mouldy fig thing to say, I know, but a serious troll through The Beatles' catalogue makes most other subsequent white pop music seem diminished. But that's a bad attitude to take. Who wants to be stuck in one musical era? Time marches on, doesn't it?
One way of solving that dilemma is to listen to Danger Mouse's The Grey Album, his "mash up" of The White Album and Jay-Z. I find it moving and stimulating. Thanks for burning that one for me, Jay-Glass.
As always, when I listen to The Beatles, I keep Ian Mac Donald's rigorous and querulous guide to their recorded music, Revolution in the Head, by my side. It's out of print in the U.S., but recently reprinted in the U.K. Sadly, he committed suicide a couple of years ago.
My other current Beatle read is Devin McKinney's Magic Circles. I'm finding it to be a very original and exciting exploration of The Beatles' place in history through a close reading of their texts (ie listening to their records). To McKinney, The Beatles, were The Sixties Band--an aggregation that reflected and received the youth culture's love and hate in equal measure. Think about it, man. Look at the love Paul and Ringo still receive; think about the violent attacks upon John and George. Think about love, love, love is all you need and Mansonian helter skelter.
The alphabetical listening project continues. On vinyl: many African-American gospel vocal quartet comps; Tompall Glaser and His Outlaw Band. On CD: the wide ranging experiments of Dave Douglas.
It's a real mouldy fig thing to say, I know, but a serious troll through The Beatles' catalogue makes most other subsequent white pop music seem diminished. But that's a bad attitude to take. Who wants to be stuck in one musical era? Time marches on, doesn't it?
One way of solving that dilemma is to listen to Danger Mouse's The Grey Album, his "mash up" of The White Album and Jay-Z. I find it moving and stimulating. Thanks for burning that one for me, Jay-Glass.
As always, when I listen to The Beatles, I keep Ian Mac Donald's rigorous and querulous guide to their recorded music, Revolution in the Head, by my side. It's out of print in the U.S., but recently reprinted in the U.K. Sadly, he committed suicide a couple of years ago.
My other current Beatle read is Devin McKinney's Magic Circles. I'm finding it to be a very original and exciting exploration of The Beatles' place in history through a close reading of their texts (ie listening to their records). To McKinney, The Beatles, were The Sixties Band--an aggregation that reflected and received the youth culture's love and hate in equal measure. Think about it, man. Look at the love Paul and Ringo still receive; think about the violent attacks upon John and George. Think about love, love, love is all you need and Mansonian helter skelter.
The alphabetical listening project continues. On vinyl: many African-American gospel vocal quartet comps; Tompall Glaser and His Outlaw Band. On CD: the wide ranging experiments of Dave Douglas.
posted by ken at 1:15 PM
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