UPCOMING SGT. PEPPER ANNIVERSARY

June 1st will be the 41st anniversary of the release of the SGT. PEPPER'S LONELY HEARTS CLUB BAND album (it drives me nuts when I see 'SERGEANT' spelled out, by the way). [June 1st is also my parents' wedding anniversary, but I don't have much to say about that except, "Congrats!"]

Let me say right from the start that I like PEPPER. Always have, always will. Unfortunately, that doesn't include "Within You Without You," which I've always disliked and always will. It simply doesn't fit. Now, when we used to listen to LPs it was the first song on side 2, and it was easy to skip right over it and not have to suffer through it (so what if I thought "When I'm 64" started with a burst of laughter? It sure looked like I had it right groove-wise when I eyeballed it for the needle drop!] Unfortunately, in the era of CD and digital players it sits like a speed bump right in the middle of the album: I begin to think about it as "Being For The Benefit Of Mr. Kite" heads towards its wondrous end and I'm not back up to speed again until the first notes of "When I'm 64."

I know I'm not the first - and surely not the last - to complain about "Within You Without You." It's probably the bane of every serious critic when discussing the album. Fortunately for the Beatles, however, the rest of the album packed such a wallop that WYWY can be politely dismissed as the weak track on PEPPER, as opposed to a sure sign that the Beatles were out of their minds to include it on the album in the first place. Just imagine if they'd opted to put "You Know My Name (Look Up The Number) on PEPPER as well. Oof.

I was only two years old when PEPPER was released, but I'm thinking that the Harrison fans of the time must have been quite disappointed when they heard PEPPER. ["He had three great songs on REVOLVER! What the heck happened?!"] And to think that his track for the follow-up project was "Blue Jay Way" doesn't exacly absolve George of his musical responsibility either. But i digress...

41 years later PEPPER is still considered the undisputed Beatles masterpiece. Which it isn't, of course: they don't have one. Each of their albums are masterpieces in their own way (except LET IT BE, but I don't count that one for reasons I won't go into at this moment), but now I think I'm contradicting myself. :-0

Happy 41st birthday SGT. PEPPER!

Jeremy Boob

SOME RAMBLINGS ON THE EARLY SOLO YEARS

When I was growing up in the 70s – I was born in 1965 and probably started listening to the Fabs when I was nine or ten – each of the Beatles was enjoying successful solo careers. [John’s was about to take a five-year hiatus, but no one knew that at the time.] At that point, the Beatles as an entity didn’t have the overshadowing effect it does now. The solo careers weren’t the footnotes they are slowly becoming as the Beatles legacy continues to grow; rather they were the logical progressions of artists/musicians who have simply moved on to other things and projects.

There is and can be no doubt that each of the Beatles produced his finest solo work in the 70s: John with PLASTIC ONO BAND (IMAGINE is great, but “I Don’t Wanna Be A Soldier Mama I Don’t Wanna Die” hasn’t aged well and was pretty lame to begin with), Paul with BAND ON THE RUN, George with ALL THINGS MUST PASS and Ringo with…well, RINGO. As it became more apparent that they weren’t going to reform, their respective solo careers took on more weight as each of them became less and less “Beatles” and more and more their own selves, striving for solo definition now that the weight of the group’s existence was lessening (while as the same time it’s legacy was beginning).

I listen to all of albums in the solo catalogue fairly regularly, depending on my mood. Some that don’t get played all that often are John’s SOME TIME IN NEW YORK CITY, Paul’s WILD LIFE, George’s DARK HORSE and Ringo’s BEAUCOUPS OF BLUES. STINYC is a real stinker, WL is just awful, DH is fairly week and BOB is a country album, of which I’m not a fan. And yet, I still listen to ‘em. Not sure I enjoy them all that much, but I do listen to ‘em.

Any thoughts are more than welcome.

Best,

Jeremy Boob

The Beatles At The BEEB

Every once in a while I go through my ever-growing personal archives and come across something I haven't listened to for quite a while (and usually with good reason). One thing I have listened to on a number of occasions is the nine-cd Great Dane set of The Beatles At The Beeb, a truly stupendous and near-complete collection of all available recordings of the Fabs from numerous sources, both good and bad. [To the casual reader: this is not an officially sanctioned set.]

Now, having listened to it from start to finish more times than I'd care to relate, I've opted to create a playlist for my digital media player of only the songs they recorded at the BBC that (1) they didn't write and (2) they never recorded for EMI. It's a great playlist if you ask me, albeit a bit repetitive (if they were such fans of "Too Much Monkey Business" and "Memphis," to name two of the most perf'd numbers, why didn't they record them for, oh, I don't know, BEATLES FOR SALE?). Numbers such as "Hippy Hippy Shake," "Crying, Waiting, Hoping" (recorded at the Decca audition, but didn't see the official light of day until the release of ANTHOLOGY 1), "Clarabella," and "Carol" really show what was bread and butter for them in their early days. These were songs that they really cut their teeth on and the revved-up perfs show a musical tightness that is at times exhilarating.

I'm sure I'll have more to say about the BBC recordings in the future, but that's all for now.

As always, comments welcome.

Best,

Jeremy Boob

Hollywood Bowl '64 Vs. Rooftop Concert '69

Went for a nice run over the weekend and listened to the '64 Hollywood Bowl concert and the '69 Rooftop Concert back-to-back just for the heck of it. Portions of both have been officially released, but there's something about listening to them "as they happened" that is truly rewarding. The Hollywood Bowl show presents the Beatles prior to their U.S. height of fame (arguable for sure, but I peg their States-side apogee closer to August '65, a full year after this concert) and the tapes - well, they USED to be tapes, as opposed to the digital mp3s they are on my iPod - show a lot of enthusiasm from the band and are much better sounding recording-wise than I thought they'd be. The stereo placement is fine (I'm sure it wasn't mixed: the tapes are fairly raw) and the crowd doesn't really drown out the music as much as the '77 LIVE AT THE HOLLYWOOD BOWL album would have you believe. A tight 1/2 hour, but a good one (hard to believe they were able to play the largely acoustic "If I Fell" and get away with it noisewise).

The Rooftop Concert, on the other hand, is much less a concert performance than a number of song run-throughs in an open-air environment. There are repeats ("Get Back" gets three perfs while "Don't Let Me Down" and "I've Got A Feeling" get two each), breakdowns (well, one at least: "Dig A Pony") and a superb one-off ("One After 909"). The between song banter is mostly of the in-joke variety and not really directed at anyone in particular as far as I can tell. Put all that aside though, and there's still some great performances by a band that played quite well together: three of the "takes" ended up on the released LET IT BE album. [There is a random correlation between this and how a number of the tracks from the '64 Hollywood Bowl concert ended up on the released album but I don't have the time today to go into further detail!]

No version of LIVE AT THE HOLLYWOOD BOWL has found it's way to a proper CD release; nor has the Rooftop Concert. A pity. I'm sure some day they'll be more widely available. Legally, I would hope.

Jeremy

[Any and all comments are welcome! Drop me a line at jeremyboob@yahoo.com. Probably won't be able to answer each and every e-mail but will do my best to address crossover issues in future posts.]

A Brief Introduction And Then On To Other Things...

Hello all! A few months back I offered my blogging services to Steve Marinucci and he was kind enough to take me up on it. I've been a fan of his site for a number of years now and can only hope to offer the quality and class in my ramblings that the site so well deserves. [For those who need to know who I am...suffice it to say I'm in my early 40s, have been a Beatles fan since 6th grade and know for a fact that I am not the best Beatleologist out there!]

That said, let's give it a go!

If you're reading this you've probably been asked any number of times, "What's your favorite Beatles song(s)?" I've been asked this by adults and kids (my kids, that is: I don't wave my Beatles fan flag in the faces of those too young to appreciate it) alike and I have to admit it's a toughie. I usually say I don't have one, offering up five or six titles that the person who's asked would be familiar with - let's face it: no Beatles-lover is ever going to ask another Beatles-lover what his/her favorite Fabs song is - and am usually greeted with something along the lines of, "Oh yeah, those are pretty good songs." That usually seals the conversation, and then we're usually on to the weather or some other topic. What's my point here? Well, for those of us truly steeped in Everything Beatles I believe it's impossible to pick a favorite when it comes to the Beatles. Unlike other bands, we've become so enmeshed in mono/stereo versions, alternate takes and whatnot that the fabrics of the songs have changed. For example, when I hear "Penny Lane" (one of the Top 5 I often quote to others) I can't help thinking "Great song/recording, but I do wonder why they cut that last horn blast off the end that I have on my BEATLES RARITIES album." Hearing a Beatles song doesn't make me sing along (sure, I do act like an idiot when it comes to the air guitar if my wife isn't around) but rather think about all the things I know that went into the song's writing/recording/release/etc. Things that a casual listener would never understand. And things I could never explain. Nor want to. I guess that's what sets us apart from the non-uber fans. Not above them, mind you; just apart.

Jeremy Boob

[Any and all comments are welcome! Drop me a line at jeremyboob@yahoo.com. Probably won't be able to answer each and every e-mail but will do my best to address crossover issues in future posts.]