Sgt. Pepper in the Age of Social Distancing
From friend of Bystander Stephen Kroninger…I'm just glad Sgt. Pepper wasn't alive to see this...
Help Dullblog out: Try the Brave Browser
"You're right, she DOES look like Alma Cogan…" A lot of people have asked how you might help the blog, so I'm always looking for painless (read: free) ways you can show your HD-love. I just found one. The Brave browser works just like Chrome, but is faster, more private, and more secure. I've been using it for three weeks now and really like it. Give it a spin. If you use this link, we'll get a small kickback. There's another neat aspect to Brave, in that you can earn money by opting in to ads. They block the crappy ads you [...]
Get Back Release Date: September 4, 2020
Thanks to our ever-vigilant @Hologram Sam, we now know that Peter Jackson's frenzied attempt at making the 1969 Get Back sessions less of an unholy drag will premiere on September 4, 2020. Mike will not be there. Mike may never be there, unless all of you say it's wonderful. Mike's teenaged years were scarred by many, many Twickenham bootlegs, and Mike DOES NOT FORGET. "State-of-the-art image-correction technology will be used to make Paul less pushy, George less sullen, and Ringo less cold," said a Disney spokesman. "It will also sweep the opiates from John and Yoko's bloodstream." The film will be sponsored [...]
Should I do t-shirts?
Hey you guys, should I make some Hey Dullblog t-shirts? They'd be about $25 each (shipping included), cheaper if we got a bunch, you just have to order it on theswissavenue.com. I did it on black because my wife said people like black t-shirts better, but I can do white instead if everybody squawks. Hairy arms optional Work it, sister
“Broke” John Lennon
File under "M" for money In the midst of commenting on Michael B.'s excellent post, I was reminded of something that I've said to friends innumerable times but might never have ever written here for you all. I have a lot of Beatle Thoughts like that, sorry. The only solution is for everyone to live with me, and that won't work because my cat Max gets hemorrhoids around new people. All John Lennon needed to be happy was to give it all away. This isn't the hippie pipe-dream it might seem. Let me explain: At his death, the Chief Beatle was estimated [...]
Dullblog’s Greatest Hits
I call this one, "Prellies and Eyemakeup." In August 2016, a whole lifetime ago, Devin, Nancy and I looked at the vast pile of writing on this site and asked each other, “Which posts still hold up? Which ones do we like best?” So we read back and back and back, and put together a list, which I'm going to append to the end of this post. The pile has only grown larger since then. To be honest, I've never really been satisfied with how we surface old material on Hey Dullblog; the posts at the bottom are simply an algorithm—does anybody [...]
Does Ringo Starr have a tattoo?
I was rather aimlessly watching this video on YouTube last night — I feel a Klaus Voormann obsession coming on, so get ready for a lot of Klaus stuff on the site — when I saw something that I had to share. Does Ringo Starr have a tattoo? Look at about 9:05 of the video. Is that a tattoo or just a helluva bruise? (Holy shit, it's a tattoo. He's apparently got two -- on the left inner arm is a shooting star crossing a moon, and on the right is a cross surrounded by a lotus flower. Pics, brothers and sisters, [...]
Dominic Sandbrook on the Early Seventies
Not-so-Great Britain. Today I happened across something I think Dullblog readers might like: "The Weird World of Seventies Britain," a lecture by the Oxford historian Dominic Sandbrook. (You'll also dig it if, like me, you're a fan of "The Crown.") The details Sandbrook relates—cue Paul's "Power Cut”—are interesting and enjoyable. Spurred by our conversations about the British nightclub scene, I've gotten Sandbrook's histories of Britain from 1956-63, and 1964-70. I will read them and report back with Interesting Beatle Facts. Britain in the Seventies is usually considered to be dystopic in the extreme, and it was certainly a rude comedown from a [...]
Best Post-Anthology Tracks?
I was just prowling around on the internet -- as one does on a Saturday night -- and discovered a Lennon demo from December 1968 called "A Case of the Blues." It's a neat little scrap of a song. See what you think. Maybe all of you know it already? What are your favorite demos, outtakes, and alternate versions of Beatles songs not on the Anthology? https://youtu.be/a0a_52O_9qo (Way to make John Lennon's handwriting boring-looking, anonymous designer.) I remember about two years ago I got obsessed with the McCartney tune "Suicide" as performed in 1969, and was shocked that 1) I was still [...]
What are we doing here, anyway?
They don't even golf like you or I. I was responding to a comment regarding the podcast Another Kind of Mind, and the application of "emotional intelligence" to The Beatles, and as I wrote the water grew deep enough for me to want this to be its own post. I have long thought—since 1995 or so, when the Anthology finally belched out all the last tracks worth hearing—that the great undiscovered country of Beatle fandom was trying to figure out what the experience was like for John, Paul, George, and Ringo. What, day by day, LP by LP, million by million, did [...]