Nancy Carr • Hey Dullblog, the Beatles fan blog

Kiss as the Anti- Beatles

By Nancy Carr|2016-03-22T12:24:16-07:00April 24, 2014|Breakup, Other bands, Photos|

NANCY CARR * Easily recognizable iconography is one thing the Beatles and Kiss share. The Beatles have sometimes been represented by just their hair, and Kiss’ comic-book costumes and makeup are certainly distinctive. But there the resemblance ends. Reading Brian Hiatt’s excellent article “Kiss Forever: 40 Years of Feuds and Fury” in last month’s Rolling Stone got me thinking about all the ways that Kiss is the anti-Beatles—not in the sense of the band’s being opposed to or “against” the Beatles, but in the sense of being a kind of photographic negative of the Beatles. Well, the HAIR is here . [...]

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Imagine Beatles chocolates

By Nancy Carr|2014-04-22T09:51:50-07:00April 22, 2014|Beatle-inspired, Beatles merch, Paul McCartney, Ram, The White Album, Uncategorized|

Linda, I need another chocolate stat! NANCY CARR * Spring is finally here, and the holy people are out smelling the grass in the meadow. It’s the perfect time to have a Monkberry Moon Delight chocolate, courtesy of the folks at Imagine Chocolate. Appropriately, it has plenty of nuts. And it's part of the "Sir Paul" assortment, of course. If you're not feeling that much sweetness, you could try something from the White Album assortment. But you'll have to have them all pulled out after the Savoy Truffle. [Note: I found these by happenstance while looking up the lyrics [...]

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Liv Warfield got “Blackbird” wrong: Ten covers that get it right

By Nancy Carr|2014-12-30T21:34:48-08:00April 7, 2014|1968, 21st century references, Beatle-inspired, Covers|

Liv Warfield NANCY CARR * Last Friday Liv Warfield, best known for her stint in Prince's New Power Generation, performed her new song "Blackbird" on The Late Show With David Letterman, declaring "Paul McCartney got it wrong / I ain't never want no song / I ain't special, I ain't strong / Black . . . bird." It's not clear to me why Warfield, who was born in 1979, is so angry about a pro- Civil Rights song released in 1968 -- especially when the song is pitched in such a universal key that it can apply to any person or [...]

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Alan Bryson’s “Anagrams” imagines alternate Beatles history

By Nancy Carr|2014-04-07T11:28:52-07:00April 7, 2014|alternate history, Beatles fiction, books|

Time-traveling Nathan's car, the Hawk, parked outside Grams' house Anagrams, an alternate-history novel in which a Baby Boomer returning to 1962 not only meets the Beatles but changes their trajectory, has just been published by first-time book author Alan Bryson. The novel’s hero, Nathan Bellew, must decide when and how to intervene in events he knows are set to unfold, while coping with the issues that come with being, outwardly, an 11-year-old kid again. Bryson is an American-born music journalist based in Europe: you can read his work at AllAboutJazz and listen to his interviews at Talking2Musicians. He graciously sent [...]

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Beatles solo albums sell slowly: or, no escape from the Fab Four

By Nancy Carr|2022-04-11T09:43:45-07:00March 24, 2014|Beatle-inspired, Breakup, solo|

NANCY CARR * The Beatles broke up over 40 years ago, but in the public’s mind they could never really stop being Beatles. The desperate efforts of all the band’s members (well, except Ringo) in the 1970s to escape its gravitational pull were doomed. If you want to see this reality in action today, check out the displays in a nearby record store—assuming you're near one that's survived. There's a good chance that everything Beatles related will be shelved together. One of my favorite local shops, Oak Park Records, is owned by Alan Heffelfinger, who's particularly knowledgeable about music (he worked for [...]

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“Chaos and Creation in the Backyard”: Or, music to confront a small-scale void by

By Nancy Carr|2021-08-28T00:19:53-07:00February 18, 2014|Paul McCartney, solo|

NANCY CARR * Never was an album more aptly named. Chaos and Creation in the Backyard finds McCartney facing the void and trying to wrest something positive from the encounter—but in a modest, domestically-focused way quite different from Lennon’s or Harrison’s more cosmic grapplings. Based on my experience, it may be just the thing if you’re staring down a garden-variety void yourself. This album has grown on me as few others have. On initial hearings I thought it was all right but nothing special, and now I rank it among my favorite McCartney albums. More than his other albums, I think the [...]

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Michael Tomasky on the Beatles as the “sound of freedom”

By Nancy Carr|2014-02-06T15:47:52-08:00February 6, 2014|Beatles Criticism, books, Michael Tomasky|

Michael Tomasky, former editor of The American Prospect and The Guardian America, is getting into the Beatles’ 50th anniversary racket. His ebook, Yeah! Yeah! Yeah!: The Beatles and America, Then and Now, has just been released; in it, he puts forward the idea that the Fabs were "the sound of freedom," catalysts for (and participants in) the vast cultural opening that occurred in the West from 1964 onward. His overview addresses everything from race relations to Ringo's revolutionary use of the hi-hat. A longtime political columnist, Tomasky writes a thrice-weekly column for The Daily Beast and contributes on a regular basis to [...]

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“Revolution No. 9” as one of the top 5 Beatles songs? Get real.

By Nancy Carr|2014-02-06T06:53:30-08:00January 28, 2014|Beatles Criticism, Beatles lists, Reviews, The White Album, Tim Riley, Uncategorized|

NANCY CARR * Quick—what’s the most untypical song the Beatles released, and the one I’d bet 99% of Beatles fans listen to least? Well, that’s the one that Tim Riley, the author of Tell Me Why and a well-reviewed Lennon biography, calls the fifth best Beatles song in an article in this recently released magazine special. All together now: “Number 9, Number 9, Number 9 . . .” Of course any list of “The Top Five Beatles Songs” is, at this point in the 21st century, going to have to include a startling pick if it’s going to get any attention at [...]

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The Beatle Brothers at Fitzgerald’s: four hours of passion

By Nancy Carr|2013-12-21T16:29:22-08:00December 21, 2013|Beatle-inspired, Beatles tributes, concert, Covers|

Great mural outside, great music inside NANCY CARR * Last night I saw the Beatle Brothers at Fitzgerald's in Berwyn, IL, giving the crowd the ultimate Christmas gift for Beatles fans—four hours of covers played with expertise and passion, featuring the best Lennon and McCartney vocals I've heard outside the real thing. Far more than any dress-up-like-the-Beatles-band, Phil Angotti and Jay Goepnner, along with their stellar crew of backing players, put across the emotional intensity of the music. Their spontaneity and obvious love for the music they're performing made last night's show fly past, though they started playing a little after 9:00 [...]

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Beatles analogy by judge in NSA spying case

By Nancy Carr|2013-12-17T19:17:56-08:00December 16, 2013|21st century references|

Justice Ringo, appointed for life NANCY CARR • You know you're the biggest band in history when a federal judge ruling about the NSA's surveillance program uses an analogy to your members to explain his judgment. The whole article is here, but I've excerpted the Beatles-related part below: “Appeals Court Judge Richard Leon invoked Founding Father James Madison and the Beatles in a frequently scathing ruling. Leon, appointed by then-President George W. Bush, ordered the government to halt bulk collection of so-called telephony metadata and destroy information already collected through that program. But he suspended his order as the case [...]

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