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 Adapted from an early, unpublished novel and suggestively titled Up Against It (Brit-speak for “under the gun”), the script was violent, sexually transgressive, defiantly sui generis—part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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Dullblog Calendar

By |2015-01-16T18:28:12-08:00March 21, 2008|1968, books, New York City|

By our own Devin McKinney. Go buy it, you'll like it. ED PARK • Next Tuesday (March 25) at 7 p.m., Dullblogger Devin McKinney, author of Magic Circles: The Beatles in Dream and History, will appear at a Barnes & Noble in New York, as part of "1968 Week." You don't want to miss this! He'll be at the B&N on Broadway at 82nd St., along with Charles Kaiser, Anthony DeCurtis, and Ken Mansfield. And why not click through and pick up a(nother) copy of Devin's book?

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Beatlespooks, Ch. 1: The Phantom Guardsman of Strawberry Fields

By |2014-07-23T16:53:43-07:00March 8, 2008|1967, Puzzles and Trivia, Strawberry Fields|

Frames from the “Strawberry Fields” promo film, shot January 30, 1967, in Knole Park, Sevenoaks, Kent. DEVIN McKINNEY  •      At first, Paul is sanguine, at his ease, perhaps even lofty on teasmoke.                   But what does he spy, reflected in the varnished piano of a Kentish night?   A Beatle aide caught in pass, or a vigilant spirit on eternal watch?         May we say, you or I, what so widens his eye?

Screen memories

By |2015-01-16T17:58:28-08:00February 6, 2008|1968|

Final graf of NYT obit for the Maharishi: In the last years of his life he rarely met with anyone, even his ministers, face-to-face, preferring to speak with followers almost exclusively by closed-circuit television. From my piece on Mladen Dolar's A Voice and Nothing More (2006), in Modern Painters:Both the Baumian and Freudian setups...owe something to the idea of the acousmatic voice, the “voice whose origin cannot be identified.” (“I am everywhere,” Oz tells his audience.) Michel Chion first elaborated on the concept in 1982’s The Voice in Cinema—tracing it back to the mother’s voice, heard omnidirectionally in the womb—and Dolar notes [...]

What Sexy Sadie did

By |2014-12-22T11:21:57-08:00February 6, 2008|1967, 1968, Lennon|

"Hey guys, could one of you introduce me to Mia Farrow's sister?" MIKE GERBER • "Which one of you geniuses," Ed emailed this morning, "is on the Maharishi beat?" As the least-employed member of our merry band, I guess that's me (Mike). I admit to having a real fondness for The Giggling One, and not just because I spent yesterday afternoon at a Mindfulness Meditation workshop at my local public library. (Me and 99 senior citizens.) As cartoonish as his public persona could be, it's undeniable that the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi helped change Western culture, largely for the better. And it's [...]

You gave me the answer

By |2014-07-01T22:02:30-07:00February 6, 2008|1965, concert, Puzzles and Trivia|

DEVIN McKINNEY  •  Polythene Eugene Cho gets half-credit and a $1 gift certificate at the Keychain Connection for figuring out most of the first installment of our Never-Ending Beatles Trivia Quiz Challenge. For the benighted and clueless, though, let's start at the fat bottom and work upwards, pyramid-style, to blue sky and pointy revelation... The question, you'll recall, was: What one factor connects the Beatles to three major American filmmakers of the 1970s—Francis Ford Coppola, Woody Allen, and Alan J. Pakula? The hint, you'll equally recall, was: What you talkin' 'bout, Lightfoot? Anyone who grew up watching TV in the '70s remembers [...]

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More on the Rooftop Concert

By |2022-07-24T12:49:59-07:00January 31, 2008|1969, concert, Get Back, Let It Be|

DEVIN McKINNEY  •  This is an anniversary worth remembering—partly because it reminds us that next year's is the 40th. As Nature Intended is the essential Get Back boot from the great "second wave" of Beatle illicits that hit the market in the early '90s. But then came the third wave—and that crested, and conceivably was capped for all time, by The Complete 2 CD Rooftop Concert, issued on the Yellow Dog label in 2000. It is beyond comprehensive, surrounding the event from all angles and allowing us to hear-"see" it in something like documentary totality. Disc 1 has the complete concert itself, [...]

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Get Back on the rooftop

By |2022-07-24T12:45:59-07:00January 31, 2008|1969, concert, Get Back, Let It Be|

Today's the 39th anniversary of the rooftop concert, perhaps the most splendid public nuisance in human history. I have it on Vigotone's As Nature Intended--anybody know a better source? While you're thinking, here's an outdoor version of "Get Back," audio only but we can all imagine it. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=txk0j8JVKbI

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"Let It Be" dissected

By |2014-07-01T18:22:04-07:00January 3, 2008|1969, Let It Be|

Let It Be, Naked or not, makes me itchy; I chalk it up to all the crap vinyl boots I listened to as a kid. But not everybody shares my allergy; an academic from Chicago is poring through the sessions, tape roll by tape roll, on this site. What I've heard so far of Let It Be Dissected, I've found quite interesting, in spite of myself.

Video: You Can’t Do That

By |2022-07-24T12:12:25-07:00January 2, 2008|1964, AHDN, Lennon|

Apparently this performance--of "You Can't Do That," one of my all-time favorite Beatles tunes--was deleted from A Hard Day's Night. You can understand why; it's Lennon at his most creepily aggressive (bested only by "Run For Your Life" off Rubber Soul). Am I forgetting any others? https://vimeo.com/540777186

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