ED PARK • We've discussed in these virtual pages the dire quality of that couplet in "She's a Woman" (you know the one), and the let's-sneak-this-in-and-move-on line in "While My Guitar Gently Weeps" ("I look at my floor and I see it needs...sweeping")... This morning, I was enjoying "Baby's in Black" and was struck by: I think of her but she thinks only of him, and though it's only a whim, she thinks of him. It's only a whim! A whim!!!
DEVIN McKINNEY • Recommended reading on Yoko's birthday. (Anyone have party plans?) Even if it does come from the dread Slate, it's one of the few halfway objective assessments you're going to find on the Internet (kind of a dread place in general, sometimes).
A while back we featured the blog "They May Be Parted," devoted to the Nagra Reels. Here's Dan again—using this familiar George statement as a jumping-off point. Well worth a read.George: OK, I don’t mind. I’ll play, you know, whatever you want me to play. Or I won’t play at all, if you don’t want me to play. Whatever it is that will please you, I’ll do it.
Maybe once a year I remember a digital watch I had as a kid which played "Hey Jude" and "Yesterday." Previous searches didn't turn up anything, but today I stumbled on a video of the watch in action! Any other Dullblog readers remember this (or -- still have it?)?
What does Magical Mystery Tour have to do with Kubrick's A Clockwork Orange? Read on...
For everyone who loves "Magical Mystery Tour" (the film) or has come to appreciate it over the years, there's someone who still hates it -- Jim DeRogatis, a Chicago critic who broadcasts on NPR's WBEZ, is a case in point. If you're interested in reading his vilification of the movie (and a lot of the album), you can do so here: http://www.wbez.org/blogs/jim-derogatis/2013-01/revisiting-one-beatles’-worst-mistakes-104650Here's the executive summary: "Nearly half a century on, the fascinating thing about "Magical Mystery Tour" the film is the rare glimpse it offers into one of the best rock bands of all time at its unaldulterated worst. And make no mistake: [...]
Some nice Beatles references in Jonathan Lethem's "My Marvel Years," about Jack Kirby (and Lethem-as-comics-reader), over at the London Review of Books: Nevertheless, if you (I mean, I) accept my premise that the mid-to-late 1960s Fantastic Four were the exemplary specimens as I'm explaining what's out there, the Revolver and Rubber Soul and White Album of comics, and if you further grant that pulling against the tide of all of Kirby’s inhuman galactacism, that whole army of aliens and gods, was one single character, our squeaky little Sue, then I wonder: Invisible Girl, the most important superhero of the Silver Age of comics?
Three years after the CD remasters, we now have the vinyl remasters of the Beatles catalog. (Mono vinyl remasters to follow). The question is, are the remasters worth buying, if you already have Beatles vinyl in good condition?The decision is more complicated than it was for the CD remasters, because the Beatles CDs from the 1980s were fair to horrible-sounding. But the original Beatles vinyl versions still sound great if they've been well cared for.If you're trying to make up your mind, you'll be interested in the following Chicago Tribune piece, in which a panel compares the sound of old, new, and [...]
I love this version of "My Brave Face," by SR-71, and think it's better than McCartney's original (which appeared on "Flowers in the Dirt.") SR-71's version is on "Listen to What the Man Said," a great 2001 compilation of McCartney covers.