- From Faith Current: “The Sacred Ordinary: St. Peter’s Church Hall” - May 1, 2023
- A brief (?) hiatus - April 22, 2023
- Something Happened - March 6, 2023
And again
ED PARK • This sort of I’ve-been-living-under-a-rock thing shouldn’t work…but I think Klosterman pulls it off!
It is not easy to categorize the Beatles’ music; more than any other group, their sound can be described as “Beatlesque.” It’s akin to a combination of Badfinger, Oasis, Corner Shop, and every other rock band that’s ever existed. The clandestine power derived from the autonomy of the group’s composition—each Beatle has his own distinct persona, even though their given names are almost impossible to remember. There was John Lennon (the mean one), Paul McCartney (the hummus eater), George Harrison (the best dancer), and drummer Ringo Starr (The Cat). Even the most casual consumers will be overwhelmed by the level of invention and the degree of change displayed over their scant eight-year recording career, a span complicated by McCartney’s tragic 1966 death and the 1968 addition of Lennon’s wife Yoko Ono, a woman so beloved by the band that they requested her physical presence in the studio during the making of Let It Be.
—Chuck Klosterman on the reissues, in The Onion’s A.V. Club
Okay, now Mike and Devin have to post their favorite paragraphs… 😉
Mollie, this line actually made me laugh out loud when I read it:
“…and the 1968 addition of Lennon’s wife Yoko Ono, a woman so beloved by the band that they requested her physical presence in the studio during the making of Let It Be.”
I was going to post it as a comment yesterday, but was away from my computer. Really funny article.
Re Klosterman, I may not have a favorite whole paragraph, but my favorite sentence comes in graf one and contains the words “the mouth of a lion.”
“They wanted to know why people cry and why people lie, and they embraced the impermanent pleasure of dance.” There’s nothing remotely funny about that line, and I’d be proud to say I’d written it.
Damn Straight, Pt. I: “She Said” and “For No One” ARE the secret keys to “Revolver.”
Damn Straight, Pt. II: Paul’s January ’69 beard IS tremendous.
On the downside, 1) CK flumblemuffs the first line of lyric on the first song on the first album! (Fact-checkers are always the first to be fired in a recession.) 2) It’s COLONEL Mustard. 3) And why, why, WHY??!??! am I the only person living or dead (besides Paul, before he was dead) who likes the “Taste” of the Beatles’ “Honey”? That song gets knocked more often than a whorehouse door.
But nits aside, and for not being a Klosterman fan, I loved this piece of alt-universe hilarity. Partly because it sent warm slooshy streams of memory flowing back in time toward a book read long ago, Mark Shipper’s “Paperback Writer.” I wonder if Michael, our resident comedy expert, knows that book? He must.
Devin, I know of that book, but have never read it. Something like it was my starting point for this latest book, lo those two-and-a-half years ago, but I found much more fertile territory in knowing fictionalization–think American Wife.
By the way, I also love Taste of Honey. And Mr. Moonlight, too (Lennon in full fucking throat, how great!). Then again, I found myself digging Revolution 9 recently, so…