Emitt Rhodes: The One Man Beatles
Emitt Rhodes, four musicians in one. “I hate those guys [The Beatles]! They ruined my life!”—Emitt Rhodes For a while I'd heard about Emitt Rhodes, famously called "the one man Beatles," but I'd never actually heard him. So I gave a listen and (unsurprisingly) liked it enough to share. Rhodes' career is a fairly standard Sixties story: guy forms a [...]
George Harrison joke in The Onion
A friend who works for The Onion wrote a George Harrison joke, which you can find here. George tells his own Beatles joke below. http://youtu.be/42udXDE36-0
Good Ol’ Freda: True tales from the Beatles’ loyal secretary
Guest review by LINDA MARSHALL-SMITH • When 17-year-old Beatles fan Freda Kelly was hired as Brian Epstein’s secretary in 1962, she couldn’t have known she was in for a uniquely intimate ten-year view of Beatlemania and its aftermath. Unlike many of the Beatles’ former associates, Kelly—a self-described “private person”—has kept her stories of the band under wraps for decades. In Ryan White’s [...]
World Party: What The Beatles Might Have Sounded Like Had They Been Just One Guy (Who Grew Up Listening to The Beatles)
Karl Wallinger c. 1991, Lennoning. DEVIN McKINNEY • Last week, my wife and I had the pleasure of seeing World Party perform at City Winery in Manhattan. World Party is Karl Wallinger, singer-songwriter and multi-instrumentalist who has been making music on and off since the late ‘70s, first with The Waterboys and then on his own. For the last few [...]
The Beatles (at the BBC) Again
The Beatles, with Pete Best on drums, rehearse for their first BBC appearance, Playhouse Theatre, Manchester, June 11, 1962. Photo by Mike McCartney. DEVIN McKINNEY • What a bounty this autumn brings us. In addition to the long (as in loooong) awaited first volume of the Lewisohn biography (the multiple iterations of which will blanket like sweet snow our Fall [...]
Three Ways: Beatles write about landscapes
NANCY CARR * In the late 60s the Beatles had three strong songwriters (and really, was that fair to other bands?), and thus three distinctive ways of treating the subjects they wrote about—landscapes, love, drugs, etc. (That's without getting into the significant variations within each songwriter's work). This time, I want to consider what Lennon, McCartney, and Harrison saw when they looked at landscapes. [...]
Pop Chart Lab Beatles Charts
Graphic swiped from Visual News. MIKE GERBER • "To render all of human experience into chart form”—is this a good idea? Unclear. Must we prepare for the ascension of our new, chart-toting overlords? Beyond the purview of this blog. All we can say for sure: Brooklyn-based graphic designers Pop Chart Lab have produced another in their series of incredibly beautiful, [...]
The Fifth Beatle graphic novel
MIKE GERBER • In keeping with our recent spate of blather on Brian Epstein, I wanted to alert Greater Dullblogania about something that I am certainly getting for Christmas (with the Lewisohn book, it's looking mighty Beatle-y this Noel). It's a new graphic novel about Brian called "The Fifth Beatle." They've got a snazzy website, and a book trailer, which I'm pasting [...]
Tune In by Mark Lewisohn…
This cover is what happens when a club flyer has sex with the phone book. ...is coming and I cannot wait! MIKE GERBER • According to this article, it's off the press in the UK. According to the author, if you think you've seen an advance copy, you haven't. There are lots of editions—US and UK, mass market (960pp) and Extended [...]