So most people who listen to a few musics listen to the well-known sixties scouse boyband The Beatles. Children also listen to the Beatles. I’m all for people listening to the Beatles. People who like a lot of musics and don’t like the Beatles are being contrary or lying. IN ALL CASES!!!!
Anyways… I imagine most people don’t listen to whole Beatles albums most of the time. They listen to the songs they like best. I was just thinking about the Beatles songs that I actually listen to regularly and wondering what everyone else plays…
I listen to a bunch that just fit in with the other late 60s Rock I play. Psychier or heavier:
Glass Onion
While My Guitar Gently Weeps
Strawberry Fields
Tomorrow Never Knows
Long, Long, Long
Magical Mystery Tour
Flying
A Day In The Life
Blue Jay Way
These tracks can slip in amongst the breakrock and hard-hippie silliness. It’s pretty easy to get away with listening to these songs.
I also listen to a handful of pure pop tracks of theirs. Mostly ones I liked as a kid (I was nuts for the early albums) but minus the ones I can’t stomach as an adult having been robbed of my childhood optimism (think “I Wanna Hold Your Hand”, no, really you want to fuck):
I Feel Fine
Twist And Shout (It’s not as good as Ron, Kelly and Rudy though)
This Boy
Do You Want To Know A Secret (Poison Clan’s “Jeri Curl” = the best Beatles sample ever)
I Should Have Known Better
This stuff almost fits in with Rock N Roll/Rythm & Blues stuff and even poppy 60s Soul, except for the voices which sound real weird when mixed with the American stuff they’re emulating. Mixing them makes the Beatles sound like Pop Idol contestants. Still, I like it.
Then there’s a group of songs which I don’t seem to listen to as much as I think I do. I think if I was more of an Indie or 70s Rock fan I’d listen to these more, but I do like them:
Here Comes The Sun
Don’t Let Me Down
Being For The Benefit Of Mr. Kite!
Here, There and Everywhere
Across the Universe
She’s Leaving Home
The Fool On The Hill
Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds
I guess those are the ones people agree on the most.
I also listen to “Come Together” quite a lot but I think I kind of hate it at the same time. I think the singing is probably horrible and the music is great but sometimes I can’t tell…
Oh and I never listen to the HELP LP cos it’s pure rubbish. If I’d bought it at the time I’d have taken it back and swapped it for a Mrs. Mills party record or some MFP knockoff version of The Sound Of Music. Let It Be is pretty shit an’all.
Which Beatles tracks do you play and whats the logic? How do they fit into your listening habits?
Just because I was really happysurprised to find it on Youtube, here is the music video to begin all music videos, Strawberry Fields…
Caedmon’s Ernest Hemingway Reading LP sounds an awful lot like Colonel Walter E. Kurtz’ recordings in Apocalypse Now. The gatefold sleeve contains extensive notes on the recordings, written by Mary Hemingway and Hemingway’s biographer A.E. Hotchner (subject of the film King Of The Hill). Unlike almost all Caedmon records which are of superb sound quality, this LP contains home recordings. A.E. Hotchner writes:
One of Ernest Hemingway’s deadliest enemies was The Microphone. The Camera ran it a close second, but The Microphone was the blackest villain that stalked his life, and despite the persistent blandishments of radio stations, television producers and record companies, he successfully fended off all efforts to put him in the grips of The Demon Mike.
But Over the years, under special circumstances, Ernest did record a few things for me on an old Webster wire recorder the he kept in his finca in Cuba, and on a transistorized pocket recorder called a Midgetape which we took on our travels. These wires and tapes, imperfect though they are, are virtually the only record we have of his voice. (The one exception is his acceptance of the Nobel Prize which was recorded by a Havana radio station.) This album contains, in addition to the Nobel acceptance, five recordings made during 1948-1961, which was the span of time I knew him.
The homemade feeling of the record carries over to the sleeve, with cover photo taken by Mary Hemingway and the candid picture of the couple attending a bullfight in Pamploma. This record is strangely personal and a bit disturbing but I guess that fits the profile we have of Hemingway. Regardless of his opposition to microphones he has a real character and presence when reading his work, something many authors that record profusely lack entirely. If he hadn’t terminated himself (with extreme prejudice) at 61 we might have heard more from him.
It doesn’t seem to be available on CD at all, the tapes belonging to Hotchner rather than Caedmon’s now parent company Harper Audio, but copies do pop up on Musicstack and Amazon sellers from time to time.
Recommended.
The below video is effectively “The autobiography of Soulja Boy, aged 17″.
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If you’re American then Crank Dat Soulja Boy was a number one single and you don’t need an introduction. If you’re over this side of the pond and you haven’t heard of him, all you really need to know is that he is a dance craze and dance crazes are GREAT THINGS.
Nowadays dance crazes play out not so much in the clubs (although they still do) as on Youtube, a service invented strictly for dance crazes.
The second most important thing about Soulja Boy is that he has written his name on his sunglasses with Tip-ex pen, a move clearly meant as a FUCK YOU to Kanye’s designer shits. Tip-ex pen is mightier than the sword. Supermanned!
