May 13 – Let It Be… A Bit Better Quality

If the full length one is a bit too much for you, but the trailer isn’t nearly enough, the magical world of Disney might have the answer for you. We’re talking about the Beatles and the story of their Let it Be album, of course. It was very much in the spotlight a couple of years back with the release of the Get Back documentary, this week it’s back in the headlines due to the re-release of the Let it Be documentary. Coincidentally, that movie came out on this day in 1970, only a few days after the album of the same name did.

If it seems a little confusing, this is the short explanation. The Beatles had cameras rolling during their early 1969 rehearsals and practices in London, as they prepared to make a new record (which was Let it Be) and culminating in the famous concert on their Apple Records building rooftop. There were countless hours of footage, much of it them just sitting around talking, or playing a few loose riffs. They edited it down to make an 80 minute documentary, 1970’s Let it Be, but super-producer Peter Jackson decided the public wanted to, and deserved to, see more of that footage, so he went to work on the 2022 epic documentary, Get Back, which was of vastly better image and sound quality (due to new technology) and gave a more thorough picture of the times for the Fab Four. Now, Disney has worked on remastering the original, shorter doc, and have it available on their streaming TV service.

The original was co-produced by the band’s Apple Records, with Neil Aspinall (their friend and at time, boss at Apple) in charge and Michael Lindsay Hogg directing. It was released first in New York, then a week later in Liverpool…with no Beatles anywhere in sight.

It was a tumultuous time for the great band; tensions were high, John seemed more interested in spending time with Yoko Ono than his bandmates, they quarreled over who best should manage them to fill the void Brian Epstein left with his death and George Harrison was sick of being overlooked and briefly walked out and quit the band altogether. There were moments when they seemed happy and enthusiastic about the project, as well as when they seemed fully involved in creating the music, but many thought the initial release missed that. Ringo Starr elaborated recently “I was always moaning about the original film, because there was no real joy on it.” John Lennon had said “the camera work was set up to show Paul and not show anybody else…(they) cut it as ‘Paul is God’ and we’re just lying around.” Indeed the footage did show Paul trying to take charge and at times boss the others around, but arguably that was because he was the only one really interested in getting work done and moving forward. Oddly McCartney was the one pushing for it to be re-released years ago, admitting “the objections should be me. I don’t come off well on it.”

At the time, response was muted to it. Fans were probably too shocked to realize the Beatles had broken up to really assess the film, or even the album. Back then Leonard Maltin said it was “uneven and draggy” but “rescued by” its music. That music won them (or at least John, Paul and George… somehow they overlooked Ringo) an Academy Award for Best Original Song Score. The New Yorker in 1970 said it was “a very bad film, and a touching oneabout the breaking apart” of the band who seemed like an “ageless family of siblings.” Over the years, Rotten Tomatoes has looked at reviews and rates it about 74%… quite good. Most agree that the expanded Get Back is better however.

Paul may still come off badly and John may seem to be lying around too much, but all agree the newly restored version is far clearer and of better visual and sound quality than the 1970 release. If you want to check it out yourself, you’ll need to have Disney TV, although it’s entirely possible a home DVD release may be coming this summer. It’s not officially been available for home release since a (poor quality) VHS in limited quantities in the 1980s.

May 4 – May The Fourth Be With You, Musically

Since this day has been pretty much designated as “Star Wars Day” (May the fourth be with you…that never gets old) why don’t we look a bit at the music of Hollywood’s favorite movie franchise, and in particular the first one.

Star Wars – back then that was its name, as a standalone it needed no “A new hope” tagged on – was of course a sensation when it opened in May, 1977. Movie viewers hadn’t seen special effects like that before, the droids R2D2 and C3PO charmed and there was the epic Good vs. Evil tension running all through it, all wrapped around a G-rated love triangle. No surprise it soon broke box office records and would be the biggest-grossing movie of all-time for the next four years or so, until the E.T. arrived on the scene and screen. Little surprise then that the movie was popular enough to launch two different versions of the theme onto the charts simultaneously!

An epic tale needed an epic, larger-than-life score and Star Wars delivered. Composer John Williams worked with the London Symphony Orchestra to deliver a bold, dramatic soundtrack that featured themes for the main characters and crescendos to build the tension. Movie-goers seemed to love the audio enhancement to the film. The film score was put out on the same day as the movie as a double-album, the different pieces having titles referring to their spot in the movie: “”Princess Leia’s Theme”, “Cantina Band” and so on. The album sold well enough to go platinum in the US. More surprising, the main title theme was released as a 7” single…and sold! The opening theme, technically Luke’s theme, is one of the most recognizable bits of movie sound ever and managed to hit #10 on Billboard‘s singles chart. It is if you think about, rather astounding that an instrumental work of classical music, played by an orchestra was played side by side with the likes of Peter Frampton, the Bee Gees and the Eagles on pop radio! Such was the appeal of Star Wars.

The soundtrack went on to win the Academy Award for Best Original Score, Grammys for that and Best Pop Instrumental and years later be named the Greatest American Movie Score by the American Film Institute. That organization also gave John Williams a Lifetime achievement Award in 2016 for his work making the movies so many love sound the way they do- besides Star Wars, he did the soundtracks of Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Schindler’s List, E.T., three Harry Potter movies and, well about half the box office smashes of the last 40 years.

Domenico Monando was a fan to be sure. The man who went by the nickname “Meco” saw the flick on its opening day, and by the end of the weekend had viewed it five times. He loved it, liked the music… but thought something was missing from it.

Meco had been a solid trombone player, playing in a band with Chuck Mangione in New York during the ’60s and adding horns to songs like Tommy James’ “Crystal Blue Persuasion”. By the mid-70s, he had become a fan of disco (“when disco was new, it was fresh and exciting because it was different,” he says, “but pretty soon it became too cookie-cutter”) and worked as part of a team which produced disco hits like Gloria Gaynor’s “Never Can Say Goodbye”.

Liking the sound, loving the music, Meco decided what it needed was a disco touch to make it palatable to the masses. He recorded a disco mix of the – well, a mishmash of the main points of the soundtrack, with R2D2 beeps and laser sounds dubbed in- and put it out, both as a single and part of a quickly-produced LP called Star Wars and other Intergalactic Funk. The Star Wars theme dragged out to 15 booty-shaking minutes on the album.

Meco was wrong about the orchestral version lacking commercial appeal, as we saw. But he was spot on when he thought a disco version would be the right sound for the times. His single was a #1 hit in the US and Canada and to date is the only instrumental single ever to get a platinum record in the States.

Williams went on to work on subsuquent parts of the Star Wars trilogy but none went on to garner large sales or iconic status. One has to be a bit surprised that Disney, which bought the rights to the whole empire in 2012, hasn’t done more to create a pop-sounding ear candy for the newer flims given the success they had with soundtracks like Frozen and The Lion King. But no matter what they do, one tends to think the diehards will consider only one piece of music as the sound that matters for the films – that opening theme from a long time ago!

April 30 – Music Map Met Seattle 33 Years Ago

Was it the day when Seattle was “put on the map”? Some people think so. Yesterday we talked about one of Kurt Cobain’s favorite bands, The Pixies. Today we look at Cobain and his band, Nirvana itself. Because on this day in 1991, the Seattle grunge trio signed to DGC Records, a division of Geffen and were on their way to conquering the world.

At that point, Nirvana were a regional, niche band. They’d signed to the indie label Sub Pop, and put out their first real album, Bleach, in 1989. It was noisy and raw and got fairly decent reviews and a loyal, but small following mostly in Washington state. Within a year or so, it had sold 40 000 copies – good for alternative rock on a small label with limited distribution powers. What’s more, the band didn’t figure Sub Pop even tried very hard with them, compared to some other acts they had. In 1990, they’d replaced iffy drummer Chad Channing with Dave Grohl and had opened for Sonic Youth on a short tour. This gave them access to talk to that band, and particularly Kim Gordon from it as Sonic Youth had started out a small indie act but had recently signed to a big label – also DGC. They seemed to give the change a “thumbs up”, so after also talking to Alice In Chains and Soundgarden (both also on the way up with big corporate deals) Nirvana decided they should follow suit.

They’d started working a little with Butch Vig, and Cobain felt they were getting better too. “ The early songs were really angry…the (new) songs are getting poppier and poppier as I get happier and happier”, he said at the time, rather ironically given his future. They sent out demos to the biggies, and after talking to a few followed their friends to DGC. It’s reported DGC gave them about $287 000 ($700 000 or so today) as an advance, presumably to cover the recording of their debut album for the company. Bleach, for comparison’s sake cost them $606 to make.

The rest is history. As we know, that album was Nevermind, and not only is it regarded as the album that changed rock’s course in the ’90s, while Bleach had sold 40 000 total copies, it was selling 400 000 per week by late 1991! Eventually it would top 20 million albums.

Did DGC feel snubbed by it all? Apparently not. They seemed to realize they didn’t have the resources to fully support a major international act and by all reports wished Cobain, Noveselic and Grohl the best. Bruce Pavitt of that label said “when I first moved to Seattle in 1983, most people in the world wouldn’t be able to find Seattle on a map. Post-1991, that all changed. Nirvana did for Seattle what the Beatles did for Liverpool.”

April 5 – They Were The Radio Worldwide

Well if you had the radio on 39 years ago today, chances are you heard this one. It was rising quickly up the charts and soon to knock Phil Collins’ “One More Night” out of the #1 spot on Billboard. And for about five minutes it would seem, there wasn’t much getting away from it. We’re talking about the charity single “We Are The World”, which had come out a month earlier and was on its way to becoming one of the top 10 selling (hard copy) singles of all-time.

The hastily-formed band USA For Africa had taken their cue from British Band Aid and their similar single, “Do They Know It’s Christmas” from a few months earlier. As you’re probably aware, both were designed to raise funds for combatting famine in parts of Africa, particularly Ethiopia. That had been the brain child of Bob Geldof and Midge Ure, and their Band Aid featured a number of top British stars from Boy George to to Simon LeBon to the then-omnipresent Collins to Ireland’s Bono. A few American musicians like Harry Belafonte, Lionel Richie and producer Quincy Jones realized that Britain was doing that and the U.S. wasn’t, and as one documentary showed, they felt especially bad that – and we know, they know it shouldn’t matter, but it was pointed out – most of the people starving were Black Africans and the ones in music trying to do something positive for them were White Brits. So that trio took it upon themselves to do something for the African crisis themselves, and added probably the biggest star in the world at the time, Michael Jackson to their collective to help Richie write a fund-raising song. The result was “We Are The World.”

Recorded hastily in one long night in L.A., it featured a who’s who of American pop and R&B talent then – among the solo singers on it were Richie and Jackson as well as Billy Joel, Bruce Springsteen, Bob Dylan, Kenny Rogers, Tina Turner and Steve Perry; while members of Huey Lewis’ backing The News, the Pointer Sisters, John Oates, even actor Dan Aykroyd were among the background singers doing the chorus. The music itself was done largely by the team who’d played on Michael Jackson’s Thriller, including Toto’s David Paich on synthesizer, drummer JR Robinson and bassist Louis Johnson of the Brothers Johnson. Although there were a few tense moments – Waylon Jennings walked out in disgust midway through, Cyndi Lauper clung to Billy Joel because she apparently felt very uncomfortable with all the others, and noticeably Prince didn’t show up although invited – it went off pretty well and most , yes, even Bob Dylan , seemed to enjoy themselves there. Netflix recently put out an interesting movie about the making of the song, called The Greatest Night In Pop.

Anyway, fast forward to April 5 that year, which happened to be Good Friday. The organzers came up with an event where radio stations were asked to play the song at the same time – by most reports 3:50 GMT PM(England) time, or about 10:50 in the morning in the Eastern U.S. About 8000 stations took part, and St. Patrick’s Cathedral in New York played it over speakers while people sang along outside. It helped the single jump to #1 the following week and stay there for a month.

When all was said and done, “We Are The World” sold over 20 million copies and raised $60 million or more by 1990, which was around when they dissolved the organization. One of its directors, Ken Kragen said “we never started out to form an organization, there are lots of organizations working in these areas doing some good jobs.” It would appear the record/CD is long out of print, but if you wanted to relive I, it’s available online and streaming.

March 1 – Canada Was Fairly XTC-tatic Over Brit Band

It was a good day for XTC in 1980! Earlier this week we looked at how they ended the 1980s with their critically-acclaimed double album Oranges and Lemons. Today, we look at how they began that decade. They picked up their first-ever gold record, but not from their homeland. Instead the English quartet got it from Canada for the Drums and Wires album. Drums and Wires was the third album for them and as allmusic note retrospectively, it was a “turning point for the band, with a more subdued set of songs that reflect an increasing songwriting proficiency.” It gave the record 4.5 stars out of 5, as did often curmudgeonly critic Robert Christgau, who called it “wilfully eccentric pop…moving towards a great art-pop mean that will set standards for the genre.”

Although the North American release included “Life Begins at the Hop“, a standalone single at home for them, and “Ten Feet Tall”, a popular track on several of their compilations, the album garnered notice largely for the single “Making Plans for Nigel”. It was a top 20 hit in the UK and Canada.

It’s been mentioned here before that Canada was especially receptive to new wave bands in the ’80s. some of that probably ties in to the country’s closer ties to Britain and the Commonwealth, some might come from the TV show The New Music, a weekly show that aired videos pre-MTV and MuchMusic (it strongly preferred playing British, new wave or punk-ish videos it would seem) while some of it might come from the effect of the popularity of CFNY-FM in Toronto, the country’s largest market. That station championed bands like Depeche Mode and The Cure early in their careers.

Whatever the reason, it’s no surprise quirky XTC would garner tangible measures of their popularity there first; one thinks they might have become superstars there (if not the U.S.) in subsequent years had singer Andy Partridge not had so many issues that kept him from going there much at all. He suffers from a well-known fear of flying and also has had anxiety attacks on stage so by 1982 the band had quit touring entirely.

February 29 – Extra Tracks For Extra Day

February 29th, “Leap Day”, is rather a bonus day, so how about some bonus songs for the day?

Generally to state the obvious, when you look at the back of an album cover, you either see a listing of all the songs on the record, or else cryptically nothing at all – let the buyer beward. But there are a few examples of hidden, or “bonus” tracks – songs not listed on the album notes but present for the patient listener who lets the LP or CD run to the end.

Take for instance, Crowded House. Their third album, Woodface, lists 14 songs. But the listener who was somehow preoccupied and didn’t get the album off the player when it “ended” found they were still there… with a part of a track called “I’m Still Here” following the official last song “How Will You Go?” after a 30-second silence. A 2016 reissue of the album had the entire 2:19” version of “I’m Still Here” at its end. Go figure.

When R.E.M. signed with Warner Brothers, they wanted to change things up just a little from what they’d done with IRS Records previously. Apparently Michael Stipe told the others “not to write any more R.E.M.-style songs” for Green, their late-’88 debut on the big label. The result was a little infusion of mandolins, a record that was “a little more upbeat lyrically as well as musically” Mike Mills suggests and saw them break more ground into becoming a major international act with hits like “Stand” and “Orange Crush.” And it also saw them tease their fans with an almost unlisted song. The album back lists 10 songs, by track number, title and length, and a mysterious “3:15” listed after the tenth track.

That three-plus minutes was a very good little track with a catchy backbeat that opens with the upbeat statement “the world is big, but so are we” and Mike Mills adding a nice harmony to Stipe’s usual vocals. The song is quite good, but lacks an obvious chorus and is typically simply title “Untitled”, although Diffuser went a step deeper in their research and found the band had copy-righted it as simply “11.” Michael Stipe says of it, “at the time it was really cool to have unlisted, ‘hidden’ tracks for the fans.” Apparently that might have been the plan right from the get-go; Mike Mills told us at A Sound Day that he doesn’t remember them ever having even a working title for the song.

Probably the best-known example of the “hidden” track in rock though is the last track on The Clash‘s London Calling … a song which amazingly would go on to be their first North American hit single, despite not showing up on the album listing. “Train In Vain” was a danceable, hummable little track everyone liked … which is probably why it got added at last minute to the record. This wasn’t an obvious ploy to be cute by The Clash, mind you. The song had been cut and was supposed to be distributed as a bonus with the NME magazine, a great way to add sales to a publication But at the last moment the mag balked on it, citing some problems with cost and manufacturing a “flexi” single so it was an orphan. CBS Records and the band decided to add it to the pressing at last minute, but the covers had already been printed… without “Train in Vain.” If you have a newer copy of the LP or the CD, you likely will find the error has been rectified and it is no longer a hidden song.

So there you have it, three bonus songs for your bonus day! “Leap” to your collection and blow off the dust and maybe you’ll find even more examples yourself.

February 26 – When He Became The ‘King Of Pop’?

We didn’t know it at the time, but musical history was being made this day in 1983. Men At Work’s Business As Usual had had the #1 album in the U.S. for 15-straight weeks, a rather remarkable tally for anyone let alone a debut album, but they were knocked off the top by Michael Jackson. Thriller was his sixth solo album, but only second as a real “adult” after leaving Motown, coming three years after Off the Wall. It had taken almost three months but it reached #1…and became one of the defining cultural landmarks of the decade.

Jackson had spent over six months making the album, setting out to make a spectacular record. CBS gave him a lofty (for the times) $750000 budget to get it done. He said he wanted an album where “every song was killer…why can’t every one be like a hit song?” He worked with high-end producer Quincy Jones and brought in a bevy of highly-talented musicians to back him including David Foster, James Ingram, Eddie Van Halen and four members of Toto. And when all was said and done, many figured he had indeed accomplished his goal of putting together and album where every song was like a hit.

At the time, Rolling Stone called the record “zesty” and praised Jackson for “facing challenges head-on with a feisty determination” and concluded he was a “prodigiously talented performer.” The Village Voice found some filler among the nine tracks but still declared it “almost classic” in stature. The New York Times suggested it was a “wonderful pop record” despite “slightly anonymous production” and suggested there were “hits here too.” How right they were.

The duet with Paul McCartney “The Girl is Mine” was the lead-off single from it; before all was said and done, there would be seven singles off it… leaving only “Baby Be Mine” and “the Lady in My Life” as non-singles on the album! Even Epic Records were surprised by that; they didn’t want to put out the final one (the title track) as a single, calling it a “novelty” song they thought no one would listen to on radio. Jackson had the clout by then to over-ride them, and it came out and went into the top 10, like the six singles before it…an accomplishment that was unprecedented at the time. Indeed, the song “Thriller” would score Jackson a platinum single, like five of the preceding singles off the album…only the dog-gone “The Girl Is Mine” failed to hit that plateau. One might imagine Casey Kasem got weary of talking about The Gloved One back then; there was merely one single week in the 1983 calendar year that some single off Thriller wasn’t in the Top 40… and that was a week when Jackson was still represented, via another duet with McCartney, “Say Say Say” off the ex-Beatles’ Pipes of Peace. Those not enthralled by the Thriller would in fact have to wait until mid-April, 1984, to find a top 40 lacking its presence being felt.

Which was also about when the album itself was finally dethroned for good from the top of the weekly charts. After taking down Business As Usual in early-’83, Thriller spent 17-straight weeks at #1in the U.S. before the Flashdance soundtrack took over. But it did that for only one week, Thriller was back at #1 after that and would end the year spending 22 weeks on top…and then start ’84 there too. Eventually it spent 37 weeks at #1, the second longest run on top for any album ever, trailing just West Side Story. The nearest competition for that in the rock era was Fleetwood Mac’s Rumours, which topped the charts for 31 weeks. As of today, Thriller‘s put in a total 509 weeks on the Billboard album chart…although it will have to sell and sell some more for years more to catch up to the record-holder in that category, Dark Side of The Moon, at 962 weeks… or about 18-and-a-half years on the sales charts!

Some would say it was fitting that it got to the #1 spot in February, with it being Black History Month, because Thriller is often cited as single-handedly changing the face of pop music back then. After the disco craze died down, Black musicians were largely marginal to the mainstream market for awhile, putting out dance or soul records that were often limited to Black or R&B radio stations. Before Thriller, Donna Summer had been the last Black artist to have a #1 album in the States, and that had been the very first week of the ’80s. Jackson changed that quickly, with his singles getting airplay alongside Springsteen and the Police on hit radio. “Beat It” even made it to #14 on the Mainstream Rock charts, something very few Black artists had done prior. And with his well-choreographed, expensive videos for the singles, MTV suddenly welcomed him in , many would say opening the door for the likes of Prince and Lionel Richie soon after.

Thriller would go on to win eight Grammys at the ’84 show, including Album of the Year and Record of the Year and sell in the tens of millions. Currently it’s sold over 34 million in the U.S., second only to the Eagles Greatest Hits, and an estimated double that worldwide making it arguably the most popular record album yet around the globe. Seems like CBS/Epic got their money’s worth for that $750000 budget!

So, down feel down Men At Work…you were knocked off the top by a giant. Because whether you love it or hate it, or possibly even are just indifferent to the album, it’s undeniable that when it came to music in the ’80s, moonwalking Michael Jackson was the king.

February 23 – Toto Showed Grammy Voters

It’s Grammys time of year, and indeed on this night in 1983, the 25^th Annual ones were given out in L.A. While the Willie Nelson classic “Always on My Mind” (actually written by Christopher, James & Carson) took home the Song of the Year award, and John Mellencamp, still “John Cougar” at the time, would win his first, for Best Male Rock Performance, the big winners of the night were Toto. They took home a trio of big awards, for Album of the Year (Toto IV), Record of the Year (“Rosanna”) and non-classical Producer of the Year (for Toto IV again.) Meanwhile, Australia’s Men at Work took home the Best New Artist…which might have had them feeling a tad less lucky than you might think

You see, the Grammy for Best New Artist hasn’t been much of a guarantee of a long or successful career in music. The night’s champions, Toto, for example were nominated in 1979, as were Elvis Costello the Cars and Chris Rea. However, they all lost to A Taste of Honey, an L.A. Disco outfit who’d had the platinum-selling dance hit “Boogie Oogie Oogie” the year before. As we know, Toto and The Cars both became staples of pop/rock radio and MTV in the ’80s, Elvis Costello sold decently and was a critics’ favorite and Rea did alright at least in Britain. A Taste of Honey, however, became staples of 1970s One Hit Wonder compilations. To be fair, they actually did score one more top 5 single in North America and New Zealand, “Sukiyaki” but that was about it for them.

And that seemed to be a not unusual story for the Grammys and the Best New Artist of their choosing. While they did pick some greats who would go on to indeed be superstars, notably The Beatles in 1965 (for the ’64 year) and some who’d at least have very good careers, like America in 1973, Cyndi Lauper in ’85, Sheryl Crow in ’95 and so on, for every one of them there’s been a Starland Vocal Band (1977), Milli Vanilli – infamously revoked later leading to no winner officially in 1990 – or Debbie Boone (1978). Making it worse, those beat out artists like Boston, in the case of Starland, Foreigner in Boone’s case or Dire Straits, the Blues Brothers and, curiously, comedian Robin Williams who all lost to Rickie Lee Jones in 1979.

Maybe more disturbing than that are the artists never nominated for the award, a list which looks sort of ludicrous with 20/20 hindsight. Artists like the Rolling Stones never got nominated but Astrudo Gilberto did in 1965 (the year the Stones would have qualified, for the ’64 calendar year), Nor did Bruce Springsteen, but Marie Osmond and Eumir Deodato did that year. Neil Young? Nada, but O.C. Smith did. And U2, whom we noted a few days back lead all groups in Grammy wins? Nope. Artists like Robbie Dupree and Amy Holland got the chance ahead of them.

All this isn’t really meant to belittle the Grammy committee. I would dare say most of us, had we picked a new artist of the year would have picked some amazing One Hit Wonders along the way and could easily have missed a Springsteen or Neil Young or Carole King. By the way, unlike Toto, Men At Work never won another Grammy, nor did they recapture their 1982 success although their sophomore album, Cargo, did decently on charts and with critics.

None of us have that good a crystal ball it seems. However, it is a message for 2024 recipient Victoria Monet. Nicely done Victoria…but you might want to go to night school to have a career to fall back on. Just in case you’re the next Starland Vocal Band instead of the next Beatles.

February 20 – Turntable Talk 23 : I’ve Been Working Like A Dog

Welcome back to Turntable Talk! This is our 23^rd round, and our third calendar year, for those keeping count. If you’re curious, there’s a bit of an index to past topics we’ve covered. By now all our regular readers know how this goes, but for any new readers, first, welcome! And second, briefly, on Turntable Talk we have a number of guest columnists from other music sites, sounding off on one particular topic. This month our topic is The Soundtrack of My Life. We asked our guests to pick a great movie soundtrack and tell us what’s great about it. For almost as long as there’ve been talking movies, producers realized that a good soundtrack adds to the product… and for almost as long as there’ve been record albums, the record companies have known a good movie tie-in can generate sales. Old, new, original songs for the film or a compilation of older tunes… there’s a lot of celluloid vinyl to choose from!

Today we go to the Peachtree State to welcome John from The Sound of One Hand Typing. There he dishes up a tasty mix of music and general thoughts on life’s meanings and moments…including perhaps movies to see.

The first movie I can remember wanting to see was The Beatles’ A Hard Day’s Night, which starred The Beatles, Wilfrid Brambell, Norman Rossington, John Junkin, and a host of other British actors and actresses. I was eight and a huge Beatles fan already, and pestered my mother to see it. She said “one day after school, Johnny, I’ll take you.” Needless to say, I never got to see it then.

My next opportunity was on Tuesday, October 24, 1967, when NBC (WNBQ in Chicago) was airing it during primetime.

I would have seen it then, except Mom came home from school and announced that she had to go to some sort of assembly that evening, and since she couldn’t get a sitter, we would have to go with her. I watched as much as I could before I was ordered to turn off the TV and come on. After said assembly, she was angry at me for acting like I didn’t want to be there. I thought to myself, it wasn’t an act, I didn’t want to be there.

It was several years later that the planets aligned and I finally saw the movie. And, naturally, I loved it. (It was probably better that I saw it at home: a friend of mine went to see it at the theater, and said he couldn’t hear half of it for all the screaming girls.)

The logline for the movie is “Over two ‘typical’ days in the life of The Beatles, the boys struggle to keep themselves and Sir Paul McCartney’s mischievous grandfather in check while preparing for a live TV performance.” In the interest of brevity, I won’t go into many details, except to say that the Fab Four are forced to “adult” when they really want to “kid.” One of my favorite scenes in the movie is when they escape from the TV studio to go play in a field, to the tune of “Can’t Buy Me Love.”

Another favorite scene is where George gets lost in the studio and ends up in a marketing office, where he is asked for his honest opinion and he makes the mistake of giving it.

When all is said and done, The Beatles put on their TV appearance, they’ve made sure Paul’s grandfather can’t get away, and they all live happily ever after.

I can’t do the movie justice in a brief blog post. It’s available to stream on YouTube and Amazon, and I recommend it highly.

The music is, of course, the real star. All of the music scenes were extracted and summarized in this video.

February 14 – An Easy Anniversary Date For Them To Remember

It’s supposed to be the most romantic day on the calendar, so it’s no surprise lots of people get married on this day. That applies to musicians as much as other people, it would seem. Unfortunately, in music as with other walks of life, those unions don’t  always work out to a happy fairytale ending.

For example, the Grateful Dead’s Jerry Garcia married his third and last wife, Deborah Koons on Valentine’s in 1994. This was shortly after he divorced his second wife, Carolyn Adams. Adams and he had been married since 1981, yet he says they hadn’t lived together since the ’70s…she was his main girlfriend going back to the late-’60s and had a couple of daughters with him. Maybe Deborah and he would have made an even better go of it, but sadly Jerry passed away the following year.

Courtney Love may have married a singer called James Moreland on Valentine’s ’89; it was such an insignificant part of her life apparently, no one is even sure of the real date. Some reports had it listed as being in July. Either way, she later called it a “joke” and had it annulled very quickly. Kurt Cobain entered her scene shortly after.

Even more of a failure was Elton John’s first marriage, to sound engineer Renate Blauel on Feb. 14, 1984 in Australia. He seemed to feel it necessary to quell persistent rumors that he was gay; rumors that of course he probably heightened when he later married David Furnish! He apparently told her he wanted a divorce while they were still on their honeymoon though they stuck it out on paper until 1988. He says of Renate, “she was the classiest woman I ever met but it was never meant to be. I was living a lie.”

And on this day in ’96, Prince married his first wife, Mayte Garcia. The gal had been a backup dancer on his tours since 1991; she’d been moderately famous since appearing on That’s Incredible at age 8 as a belly dancer! Perhaps more incredible than that, Prince met her when she was 16 and somehow became her legal guardian when she was 17! The pair had a son in 1996 but unfortunately he died at just a week of age and they never really got over that. They divorced three years later but when he died, Garcia said of him “this man was my everything. we had a family. I am beyond deeply saddened.” 

Does popping the question on Heart Day give one better chances at lasting happiness? Well, probably not. Lady Gaga said “yes” to Taylor Kinney on this day in 2015. He was an actor who’d been in one of her videos four years prior. Unfortunately she then said “no” and called it off the following year. But, take heart…not every Valentine’s Day connection ends badly… we hope. Katy Perry got engaged to actor Orlando Bloom on Feb. 14, 2019 and they had a daughter together the following year. Although they’ve had a bit of a rocky road, apparently they are still together and currently happy. Maybe she kissed Orlando and liked it even more than a girl. May we suggest they don’t go to the altar on the 14th day of February however!