How Sweet to Be A Summer Rerun

Note: I'm reasonably sure it's a coincidence that I kept thinking of the last song in this post after watching cable news coverage of politicians and political pundits...

Originally Published May 2009

After the Rutles album came out, there was a lot of talk about how similar the songs were to Beatles songs (including this article, which proves that scholarly study of humor will almost immediately spiral into self-parody).

Unfortunately, the owners of the Beatles publishing (but not the Beatles themselves) decided that the Rutle songs were too close to Beatle songs and sued. In the process, Innes lost all the publishing and songwriting royalties for all the songs from the first Rutles album (and was so disgusted with the music business that he dropped out of music for several years). Add in legal squabbling with Eric Idle about legal ownership of the idea of the Rutles, and you've got enough to make you want to smash everything in sight. (And blame it on society.)


But the universe does have a way of showing that there is such thing as Karma, even if it takes longer than we want. In the mid-1990s, Oasis, a band whose music is often ignored while people focus on their influences and frequent fistfights, released a song called "Whatever" which -- and I'm not sure how to put this delicately -- sounds exactly like the Neil Innes song "How Sweet to Be an Idiot."

And, perhaps in part to make up for mistreating him financially with the Rutles, the universe awarded Innes royalties and co-writing credit on "Whatever."

Sweet.

Meanwhile Back on Ukulele

It's been a while since I checked in on the Beatles Complete on Ukulele project , which now boasts 124 Beatle songs performed in a variety of ways, in a variety of styles, but all with a Uke. New songs released each and every Tuesday.

Here's what caught my attention this time:

Erin Bowman combines great vocals, up-to-the-minute studio sounds, and back-to-the-50s Ukes for a bizarre and interesting take on "It's Only Love." Read more and listen here.

The Big V offer a more traditional rock take on "Misery" -- and the essay accompanying it say that Alan Clarke and Graham Nash (from the Hollies) threw in lyric suggestions that were included in the Beatles version. Yeah, the uke seems like an afterthought, but still, give it a listen.

Sharlotte Gibson brings phased, layered vocals, simple uke lines, and gorgeous string hits to a cover of "Hello Goodbye" that sounds like it could have been a hit in the early 70s. Listen here.

Now That You Know Who You Are

Tuned to a Natural E

"When you name something, it gives you power over it."

I don't believe that.

"Then how come you felt better when you learned the name of the weird flu you had?"

That wasn't about the name. It was about being able to get better.

"By using the name. Because knowing the name gave you power."

But what about before anyone named it? Naming a disease doesn't mean you've cured it.

"Maybe not. But if you divide everything into two... before you name it and after you name it... the before part is all swirling and amorphous."

And the after part is swirling and amorphous with a name.

"What about you? What were you before you had a name?"

I didn't exist. My parents named me long before I was born.

"Maybe they did. Maybe you just came into existence with a name. And that name seeped through the membranes until your parents recognized it. And knew it was part of you."



I can't find the reference anymore... But a few years ago someone told me that, before the word "hippie" caught on, people who were... basically hippies referred to themselves as "the Beautiful People." (And if you know where this "fact" originated, let me know.)

I know this much: John Lennon had a weird psychedelic song fragment called "One of the Beautiful People" and Paul McCartney had a chorus that started "Baby You're a Rich Man." And they strung the two together, tweaked the lyrics, and came up with a hippie anthem for the period just before anyone knew the word "hippie."

By the way, Wikipedia says the original mono mix of this song featured a spin echo feedback delay that bridged the end of one verse with the start of the next. When it came time to make a stereo mix, engineer Geoff Emerick could not recreate the spin echo effect, so he just took it out. (Feel free to compare and contrast.)

Moscow Girls Got Soul

A good song is a good song is a good song.

Over at Echoes in the Wind today, Whiteray dug through the Billboard charts from this week in 1969. Not so much the top of the charts (dominated by two songs from Hair, Glenn Campbell singing Jimmy Webb, Tommy Roe, the Temptations, the Zombies, and Blood Sweat & Tears), but the rest of the Hot 100.

Including an unlikely coulda-woulda-shoulda-been hit by Chubby Checker.

Certainly by 1969, it must have looked like Chubby Checker's best days were far behind him. Hell, even in his heyday, Checker seemed predestined to be a soon-to-be-forgotten novelty.

His stage name was a play on Fats Dominoe. In his first record, he imitated Alvin and the Chipmunks. And his signature song ("The Twist") was a dance-crazy novelty record.

A quick look at his career shows him going back to the same well over and over (with singles like "Let's Twist Again," "Twistin' USA," "Slow Twisting," "Twist It Up," and "Yo Twist"), then trying to "expand" his repertoire with other novelty dance songs ("Do the Freddy," "Dance the Mess Around," "Limbo Rock," "Pony Time," etc.).

By 1969, he was mostly forgotten in the U.S. (although he toured extensively throughout Europe).

Still, a good song is a good song is a good song.

And one of the signs of a good song is that you can rearrange it, put it into another style, and it's still a good song. Maybe it's an even better song in a different style because listeners bring with them the memory of the original, creating a hybrid experience when they hear a substantially reworked version.

And if there's one thing the Beatles knew well, it was good songs.

Whose idea was it to take the Chuck Berry-ish rocker "Back in the USSR" (with it's Beach Boys-inspired bridge) and rework it in a horn-fueled soul groove? Tom Sellers, who played in a pre-Oates band with Daryl Hall, arranged the song. And both Sellers and Hall played and sang on the record.

In a more just world, it would have been a hit and it might have given Chubby Checker the type of career rebirth Tina Turner enjoyed in the 1980s. But the record skimmed the bottom of the charts, peaked at number 82, then vanished.

And, up until this morning, I'd never heard it. Or even heard of it.

But now (with thanks to Whiteray and because a good song is a good song is a good song), here's Chubby Checker's comeback-that-never-was:

Telling Tales of Drunkenness and Cruelty

The Day After Meeting with the Tax Guy

We met yesterday with our accountant.

If Hogwarts had a tax department, this guy would lead it.

The meeting underscored what I already knew: 2010 was a shitty year financially.



And we're getting a refund.

Which is great.

But it doesn't make up for having a shitty year financially.



It's not that I mind paying taxes.

I'd just like to have more income. Preferably a lot more income.

Then I'd be more than happy to pay more taxes.

Seriously.

Just Something Fun

Just because.

Sometimes the world is sad beyond belief.

So, after the tragic events of this weekend, I wanted to post something that's just goofy and silly.

Here, nicked off Hey Dullblog ("for people who think about the Beatles maybe a little too much") is a dog who only responds to bad Liverpudlian accents:

Wish I Didn't Know Now What I Didn't Know Then

I've Avoided This for Over a Year

Partly because I didn't have the money. Partly because I didn't have the time to figure out if it was better to go mono or stereo. (I mean, the mono mixes were the ones they labored over... the stereo mixes were tossed off quickly by assistants with most of the principles long, long gone.) And partly because I just don't know how many times I can be expected to buy certain Beatles albums in "new" configurations.

Sure, I read all about the remasters.

But I hadn't heard them.

Until a few days ago.



Maybe I'd hoped I'd win the lottery (or at least pay off all my debts).

And maybe I'd secretly hoped the remasters wouldn't really be that different. Or that good.

But I'm sad to report that the remasters are crisper and clearer. And just plain better.



Damn it.

Guess I'd better start buying lottery tickets.

Meanwhile, I'm Still Thinking

Peter Brown called to say you can make it okay...

Over on The Beatles Complete on Ukulele, Tred weighs in with one of the weirdest Beatle covers in history. Declaring "The Ballad of John & Yoko" as the world's first tweet (albeit in song form and with a lot more than 140 characters), Tred deconstructs the song.

He also claims it's the precursor of today's societal inability to distinguish between celebrity's private lives and their art.

Leo the Lion

The Brave Hunter is Low to the Ground

12 pounds of lithe, sinewy grace.

Ears twitch from the other side of the house. He senses something, presses his body low to the ground and moves quickly and silently across the carpet.

A second later, he's in place.

In stalk posture. Whiskers forward. Poised before the window.

His DNA infused with the knowledge and instinct of big cats 50 times his size. And, like most Leos, he believes at times that he is a big cat. King of the Jungle.

He's a rescue. Found on the street, a few inches long and less than half a pound.

Goofy from the first time we saw him, he tried to curl up in his food bowl at the shelter, mewing like something from the scene of a Fisher-Price car accident. But when he first settled into my palm and looked up at me, he instantly relaxed. Totally calm, totally content, totally sweet. (And totally melting my heart even though I've always been a dog person and never had much use for cats.)

He's grown in the past 8 years -- now 42 inches from paw to paw when he stretches out.

But he's still goofy.

He recognized his reflection in the mirror quickly, but never quite understood the difference between the inside of a glass (or a cardboard box) and the outside. And he still regularly jumps backwards up in the air, disturbed by something only cats can see.

To this day, he's doglike -- he loves baths (except for the rinse cycle), plays fetch, and comes when you call him. He doesn't exactly bark with glee at the thought of car rides, but he's relatively happy to ride in the car.

Last year, he developed a urinary infection that was misdiagnosed by his old vet. This made him lethargic and he started gaining weight, eventually topping out at 18 pounds. His new vet quickly figured out the problem, gave him a course of antibiotics, and within 2 weeks his old energy was back.

So we put him on special diet food and put a bird feeder on the porch outside the living room window. Within 4 months, he was down to his bird-taunting goal weight of 12 pounds. He's an indoor cat, so he doesn't actually hunt down and kill the birds. But he'll stalk them from inside. And he'll charge the glass (or the screen) and make them fly away.

And always with a look that says "if it weren't for the window and screen, I'd be catching birds every single day!"

A few weeks ago, I was cleaning the porch and found a small dead bird. When I came inside, his whiskers were all forward. He gave me a knowing "urp" and a look that seemed to say "yeah, I killed that bird with my mind. We cats can do that, you know."


Happy Birthday, Sitka!

Update: For frequent commenter asiangrrrl, here's Sitka as a kitty, recommending one of his favorite books. (Teaching him to read was easy, getting him not to gnaw on the books was a lot harder...)

As you can see, his face has always been head-explodingly cute!

Never Say Hello

Familiar, but a bit off

The phone rang and I grabbed it. No hello, no introductory small talk. Just "So I accidentally lit my underwear on fire."

Because she never said hello. And she never bothered introducing anything. Everything was now, everything was tumbled up together, everything was a continuation at 100 miles per hour.

And you had your choice: jump on and keep up or jump off and escape.

There was always a reason to whatever crazy thing she said. If you stuck around. If you unpacked it.

She was lighting a candle. In the bathroom. Where her underwear was drying. And the dog knocked the candle over. Knocked it to the floor. But it didn't go out. It lit things on fire.

Things like underwear. And magazines. And maybe her roommate's hash supply.

This was normal. This was how she lived. This was what you had to expect.

The other choice was exile. And you didn't want the exile.

Because it felt good to be part of the circle. One of the ones who'd get the phone calls. Rush to catch up to the insane stories that started in the middle and worked their way in all directions.

The outside was crowded. With exiles who'd never light their underwear on fire, either by accident or on purpose.


Long periods of silence would follow the calls. And then the next call, again starting in the middle as if no time had past.

"So the state trooper wanted me to crush grapes with my feet with him, but I said I'd rather take the ticket," she said. No warm-up, no windup, just the pitch.

And God help you if you weren't ready.

Why would the state trooper want you to join him in crushing grapes with his feet?

That question could never be asked. Or, more accurately, it could only be asked once. Then, immediate exile.

"I shot a bullet hole through my igloo and I need it fixed in the next 20 minutes before the temperature gets down past 40 below."

But how do you know you've been exiled?

"I dreamt you were haunting me after death. So I need you to do a pre-emptive exorcism of yourself."

What's the difference between exile and the long months of silences?

"I know I told you if I were an animal, I'd be a gazelle, but I just realized I'm really a limur."

And how long is her list anyway? How many people does she cycle through before she calls you back again?

"I was just at Starbucks in line behind Ben Vereen and I realized I'd always gotten him confused with Bette Midler."

And where does reality end and fantasy start with her? Certainly not at the same place as with normal people.

So, one day I got a voicemail. "I'm heading into the mountains and the mist is clinging to the peaks like a lovesick teenager. And it's so beautiful I want to cry. But I can't because the mountain goats are looking intently for any sign of weakness."

And I thought long and hard about what really counts as normal.

Then I called her back. But the number had been disconnected.

And the long period of silence began again. Familiar, but different.

New Genre

More weird stuff I found on the web

Sometimes you just found stuff online that makes you smile even if it matters far less than you can say.

Along those lines, who knew there was an entire genre of foreign artists doing ska covers of Beatle songs?

From Mexico



From Switzerland:



And from Japan:

In Which Harry Nilsson Invents the Mashup

Old School.

These days, producers with computers strip vocals from one song, add beats, take samples from another song, add new vocals, and come up with something "new" (or at least new-ish).

(And if you're not sure you understand what a mashup is, listen to this. I'll wait.)

Harry Nilsson did the same thing. In 1967. With no computers or studio tricks.

Instead, Nilsson took a single Beatle song as a spine and wrapped around it vocal and instrumental licks from more than a dozen other songs. With no producers with computers to fix all his shitty tracks. The result was different from lame TV-show medleys and was fun and memorable (and a great way to respond to John Lennon's statement that Nilsson was his "favorite American band"). Not bad for a guy who was doing computer work for a bank and trying to peddle his songs to established acts. (Link for Gmail subscribers.)


Thirteen years later, Ringo Starr was in the middle of recording an album that would ultimately be retitled Stop and Smell the Roses. (John Lennon, 12 days before he was killed, gave Ringo demos of 2 new songs Lennon wrote for Ringo, including "Nobody Told Me." They made arrangements for Lennon to produce a session for Ringo to record the songs in early January 1981. When Lennon was killed in December 1980, Ringo couldn't bring himself to record the songs. An enhanced version of Lennon's demo would surface a few years later on the posthumous Milk and Honey album.)

For Stop and Smell the Roses, Harry Nilsson decided to revisit the technique he'd used for "You Can't Do That": with Nilsson producing (and singing background vocals) Ringo re-recorded his 1972 hit "Back Off Boogaloo" (now featuring the intro from "It Don't Come Easy" and more of a funk feel). Nilsson used "Back Off Boogaloo" as a structure from which he hung sections from a half-dozen other songs by Ringo and the Beatles. The result was mixed; mostly it worked, but it felt like it probably should have gone a lot farther. (Link for Gmail subscribers.)


So offering these examples from the years before Pro Tools and sophisticated music software, I put forth this simple idea:

Harry Nilsson invented the mashup.

Go Here, Read This, Listen to That

A Touch of Miscellany in the Night

Hey Dullblog, the self-proclaimed blog by and for "people who think about the Beatles maybe a little too much," has a couple of fascinating posts on the psychology of the Beatles: How John and Paul Reacted to the death of Brian Epstein (and why) and an alternate theory on the real sad reason the band broke up.

Peter's Power Pop presents Jane vs. World (featuring what might be a cautionary tale about star-crossed long-distance love in the internet age).

For the Love of Harry is giving away CDs in a spiffy contest.

Craig Ferguson explains everything to you.



And finally, Rooney (my favorite band named after a character from Ferris Bueller's Day Off) has a new album coming out next week. Here's a taste:

Declare the Pennies on Your Eyes!

Ah-ah, Mr. Wilson. Ah-ah, Mr. Heath

Completely absurd.

Not their real voices.

And yet... oddly appropriate.

It was 40 Years Ago Today

And so it began.

John Lennon wanted to announce in 1969 that the Beatles had broken up. But Paul McCartney knew they were in the middle of negotiating a lucrative distribution deal for Apple Records (and would get much less money if people thought there would never be another new Beatles album) and talked Lennon out of it.

McCartney himself casually announced the breakup exactly 40 years ago today.

As a way of plugging his first solo album.

In the middle of an interview he conducted with himself.

As if to prove he didn't need anyone else, McCartney played every instrument on that first album himself. (Unfortunately, he also wrote every song himself... even though he didn't have an album's worth of good songs.)

Go Here, Watch & Listen to This, Read That

More from the digital world of hunter/gathering.

Peter's Power Pop reminded me of the fabulous Mitch Friedman (a New York-based singer/songwriter who manages to corral both Andy Partridge and Dave Gregory from XTC to play on his records) and his very, very meta "This is A Song":


Swedesplease points out that this song from the Most is "perfectly crafted pop circa 1968" and the Jean-Luc Godard-influenced video could easily have come from 1968 (except for those shots of the cell phone):



And finally, Then Play Long (home of long, fascinating essays about each #1 British album of the rock era in order) draws the curtain down on the 60s (and the Beatles) with a meditation on Abbey Road. Give it a read.

The Mono Post

It's hard when your core beliefs are shattered.

I grew up thinking that stereo was just always inherently better than mono. And it makes sense if you think about it. If you could have two channels, why would you want to settle for one? It just makes sense that two is better than one and therefore stereo is twice as good as mono.

But I've come to the conclusion that this belief (which I never really questioned before) is ridiculous.

A few months ago when the Beatles remasters came out, I read a lot comparing the mono remasters to the stereo versions. Until about 1967 in the U.S. and 1968 in the U.K., most records sold were mono. The stereo versions were considered novelties. So while the bands would labor for days or weeks on getting exactly the right mono mix, it was often a junior engineer who would jimmy up a stereo mix in an hour or two. And a lot of those stereo mixes involved a lot of artificial separation (to emphasize that there were two separate channels) -- sometimes putting all the vocals on one side and all the instruments on the other. Needless to say, that's a crappy way to listen to music.

Then a funny thing happened to bands that had been around since the mid-60s: their early albums stopped being available in mono. So the public had to buy the stereo versions -- even though those were the versions whose mixes were tossed off with minimal involvement of the creative team that made the record.

This hit me like a ton of bricks when I recently heard a mono version of the Hollies' Greatest Hits. I own this record on vinyl (in stereo) and I love it. The harmonies are wonderful, the songs are great, and it just makes you smile from start to finish. And then I heard the mono mix of the same album.

It's like night and day.

In mono, the drums are sharp and visceral. The vocals are clearer and more natural. The guitars really chime. It's like being in a church that has perfect acoustics.

In stereo (and my vinyl copy had a sticker boasting of scientific stereo separation that was identical to hearing music live), everything feels smooshed together. The drums, guitars, and vocals get mashed together and the attempts to create spread and space just make the music sound muddy. It's like being in a clown car with 20 trombonists all playing in different keys at different tempos.

But even with the inferior sound, I still loved that album. Because the songs were great and even when they were poorly mixed they were still pretty great.

And it makes me wonder how many old records there are whose great mono mixes were discarded and the inferior stereo mixes (without any remixing or remastering to compensate) were put on CD and foisted on an unsuspecting public (or put on MP3 and compressed down to the point where the sound really suffered). All because we believe inherently that two channels has to be better than one.

But think about how ridiculous that is. Does that mean that anything recorded on 256 tracks is 64 times better than something recorded on only four tracks? So the latest Jonas Brothers album is 64 times better than Sgt. Pepper? Is the teenage girl with Pro Tools (or Garage Band) better than Carly Simon just because of technology?

Of course not.

Ultimately, it doesn't matter how many tracks you have or how many channels you master for. What matters is the quality of the songs and the quality of the performances.

And that's why inferior mixes of amazing songs still sound better than amazing mixes of inferior songs.

Still... I wish I would have had the mono version of that Hollies album for all these years.

Like a Bad Dream

Any song with a kazoo solo is okay by me.

To paraphrase Craig Ferguson, this is not a great day for America.

Even 29 years later, we can still dream, right? (Embedding's disabled, so you gotta click.)

Just ask Mike Scott from the Waterboys. Even if the harmonies were slightly off.

RIP John.

Kinks Month and the Beatles Ukebox

This is why Al Gore invented the Internets!

All month long, a group of dedicated followers of fashion have been listening to one Kinks album a day (in chronological order). Two of my favorite blogs, Pleasant Valley Sunday and The Song in My Head Today have been doing daily posts on all those Kinks albums. Compare and contrast (or at least go there and scroll back).


And red-hot atomic thanks to Never Get out of the Boat! for alerting me to a blindingly brilliant project: Brooklyn-based musicians Roger and Dave have decided to arrange, perform (on ukulele), record, and post cover versions of all 185 songs written and released by the Beatles (with 185 guest artists). They've been posting one of these a week since January and will keep posting one per week until they're done. And they also have been posting essays about the songs, musicians, etc.

In most cases, these are covers with full instrumentation (and often feature arrangements that depart quite a ways from the originals). Peruse the whole shebang here. I'd recommend checking out "I am the Walrus" (song 038) "Because" (song 017), and "Come Together" (song 007) then work your way up to "Revolution #9" (song 034).

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Cue the Spooky Music

Cue the spooky music.

Sixteen years ago this week, Leon Theremin died.

The Russian inventor of the weird electronic instrument that you play without touching it wanted to invent something you could play without expending any mechanical energy.

I'm pretty sure he didn't think it would one day be used for this:


Or this:


This past weekend, I was at a Halloween party where someone brought a theremin. And I'm here to tell you, it's impossible to play the theremin without making weird faces. (Or at least it is for me...)