There have been threads about The Beatles since the original Word v1 site (of which Tigger’s White album post below is just the latest). The recent publicity given to 50 years since Sgt Pepper, the thread on Rolling Stones songs ordered by merit, plus comments elsewhere on Ian McDonald’s Revolution In The Head got me thinking and planted a seed.
I propose to listen to every Beatles song in turn, and post a commentary on each one of them, first to last. The order of songs will be guided by MacDonald’s book; while I may refer to, concur with or disagree with IMac’s opinions or extract notable information the thoughts will be mine and I hope yours.
Just to be clear, the main purpose of referring to Revolution In The Head is to use it as a chronological guide. I’m not proposing a redundant exercise of re-analysing the songs as McDonald did, but want to consider their impact on me and I want to read your thoughts on how they hit you. I recall almost all of them first time around. How have younger members come across them and how do you feel about them?
So we can discuss EVERY Beatles song. The brilliant, those that are merely good, the bad and the abysmal. I want opinions about the songs, memories stirred by them, stories around them, your thoughts on cover versions. This will follow the evolution of the band and chart the decline. But for this to go beyond an ego-trip on my part it is essential for this discussion to gather your opinions. and any other bollocks that springs to mind, going off at any sort of tangent that takes my (and your) fancy. There may be detours to look at other bands singing Lennon-McCartney songs that the Beatles didn’t do themselves – bands like The Fourmost
For each song I’ll assume it is the basic Beatles line-up. Any variations with guest musicians etc will be noted. I’ll also note my listening source; whether CD, vinyl (7” single or album) or possibly on-line stream.
So with more than 200 songs to cover (possibly going down the Anthology route and including the two posthumous songs if I’m up to it by then) let’s get cracking. This is going to take a while to cover. My thought is to leave a song thread until discussion starts to peter-out, then post the next one. Some may run, others (I’m thinking of things like Blue Jay Way), may be very short. But who knows? The whole thing may die a death at the first song.
So I’ll say goodbye for the moment and hope to see you over on the thread with song #1 Love Me Do.
Can there be a special section for it. I’m not especially interested in them and would prefer the whole Blog isn’t Beatles Beatles Beatles….OOAA
I am interested in The Beatles but I agree. 200 odd threads on them may be pushing it a bit
Couldn’t agree more, Twang.
Without wanting to be mean, can someone give me a yell when this is over?
I find the Beatles really tedious, and the prospect of this essentially becoming a Beatles fan-site (even more than normal) for months on end is enough to make me want to fully peace out.
Don’t want to ruin anyone’s fun, and I suspect there’ll be plenty of appetite for the proposed project, so happy to just duck out and come back when it’s all over.
What I find tedious is people with no interest in the subject coming on to moan and groan. If you don`t like the subject don`t bother viewing it, bloody move on. There are many more threads here that must be of interest to you.
@Carl I`m with you on this, I`m not going to join you on this voyage but it is one that I have considered for a while and do intend to the a chronological journey but maybe in stages. Listen an album and associated out-takes at a time. Please carry on with your project, which is something positive. You have as much right as the next person, there are many and mostly interesting threads on here that run and run. There`s plenty of room and I for one look forward to your posts on this.
Pretty hard to “move on” if there’s 200 threads on the same subject.
Don`t make bloody stupid statements, what does it take to scroll past a thread? Why the feck are you reading this?
Calm down, dear. It’s only a commercial.
Bob, bob off, peace & tranquillity.
Ha ha – excellent!
It’s a thread asking for opinions on the prospective Beatles project, not a thread on the Beatles themselves. I’ve politely ventured an opinion on the subject, as requested.
I’m actually studiously careful not to post negativity on Beatles threads, because it’s rubbish pouring scorn on the enthusiasms of others.
As I said above, feel free to make this a Beatles site in all but name. I’ll just take a sabbatical. It’s probably due anyway.
Brilliant – I’m looking forward to this.
another request to tuck this in a special slot please.
Calling Moose!
Tuckin ell!
Give me the odd Beatles thread over endless YouTube posts that nobody ever seems to watch, let alone comment on. Maybe we need a bunch of sections!
A way that Steve Hoffman deals with multiple songs/album comment posts is just to have one thread, with comments moving onto the next song/album when a particular topic (eg ‘Love Me Do’) is exhausted. Just an idea…
but it’s not the odd post, it’s 200 posts of people droning on about the different hand claps or pig noises on the stereo version. Fascinating I’m sure, to the faithful. I’d far rather someone post a video of some song they like, and when I’m WFH I frequently work through threads I’m interested in, listening to stuff. So ner.
We’ll have to disagree matey. The list/video threads bore me to tears. I just don’t get the point – people talking at eachother, with rarely a reply or any interaction.
I don’t notice that much esoteric Fab stuff, but maybe I’m blind to it. There’s certainly far more on Steve Hoffman. Maybe the problem is we’re not very inspired/inspiring at the moment.
If it helps I hate the list threads and I’m not that interested in the Beatles! 😉
We look to you Bob to kick-start the Bananarama song-by song appreciation thread. 😂
I don’t like just posting a vid, but if someone says why they like it and what’s good about it I’ll have a lis, sure.
Bloody hell @Twang, you`re going on about Beatles, Beatles, Beatles, yet you`ve read so far down a thread you don`t want on here. What gives? Same with Bob, just scroll past the bloody things. How hard is that. Me I like The Beatles so obviously I`m fine with it. Now if it was Bananarama, The `80`s, or anything else I don`t like I scroll past.
I would scroll past Bananarama too.
I only recently happened upon the Steve Hoffman forum and I find it totally exhausting. It moves so quickly that within minutes a thread that was at the top has moved to the third page, with some threads running to hundreds of pages. There is some really interesting stuff on there, but I just find it too big.
Agreed. It does tend to exhaust each of its many and fast-moving subjects, but it’s rare that a comment goes without a reply of some sort.
Why are all the comments in italics?
I guess cos @carl didn’t close his italic tag in the OP.
Yes I was wondering that too! Explanation makes sense – surprising it hasn’t happened before (or at least I haven’t noticed)
It’s certainly making everyone sound more sarcastic than usual. Or as if we’re endlessly quoting one another.
I’m sorry about the italics.
I’m happy for this thread to be moved to Features or Afterwiki. I guess I can’t think where else to put it. Features may be the best place for future posts.
Thanks all you who have responded positively. It’s heartening as I was worried it might get much more negativity.
Afterwiki is an excellent idea.
Quick question. What is the purpose of the ‘Afterwiki’ section?
Sort of more of a reference place dedicated to an artist.
I put my Write Here Write Now threads on a separate WordPress blog, precisely because I thought a year of daily posts on here would go down like New Yardbirds album.
Having said that, this place is nothing without a declaration of members’ interests, so, if you’ve got the hotchscotch to do it, why not. I’m sure it’ll play well to the congregation/choir/gallery. As I’m on a steady diet of listening to one song a night multiple times, I’m a little bit intrigued to discover what angle people take in assessing the canon.
More dancing about architecture, please!
I started reading your blog from the top recently Sal. Very good I must say. @nickduvet ‘s blog is good too, and mini.
Thanks, @Twang – glad you like it. It’s fun, particularly in seeing how and where it develops. I wondered where nick’s blog was, then realized we all have profiles on here, and found it that way. I took the opportunity to add my blog url to my profile, while I was thinking about it, too. I’m guessing there must be quite a lot of bloggers among the Afterworders. Maybe I’ll ask for people to bang the drum for their own blogs in a separate thread.
Thanks for the feedback on my blog, chums. I’m paying more attention to it again and repurposing some old material, including the reflections on Joni Mitchell’s imperial phase. Here’s a link in case you have trouble finding it
http://bangnzdrum.blogspot.co.nz
It was your blog about about Don Juan’s which hooked me in…
You could put the Joni one on Features?
I’d dip in and out of this thread Carl. I’ve never listened to all of their recordings so a good opportunity to fill in the gaps.
Well, personally I would hate it, but I’m not lord of the site so go ahead and do it if you want. I do strongly support the idea above that it should be confined to one thread, however. If I log in and see a load of different topics, all named after Beatles songs, I’m logging straight back out again.
No objection from me. I’ll probably give it a look from time to time as the mood takes me.
One request, though.
Try and keep it so only one or two of these threads are in the top section at a time, then the place won’t get flooded.
Can i suggest a compromise? Discuss each Beatles song on the 55th anniversary of its recording date. That’ll space them out a bit.
My first thought, @chiz, was “Whaaat…? That’s crazy”.
Then I thought some more and thought, with tweaking it can work. Bursts of creativity followed by studio inaction due to touring etc may require a bit of smoothing.
So, yes, while I will have to keep a close eye on the calendar, this may be the way forward. And I don’t intend to wait until November for part 3 – “Please Please Me”.
Make it 54 years, skip the first album which is crap anyway, and pick up with She Loves You and I’ll Get You on July 1, You Really Got a Hold on Me on July 18, and so on. The golden era as it happened, sort of thing.
18 October 2018 will be a busy day though