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Nothing Is Real

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For the week that’s in it, Nothing Is Real podcasts an eye over ‘John Lennon / Plastic Ono Band’.

https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/nothing-is-real-a-beatles-podcast/id1462587848#episodeGuid=aa7e0fd2-92c7-49d1-b53b-e5cadca0bbca

Your Top Two BEATLES tracks!

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See, the point of this is to STOP AT TWO. This means you, duco01 and tiggerlion. No “honorable mentions” running into the hundreds. Just TWO. Two songs by the Beatles. Not cover versions. Performed and recorded by the Beatles. Not MORE nor indeed FEWER. Two. 2. Deux. Dos.

Let’s do this, people! To get the show on the road, I’ll list my Top Two Beatles Songs in the comments!

Please Please Me vs With The Beatles – the return of the LP vs LP face off

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Since I enjoyed doing my Stones thread so much yesterday, and it struck just the right amount of nodding agreement and violent disagreement in the Afterword massive, I’m going to do the same thing today (and possibly until the end of the week… or until I get fed up….).

So, again another A List act, and another two LPs I don’t really often listen to from start to end… and which I get mixed up which tracks are on which…

It’s the Beatles! And it’s Please Please Me vs With The Beatles!!!

Once again, tracks marked * are the Good Ones – the ones I would choose to listen to outside the context of the album. And I’ll rate each track out of ten as I listen.

Here we go!

Please Please Me (1963) ———————– A1 – * I Saw Her Standing There – Ah, 1, 2, 3, 4!! 10/10 A2 – * Misery – What a tune… and what harmonies 8/10 A3 – * Anna (Go With Him) – A fabulous Lennon vocal and blistering middle eight rescue this from schmaltziness – 8/10 A4 – * Chains – I have a real soft spot for this one. I think » Continue Reading.

Happy Birthday, Ringo

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So the sickly lad who was hospitalised with TB (and discovered a passion for drumming while he was in hospital) has made it to 80.

As a fan of all the Fabs, I still find that Ringo is one of my favourite solo albums of all. Ok, he had lots of help from the other three, as well as Harry Nilsson, Billy Preston, Nicky Hopkins and most of The Band, but it’s still his album.

Peace And Love!

She’s Leaving Home

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I’m currently reading Craig Brown’s entertaining ‘biography’ ‘One,Two, Three, Four: The Beatles In Time’. I haven’t checked to see whether the pre 1963 stories in Brown’s book are in Mark Lewisohn’s ‘Tune In’ but I suspect they are. And, of course, we’ll have to wait and see whether the stories from 1963 onwards are included in Volume 2. (Craig Brown’s research is not on a par with Lewisohn’s as he re-tells the story about Dave Dee being the trainee cadet who was at the scene of Eddie Cochran’s fatal car crash in 1960 and states that Gene Vincent was killed in the same crash. He wasn’t of course, dying in 1971.) Anyway, I digress. One story that fascinated me was about Paul McCartney judging a competition to mime Brenda Lee’s ‘Let’s Jump The Broomstick’ on Ready Steady Go in late 1963. He picked out 14 year old Melanie Coe as the winner and presented her with the ‘Please Please Me’ LP. Four years later Melanie became pregnant and left home to live with the father, a croupier, in Bayswater. Shortly afterwards, an article appeared in The Daily Mail – ‘A-Level Girl Dumps Car and Vanishes’ – about her distraught father » Continue Reading.

It Was 50 Years Ago Today, Apparently

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I see that it was on this day, 50 years ago that the Beatles ended.

I got nothing [I was 6 and would have been out on my bike all day], but perhaps you have some remembrance of the day?

Or maybe you’d like to post your favourite Beatles song, or perhaps a playlist or video clip?

Or maybe, you’d like to tell us all why you still don’t get what all the fuss was about?

https://www.theguardian.com/music/2020/apr/09/shattered-paul-weller-booker-beatles-split-50-years-ago-fans

Coronavirus hand washing songs

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So we are being told that we need to wash our hands for 20 seconds.

The suggestion is that’s twice through Happy Birthday.

I’m sure we’ve got better ideas.

Mine is this, with appropriate lyric adjustment (and sans intro which makes it exactly 20 seconds)

Oh yeah I’ll – tell you something I think you’ll understand When I – say that something I’m gonna wash my hands I’m gonna wash my hands I’m gonna wash my hands

“Oh! Darling” – Let’s hear it for Mickey Rafferty…

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Mickey Rafferty is a minor legend in Northern Ireland – voice and songwriter of the Minnows (formerly Tiberius Minnows) from Coalisland/Dungannon, c.1988 to the present. They’ve become elusive in recent years in public, though there’s an album in the can that they’ve been leaking (fabulous) songs from on to YouTube for a year or so. Maybe next year for the actual release. Fingers crossed…

But… every Saturday in recent months, three of the four Minnows convene in Mainzy’s garden shed and record/film live performances of covers selected by their fans, using the name ‘the Handsome Princes’. The songs are eclectic – from Johnny Cash to China Crisis, Neil Young to Lloyd Cole. And in general, they’re brilliant. Yes, dammit, even the 80s ones (obviously, not all of them…) So popular has the alter ego brand/band become that the trio has started doing live shows lately – Mickey on guitar/vocals, Kevin on bass, Mainzy on lead guitar, keys and a lunar module of gadgetry and the odd backing track bit of instrumentation. But without doubt the act’s secret weapon is Raff’s vocal.

I had the pleasure of working with the Raffmeister recently on my song ‘Don’t Go to Nashville’, released digitally » Continue Reading.

The Mark Lewisohn archive

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Just listened to the Nothing Is Real Beatles podcast featuring a two-part interview with Mark Lewisohn. Really worth a listener Beatles nerds. One fascinating snippet for me was that Mark was asked whether he was planning to create an archive of his research material. He said he was but hadn’t got round to it yet (right answer as he should be concentrating on finishing Vol 2 of All My Years before I pop my clogs!). He had, however, moved his office and the archive weighed over 13.2 tons! That’s an incredible amount of material, and he said he doesn’t really collect artefacts or obvious memorabilia, just loads and loads of information. Difficult to imagine what other band could come even close to such a mountain of material.

https://www.stitcher.com/podcast/adrian-carty/nothing-is-real-a-beatles-podcast/e/64459556

Earlier stuff. Later stuff. Or all their stuff?

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Once upon a time it was an axiom of this place that people liked a band’s “earlier stuff”. You know, being old and in the way and generally grumpy about this ‘ere modern music an’ all.

So let’s share our thoughts on this. Only TWO bands per category so it doesn’t become an endless unreadable list.

It’s very general, for example I have The Beatles as “later”, which doesn’t mean I don’t like their earlier stuff. It’s just that thinking of their overall oeuvre I prefer listening to MMT to WTB.

Here’s mine

EARLY

Frank Zappa and The Mothers Of Invention Pink Floyd

LATE

The Beatles

ALL

Steely Dan XTC

The Eponymiser – full house! AKA Band, song, album

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Listening to Love and Money’s excellent ….All You Need is Love and Money debut album yesterday, alongside better-known tracks Candybar Express and River of People is Love and Money. By Love and Money. On …all you need is Love and Money. Going the extra mile on the eponymiser. So, who else liked their name so much they put it on an album, and a track on that album. If only the Beatles had a track called The Beatles. Instrumentals allowed, though more points for a track not just called Love and Money on Love and Money by Love and Money, but with love and money in the lyrics. You get the idea. One incredibly famous not the Beatles example in the comments to clear that one up. No youtube clip for Love and Money though.

Furore magazine – “Where They Jumped” edition

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This magazine is new to me, and I don’t recall seeing it mentioned it on here before. It comes out of Amsterdam and this most recent ish is a must-buy for any pop fans out there who still love the Fabs and have that thirst for anything new about the loveable Moptops.

The first dozen or so pages tell the story, in exquisite, Lewishon-esque detail (he helped with it of course) about the cover pic for the Twist And Shout EP, which is the one that changed my life.

Check it out, you know you want to…

http://www.furoremagazine.com/24-beatles-special-3/

Worst Beatles lyric

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Today I was idly strolling through the streets of Bari in Italy, as you do, and popped into what looked like an interesting shop where a familiar guitar riff was playing. “Bugger me” I thought, “I know this” – and sure enough the fab sound of young Paul blasted through the speakers –

“My love don’t give me presents – I know that she’s no peasant”

I mean I know he was a young lad, and “she was just seventeen – you know what I mean” wasn’t exactly great, but a few years later we had faces kept in a jar by the door and newspaper taxis appearing on the shore

What are your shabbiest Fab lyrics?

Geoff Emerick Remaking Sgt Pepper BBC doc

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BBC doc from 2007 in which the late Geoff Emerick (along with also Fabs recording assistant Richard Lush) guides various suspects (inc Kaiser Chiefs, Magic Numbers and Stereophonics) through a track each from Sgt Pepper, recording each on vintage Abbey Road kit.

There are a few revealing moments and along the way Geoff shares a few good Beatles stories. It’s not the whole album and the doc was made very quickly. I know as I directed it: we shot by day and edited by night for two weeks solid – but enough of that.

In my brief experience Geoff was a lovely chap. Off camera told me the detail about George’s chocolate biscuits – Yoko had three of them just under her blanket which she pulled up over her mouth to enable nibbling. He also spoke of how, before quitting during the White album, on one bad Beatle tempered evening he and a colleague hid in a store room to make the Fabs think they’d gone home, creeping out to clock off when their shift was actually over. Not that one would know this kind of thing from recent 50th Anniversary box set publicity…

During filming with Travis » Continue Reading.

Macca klaxon #438272

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Just in case anyone is wondering why its so damn quiet on the McCartney front at the moment, here’s a rather good interview from the new GQ. Given he has been uncommonly open on recent encounters with Marc Maron, Howard Stern, he’s on equally good form here. Nothing shockingly revelatory but a good read nonetheless.

https://www.gq.com/story/the-untold-stories-of-paul-mccartney

Top ten Paul McCartney post-Beatles songs

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Yep, sorry, another list, and yep, sorry, another Beatles thread.

Look away now if these things offend you and somehow you still clicked on the link.

So down to business…

I’ve grown more interested in Macca since I saw/heard his brilliant show in Sydney last year, and then I loved the James Corden clip. In the spirit of “yeah, the lad’s alright”, what are his best post-Beatles songs?

I was going to start with 5, but then I found I could stretch it, to ten, but only just.

So here’s my Top Ten Paul McCartney post-Beatles songs (in alphabetical order)

Another Day

Band On The Run

Coming Up

Every Night

Live And Let Die

Maybe I’m Amazed

My Love

My Valentine

No More Lonely Nights

Uncle Albert/Admiral Halsey

Very happy to be reminded of songs I’ve forgotten

It’s the Beatles White album, it sold, shurrup.

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So, Macca confirms (almost) a bumper box of White album wonderfulness this year. Quite possibly, Abbey Road will follow. So, am guessing will include Esher demos, mono and stereo remixes, studio outtakes etc… will you be getting it?

And while we’re here, what do we make of the new Macca single? I think it’s not half bad…

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nguRK37qI54%20%20%20%20https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aef2eV7GmQw

https://www.forbes.com/consent/?toURL=https://www.forbes.com/sites/markbeech/2018/06/20/beatles-50th-anniversary-white-album-is-almost-ready/

What did your Mum say about The Beatles?

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It’s coming up for Mothers’ Day (2nd Sunday in May) here in Australia, I think maybe it’s a different day back in the old country. And it’s going to be my first without my Mum who passed away at the end of May last year.

So in the spirit of that, and the person who commented over on the “what ails the blog” thread that we used to discuss important things like who’s your favourite Beatle, I ask the question above.

For the record, my Mum used to say “Paul’s the nicest looking but Ringo’s got the nicest smile”. Brings a tear to me eye just thinking of her saying it…

Murder your darlings: the HJHs

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Hello Afterworders. I haven’t posted regularly for a while but I return to you now with a solid Idea. Based on a number of Facebook chats that happened last year, I’m proposing we try to cut the clutter in our lives by reducing our favourite artists’ back catalogues to just 10 songs.

Your Too 10, then: are they the hits, or are they the “deep cuts”? Do you try to go chronologically or mercilessly acknowledge the fact that only the first two albums were any good?

I suggest that the we each publish a 10 perhaps with a little word of explanation, and then when the conversation peters out, move on to a new act. Let’s start with an easy one: in the words of Alan Partridge, “the best of the Beatles”.

Help! / Ticket to Ride / Think for Yourself / And Your Bird Can Sing / Rain / Paperback Writer / Tomorrow Never Knows / Hey Bulldog / Something / Golden Slumbers … Carry That Weight

As for the methodology, I think it suggests I like the quirkily funky rockers best. That’s the way the Beatles are meant to sound for me, and no one else could » Continue Reading.