Another sad anniversary.

Gees, these crappy anniversaries just come running smack into each other at the end of the year, don't they? Anyway, it's now been 29 years to the day since John Lennon died. That's kind of weird, isn't it? I don't have much to add to the wave of online remembrances that I'm sure are lining up in my blogroll (over there on the right), because I was only about a year and a half old when it happened, and I don't have any memories. He's just always been dead for me. A little like the way, say, Abraham Lincoln has always been dead for me. Gad, that's depressing.

But I still get sad every year, even though I have nothing personal to really add to all the grieving. I like to think that if John had lived, the (if we're honest) fair-to-middling Double Fantasy album would have been kind of a blip in a long career of much, much better music. I don't have any reason to believe this, only a strong desire to believe this. I also kind of wonder what John would have thought of Beatles-bonanza years like 2009 has been. He tended to not go for that kind of intense nostalgic stuff, and we probably would have heard a lot of snarky quotes about how the Beatles were just a band and we should all get a life. But I think he would have okayed it all even so. Money talks. And besides, I can kind of see him enjoying Rock Band. He strikes me as the kind of guy who could dig a good video game. He'd probably also be about spending all day watching YouTube, as I've been doing these past few hours. He and I share a common lethargy. (We would have been so good for each other. Oh well.)

Herewith some videos of John that I like. This is one of the good songs from Double Fantasy, made into a very sweet video.

This is John reading a teleprompter at the 1975 Grammys, possibly while drunk.

John reading and dramatizing pieces from In His Own Write on the Not Only but Also show in 1964...

Please go elsewhere if you want to watch the "Imagine" video once again, is what I'm saying. I prefer to think of John this way.

And of course also with songs. John's generally best when singing, and this is some of my favorite singing ever. At least, you know, today.

1. Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds

2. Leave My Kitten Alone

3. Julia

4. Anna (Go to Him)

5. Everybody's Got Something to Hide Except Me and My Monkey

6. All I've Got to Do

7. I Gotta Find My Baby

8. Come Together

9. If I Fell

10. You Really Got a Hold on Me

11. Happiness Is a Warm Gun

12. Ticket to Ride

13. I'll Be Back


Sigh.

Thoughts on Beatle books.

Because the Lennon vs. McCartney question is a debate (and a fallacy) that apparently will never die, I am delighted to see that the new McCartney biography by Peter Ames Carlin, Paul McCartney: A Life, apparently spends a lot of time once again defending Paul's legacy from those who would continue, blindly, to see him as the lameass of the band and to deify a conveniently deceased John. But I am even more delighted to see what else this largely positive A.V. Club review has to say, which is that the book seems not to go as far in the self-promotion direction as Paul himself has veered in recent years. In fact, the review makes the book sound quite balanced and well done overall. I think that I'm going to have to read it.

The best book I've read about Paul is probably Many Years from Now, which pubbed in the '90s. Though technically written by Barry Miles, most of the book is direct quotes from extensive interviews with Paul. This is both cool and lame. Cool, because you're basically reading Paul's own story direct from him. Lame, because Paul often comes off as ridiculously defensive about his career and his legacy, and ends up exaggerating his own accomplishments and exacerbating all those stories about his huge ego. I understand Paul's defensiveness to an extent, but it comes off as cranky much of the time. The book is still worth a read, but be warned about Paul's motives, is all. I'm just glad there's another good biography out there to round the picture out a bit more.

I'm thinking about all of this anew, as I've recently started rereading Ray Coleman's Lennon, which I think I first read in high school. I recently picked up a used mass market copy for a dollar, so why not? Lennon has been widely considered the best John biography out there for a long time, but reading it is annoying me, because it's so sycophantic that even a fangirl like me wants to throw up in her mouth a little. The basic storyline so far is that John gets drunk and beats people up and stuff, but deep down he's a big ol' sweetie! As if the author is afraid of readers hearing anything negative about the guy. (Secondarily, I'm also a bit turned off at Coleman's obvious disgust at rumors that John might have had a fling with Brian Epstein. I'm not saying the rumors are true-- I kind of doubt that they are-- but Coleman protests so much, and goes so out of his way to say what a HETEROSEXUAL guy John was, that it's rather too revealing of his own homophobia. Which is just gross, and is making me kind of hate the author.) But the worst offenses are toward Paul McCartney, who is only mentioned in order for Coleman to sneer at his so-called primness and downplay the intensity of the artistic partnership the two had. If you had only this book to go on, you'd assume that Paul was just some guy John played in some band with for a little while. You know, no big deal. So it's books like this that make Paul feel he HAS to defend himself.

Last year, Phil Norman-- the author of Shout!, a book that I still feel is the best Beatles biography I've read, even though a lot of people consider Norman hopelessly biased in John's direction (not without reason)-- published a new biography of John that's out in paperback this fall: John Lennon: The Life. (Note that Paul's new bio is just A Life. John's is THE Life. Hee.) I haven't read this one yet. In the mainstream press it seems to have been very well received, but among Beatle people there was a lot of vitriol about how this was yet another offering to Saint John the Lennon. I can't imagine Norman's book being worse in this way than Coleman's, though, so I've decided to read this one as well. (Maybe I'll read Norman's book and Carlin's book side by side to compare how they approach their subjects.) I've also heard that Norman's book picks up some of the recent allegations raised by Julia Baird, John's half-sister, about some hidden family secrets or something. Baird has a book out, too, whose title I forget, but which I've been hesitant to read just because, even if true, the whole thing sounds a little too sordid, a little too Maury Povich for my tastes. (Spoiler alert: Aunt Mimi doesn't come off well.)

But my larger point is: Isn't this John vs. Paul thing in the book business just nuts? It makes me glad not to be famous and not to have any legacy really worth protecting. Because the whole things would just exhaust me.

Pop Matters' playlist versus my own.

My first playlist that I did on the blog back in, what, April or something, was a hidden treasures playlist. Listing the Beatles' hidden treasure tracks is a slightly ridiculous exercise, given the culture's massive Beatles overexposure in general. But that's why it interests me so much. Besides, for whatever reason, I have personally witnessed several people come to the Beatles (rather like one would come to Jesus) because they heard a kickass song no one had bothered to play for them before, so they ARE out there. My own playlist, though, was rendered even more ridiculous by the fact that I limited myself to songs I'd already written about, so that I could link to them in a shamelessly self-promoting kind of way. So I'll be the first to admit it's incomplete.

That won't stop me from having strong opinions about other people's lists, though. The other day (as usual I'm like a week late) Pop Matters posted a 20-song countdown of the best of Beatley buried treasures. And I have some remarks to make. Sure, all of these songs are terrifically awesome. But are they all really BURIED?

1. "Tomorrow Never Knows." Maybe. I would argue, though, that with the high profile of Revolver these days, "Tomorrow Never Knows" is getting more than its due. Also consider the song's prominence in what is probably the best known remixed track from Love, as well as the fact that George Martin brings it up in like every single interview he does, and I think this is less buried than one might think.

2. "Rain." Again, maybe just me, but I think the kids are pretty well aware of "Rain." It's another one George Martin likes to talk about, and Ringo brings it up quite a bit too. If my husband is any indicator, high school kids like to teach themselves the bass part. All that said, "Rain" should be listened to as often as possible, so if there's any internet surfer who still didn't know it, I guess it's good they'd find it here.

3. "Hey Bulldog." Okay, this one I'm with you on, Pop Matters. It was on my original list because I'm still shocked and appalled that people sometimes haven't heard or don't remember it.

4. "She's Leaving Home." Yeah, okay. This song has its passionate devotees, but I can maybe buy that it's not out in the mainstream as much. Still, though, considering its iconic status as one of the first albums you were supposed to listen to all the way through, can ANY song from Sgt. Pepper ever be described as truly buried? Discuss.

5. "No Reply." Yes. This song deserves more love than it gets. I think its structural oddities might still put it ahead of its time, maybe even more so than much later songs.

6. "You Never Give Me Your Money." I will give you this one only because I can agree that the glories of this song might get lost in the sweep of the Abbey Road medley, all components of which are inferior to this song.

7. "She Said She Said." No one appreciates this one as much as I do, I swear, so I'll come along with you on this, though also gently nudge you back to the first two songs on the list to point out that, due to this song's similarities, some of those same points apply.

8. "Here, There, and Everywhere." See, I don't know. I think this one is pretty firmly on people's radars. Perhaps it's because of the number of times it's been covered. Or because, despite its sophistication, it's still a McCartney ballad, so you can be sure that if you, say, play it at your wedding (which, YES, I did, SHUT UP) even your grandparents will probably nod knowingly at each other at that opening strum.

9. "Happiness Is a Warm Gun." Probably. Sure. People love the White Album, but they're going to remember several songs off the tops of their heads before this. Plus, it's obviously one of the bigger weirdos in the catalog.

10. "Taxman." But, no. You guys, people freaking love "Taxman." Have you ever turned on a classic rock station on April 15th? The people are very familiar. Buried this one is not.

11. "Tell Me Why." This is a song that's hidden-- hidden because any fun rocking song would be inevitably hidden by all the masterworks on A Hard Day's Night. An underrated song, and an excellent pick.

12. "I'm So Tired." Hmm. Not sure. The heroin-influenced Lennon songs tend to get a lot of attention from biographers and bitter high schoolers, and, you know, not that the average listener has read the biographies, but I still say this one might have a higher profile.

13. "I'm a Loser." Mostly with you, Pop Matters, except that, again, this is one that no Lennon biographer overlooks-- what with the self-loathing and the Dylan influence and whatnot. But since I still think no one actually listens to this song as much as they should, I'll go ahead and nod along with you here.

14. "Old Brown Shoe." Oh my God, I know. Isn't it criminal how much people ignore "Old Brown Shoe"? This made my list, and for good reason.

15. "And Your Bird Can Sing." Again, RIGHT-O. This one made my list, too. I suspect that Beatles Rock Band might have the power to change this, though. Let's hope so.

16. "I'm Only Sleeping." I wavered here, but then I couldn't think of why. So, okay. Yes. Sure.

17. "It's All Too Much." Here I agree 100%. I'm told that it's kind of cool to like this song now, in the same way that it's cool to like "Hey Bulldog," so I'll take that as a good sign.

18. "Girl." Do you think so? Is this one underrated? Hmm. Maybe you're right. I think it might be more of a hidden Rubber Soul track than a hidden Beatles track, if you take the point, but I'll go with you here, though I feel like a lot of people seem to know and adore this song.

19. "You Won't See Me." Ah, yes, another hidden nugget of genius on Rubber Soul. I am totally in agreement that this is less beloved than it deserves.

20. "Yer Blues." I don't know-- if you're the kind of Beatles fan who likes this kind of song, you've probably already found it, and if you haven't found it yet, you don't want to find it. Does that make sense? I think it's notorious (if not actually famous) just for its polarizing qualities. Rather like "Helter Skelter."

This is obviously all just my opinion, but seriously, whither the early songs, Pop Matters? That's where there are really some juicy hidden songs, even if you arbitrarily decide to not count the covers. Whither "Any Time at All," "It Won't Be Long," "I'll Be Back," or "There's a Place"? I mean, it seems like no one even listens to Please Please Me anymore. (And what's with these kids on my lawn, anyhow?....)

Two playlists for a sad anniversary.

Well, it's been eight years now since we lost George Harrison to cancer. On this day in 2001, I remember being in my still-fairly-new Boston apartment, pacing around the bedroom and trying to get some writing done (I was in a grad program for creative writing) and just being completely blocked, so I turned on the radio to procrastinate a little and suddenly it was all George all the time. There was not much hope of getting any writing done once I heard the news.

Remember George however you wish today. I'm offering two playlists to help you out. Here's a playlist of what I feel to be some of the happiest performances of a not-always-totally-happy guy: George at his youngest, cutest, and liveliest. Most alive, if you'd like.

1. Glad All Over

2. Here Comes the Sun

3. Savoy Truffle

4. Young Blood

5. For You Blue

6. Nothin' Shakin'

7. It's All Too Much

8. Something

9. All Things Must Pass

10. Don't Ever Change

But I thought I should also do a playlist of some of my favorite George guitar moments. If it hadn't been for George, all these Lennon-McCartney songs would have been vastly inferior to what they turned out to be. If these seem obvious, it's because they largely ARE-- but still, they're fun to listen to.

1. A Hard Day's Night

2. She Said She Said

3. Norwegian Wood (This Bird Has Flown) **(okay, not strictly a guitar moment. sue me.)

4. And I Love Her

5. And Your Bird Can Sing

6. Sun King

7. Can't Buy Me Love

8. It Won't Be Long

9. Paperback Writer

10. The End

11. Let It Be

And finally, because I cannot help myself (and because I secretly have sometimes questionable taste), the video for the first song by George I ever remember liking. You could not stop my eight-year-old self from dancing around to this one. Yeah, it's a cover, but who even remembers the original anymore? George's version rules. Enjoy!

Rock Band is Getting even Better.

I see at WogBlog that Harmonix, which had long promised a complete Sgt. Pepper download for Beatle Rock Band in November, has announced solid dates: Xbox and Wii users can download the album on November 17th, while PX users have to wait until the 19th.


Harmonix has already put up Abbey Road for sale to the Rock Banders of the world, and wisely so-- how could anyone who had already laid out the cash for the game resist it? They're pricing the albums at about the same cost as a CD, which sounds pretty okay until you realize that you're only really buying, like, half the album's songs, since a bunch of the album's tracks already came with the game. But it's NOT a CD-- it's a new product, really, for which Harmonix designed lovely dreamscapes and scored all the instruments, so in the end I've decided it's a fine deal to just buy these things. Abbey Road was a good one to start with, too, because it turns out that playing the entire B-side medley as one complete track (which the game allows you to do) is THE MOST FUN THING IN THE ENTIRE WORLD. Like, seriously. It rules so hard. It makes me want to cry.

Have you guys checked out Beatles Rock Band yet? It's kind of taken over my life. I'm doing productive things like reading books/cooking nourishing meals/blogging much less frequently than I'd like, because when I come home from work I just want to sit down and try to get 5 stars on "Dig a Pony," which is the ONE song in the Story Mode that I can't seem to master the guitar part on. (I don't even know why. I've managed "Back in the U.S.S.R.," which is much harder, but "Dig a Pony" keeps messing with my mind.) Or else I just want to kick ass on the guitar solo of "The End" one more time (which is the BEST guitar solo in the game, because you get to pretend you're three different Beatles at once).

If you haven't checked the game out yet, I need to urge you to do so. Whether or not you enjoy the previous Rock Band iterations (I do), the new game is such an affectionate homage to Beatles-geekdom that Beatles geeks everywhere owe themselves a look, no matter how much it sets them back. You might have already read about the crazy attention to detail in the sets-- well, it's ALL TRUE. If you're like me, you've seen a lot of photos taken when the Beatles played the Cavern, Shea Stadium, the Apple rooftop, and so on, and the designers of the game have literally captured even random people in the audience that you'll recognize. (My favorite is the guy with the glasses who checks his watch at the Cavern. Just like he does in that one photo. Awesome.) And in the "dreamscapes," which is the way they animate later songs that weren't performed live, they clearly reference pre-existing video interpretations of songs ("Yellow Submarine," "I Am the Walrus," and so on) while still doing new fun things with the visuals. The attention to detail is SO awesome that I tend to forgive the forays into revisionist, idealized Beatles history-- such as the fact that Eric Clapton does not play the guitar solo on "While My Guitar Gently Weeps," Ringo drums on "Back in the U.S.S.R.," and Yoko is nowhere to be seen at the rooftop concert.


My little secret is that, since Harmonix is based near me in Cambridge, MA, I actually got to be a playtester on Beatles Rock Band. I played three separate times, and I got to sing AND drum my way through every single song in the game (except for the new albums they're putting out for sale this fall) months before it was out. I had to sign paperwork giving the MTV/Viacom people permission to, like, draw and quarter me if I told anyone anything about this at the time, so I had to hush up here on the blog. But the point is, I tried to offer this kind of constructive criticism to the playtest people ("Why not put Yoko and Maureen right there on the rooftop? What about how in "Dig a Pony," there's a guy holding up a legal pad to John so he can read his lyrics? You guys should put that in!!"), who politely pretended to take notes and then politely bade me adieu at the end of the night, no doubt shaking their heads at the crazy playtester girl.

Anyway, I've been thinking about Sgt. Pepper and how hard it might be adapt for Rock Band. How on earth would you play the orchestral crescendo on "A Day in the Life," which itself is only the very first potential difficulty that pops into my head? I'm looking forward to seeing how they manage it, though. Because I know where my ass will be on November 17th. My couch. As I play the entire Sgt. Pepper album. And that is way cooler than what the rest of the world will be doing on a random Tuesday.

Playlist: My One-Disc White Album.

Although I'm a fan of the One-Disc White Album game (the game wherein you pretend that George Martin gets his way and that the Beatles release a wicked solid single-disc album instead of the slightly all-over-the-place double-disc album that DID get released in November of 1968, and then decide which songs should be on it and which shouldn't be), I've never been able to satisfactorily come up with a One-Disc White Album myself.

There are a lot of issues, you know, in rewriting a Beatles album. It's not necessarily going to work if it's just your favorite songs. You have to achieve a John-Paul parity, or else you'd have been in trouble with at least one of them. And you need at least two cuts from George if you're going to be fair too. Ideally, Ringo will get a vocal. I'm basically holding myself to the standard Beatles 14-track album size, though I'm allowing myself to go as high as 15 if I end up including some of the really short tracks that pepper this album. This should work as a playlist, so I'm filing it away as one. Oh, and I'm going to futz with the order to better accomodate the new direction a one-disc White Album would have.

A:

1. Back in the U.S.S.R.

2. Dear Prudence

3. While My Guitar Gently Weeps

4. I Will

5. Sexy Sadie

6. Martha My Dear

7. Blackbird

B:

1. Julia

2. Everybody's Got Something to Hide Except Me and My Monkey

3. Long, Long, Long

4. Don't Pass Me By

5. I'm So Tired

6. Helter Skelter

7. Happiness Is a Warm Gun

8. Why Don't We Do It in the Road?


Do you see how problematic this is?

What my version gets right is parity-- John and Paul get 6 songs each, George gets 2 songs, and we leave in Ringo's contribution out of kindness, which we can do because we've selected two songs that are only about a minute and a half long each. I think there's also a good variety of moods here, with John and Paul and George each getting a straight-up ballad-- well, Paul gets two, but that's Paul. But there's lots of rocking stuff here too.

In fact, the songs that I wanted to include but had to leave out were mostly left out to make room for the various moods I wanted this to include. I want "Savoy Truffle" to be in here somewhere, but "While My Guitar Gently Weeps" seems somehow indispensable, and then I want George's second song to be very different-- so it's "Long, Long, Long." (Besides, I love that song more than is probably healthy.) I have similar problems with "Yer Blues" and "Birthday." And then I find myself leaving out "Revolution 1" just because, you know, at least there's the "Revolution" single... And then, of course, I just want to put in some songs because I heart them, like "Bungalow Bill" and "Cry Baby Cry." You'll note that I also left out songs that might be considered big ones (ahem, "Ob-la-di, Ob-la-da") but which I have always considered inferior. One can't help but bring one's own prejudices into this thing.

So maybe this whole game is flawed. But still, have I done anything right here? Is this what you guys think about while you're supposed to be working? Or am I just mildly mentally ill?

Remastered CDs not geeky enough for you?

Well, you're in luck, because the whole catalog is going to be released again, this time on vinyl.

MOJO had the story on its website yesterday. And, you know, I like records a lot. But even I might be too exhausted at this point to lay out more money. I swear, though, if they package Let It Be with a reprint of the original photobook, I might yet relent....