The Beatle Photo Election Rule

Boy, this Presidential race keeps getting crazier and crazier, doesn't it?

Just when I thought I'd seen it all, here comes ol' Ralph Nader jumping into the fray. Doesn't he know that he can't possibly win? Its absolutely impossible. And I can say that with total certainty because I know what the professional pundits all seem to have forgotten.

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That's right - "The Beatle Photo Election Rule".

Back in 1972, Mr. Nader appeared on The Mike Douglas Show with John Lennon and Yoko Ono, who were that week's co-hosts.

Here's a photo from the show:

"The Beatle Photo Election Rule" is the rule that says anyone who has had their photo taken with a Beatle (or ex-Beatle) can not be elected President.

Remember 2004? Everyone thought John Kerry had the election all sewn up, but then this old photo surfaced:

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The result? Four more years of George Bush.

And how about Gerald Ford? He became President by default, but still you would have thought that even an un-elected incumbent would have beaten Jimmy Carter in the 1976 election. Poor Ford never guessed that this photo would be his undoing:

But of course, Ralph isn't the only one who will fall to The Beatle Photo Rule this election year, is he? Word on the street is that John Edwards dropped out when someone threatened to leak a photo of him with Pete Best, and Hillary's role as a pterodactyl in "Caveman" (see above) knocks her out of the race. And now there's this recently-surfaced photo of Obama:

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I guess things are looking pretty good for John McCain.....

George

Here's a little Something to mark what would have been George Harrison's 65th birthday.

It was 39 years ago today, on his 26th birthday - a couple of weeks after having his tonsils out, and a couple of days after The Beatles started work on Lennon's "I Want You (she's so heavy)", that George went into EMI Studios with Ken Scott engineering and recorded demos of three of his latest songs.

In January, during the "Get Back/Let It Be" sessions, The Beatles had rehearsed all three of the songs as well as other new George tunes, but the only proper recording of one of his songs had been "For You Blue" (which he would record a new lead vocal for a year later). They would begin recording "Old Brown Shoe" and "Something" in April.

Here are the February 26, 1969 demos, as they appear on Purple Chick's Abbey Road Deluxe:

OLD BROWN SHOE (demo take 2)

ALL THINGS MUST PASS (demo take 2)

SOMETHING (demo take 1)

SOMETHING (demo take 1 with overdubs)

Happy birthday, George.

so anyway.....

.....I'm finally back, all rested, refreshed, and ready to roll.

Thanks for all those cards and letters, I'll try to get to some of the requests that have been piling up before too long.

So what happened? I guess if one was trying to think up ways for a music-oriented blog to lose big chunks of its readership, having a five-month period with a lead post that links to National Review Online might be a good idea, but the real story is just that I used a hard-drive crash as an excuse to get away from it all for a while.

Back in September, I had some computer trouble and stopped blogging. When I finally got around to doing something about it, I ended up having some very bad experiences with a popular computer-repair company that shall remain nameless. Sort of like the old "Niagara Falls" routine, the very mention of their name is enough to give me some serious conniptions! ("Slowwwww-ly I turned.....")

After waiting FOUR WEEKS for a diagnostic, it turned out my hard-drive was damaged, and A FEW WEEKS LATER when the computer was back up and running I was reluctant to get right back into blogging, and I've spent the past several weeks just catching up on various stuff around the 'net. Particularly the amazing Purple Chick Beatles' Deluxe series. Looks like they're working on putting together *all* the available Beatles recordings. With their 10-disc Complete BBC set, their 83-disc A/B Road set, and the studio recordings series, they're up to about 150 (yes 150!) Beatles CDs. All the stereo, mono, alt mixes, outtakes, sessions tapes, etc. And they've just started to put together the live recordings, with a 2-disc Star Club Deluxe set.

Here's a link to tracklistings and artwork for what they have so far:

http://x3mkungen.mine.nu/wogev/beatles/pc/

I was able to get most of what I needed from a few fantastic blogs:

http://www.yourmothershouldknow03.blogspot.com/

http://www.octaner.blogspot.com/

http://losslessbeatles.blogspot.com/

Of course I don't know if the links are all still good, but poke around and give 'em a try. What a wonderful Beatle-filled world we have here!

So anyway, its good to be back, and thanks for being here. Stick around, I've got plenty of stuff to post, including some of the requests I've been receiving.

See you soon!

hope you're satisfied

Testing, 1, 2, 3.....

Is this thing on.....?