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.....?

Derb on Boyd

JOHN DERBYSHIRE has a new "diary" column up that features a nice bit about PATTI BOYD. Here's a short excerpt:

"There are plain women, there are pretty women, there are attractive women, and there are beautiful women. High above them all, in a realm of their own, there are those women. I think every guy knows what I mean: women who, without necessarily being beautiful in a conventional way, or having any specially iridescent qualities of intelligence or personality, cause our knees to tremble, our eyeballs to lock, and our poor tongues to lose the power of speech."

There's more, and you can read the whole column here:

http://article.nationalreview.com/print/?q=NDBkZWUxZmU5NmFiZTQwNjA4MTM3ZmQ0NjRiM2E1M2Q=

Good ol' Monkey Grip

Love Extractions

One of the coolest things about this here digital age of music, in my opinion, is the ability (of some folks, anyway) to do these 5.1 extraction things, extracting the "discrete" channels from 5.1 mixes. This allows us to hear the same old songs in some totally new ways.

Currently floating around is a 10-disc set called "Loveology", a collection of all the discrete channels extracted from the 5.1 mix of the recent BEATLES "Love" CD.

I think its all fun to hear, but 10 discs is a lot to download, so here are a couple of tracks that I thought really stood out. If you like 'em, you might want to look around for the full set.

These are both "center-channel" extractions from Disc 1, which give us a loud and clear vocal track along with some of the musical backing. Its almost like LENNON and MCCARTNEY were right there singing in your ear!

BACK IN THE USSR (CENTER CHANNEL)

I AM THE WALRUS (CENTER CHANNEL)

And be sure to listen for Lennon's shout of "Nyet!" during the solo in "Back In The USSR".....

What's new.....

What do Ringo, Patti, Astrid, Mick, Elton, Eric, Ronnie, and Paul all have in common?

They all have new product either just out or coming out soon. Here's a quick run-down, with links:

8/28 - CD + DVD / RINGO STARR - Photograph: The Very Best Of Ringo

8/28 - Book / PATTI BOYD - Wonderful Tonight: George Harrison, Eric Clapton, and Me

10/1 - Book / ASTRID KIRCHHERR - Yesterday: The Beatles Once Upon A Time

10/2 - CD / MICK JAGGER - The Very Best Of Mick Jagger

10/2 - CD + DVDs / ELTON JOHN - Elton 60: Live At Madison Square Garden

10/9 - Book / ERIC CLAPTON - Clapton: The Autobiography

10/16 - Book / RONNIE WOOD - Ronnie Wood: The Autobiography

11/13 - DVD / PAUL MCCARTNEY - The McCartney Years

Maybe I should get started on my "Dear Santa" letter.....

Michael

Born August 29th, 1958, today is MICHAEL JACKSON's 49th birthday.

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Here's a great track that I've already posted before, about a year and a half ago. Its the "CCC" mash-up of Michael's vocal from the JACKSON FIVE's "I Want You Back" and the music from GEORGE HARRISON's "Isn't It A Pity". And like I said before, check out little Michael's vocals. Excellent.

CCC - I WANT PITY

Happy birthday Michael.

Disco Floyd

".....goody goody goody bullsh*t....."

This year marks the 30th anniversary of the release of ROSEBUD's classic disco versions of PINK FLOYD's "Have A Cigar" and "Money". Released as a 12-inch "Disco Single" on Warner Brothers Records, the A-side "Have A Cigar" did actually get some airplay on my local FM "rock" station at the time.

I did my own needle-drop, and since I know you'll all want these for your next Disco Dance Party, I ripped them at 320 kbps. They're separate MP3s, but they're both in the same RAR file.

http://www.gigasize.com/get.php/3195435410/Rosebud.rar

Too Many Cooks!!!

Yes its true - finally an official release of "Too Many Cooks". Coming in October, on "The Very Best Of Mick Jagger":

"The sizzling "Too Many Cooks (Spoil The Soup)," was produced by John Lennon and recorded by Jagger in 1973 in Los Angeles. The track features an all-star lineup that includes guitarists Danny Kortchmar and Jesse Ed Davis, keyboardist Al Kooper, bassist Jack Bruce, drummer Jim Keltner, and, on background vocals, singer-songwriter Harry Nilsson. It has never previously been released."

Read all about it here:

http://mickjagger.com/

2007 Magazine of the Week #17

Maybe I should just start calling it the "Magazine of the Month".....

(.....yeah, I know. Its been two months.....)

Anyway, here's a look at the June 1969 issue of HIT PARADER.

(Click images to enlarge)

There's a story on the "Current Problems of THE ROLLING STONES". We learn that BRIAN was "now happily back in the social circulation", and "took a great fancy to the ten-foot-high cut-out of Tiny Tim at the Playboy Club reception. So taken with it was Brian that he took it with him when he left and on to a party at photographer DAVID BAILEY's next evening, where it was apparently a great success". MICK pops in for a quick interview and briefly (very briefly) discusses "Beggars Banquet", "Performance", "Barbarella", MOTHERS OF INVENTION, and his new "moog-synthesiser".

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In "PAUL MCCARTNEY on THE BEATLES", Paul talks about the recently-released Beatles' "White Album". Here's a bit where he talks about writing "Rocky Racoon":
"I was with John on the roof, and we were just sitting around playing guitar and we were with DONOVAN and just enjoying ourselves. I started playing the chords and originally the title was "Rocky Sassoon". And then the three of us started making up the words and they came very quickly, and eventually it became "Racoon" because that was more like a "cow-ie"."

"Words To Your Favorite Hits" includes the lyrics to "Crossroads (as recorded by the Cream)" and "Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da (as recorded by Arthur Conley)".

There's a nice article on the SPECIALTY record label, plus TRAFFIC, JIMI HENDRIX, ARETHA FRANKLIN, and "Have We Misjudged THE MONKEES?".

And then there's THE HOLLIES, BUFFY SAINTE-MARIE, THE IMPRESSIONS, MARTHA REEVES, JOHNNY TAYLOR, and a lot more.

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Not bad for 35 cents!

DC5 redux

By popular demand, here's a re-posting of the DAVE CLARK FIVE tracks that I posted a while back, this time all in a single file:

http://www.gigasize.com/get.php/-1099690015/DC5.rar

These are the songs included:

Glad All Over
Bits And Pieces
Do You Love Me
Can't You See That She's Mine
Because
Reelin' And Rockin'
Everybody Knows
Having A Wild Weekend
Catch Us If You Can
Try Too Hard
At The Scene
I've Got To Have A Reason
I Like It Like That
Over And Over

And here are links to my original posts:

CULPA DIRECT - THE DAVE CLARK FIVE

CULPA DIRECT - THE DAVE CLARK FIVE, PART 2

Tracking Townshend

There's an excellent interview with PETE TOWNSHEND over at EQ Magazine. Pete talks about recording, making home demos, equipment, Pro-Tools, mic placement, the recent "Endless Wire" CD, etc - fascinating stuff.

Here's a brief excerpt:

"It is a long time since I have mixed in an analog desk. I have had my big Synclavier since 1984 — me and Frank Zappa, Sting, and the rest. That had a built-in 16-track hard disk recorder that still sounds pretty incredible, I have to say. So often a lot of simple level adjustments could be made right inside the Synclavier with ease. On Endless Wire, I would have mixed analog, but my Focusrite desk from 1986 was on its last legs (it is now being broken up into modules), and I simply didn’t have enough reliable working channels to give it a try. I wasn’t about to go into someone else’s studio to mix. I have to say I think mixing in Pro Tools is a joy. The ability to keep tweaking a good mix, and to strip it down for TV backing tracks, to offer elements to remix engineers, to be able to email track groups across the globe for overdubs, etc. — all this is what makes it so great. The sound? I have heard recordings made by Myles Clarke on Pro Tools at 48/24 that sound as good as those I record to tape. I can’t do what he does with it. He uses some of the techniques I’ve demonstrated on the studio floor, but also has his own unique approach. So we learn from each other. "

Read the whole thing here:

EQ ONLINE - TRACKING TOWNSHEND

50 years ago.....

Yesterday, July 6, was the 50th anniversary of, as Dinsdalep put it, "what's-his-face meeting the other guy".

If you haven't already, check out the excellent new Beatlegs Podcast. Here's the page:

BEATLEGS PODCAST - TO DESERVE SUCH A FETE

Happy Birthday Ringo!

July 7th - today is RINGO STARR's 67th birthday. Here are a couple of solo-Beatle mash-ups to celebrate with.
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First there's a duet with Ringo and JOHN LENNON on John's song "Goodnight Vienna", from "Fab Forgeries Vol 3":

GOODNIGHT VIENNA - RINGO AND JOHN

Then from "Fab Forgeries Vol 1", there's Ringo with GEORGE HARRISON on Ringo's "It Don't Come Easy":

IT DON'T COME EASY - RINGO AND GEORGE

Happy birthday Ringo!

Bill Haley

Born July 6th, 1925, today would have been BILL HALEY's 82nd birthday.

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A champion yodeller who went from C&W and Western Swing through Rockabilly territory into some nice clean and tight Rock 'n Roll, Haley never really seems to get the respect he deserves. Both classic versions of BILL HALEY AND HIS COMETS (and the pre-Comets SADDLEMEN) featured some excellent musicians, real top-notch pros. (The "original" Comets morphed into THE JODIMARS, who eventually had one of their songs covered by THE BEATLES).

I'll have more Haley-related posts in the next few weeks, with some great stuff from that era and the whole JACK HOWARD scene. I've got some pretty interesting things coming up.

But for now, to celebrate Bill's birthday, here's a very rare recording from my personal collection. Its a demo of "Haley's Comet", a song that was written for Haley in the 1950s by EDDIE KHOURY and RONNIE BONNER. Haley never recorded it though, and there has never been a commercially released version of the song. This demo is sung by the legendary cowboy singer DICK THOMAS, who had a big hit with "Sioux City Sue" in 1945. ("Sioux City Sue" was co-written by MAX FREEDMAN, who also co-wrote "Rock Around The Clock"). Dick also recorded for REX ZARIO's Arzee label, but that's a whole other story, for another time.

Happy birthday Bill!

HALEY'S COMET - DICK THOMAS

The Dave Clark Five, part 2

By popular demand, here are two more DAVE CLARK FIVE tracks. How could I have not posted these the first time???

"Everybody Knows (I Still Love You)" was a top-20 hit in 1964. "Having A Wild Weekend" was the title track from their 1965 film and soundtrack LP.

HAVING A WILD WEEKEND - DC5

EVERYBODY KNOWS - DC5

All This And T-Shirts, Too