A friend and I mark the second week in October, during which our respective birthdays fall, by sending each other videos.
We’ll throw fresh material into the mix but it’s mostly old reliables. I’ve shared a
few on the blog in years past; the one that hilariously interprets lyrics to Joe Cocker’s performance of “With a Little Help from My Friends” at Woodstock [4:06] — a.k.a., to us, “I Did Some Wonder Loaf (Hoggify)” — I rather inexplicably have not ere now and it is among my favorite things. While the video’s been around so long that its original link/uploader is lost to the mists of time, I’m pretty sure the mysterious Dan’s name has always popped up at the end.
The Ed Sullivan Show 17.19 photo © 1964 SOFA Entertainment.
I’m a little surprised at how emotional I got watching the Beatles tribute earlier tonight.
I chanced upon “Hey Jude” in the car last night, reminding me again to write about
The Beatles.
Far lesser musical lights have labels on this blog, and it’s been bugging me that the greatest band in the history of pop music doesn’t. Many folks consider The Rolling Stones the greatest rock band ever, and they might be right — I’m not a huge Stones fan, to be honest, although they are undeniably iconic. The Beatles, however, during a relatively brief period spanning the era in which classic rock-&-roll (“She Loves You”) gave way to flat-out hard rock, hold the roll (“Helter Skelter”), also proved masters of old-fashioned balladry, psychedelic experimentation, and so much more (“Strawberry Fields Forever”). They wrote anthems, they wrote grooves, they wrote ditties, for Pete’s sake. Has any other group of musicians been so talented at turning out so many different styles of infectious, accomplished, influential music? And I include in that group not only John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison, and Ringo Starr, but producer George Martin as an indispensable enabler of most of the Beatles’ joint
career.
So here’s my First Beatles Story.
