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So, This Used To Be A Thing

January 31, 2015 7 Comments

When young people hear late Cretaceous period Bob Dylan gargling participles, or are forced to flip the channel hurriedly when the PBS begging jag starts out with the twitching corpse of Peter, Paul, and Mary, they don’t really have a frame of reference for what’s going on. Folk Music used to be a thing.

Not just a thing. THE thing. John Lennon wrote this song because he wanted to take a stab at the folkie thing. It wasn’t really their bag. It was more like a train running on a parallel track. Liverpudlians had skiffle, their own version of folk music, but Gerry Marsden took care of that. When prospective manager Brian Epstein found the Beatles banging away in the Cavern Club, they were wearing leather clothes like Marlon Brando in The Wild One, and they interrupted their fifties proto-rock covers to have Gerry Marsden sing some scouse ballad while he stood on a packing crate because the microphone stand couldn’t be adjusted. It wasn’t any sort of Rock Island Line festival.

Brian Epstein signed The Silkie because he heard them playing in the Cavern Club when he dragged his Savile Row arse in for a gander at the Beatles. It’s hard to say whether the Beatles or The Silkie did the cover version of Hide Your Love Away. Both versions were recorded at the same time by the same people, more or less. It’s assumed that John Lennon always wanted to be someone other than himself on a given day, and that day he wanted to be Bob Dylan for a spell.

Or so everyone says. I’ve never seen a pop-culture vulture offer any other opinion about this record. They all agree that John Lennon wanted to be Bob Dylan because they have no idea what creative people are like. If they were in the slightest bit creative themselves, they wouldn’t be writing for music magazines. It’s like relying on remoras for advice on how to be a shark. John Lennon was like many people who feel an intense need to compete in whatever arena they find themselves in. It might be passive-aggressive combat, but it’s very real. I get a whiff of Oh Yeah, I got yer folk music right here, Bob in this song. Like Marlon in The Wild One, he’s wondering whattaya got he can rebel against.

The song was given to The Silkie to record, Lennon produced the record, McCartney played the guitar, and George kept time by tapping the top of an acoustic guitar. When it was done, Lennon called Brian Epstein, held the phone up to the speaker in the studio, and told him they had recorded a Number One hit.

The Silkie version made it to a respectable #28 in the UK, and #10 in the US. The Beatles version was part of the Help! soundtrack, which was # 1 nine ways from Sunday. Knowing how that happens is why the Beatles had a manager, I guess.

Preciso Praticar Meu Português. Never Mind. They Speak Beatles

January 16, 2015 4 Comments

That’s from a show in Brazil called Programa do Jô. It’s something along the lines of the Johnny Carson show. Oops, I mean the Leno Show. Dammit, the Letterman Show or something.

Wait a minute, I have no idea if Letterman is still on the air, either. Whatever. On Programa do Jô, a Chilean waiter serves the guests cocktails and food while they’re on the air. And they have Beatles cover bands that probably don’t have any idea what the words mean in the songs they’re singing.

Hey, you’ve got to guzzle Cabernet!

Hey, you’ve got an ugly fiancee!

Hey, Yul Brynner hides your lunch away!

Hey, read me a book by le Carre!

Hey, you’ve got to give me some sorbet!

As I said, whatever. Most people have no idea what the words are, or what they’re driving at. In most cases, the composer had no idea what they were driving at either. Writing songs is more a knack than a trade. You’re supposed to give the audience a vague feeling one way or the other, and try to concatenate the notes so it can be hummed. That’s about it.

A half-decent folk song is hard to come by these days. These Brazilian coves knew where to look.

Hey Giuda

January 7, 2015 3 Comments

The world is a wonderful place chock full of interesting people. There are like, twenty-three of them. Maybe twenty-two. Anyway, if you poke around, it’s not 100 percent douchebags downloading navigation apps into their “smartphones” while walking into parking meters.

I’d be hard pressed to recall the last time I saw something truly new. No, really, I mean it. It’s been decades. Everything touted as new is a retread, and generally a degradation of the thing it copies.

Don’t feel bad about the smartphone thing. At least it’s a step up, intellectually, from jingling change in your pocket.

I remember distinctly the first time I saw a workable digital camera, the first time I saw Microsoft Office, the first time I heard the modem blast of dial-up Internet connection, the first time I had a usable cell phone, the first time I got yelled at by Nuvi, and the first time I played Doom. Nothing new has happened since any of that, and everything that’s tried to beat them has been worse. And Justin Bieber is just Frankie Avalon, except I gather Frankie Avalon knew how to sing a little; but I really don’t know, because I’m not that old, and I know I’ll never get so old that I have time to waste listening to either of them.

I like new things. Since there aren’t any, I just look for intriguing versions of old things. A roomful of guys in Bologna singing Beatles songs is intriguing enough, I guess.

[Backstory, previously on Sippican Cottage: It Won’t Be Long , and More Beatles Bolognese]

 

The Strangers: The Upside-Down Beatles

December 28, 2014 1 Comment

The Strangers were a pop/rock cover band in Melbourne, Australia in the 60s and 70s. They were the house band for a sorta Australian version of a Hullabaloo/American Bandstand/Don Kirshner’s Rock Concert-kinda thing called The Go!! Show, which shows the early predilection for exclamation mark abuse in the teen set, which would metastasize into full-blown emoticon leprosy when the Intertunnel finally showed up.

This version shows a few thing admirably. It’s an excellent cover, overall, but brings nothing new to the proceedings. Back then, access to music was much more limited, and cover bands had to deliver the payload precisely. Just like the record was the grail. You were stand-ins for the bands.

Nowadays, no one wants to call themselves cover bands, though. They’re tribute bands, and they play just like the record, forevermore. The actual bands that played the songs in the first place get old and become cover bands of themselves, playing at state fairs and whatnot, trying to sound like themselves even thought four out of five original members have died by choking on vomit by the time they play at the Waterfront Concert for Balding Hair Metal Bands.

No one knows whose vomit it was. You can’t dust for vomit.

Maybe It’s Just Me, But I Don’t Think Eleanor Rigby Is Supposed To Sound This Happy

March 13, 2014 2 Comments



And still, here we are.

Pharrell Williams is notable enough to have his own Wikipedia page. I checked. Ye gods, he’s won seven Grammys.  That seems an awful lot for someone I never heard of. The Beatles only won eight. That’s not a typo. They won a “lifetime achievement” Grammy, too, so nine, depending on how you count them.

I have heard of The Beatles. They seem to have gotten much more mileage out of their meager stash of Grammys.

Tag: Beatles

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sippicancottage

A Man Who Has Nothing In Particular To Recommend Him Discusses All Sorts of Subjects at Random as Though He Knew Everything.

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