Tag Archives: the beatles

My iPod #88: The Beatles – Being for the Benefit of Mr. Kite!

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John Lennon bought a poster one day in 1967, from an antiques shop whilst filming the video for “Strawberry Fields Forever” with the other three guys. This is a picture of the poster. This is a picture of John standing next to the poster which is the real deal and not edited by Photoshop at all. It actually isn’t.

To put it simply, everything in the song is from the poster. The horse’s name wasn’t Henry though. It was actually “Zanthus”. I don’t think “Zanthus the horse dances the waltz” would have been as good of a lyric though. Mind you, if they had used that lyric it wouldn’t have been banned on the BBC for supposed “drug references”. Silly BBC.

If you own the vinyl version of “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band”, this song closes the first side of the album. To emphasise the circus theme of the song, their renowned producer George Martin asked the engineer to chop up recordings of various faiground organs and calliope music, throw them in the air and reassemble them at random. These are the noises used for the instrumental break, and also during the outro of the song. It took five days for the band to make this, and is regarded to be one of the more complex songs on the album.

It’s used in this epic mix on the LOVE album from 2006 too.

Until tomorrow.

Jamie.

Kings of Leon – “Supersoaker”

Alright! So Kings of Leon are back, and this is their new single “Supersoaker”. There’s the audio-video right up there.

It premiered yesterday on Zane Lowe’s radio show on BBC Radio 1. I missed the first time it played.

But then it played again later….. and I was quite pleased! Only a few posts ago was I talking about how I didn’t like the new sound that they were going for now and how I was dissappointed that they had sold out or whatever. But this song is like a mix of that sound and their “Aha Shake Heartbreak” material. Reminds me of “Taper Jean Girl” in particular. This is what I wanted. They’ve gone back to where they once belonged. You can hear their roots in the song. The only recent song I can think of when they have done this is “Back Down South”, and that’s not even a bad song. I find myself singing that from time to time. Stick to your roots, KOL.

It’s a thumping four-on-the-floor western rocker with Caleb’s crooning vocals over the relentless guitars and jumpy bassline in the verses and everything. Yeah… I can dig this. This is a good first single.

Their new album “Mechanical Bull” is released in September.

Bye!

My iPod #61: The Beatles – Back in the U.S.S.R.

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You don’t know how lucky you are.

Today’s song is another one by those four guys from Liverpool. I don’t have access to my computer at the moment so I hastily type this up using my iPod Touch.

“Back in the U.S.S.R” is the opening track to the band’s double album “The Beatles” – also known as “The White Album” due to the album’s front cover. I prefer to call it “The Beatles” though because… that’s the name of the album.

1968 is known as the year when the members of the band started to get a bit annoyed with one another. You probably wouldn’t think that listening to this classic though. Upon first listen you might think, “Yeah, I can dig this! Paul sounds like he’s having a good time, they are all whooping and stuff in the middle. Ah, those guys.”

IT’S ALL LIES. Tension was building amongst the group, and for a number of different reasons. George felt under appreciated, as did Ringo and John had brought along a force that would totally break the harmony between the four for the rest of their years together.

For anyone who didn’t know, Ringo doesn’t play on this track. It is actually Paul on the drums. I’m sorry to break it to you if he’s your favourite or whatever.

In regards to “The Beatles”, it was a matter of ‘back to basics’ for the band. Their last full release was “Sgt. Pepper” which is known for its wide variety instrumentation and the colourful front cover and whatnot, and so after travelling to India for ‘spiritual enlightenment’ the band were ready to keep things simple.

“Back in the U.S.S.R.” is a great opener, I can’t imagine it anywhere else on an album. It’s got that sense of urgency and pace and gets you hyped up for what is to come.

Until tomorrow.

Jamie.

My iPod #60: The Beatles – Baby, You’re a Rich Man

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“How does it feel to be one of the beautiful people?”

“Baby, You’re a Rich Man” was originally released a b-side to “All You Need Is Love” in the summer of 1967.

Everything was still fine with the group; Brian Epstein was alive and they had been revelling from the success of their then new album “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band”. Yep, things were going strong. Probably better than ever before.

The band then decided to start work on “Magical Mystery Tour”, in those sessions this song was recorded. The actual thing started out as two separate ideas that Lennon and McCartney had, the former with the aforementioned quote at the top and the latter with the “Baby, You’re a Rich Man” chorus. With a few tweaks and shape ups, they ended up with the song that you and I enjoy today.

Apparently at the very end of the song when everyone is singing the chorus, John sings ‘baby, you’re a rich fag jew’ in reference to their manager Brian Epstein who was a homosexual… and Jewish. I can’t hear it, it’s probably just a rumour. Thinking on the lyrics now, it may be that the song is about him – but that’s for discussion.

It’s very groovy, with smooth bass playing by Paul and a clavioline by John which makes those random noises in the intro and during the verses. The highlight for me is at the end when the song picks up pace, everyone’s shouting the title at the top of their voices and the song fades out. Everyone sounds so happy and we all know that they wouldn’t be that way for much longer, but that particular part makes me want to be in the studio with them.

You know the video for “Hello, Goodbye” when everyone starts dancing? This is the audio version is that.

It’s also something that makes me want to have more songs on The Beatles Rock Band. Can we have more songs on that game? Probably not.

Until tomorrow.

Jamie.

My iPod #41: The Beatles – Another Girl

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Alright. So, if you read my post yesterday, you know that I am 18 years old! Woot woot.

I still feel the same though. Does everyone else wake up when it’s their birthday and just think, ‘well, what now?’ I thought that by turning eighteen I would feel some sense of freedom or intellectual gain, that hasn’t happened so far. Meh. Life goes on.

Yeah yeah, The Beatles were great blah blah blah.

‘Another Girl’ is a bright and peppy song of the band’s album ‘Help!’. Paul McCartney takes the lead on this, also filling the role as the lead guitarist. He’s the one doing all the random licks during the verses and chorus.

The band also play along with the song in a kind of music video, this can be seen in their movie also named ‘Help!’. It’s all fun and games with the Fab Four. The guys are in the Bahamas fooling around, John starts playing the drums and Ringo tries to the play the guitar, George starts throwing rocks at the other members, Paul almost touches a girl’s noob whilst ‘strumming’ her like a bass. It’s all good times in 1965.

‘Help!’ won’t be that album that The Beatles are most known for, but it’s still got some good tunes. This is a highlight.

Happy birthday to me and Pharrell Williams.

RIP Kurt Cobain and Layne Staley.

Until next time.

Jamie.

My iPod #38: The Beatles – And Your Bird Can Sing

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1966 was a good year for England. The football team won the World Cup, Tony Adams was born, and The Beatles unveiled their seventh album to the world. Except for the USA, who wouldn’t hear the album in its original form until the remastered CD in 1987.

Revolver. My favourite album by The Beatles. One of my favourite albums by any band.

Where can I start? I think that everything I would say about it has been said by almost every reviewer there is. I’ll leave it to you lot to find out what they say.

Upon seeing the Beatles light in 2009, I went on any site where I could download their whole discography. ‘Revolver’ was one of their first albums I downloaded, and then I didn’t know what to think of it. I’ve said many times that it takes a few listens to appreciate each song individually, resulting in an accumulated appreciation for the album as a whole. This was another of those times.

I think the fact that the songs were so short was something that made the album seem really quick to me. I would be listening to a song, and then it would finish and it was onto the next one. It was hard to get into something when the last chord faded out before your ears.

‘And Your Bird Can Sing’ was one example. Barely over two minutes, it’s one of the shortest songs.

Listening to it again and again though, I finally understood why the song was so sick. Sick is good. Now, it’s come to a point that when I see the cover, I either think of the fake countdown at the beginning of ‘Taxman’ or the introduction of this song.

It’s actually one of the more ‘basic?’ pieces of the album. A straight-forward rocker written by Lennon, with dual-guitar solos by both George Harrison AND Paul McCartney, Ringo doing his stuff on the drums. It;s just a really cheerful song, with hubris at its finest in the lyrics:

‘You tell me that you’ve heard every sound there is
And your bird can swing, but you can’t hear me
You can’t hear- MEEEEEEE.’

It’s just a huge ‘You suck. I’m great’ message. It’s brilliant. It’s everything you want musically and lyrically, and it’s only done in a short amount of time.

Then ‘For No One’ starts. Then you need to get the tissues. For drying your eyes.

It was clear that the band was a world away from their mop-top mania stage and had already embraced their dive into the unknown. That’s why they’re so great you know? They changed their sound on every album and they still sounded good! JESUS.

Revolver forever.

Until next time.

Jamie.