Thursday, July 09, 2009

09-09-09



Two months from today, EMI will be re-releasing the entire catalogue of a venerable 1960s group. Girls screamed for them, parents loved their harmonies and young men ironed their shirts twice in an attempt to copy their idols' manner of dress.

Ladies and gentlemen, I give you The Kingston Trio! (cue insane amount of applause)



Why aren't you cheering? "Tic Tic Tic" is one of the greatest songs known to humankind.

The Beatles were pretty good, too.

The voices of Lennon, McCartney, Harrison and Starr are as familiar to me as those of family members. At age five, Beatles '65 was one of the first records I had and I listened to it endlessly until it was scratched beyond playability.

Ramping up to the momentous date of 09/09/09, it seems only right to feature all of their records from Please Please Me through to Let It Be. With two months of time allotted to complete this task, I'm looking forward to some great listening/blogging sessions.

For anyone that actually looks in on my ramblings, please feel free to name your top five favorite Beatle albums, their absolute worst song and what the original title was for the Abbey Road LP.

6 comments:

classicrockforthesoul said...

I am definitely no Beatles connoisseur, but whenever I was recently in London I went on a Beatles walking tour and it was very interesting!

On 09/09/09, all Paul McCartney will be hearing in his ears is "ka-ching! ka-ching! ka-ching!" which will be the sound of all the money the Beatles will be getting that day.
I will be very interested in hearing the final dollar amount!

Just off the top of my head, I don't really like the song "Yellow Submarine." I don't know why, I just don't like it.

Apart from the extremely popular hits, I really like "Strawberry Fields Forever", "A Day in the Life", and "In My Life" always makes me cry.

Bar L. said...

I don't know my top five albums or my best or worse but I'll ponder this and come back awake later.

Jeff said...

Wow, naming my top five Beatles albums is impossible because anything from Rubber Soul on can easily be considered my favorite album. That's the amazing thing about The Beatles, they were so amazingly consistent, and in my opinion never digressed once in their career. My favorite song is probably "A Day in the Life", at least I can name that.

By the way, have you ever watched The Beatles Anthology? I don't think there was a rockumentary that ever came even remotely close to matching the quality of Anthology.

Anonymous said...

"help us".
"yes marge, but we call them chips".

Sean Coleman said...

Classic- Great picks. "A Day in the Life" seems to be a popular cover choice for big name artists these days. Jeff Beck closed his set with it at Bluesfest the other night. Neil Young has been using it as a finale for months. Paul will definitely have to buy his own bank to house his earnings.

Barbara- I'm looking forward to your choices as I know they're going to be cool.

Jeff- It is definitely a tough decision on a pick five level. I have watched the Anthology too many times (in parts of course). The director's cut is interesting as there's a bit more candid talk about drug use and some stories change from those told in the official release. With Lennon and Harrison gone, I don't think the real dirt will ever be known, as McCartney is very guarded and Ringo just tows the line in interviews.

Anon-"Dear Marge, thanks for the lovely pictures. I hung them on me wall..."

"Everest" was the original title for Abbey Road. It was the brand of cigs that Geoff Emerick smoked. They were even toying around with shooting Mt. Everest for the LP cover. After some exasperating discussion, it was suggested that the group just go outside the studio, take the 'effin picture, call it Abbey Road and be done with it.

Think of all of the time that people wasted trying to attach symbolic meaning to the cover photo, where there is none. It was an afterthought, born out of the fact that the four guys doing the project didn't want to put any further effort into it.

Thank you all for your excellent comments. With each album that I write about, there will be trivia questions to match the era.

Charlie Ricci said...

The original title for Abbey Road was Everest. Worst song: "I Am The Walrus."

Top 5 albums in order:

Abbey Road
The Beatles (The White Album)
Revolver
Sgt. Pepper
Rubber Soul