Happy Birthday Memere

4.30.2007

Plugs . . .
There is a new 8 1/2 by Eleven as well as a new Fetus-X. Also you need to read Dr. Murks uproariously funny recent blogs. First read his sports blog on the Randy Moss trade and the state of Boston sports and also read his slang primer of alternative ways to say breasts, add a few of your own.

Also, Malach is a huge fan of Bill Simmons. You need to read his blog on Moss, and the rest of the draft.

Happy Birthday Memere.
We love you, your great grand kids love you, and we hope you have a wonderful year

You are Listening too . . .
Penny Lane, from Magical Mystery Tour, by the Beatles. Actually Penny Lane and Strawberry Fields Forever are both from the Sgt. Pepper recording but were pulled and done as a double sinble, then added to Magical Mystery Tour. Both songs are very interesting, as they are basically the same subject, one from McCartney's point of view, the other from Lennon's. It shows the marked difference and split their music was developing into. It was brilliant to market them together. As a general rule, McCartney was writing very smart pop songs, and Lennon experimenting more. McCartney's songs were generating more hits also. This also created a division among Beatles fans. Malach admits he is more of a Lennon guy, but McCartney was genius too.

First Magical Mystery Tour. A strange album and an even stranger movie (I saw in once in college, but I was a little drunk). The album was a double EP in the UK, and a regular 2 sided studio album in the US (EP did not generally do well in the US). The first side of the album was the soundtrack to the movie, side two contained previously released singles, All You Need is Love, from Our World, and a song for the upcoming Yellow Submarine movie. Much of the music on this album were sessions from earlier albums. It is a strange mix of songs, from things like Hello, Goodbye to I am the Walrus.

The movie itself was a huge disaster one of the only disasters The Beatles had in their career. The hour long movie was specifically created for television, and was a flop. Critic totally panned it, but as time has passed it became a sort of cult classic.

Much of the movie was concieved during an acid trip. There was no script, just a series of handwritten ideas, drawings, and sketches. Much of the movie was stream of concious. The basic plot was a group of people were on a bus tour. During the tour strange things begin to happen at the whim of several magicians (The Beatles and road manager Mal Evans). It is really something you have to see.

While the movie was pretty much destroyed critically in the 60's it has become a bit of a classic, with it's concept, and is a favorite of Stephen Speilbergs.

Penny Lane is a semi-autobiographical song, about a street in Liverpool, where Lennon and McCartney grew up. They would meet as teens at the Penny Lane junction to catch the bus to get to the center of Liverpool. Needless to say, the theft of Penny Lane street signs over the years caused local officials to begin painting it on the side of buildings. The song describes all real and actual places in and around Penny Lane. The song goes through a number of temporal stream of concious moments with McCartney describing sunny weather, rain, Rememberance Day, Summer, and Fall.

Penny Lane's music is very similar to The Beach Boys God Only Knows, which is one of McCartney's favorite all time songs. It is especially notable of the sections of the song, attrubuted to McCartney; the block piano chords, and the rythmn of the base.

Also used was a piccolo trumpet solo, which was the first instance of it's use in a pop song, and that instrument is now pretty common. McCartney was inspired after lackluster solos of other instruments by a Dave Mason performance he heard on the radio. Mason agreed to do a solo for this song. Penny Lane and Strawberry Fields both had extremely influential early"music videos".

Becuase of the song, the real Penny Lane, basically a bus route, became a trendy art and shopping district, which it still is today. In addition in 2006, Liverpool attempted to abolish street names recognizing people of the slave trade, of course Penny Lane was one of them, named after James Penny. Ultimaltely, city elders decided it would be unwise to change the street name.

Penny Lane began setting the groundwork for soft rock, and pop of the 70's. It also begins to show The Beatles slowly moving back to some of their earlier pop garage rock. Magical Mystery Tour is also a very strange transition album from Sgt. Pepper to the White Album.

See what the Yankees do?
They turn people evil. And you know, I don't really see this Steinbrennae press conference as a huge vote of confidence. Hey Joe Torre, if the do fire you, what better way to get some revenge but come work for the Red Sox as a bench coach? Sox are off tonight.

Malach Quote/Video of the Day

I am Malach, and I remeber this video from the early days of MTV.