Beatles for Sale

In honour of the digitally re-re-remastered Beatles back catalogue going on sale today (not the first time they’ve been remastered, but by all accounts the best of them), here’s my top few from the fab four:

1. While My Guitar Gently Weeps
2. And My Bird Can Sing
3. Taxman
4. I Am the Walrus
5. Happiness is a Warm Gun
6. Across the Universe (the ‘Wildlife’ version)
7. Strawberry Fields Forever
8. I Wanna Be Your Man
9. Norwegian Wood
10. You’ve Got to Hide Your Love Away
11. I Should Have Known Better
12. Let it Be (the one without Phil Spector’s strings and choirs)

Top albums:

1. White Album
2. Revolver
3. Abbey Road
4. Rubber Soul
5. Past Masters

What’s yours?

UPDATE: Just to forestall complaints that I’ve left something out, I’d rate ‘Sgt.Pepper’s Only Dart’s Club Band’ somewhere around the fourth most overrated album in musical history.

Dear prudence – where have you gone?

So John Key cynically cancelled your tax cuts in this year’s budget, which in 2010 would have only needed $98 million to fund, but he’s still happy to carry on spending your money at a rate that would make Michael Cullen envious.

Prudence, thy name is not John.

John Boy’s latest promise – which comes on top of  the $300 million extra to insulate other people’s houses, $550 million on setting up an emissions trading scam, and a $4.3 billion increase in “core government spending”– oh, and $50 million for a bloody cycle path – is to spend at least $120 million of your money on a “party central” in downtown Auckland for the Rugby World Cup.  To quote Bernard Darnton, that’s $120 million plus cock ups.  On top of the $240million (plus cock ups) we’re spending on upgrading Eden Park, it’s beginning to make me wish that Australia had got the Rugby World Cup instead.

The Herald reports this sum is to be divided around 20-80 between taxpayers and long-suffering Auckland city ratepayers, who are already on the hook for $60 million of feel-good Rugby World Cup nonsense, and for interest payment on a $270 million loan taken out by the council because it couldn’t be bothered to cut its spending.

And John Key calls this development “of national and international importance” – which rather begs the question, doesn’t it.  In fact, three questions.  Important to whom. How does he know?  And if it’s so gosh-darned important to them, then why don’t they pay for it themselves instead of sending us the bill.

Here’s the Beatles:

The power of suggestion [updated]

Apparently if you play Donny Osmond’s ‘Puppy Love’ backwards it sounds like he’s singing ‘Kill for the Devil, sinners,’ if you play the Beatles’ song 'I’m So Tired’ backwards it tells you Paul is dead.  And if you play Led Zeppelin’s ‘Stairway to Heaven’ backwards (which, let’s be fair, could hardly be worse than playing it forwards), it is supposed to say “Here's to my sweet Satan. The one whose little path would make me sad, whose power is Satan. He'll give those with him 666. There was a little toolshed where he made us suffer, sad Satan."  Or something like that.

Some people, frankly, will hear something in anything.

Which brings us to the lastest attempt to hear something out of nothing: the David Bain “heavy breathing” tape.  I have it on good authority from some of the world’s most highly-paid experts (i.e., this bloke down the pub told me) that if you play it backwards it sounds like he’s quoting the words to the Macarena.  Or is it the Birdy Song.  Either way, this bloke swears it’s true.

Which, to be blunt, all makes about as much sense as the theory that he’s saying “I shot the prick”  in between hyperventilating.  The idea is about as dumb as the decision to exclude it from the trial.

UPDATE: Leighton Smith was asking on his show this morning a question that’s occurred to many people: How come the defence was allowed to present frank speculation about Robin Bain, about Laniet Bain, about her supposed sex life their supposed relationship, but the prosecution appears to have had so much of their evidence ruled out – evidence such as this tape, for example, and the evidence of school mates that a young David had devised a plan to use his paper round as an alibi.

I think the difference here is the rule on “hearsay evidence,” which is that assertions about what someone else might have said are generally inadmissible for the very good reason that what they report as being said was not presented as evidence was not made under oath, and is unable to be cross examined.  Witnesses therefore are enjoined to deliver evidence only on what they know directly – as a High Court judge once explained it to a witness, “Is it something you saw, or something that you’ve read.” If it’s neither, then it’s out.

It’s on this basis presumably that what David was supposed to have said when he was a youngster is ruled inadmissible, since it’s a direct example of hearsay – and may be just one reason that David was reluctant to go into the witness box himself, since this is the sort of thing the prosecution could question.

Now, much of the speculation presented by David Bain’s defence team falls into this category too – most of it being evidence of what Laniet told friends, or “work colleagues,” or dairy owners, or people she passed in the street.  But since Laniet is what’s called “an unavailable witness” – one whose testimony can’t be presented since they’re not around to answer questions – then the stuff she’s supposed to have said falls under the “hearsay exception” and can therefore be presented to the court.

It’s said that dead men tell no tales. But it could also be said that any defence lawyer worth his salt can easily fix that.

Fifteen Albums That Changed Your Life

Then one fine morning she turned on a New York station
Couldn’t believe what she heard at all!
She started dancing to that fine, fine music
You know her life was saved by rock n’ roll . . .
- Lou Reed, from ‘Rock n’Roll’

After yesterday’s fiscal fraudulence (Tax cuts. Yeah right.) we’ve almost earned ourselves a frivolous Friday, don’t you think?  And what’s more life-saving than music, eh?

Anyway, a friend was talking last night about a Facebook thread she’s on where folk are discussing the Fifteen Albums That Changed Your Life – and since we started making a wee list over a few drinks I figured I’d offer up the benefit of my research.

So here they are in autobiographical order – each one of which at one time lifted back the scales from my ears and drew back a curtain from my soul. It’s not as if you won’t know most of them already, to be fair.

1. Hello Sailor, by Hello Sailor
   Heard it, bought it, played it every night for two years.  Wore it out. This was my just what this particular thirteen-year-old ordered.
2. Never Mind the Bollocks, Here’s the Sex Pistols
   As the poet said, Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive, But to be young was very heaven.  Or something like that anyway.
3. 1969:Velvet Underground Live, by the Velvet Underground
   It seemed for a while there that the universe contained two kinds of people. Those who ‘got’ the VU, and those that didn’t.
4. White Album, Beatles
   Friend’s older brother got sick of us playing air guitar to the Buzzcocks one afternoon, and dropped the needle on ‘Helter Skelter’ to show us who was boss. Turned out old hippies could rock out too!
5. King of the Delta Blues Singers, Robert Johnson
   Strange what you uncover when you check out the influences of your influences.  Blues!  Who knew!!
6. Ninth Symphony, Ludwig van Beethoven (LSO)
   Figuring there was more to this music gig than I’d heretofore discovered I started mining the second-hand classical record bins.  I stuck in my thumb and pulled out . . . this!  My God, I never knew music could do this.
7. Second Piano Concerto, Sergei Rachmaninov (Moura Lympany)
   Then one fine morning I turned up this wee beauty, and I really and truly couldn’t believe what I heard at all.
8. Jazz Classics in Digital Stereo.  Vol 3: New York
   It was that Jimmy Lunceford song ‘Stratosphere’ that did it.  What started out as a cheap tape full of tiddlywink music to play while studying suddenly told me that a whole world of jazz awaited my discovery. And the whole world got even bigger, and more exciting.
9. Cotton Club soundtrack
   And then I discovered Duke Ellington, and I have John Barry and this soundtrack to thank for it.
10. Tosca, Giacomo Puccini (Leontyne Price/Giuseppe de Stefano)
    Scratched to hell this old record was, even when I first got it, but it scratched an itch I hadn’t even known I had.
11. Smoke & Strong Whiskey – Christy Moore
    He offers one hell of a rousing welcome to this particular cabaret.  Almost literally intoxicating, this was the drive-home-after-a session music for every Irishman I knew in London.
12. The Essential Wagner – The Legendary Toscanini Recordings
    Another cheap cassette tape picked up in a Shepherd’s Bush bargain basement opened up a whole new world. I played it and played it as background music -- until one day something just happened.  I stopped it, rewound it, and just sat there and actually listened to it.  As friends will testify, I really haven’t been the same since. The thing is, after Wagner nothing else can ever sound the same again.
13. Bossa Nova/Nevermind/Generation Terrorists
    While my back was turned, these buggers showed that the lost decade of music that was the eighties would finally result in something exciting.  Youngsters could still do it for themselves, and it could still be alright.
14. Let Love In – Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds
    I’d lost track of old Nick over the years, never realising that he’d discovered melody in his middle ages.  I heard this, and I let Nick back in.
15. Four Last Songs, Richard Strauss (Elizabeth Schwarzkopf)
    Balm.  Just balm. When the mood is right, these four songs can justify the whole world. I’ve since heard it sung better (thanks, Jesse Norman), but this album is still a well-played sentimental favourite.

So there’s my fifteen (and thanks Les, Francis, Graham, Tanja, Martin, Lindsay et al for some of the introductions).

What are yours?

Dr Robert

Pssst.  I know that many of you know Robert White, a local Objectivist, so I'm very happy to report that Robert is now Doctor Robert -- his thesis on the philosophy of Ayn Rand has now been accepted, and the title of Doctor about to be bestowed.

Congratulations Doctor.

UPDATE: Oops, apparently my grapevine was slightly inaccurate.  I said the title of Doctor is about to
be bestowed. In fact, Robert's degree was conferred several weeks ago.

Here's the Beatles, with 'Dr Robert':

                          

And here's a very good Peruvian Beatles covers band doing Dr Robert.  Who knew that such things even existed.

"Get born, keep warm...": Global warming with Bob.

[Pinched from Jameson] Rolling Stone magazine's 40th Anniversary edition is by all accounts a sentimental tribute to the hippy, full of interviews with icons from the era. Appropriate then that they sat down with the top two on their 100 Greatest Artists of All Time list: Bob Dylan, who came second only to the Beatles on their list, and Paul McCartney.

Bob’s influence on the magazine’s founder was not inconsiderable: Jann Wenner began his career as a music critic under the pseudonym Mr. Jones (taken from Dylan’s song 'Ballad of a Thin Man'), and named his magazine after Dylan’s 'Like a Rolling Stone', the song Rolling Stone ranked #1 on their 500 Greatest Songs of All Time list. So Wenner took the honour of interviewing Dylan himself and did his best to get him into the swing of the auspicious anniversary by asking him the no-brainer question about global warming … but things didn’t quite go according to plan ...

Wenner: What do you think of the historical moment we’re in today? We seem to be hell-bent on destruction. Do you worry about global warming?
Dylan: In what sense do you mean.
Wenner: Bob, come on.
Dylan: No, you come on. In what sense do you mean that?
Wenner: We seem to be hell-bent on destruction. Do you worry about global warming?
Dylan: Where’s the global warming? It’s freezing here.
Wenner: It seems a pretty frightening outlook.
Dylan: I think what you’re driving at, though, is we expect politicians to solve all our problems. I don’t expect politicians to solve anybody’s problems.
Wenner: Who is going to solve them?
Dylan: Our own selves. We’ve got to take the world by the horns and solve our own problems. The world owes us nothing, each and every one of us, the world owes us not one single thing. Politicians or whoever.

By contrast, Paul McArtney was just as wet as you'd expect.

RightWingBob has more on 'libertarian Bob', including an amusing note that Gore referenced Bob in his own Rolling Stone interview (just as wrongly as Wenner as it turns out), and the suggestion from John Berlau that growing celebrity scepticism might be a signal that "global warming hysteria has jumped the shark."

Dylan’s latest statement may signal that in the global warming debate, the times are changing. Even independent-minded celebrities are now questioning the establishment media orthodoxy that the debate over global warming and its effects are all but over. In a phrase familiar to those who study pop culture, it appears that the global warming scare may have “jumped the shark.”

Music meme

Here's a challenge from Paula you might want to pick up.

NAME UP TO THREE:

Song(s) That I Loathe to the Core of My Being
- God Defend New Zealand (the world's worst anthem)
- Ten Guitars (the world's second-worst anthem)
- Staying Alive, Bee Gees
Musical artist(s) That I Loathe to the Core of My Being
- Barry Manilow
- Elton John
- Pink Floyd
Rolling Stones Song(s) I Like
- Sympathy for the Devil
- Pay it Back ;^)
Beatles Song(s) I Love
- Taxman
- And My Bird Can Sing
- While My Guitar Gently Weeps
Who Song(s) I Love
- Love, Reign Over Me
- I Can't Explain
- Can You See the Real Me
Dylan Song(s) I Love
- It's Alright Ma (I'm Only Bleeding)
- Every Grain of Sand
- Ballad of a Thin Man
Lou Reed/Velvet Underground Song(s) I Love
- Coney Island Baby
- It Wasn't Me
- Pale Blue Eyes
Reggae Songs I Love
- Johnny Was, Bob Marley
- Police and Thieves, Junior Murvin
- Sonny's Letter (Anti-Sus Poem), Linton Kwesi Johnson
Country Song(s) I Can Stomach
- This Drinking Will Kill Me, Dwight Yoakam
- One, Johnny Cash (proof that every singer and every songwriter might just have one good song in them)
Movie Soundtrack(s) I Love
- Cotton Club, John Barry
- Amadeus, Wolfgang Amadeus Someone or Other
- anything by Ennio Morricone
- anything by Nino Rota
Cover Song(s) I Love
- Stardust by Hoagy Carmichael, performed by Louis Armstrong
- Hallelujah by Leonard Cohen, performed by John Cale
- Sweet Jane by Lou Reed, covered by Cowboy Junkies
Contemporary Top-40 Artist(s) I Secretly Love
... I don't think I even know any contemporary top-forty artists...
Song(s) That Bring Me To Tears
- Papa's Song, Les Miserables
- Missing You, Christy Moore
Rap/Hip Hop Song(s) I Can Stomach
- Original Wrapper, Lou Reed
Blues Songs I Love
- 32:20 Blues, Robert Johnson
- Stomp Boogie, John Lee Hooker
- Killing Floor, Howling Wolf
Novelty Song(s) I Love
- Big Bottom, Spinal Tap
- Monkey Song, Hoagy Carmichael
- Ying Tong Song, The Goons
Soul/R&B Songs I Love
- Try a Little Tenderness, Otis Redding
- Land of a Thousand Dances, Wilson Picket
- Motown Junk, Manic Street Preachers ;^)
Power Ballad(s) I Love
- Because the Night, Patti Smith
- Nothing Else Matters, Metallica
- Passion Play, Hello Sailor
Pre 1950s Song(s) I Love
- Ain't Misbehavin', Louis Armstrong
- Im Treibhaus, Richard Wagner
- Body and Soul, Coleman Hawkins
Singer/Songwriter Songs I Love
- From St Kilda to Kings Cross, Paul Kelly
- No Man's Land, Eric Bogle
- Your Ghost, Kristin Hersh
Songs I Still Love From When I was Fourteen
- Smash it Up, Damned
- Transmission, Joy Division
- Search and Destroy, Iggy & the Stooges
Song(s) to Have Sex To
- Leibestod, Richard Wagner
- Roll Up to My Bumper, Grace Jones
- European Female, Stranglers
Drinking Song(s)I Love
- Vagabond's Drinking Song, Mario Lanza
- Billy Bold, Graham Brazier
- Boys from County Hell, Pogues

RELATED: Music

'London Calling - Redux'

If the Beatles White Album needs pruning down to a single record, as The Whig The Tory suggested last week (erroneously IMHO), there is one well-known record that needs it more, much more: The Clash's London Calling.

When this first came out, records in NZ (remember records?) came out from England by slow boat, and English punk records came out by row boat, if at all. (Anyone remember standing in line at the bottom of Queen St to pick up one of the very few Joy Division imports in the country? Back when you had to save up for months and put your name down for one of the limited number imported? I tell you, those weren't the days.)

Fortunately, I had a girl-friend visiting the UK just as this came out, and she brought me back three wonderful vinyl presents*, including this one, making me one of the fortunate few in New Zealand to hear what the Clash's new record sounded like in the week it came out. My friends and I gathered expectantly around the wind-up gramophone as I unwrapped the boon, and I dropped the needle expectantly. It started well. 'London Calling' was no 'Safe European Home' -- or even a 'Janie Jones' -- but it was good and fresh and pungent, but from there it all sort of seemed to slide little by little towards limpness, from 'Brand New Bloody Cadillac' (limp filler) and ending up with the song they were too embarrassed even to include on the sleeve, 'Train in Vain.'

The Clash had gone disco. Uuurgh.

The record sat unloved for months. Even to an untrained teenage ear it was clear this was a different Clash, and a different Clash was not what I had signed up for. Eventually however, over time, its few treats won me over. This was a good record. A good single record. There was too much fluff; too much stuff that in the Age of Vinyl couldn't simply be programmed away and avoided -- the only recourse was to scratch a nail through the grooves you needed to avoid. I didn't, but I was often sorely tempted. Whatever fitness I had in in my early teenage years I attribute to getting up and down a lot to skip tracks on this album

Here then is the record The Clash should have put out, sans dreck -- London Calling Redux:

Side 1:
1. London Callng
2. Rudie Can't Fail
3. Clampdown
4. Guns of Brixton
5. Spanish Bombs

Side 2:
1. The Card Cheat
2. Wrong 'em Boyo
3. Death or Glory
4. I'm Not Down
5. Lost in the SuperMarket
6. Jimmy Jazz

-------------------------------------

*The other two records, bless her, were Stiff Little Fingers' Inflammable Material, and Buzzcocks' A Different Kind of Tension -- both also just released. Waddagirl!

TAGS: Music

Worst songs ever written

In the tradition of previous weekends and similar posts here both this year and last, I was putting together a list of the worst songs ever written when I saw this, an invitation to put together a list of the most embarrassing songs in my collection. [Hat tip a presently embarrassing blog.] Perhaps I'll embarrass myself next week. :-) In the meantime, here's a list of the most annoying, most insidious, just downright worst songs ever written -- songs that have not only stood the test of time, but are so bad if they're played in your company you just have to get the hell out. Quickly. Here they are, the top ten songs that really bring up the bile (note the disproportionate number of hippies in the list):

1. Train in Vain - The Clash
   
2. Rhinestone Cowboy - Glenn Campbell
3. Yellow Submarine - Beatles
4. Sailing - Rod Stewart
   
5. I Will Always Love You - Whitney Houston
   
6. I Just Called to Say I Love You - Stevie Wonder
7. Bridge Over Troubled Water - Simon & Garfunkel
8. Teach Your Children - Crosby, Stills and Nash
   
9. Candle in the Wind - Elton John
10. He Ain't Heavy, He's My Brother - The Hollies
    

Bubbling under: Achy Breaky Heart; Ten Guitars; Shout - Tears for Fears; We Will Rock You; YMCA; Funkytown; Mandy; Bohemian Rhapsody; Green Door; Kumbaya; Lady in Red; O-Bla-Di, O-Bla-Da; Girl from Ipanema; How Deep is Your Love; Raindrops Keep Falling on My Head; Puppet on a String; Tie a Yellow Ribbon; Puppy Love; Both Sides Now; Summer Breeze; Morning Town Ride; ABC; From a Distance. Anything execrable I've missed?

And note, if I've now given you Stuck Tune Syndrome, Maim That Tune helps you detune your head by sticking an even worse tune in your head. Give it a try. It's rather like having someone standing on your left foot so you forget about the pain in the right.

ADDED: Maxwell's Silver Hammer - Beatles; Blowing in the Wind; It's Raining Men; Money for Nothing - Dire Straits; The Gambler; I Will Survive; What's New Pussycat?; Once, Twice, Three Times a Lady.
LINKS: Bad song survey - Not PC
Here are some of the worst songs of all time - Dave Barry, Pop Culture Madness
Nagging bloody music - Not PC
Shame Game - Moody Mama
Maim That Tune

TAGS: Music