February 2012
23 posts
5 tags
The Beatles: Song By Song (In Spite of All the...
“In Spite of All the Danger” is the second and final track on The Quarrymen’s very first recording, an acetate of which only one copy was made. The recording session took place in a Liverpool home studio in 1958 and cost approximately 17 shillings. The Quarrymen were John Lennon (co-founder), Paul McCartney, George Harrison, John Lowe (piano) and Colin Hanton (drums). They were a...
7 tags
The Beatles: Song By Song (My Bonnie)
This was the most successful song to emerge from The Beatles brief stint recording in Hamburg with English rocker Tony Sheridan. “My Bonnie” is basically a revved up version of Scottish folk song, “My Bonnie Lies Over the Ocean”, which I recall knowing as a suburban Illinois kid. I also recall hearing this as a preteen, knowing and loving The Beatles but being surprised the...
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The Beatles: Song By Song (The Saints)
The Beatles (who I think were either The Beatles or The Silver Beatles by then) befriended a rocker named Tony Sheridan during their first trip to Hamburg. When they returned in 1961, the band (Paul, John, George and Pete Best, but now sans Stuart Sutcliffe), arrangements were made to do some recording sessions with Sheridan, produced by a guy named Bert Kaempfert. Only a single or two came out...
7 tags
The Beatles: Song By Song (Cayenne)
Is this the final recording by The Quarrymen? I think so. This one was recorded in 1960 in Paul McCartney’s family’s bathroom. It’s kind of a moody 12-bar blues instrumental, the composition credited solely to McCartney as he and Lennon had not yet decided on their joint songwriting arrangement.
There isn’t a lot to say about this one, other than that I’m curious...
6 tags
The Beatles: Song By Song (You'll Be Mine)
“You’ll Be Mine” is another Quarrymen recording from the same 1960 session that produced “Hallelujah I Love Her So” and “Cayenne”. It’s one of the odder recordings in Beatles history. I don’t want to oversell the oddness; let’s say that rather than “Revolution #9”, we’re closer to “You Know My Name (Look Up the...
6 tags
The Beatles: Song By Song (Hallelujah I Love Her...
This was another early recording by a pre-Beatles Quarrymen, recorded in 1960 or early 1961. By this time, the band included Stuart Sutcliffe on bass, and this home recording is one of the few audio documents of his time in the band. I believe by this time the lads had already spent one season in Hamburg, Germany, and so had built up some decent musical chops.
The song was written by Ray Charles...
5 tags
The Beatles: Song By Song (That'll Be the Day)
“That’ll Be the Day” is the first song the proto-Beatles band The Quarrymen recorded. The personnel, I believe, were John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison, pianist John Lowe and drummer Colin Hanton. I include the song in this series due mainly to its appearance on The Beatles’ Anthology (Vol. 1) album, which collected Beatles rarities, alternate versions and...
2 tags
The Beatles: Song By Song (Intro)
I’ve loved The Beatles since I knew what music was. No matter how strongly they’re marketed, how often they’re remastered or repackaged, they remain fresh to me. I think I have a favorite era for them, and then a song from another time comes on that I hadn’t heard for a while and I have to reassess.
Several months ago, as I’ve written elsewhere, my Mac started to...
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Midnight In Paris (2011)
Starring: Owen Wilson, Marion Cotillard, Rachel McAdams, Adrien Brody
Writer/Director: Woody Allen
We’re a country that likes to tear artists down, but at the same time we also like to celebrate people who just kind of keep on plugging, even with diminishing returns. Any time, say, Neil Young puts out a record, there will be plenty of critics who laud it as one of his best, a return to...
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The Caretaker - An Empty Bliss Beyond This World...
Many instrumental artists choose enigmatic song titles, allowing the reader to interpret the music, but not The Caretaker. This is an album about the relationship between music and memory, about musical phrases and tunes surviving in Alzheimers victims even as memories of family and friends fade. The titles drive this home, all about the mysterious caverns and worlds embedded in the brain. The...
3 tags
Comic Book Men - Episode 1 (2012)
Starring Kevin Smith, Several Comic Shop Employees, One Hanger-On
AMC’s comic book-adapted series The Walking Dead apparently put one geeky, overburdened foot in the door for comics-and-pop-culture-related shows that don’t cost much to produce. The Talking Dead is a talk show focused mainly on talking about the episode of The Walking Dead that just aired before it, and now we have...
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Fucked Up - David Comes to Life (2011)
I don’t know if it has to do with being a teenager in the early-to-late-80s, but I’ve never been very interested in hardcore punk. I dabbled, I tried some mixtapes from friends, but never bought anything really punk. The Clash, X, Billy Idol…that’s as far as I went. I think it had more to do with the vocals, since I liked other types of noisy music—Chicago or Belgian...
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Justified - Season 3, Episode 4 "The Devil You...
This is my first season with the show, but I have watched the first four episodes. I know, I know, I should probably have tried to start from the beginning, but to be honest this seems like a relatively simple show. Timothy Olyphant is Raylan, a Kentucky marshal, and he’s relatively tight and cordial with lots of scumbags he eventually has to either arrest or kill, like Walton Goggins as...
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Colin Stetson - New History Warfare Vol. 2: Judges...
Hate on Pitchfork all you want, but their Best of 2011 list has led me to some really good music I would have missed. I don’t know about you, but I wasn’t expecting one of the best discs of last year to come from a saxophone player.
I haven’t heard his first album yet (New History Warfare Vol. 1, natch), but the hip session player with The Arcade Fire, Bon Iver and The National...
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The River - Pilot/Episode 2 (2012)
I’m refraining from looking up the credits on this one as I want to avoid accidentally reading any bits of other critical reaction to this highly-touted new (mini?)series. The only reaction I’ve gotten so far is from a friend and coworker who recorded it and stopped watching after episode one because he was disappointed at the lack of action, although he will probably watch the second....
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Clams Casino - Instrumentals (2011)
It’s tough for me to put a disc of wordless beat tracks in my Best Of list, but this is really good. Lots of ambient strings, swirly, chimey keyboards and moony choirs like New Age music, but with some insistent hip-hop/trip-hop beats keeping it from being total trance music. It’s still for the most part background music, but intelligent and varied.
5 tags
All Good Things (2009)
Starring: Ryan Gosling, Kirsten Dunst, Frank Langella, Lily Rabe, Kristen Wiig, Nick Offerman, Philip Baker Hall, Diane Venora
Director: Andrew Jarecki
If you’re like me, you were surprised to find this one on your Netflix, as a Gosling/Dunst feature would seem to be something one would remember hitting the theaters. From what I’ve read, it sat on the shelf for a while before being...
