Music Monday-8/18/2014 The Beatles

john says:

Though I’ve been procrastinating in making my post-Beatles Beatle Album, aka The Black Album, based on the song line up as suggested by director, Richard Linklater, and actor, Ethan Hawke (a link to a short explanation and track listing for the “album” can be found HERE), I have gotten around to listening to a number of Beatles solo albums on my walk to work in the morning.  Reacquainting myself with Beatle solo work got me to wondering which of their solo album is pound for pound, song for song, the best solo Beatle Album.  I came up with this answer:

Yeah, yeah I know: George Harrison’s brilliant post-Beatles, tension releasing All Things Must Pass.  And if he hadn’t put all of those jams on the album this would be a different blog post.  Keeping those jams in mind I have to go with McCartney’s 1973 release Band on the Run.  It’s a fantastic album from start to finish.  Pure rock.  Pure Pop.  The album is fun.  It’s melodic.  Band on the Run is a Paul McCartney greatest hits album on its own.  If you don’t believe me check the title track, Jet, Bluebird, Let Me Roll It, and Nineteen Hundred and Eighty Five.  Hell, even John Lennon had something good to say about Band on the Run in his 1975 Rolling Stone Interview:

“Band on the Run is a great album. Wings is almost as conceptual a group as Plastic Ono Band. Plastic Ono was a conceptual group, meaning whoever was playing was the band. And Wings keeps changing all the time. It's conceptual. I mean, they're backup men for Paul. It doesn't matter who's playing. You can call them Wings, but it's Paul McCartney music. And it's good stuff. It's good Paul music and I don't really see the connection.”

Band on the Run was also made under duress.  Two members of Wings quit before the recording.  The location of the recording (Lagos in Nigera) was corrupt and militaristic.  Paul and Linda were robbed at knifepoint.  Lyrics and demos were lost/stolen, the recording equipment was subpar, and according to the geniuses over at Wikipedia, Paul even suffered a bronchial spasm from too many smokes.

Band on the Run is not without its share of hokey moments.  The album does move into stereotypical, critical McCartney territory.  Some of the lyrics are bad.  To this day I still don’t have a clue what Jet is about.  The suffrage movement?  It can be schmaltzy at times, although Picasso’s Last Words (Drink to Me) is Paul at his schmaltzy/avant garde best.  But if you’re looking for the closest thing to a Beatles album as done by a solo Beatle, Band on the Run is a sure bet. 

Paul McCartney has had a rather pleasant late-career creative resurgence.  For further listening check out: Flaming Pie (1997), Chaos and Creation in the Backyard (2005), Memory Almost Full (2007), and New (2013).

Let's Go Somewhere - 5/13/2014 England

Ally says:

No One I Think Is In My Tree

The tour guide keeps us in the backyard. We’re not going to go into the house yet, and we’re certainly not going in by the front door. The front door leads to the Best Room and we were not Best Room people.

            “We’re going to experience this today,” the tour guide tells us, “the same way Paul did the first time he met Mimi.”

            I smile, gaze around the backyard.

            This is it. This is John Lennon’s home. We crossed an ocean, boarded a train and we were finally here.

            The only way you can see Mendips is through the National Trust tour. Tours aren’t my kind of thing. Packing a map and list of addresses and decent shoes tied to my feet and then venturing out into the unknown is my kind of thing. Getting on a packed bus with a bunch of old English bitties, twittering about how fast the driver’s going is not. But I pass the time with my map out, catching street names, seeing if I can follow the route we’re taking to John Lennon’s house.

            I roll the words around. John Lennon’s house.

            This is a big one. I’ve been pretty lucky in this life. Seen some good stuff – some good writer homes (Virginia Woolf, Charles Dickens) some good musicians graves (Mozart, Beethoven, Jim Morrison) but for some reason this feels bigger than all of that.

            When we pull up to the gate, I feel the catch in my throat. I laugh at myself. God Ally, you’re so emotional. I wonder if it’s PMS. I laugh it off, but it’s there. Something reverent. I’m going to stand in John Lennon’s bedroom. This feels, as I step off the bus, earth shattering.

In my head is Aunt Mimi, the aunt who raised him when his mother couldn’t, yelling “Glasses, John,” to the boy who’s trademark sneer was due to intense near-sightedness.

Before we get started the tour guide lets us take pictures. I drag my husband to the front of the house, stand at the door having passed my camera to one of the biddies. My husband groans. Tells me this is embarrassing. I shush him. It’s Mendips. We might never be back.

Once we’re ready the guide tells us that we’re going through the back gate, just as Paul did that first time he came to Mendips at the still amorphous age of fifteen, ready to meet the disapproving Mimi. Paul lived in a council house. He was not the sort of riff-raff that John should be around. And the band! The band was a problem.

In a few minutes we’ll go inside, pass through the house. I will stand in John Lennon’s childhood bedroom. It will be small. Unimaginably small. Only three of us will be able to fit at once practically tripping over each other. The roof slanted, the tiny bed, green quilt, a poster of Bardot tacked on the wall. The tour guide will mention that when John came back to Liverpool he took Yoko down Menlove Avenue.

“Look Yoko,” he said pointing at the house. “There it is. That’s where I did all my dreaming.”

I will feel strange in that room. Like a trespasser but also heartbroken thinking of seventeen year old John missing his mother, writing his songs. Doing the dreaming that will change everything.

But right now we are still outside.

“Right over that treeline,” the guide tells us pointing, is “Strawberry Fields.”

The bitties twitter with excitement. I gaze up at the tree.

He tells us about Mimi. After John was gone, she stood in this backyard and said, “I can still seem the all back here. John and Pete Shotton and the boys – Nigel and Ivan. Pete was always tied up to a tree, covered in war paint. Ever the prisoner. John running circles, ever the leader of the gang.”

The leader, indeed. Even of that first rag-tag band of Warrior Boys.

On the train back to London, I slip my book into the pocket of the seat car in front of me. I don't feel much like reading. I put in my headphones. Cue up the Anthology. I listen to the Strawberry Fields outtakes. I hear John laugh.

No one I think is in my tree. I mean it must be high or low.

I picture that boy, his Indian head dress sewn by his Auntie. All that fierce howling creative life inside him. Always the leader. Always John.

Aleathia says:

In keeping with this fabulous England vibe, I'm going to share a bit of my own journey to good old Bristol. I have been an Anglophile since I was little.  I remember at an early age watching The Benny Hill Show and Monty Python with my grandmother.  I didn't quite get it at age 4, but it touched a certain sensibility in me.  I loved the dry humor, the proper sounding speech, and the comedic timing.

Through the years of my life, the desire to get to England only grew.  When I was in high school we were supposed to go to Europe with French Club which meant a few days stay in London.  I was finally going to get there, but there were plane hijackings that year so we joined up with Spanish Club and went safely on to Mexico.  I was devastated.

After I left my now ex-husband, I decided to treat myself with the trip of a lifetime to stamp the new beginnings.  To signify that I was finally my own person.  I had a friend who lived in Bristol, England and decided to go there for a visit and have an experience instead of just a tour.  We went to local haunts, grocery shopped at Sainsbury and lived in a rented flat.  It was an amazing time.

The most impressive feature in the city was the Bristol Cathedral.  It was built in the 1400's and though I have been a Buddhist for over 17 years, I have always appreciated the grand scale of old churches.  I appreciate the architecture, the design, and the sheer force of physical energy it requires to build such a structure knowing there were no modern conveniences and machines to assist.

If you are in Liverpool visiting John Lennon's house, take the drive over to Bristol to see the church and a host of other beautiful things in that city.