CHASING PAPER

The fourth Beatles remaster I bought? Why, it's all there in that previous post.

Here's a hint: white text on a white background.

Now, go plant some acorns for peace, ya knuckleheads...

YOU ASK ME FOR A CONTRIBUTION

The last of the four Beatles remasters that I bought was the white album. That sprawling, bawling, yawing, hawing, mess of an album.

The thing is so schizophrenic that an actual schizophrenic heard in it messages to foment violent revolution.

Never mind that one of those songs was a slight but noisy ode to a fairground ride (Helter Skelter). Mind that one was a fairly vitriolic attack on middle-class values (Piggies).

And I have to say, whereas Helter Skelter always felt kind of cleansing to me, Piggies still just sounds nasty and condescending. I mean, that line about “clutching forks and knives to eat their bacon” (cannibalism, you see) is positively Swiftian—well, if Swift had been a moralizing, humorless prig, that is.

To indulge in some parlour games, here’s my version of the great single-album tracklist:

Side A
1. Back in the USSR
2. Dear Prudence
3. Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da
4. While My Guitar Gently Weeps
5. Happiness is a Warm Gun
6. I’m So Tired

Side B
1. Birthday
2. Everybody’s Got Something to Hide Except for Me and My Monkey
3. Sexy Sadie
4. Julia
5. Helter Skelter
6. Revolution 1

FUN IS THE ONE THING THAT MONEY CAN'T BUY

Next up on the remaster parade is Sgt Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band.

The album is at heart a confection.

Its weight, in the context of late 60's Romantic notions, is its weightlessness.

Right up until A Day in the Life, that is.

Don't get me wrong-- A Day in the Life earns all its due respect as a watershed moment in pop. But, really it just seems out of place here. Sgt Pepper proper would be a much tidier affair if it ended with the reprise.

And as a bonus, then we could all acknowledge She's Leaving Home as the best single song on the album without feeling guilty...

HEAD IN HAND

The next Beatles remaster I picked up was Help!

The drill here is essentially the same as with A Hard Day's Night: seven brilliant soundtrack songs, followed by, um, others (quick-- whistle You Like Me Too Much or Tell Me What You See). The line of demarcation is drawn in boldface when Ticket to Ride gives way to Act Naturally.

But in this case, “other” also includes I've Just Seen a Face and Yesterday. (Thanks, Paul.) Plus, the brilliant songs are “better” than the one's on A Hard Day's Night because they're more “mature.”

So, while A Hard Day's Night is the winner in the movie category, Help! has got it on songs...

I DON'T CARE TOO MUCH FOR MONEY

Depending on the angle of light on any given day, The Beatles can appear infinite.

But then you see the box set sitting there: 14 discs, 180 or so songs. And The Beatles seem as tiny as England.

The truth-- as always-- is somewhere in between.

I didn't gob up for the box-- too many middling early covers I'll never listen to, plus the Yellow Submarine soundtrack.

I started with A Hard Day's Night.

The first seven songs are from the movie, and are pretty much magic in a can: A Hard Day's Night, I Should Have Known Better, If I Fell, I'm Happy Just To Dance With You, And I Love Her, Tell Me Why, Can't Buy Me Love.

Bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, and bang.

The back six is not quite as strong. There's a reason you probably couldn't sing I'll Be Back or When I Get Home if I dared you.

But if the whole thing doesn't tickle your spine, you might want to try breathing on a mirror...

FOR SALE

Boy, they have just marketed the fuck out of those Beatles remasters.

Not that The Beatles had too much fuck in them to begin with.

So, um, which ones did you buy?

I'll tell you about mine...

VOULEZ-VOUS

I was looking at my usage stats the other day, and saw that someone from France had stumbled upon this page last week, my 2005 “interview” with Rudolf Schenker of Scorpions.

And I had this vision of a guy for whom perhaps English is not a first language (OK, I call him Jacques—my visions are pretty fleshed out), mistaking this for an actual interview.

In my vision, Jacques is the editor of the premier French Scorpions fanzine (it’s called “Scorpions: Les Maîtres de Rock” and it’s a 64-page, four-color, A4 affair), and he decides to appropriate my piece for an upcoming issue.

And that way, all the Scorpions fans in France and the French-speaking world can enjoy what is my favorite phrase ever in the history of this blog: “the bras bloom like tulips.”

Or as the French say, “la fleur de soutiens-gorge aiment des tulips”…

SKIP A LIFE COMPLETELY

Man, did Adventureland ever knock me for a loop.

Let me count the ways.

1. Setting. I grew up a couple of miles from the Adventureland that “inspired” the movie-- spent plenty of time there as a kid. Apparently the filmmakers looked to shoot at the Long Island location, but it had been modernized out of the 80s, so they found a more vintage park and changed the setting to Pittsburgh.
2. Soundtrack. Husker Du. The Replacements. The JAMC. The Velvet Underground. Hell, the third-album Velvet Underground, specifically. That was my 1987, too.
3. The piddling job. I did my time at a Waldbaum's deli counter, slicing meat for the masses (see this blog, name of).
4. Romance. Heidi and I came together for a brief moment at the deli. She was a sophomore, a surfer, a Deadhead, adrift. I was none of those things...except adrift. She invited me to a party, and I asked if I could bring a friend. When I showed up with Kenny, she assumed I was gay. I assured her I was not, and we ended the evening with an involved kiss. I had never kissed someone who was as tall as Heidi. We spent time together for the next few weeks. I wrote her poems, we wrote each other letters, and we stayed on the phone into the after hours. She slept in my bed the night before she went back to Binghamton. The poems, letters, and phone calls continued long distance for another couple of weeks, until she was absorbed finally back into life in her dorm. And it was over.
   

So, yeah-- a loop.

And I tell you, I have never liked being upside down...

A GREAT LONGING

Llllllllllllllllllaaaaaaaaaaaammmmmmmmmmmaaaaaaaaaaaaaasssssssssss!

WHITE LABBIT

Picked this shirt up in NY at Century 21:



I swear I'm not biting your style, brain coral. It's just a really cool shirt.

Let's call it a tribute...

CHIPS AHOY

The best material gift my family brought me from Japan was a jumbo bag of nacho cheese Doritos from Costco.

Japanese nacho cheese Doritos are the platonic ideal of Doritos.

They are smaller than American Doritos, and a single chip can be eaten reasonably in a single bite.

They are slightly thicker, and therefore have a more substantial crunch.

The flavoring is mild, as opposed to the overwhelming orange powder of their American counterparts. This allows for an appropriate balance between the cheese flavor and the corn flavor.

I ran through the whole bag in about a week and a half, and I don't typically snack too much.

Japanese nacho cheese Doritos put the lay in Frito-Lay...

SHADE TOO WHITE

I like that Amazon offers 50 albums for download each month at $5 a pop.

I don't like that such a large percentage of the albums suck pepperjack.

Like, if you think you need a copy of Kings of the Wild Frontier, I'm here to tell you that you don't. Not even for a fivver.

This'll do for that...

GOING OFF THE RAILS

You ever have one of those days where you wanted to grab someone by the lapels and just yell in their face “Be less crazy!”?

But (A) they don't have lapels, and/or (B) it wouldn't work?

Well, yeah, that was my Monday.

But it was balanced out by Sebastian telling me after dinner that he wanted to be a dad someday so that he could have “minions.”

Nothing crazy about that...

WHITE ROSE

A friend made me a couple of mix CDs, and disc one starts with Portland, Oregon by Loretta Lynn with Jack White.

These guys are like peanut butter and chocolate. That is, two great tastes that taste great together...

SAVE THE WHALES

I can see myself having the same sort of relationship with Bitte Orca that I had with Ships.

That is, initial arms-length admiration mixed with annoyance, followed a year or so later by devoted obsession.

Bitte Orca even has its own second-song line that's currently annoying the fuck out of me (a la “When life's got your goat now/By his tail and by his goat throat...” from Ships): “And what hits the spot, yeah, like Gatorade?”

Stop product placement in indie rock now, bitches.

If you tolerate this, your Toys R Us kids will be next...

HUSH HUSH

We have all at one point or another made an album purchase that in the light of time and reflection fills us with shamebarassment.

But, brother/sister, you'd be hard pressed to top the moment back in 1983 when I plunked down $5.99 + tax for a cassette copy of White Feathers by Kajagoogoo...

BACK TO THE GARDEN

Pictures of old hippies. That is all.

(I'll be back from vacation next week. In the meantime, watch out for the brown acid.)

THREE FEET HIGH AND RISING

The final of my four Classic Rock downloads from last week was Don't Let the Sun Go Down on Me by Elton John.

From 1973 through 1975, Elton released three albums in quick succession: Goodbye Yellow Brick Road, Caribou, and Captain Fantastic and the Brown Dirt Cowboy.

And apparently, Elton worked closely with England's National Health to have the covers designed by dangerous mental patients.

I'm telling you, that Caribou cover alone is going to give me cold-sweat nightmares for sure...

DON'T LOSE THAT NUMBER

My third Classic Rock purchase was My Old School by Steely Dan.

Back when I was a wee lad, I got a kick out of the way they used the words “oleanders” and “Guadalajara.” Had no idea until years later that the song retold events surrounding a pot bust at Bard College.

Even more obscure than the narrative was that opening line: “I remember the 35 sweet goodbyes...”

I'll give you a minute.

(Whistle whistle)

Still nothing?

How about if I told you that the original number in the lyric was 34.5, but they changed it because 34.5 didn't scan well?

(Whistle whistle)

OK, let's work with those numbers a bit. 35 is half of 70. And 34.5 is half of... 69.

So the “35 sweet goodbyes” is meant to represent half of 69, or more specifically, a blow job.

Just in case you forgot that Steely Dan were named after a dildo.

Randy bunch, that...

THE ROYAL SCAM

I almost bought two ELO songs, but I couldn't decide. Turn to Stone? Telephone Line? Sweet Talkin' Woman?

Damn you, Jeff Lynne.

So I did the next best thing, and split the difference: Somebody to Love, by Queen.

What I like about this is that it has moments of restraint. Sure, there's all that patented scaramouching going on, and it sounds like Freddie's voice box falls down a flight of stairs toward the end, but there are parts where genuine human emotion appears to be on display. Not too many, of course, because who comes to Queen for that?

Oh, and the guitar solo sounds like it's played by an astrophysicist. Cash!