Here are a few un-deconstructed Beatles tunes. I mean re-constructed. Wait. Constructed? Skip it. These are just a few of my favorite (and hopefully more obscure) Beatles tunes.
Tell me what you see.
Think for yourself.
And your bird can sing!
Tell me you’ve seen seven wonders indeed. Now you’ve heard three.
As in deconstructing the Beatles. This is a little about the music and a little about how it is was made, that is, performed and recorded. Or at least how it was done in “the olden days”. Here is a YouTube video that breaks down Sgt. Pepper’s Lonley Heart’s Club Band into the 4 tracks it was recorded on. Yep, the analog tape machines of the day only recorded on 4 tracks, so the engineers had to get a little creative. George Martin who produced and/or engineered many Beatles recordings is considered an early master at fitting everything onto the 4 available tracks, a practice known as “ping-ponging”.
Interesting, no? I think it holds up well strictly as an instrumental. And the harmonies seem all the more…harmonious when you hear them a capella. Anyway, lots of Deconstructing The Beatles videos at YouTube if you’re interested.
There were a couple things in the news this week. Paul Revere of Paul Revere and the Raiders died this week at the age of 76. Paul Revere was the band’s keyboard player, not the frontman/vocalist. That was (is) Mark Lindsay who is still alive. Here is one of my favorite P.R. & The Raiders songs:
The nominees for induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame for this year were announced. Among them is Sting, so here is a song from him:
What the hell. Here’s a bonus song from when he was a Policeman:
So there you go. No film at 11.
Yep – all talk and no action. Actually, no talk either. Just “talking”.
Whadda you talking about?
I’d like to first welcome any new readers, then give some background and answer some questions about the blog.
*taps the microphone* Is this thing on?
Ego Vero is my little corner of the internet where I can transform thoughts and ideas that are rattling around inside my head into a form of reality by comitting them to writing. Ego Vero is Latin for “I seek truth”. I have invited you along on my journey which may take us along strange paths. This means I may write about any of several general topics that interest me and for whatever reason occupy my thoughts. The articles (which are called “posts”) on the home page are in chronological order – newest at the top, older below – and not sorted by category. As you scroll down you go back in time and see every post covering every subject. If you don’t wish to see all the categories, you can narrow things down to one category at a time. Here’s how. You will see these categories listed on the right hand side of the page – clicking on one of those categories will show you only the posts on that subject. Let’s say you are an aviation buff who only wants to read my aviation posts and avoid the rest of my blather about Empiricism, robots, music and so on – click on “Aviation” and voila! You will see only the aviation posts – still in chronological order with the newest at the top. Same goes for any of the categories.
The category with the most posts by far is “Life”. Just FYI
You know – Life – as in Life One and Life Two (three? four?……)
Any red text you see within a post contains a link to additional information – an article I used for reference, perhaps another related post I wrote, or a wikipedia link, etc. Clink on the red text and the link should open in a new tab.
My goal first and foremost is to get these ideas out of my head! Read the “About” page for more background. But I invite you, dear reader, in the hope that we may learn something together about ourselves and each other. And that you may be at least somewhat entertained in the process. I welcome your feedback via the comments. To the left of each post title is a two colored box – the top half is red and indicates the date the post was created. The bottom half is grey and says “comments”. The number – which is almost always zero, dammit – indicates how many comments readers have left about the post. Click on that grey box and you can leave a comment about the post. Please do! Your e-mail adress will not be published, shared or used by me in any way. And there is definitely a slim chance that I will not stalk you.
For more, read How to Read This Here Blog Thingy and For New Readers – Welcome!
So Welcome! And enjoy.
Welcome to Music Friday on a Saturday morning. What can I say? I just ran out of Friday. No matter – since there are no more Saturday morning cartoons you don’t have anything better to do, right? Thought so.
OK, so jumping off my previous post (scroll down or click here), I want to throw something different at you. These songs are among my favorites – what does that say about me? If you ask me, it says nothing. But what do you imagine it says about me? Listen to these while you ponder that.
Presented with minimal commentary. Click on the artist’s name to follow a link to their Wikipedia page. First up is a song from the soundtrack of a popular movie by dueling pianists Ferrante & Teicher:
Come to think of it, these are all from soundtracks. The next offering is the first of a pair from Henry Mancini:
And finally another Henry Mancini arrangement:
So. Any opinions? Did my choices reveal my secret personality? Please feel free to leave a comment.
And conversely, what does your taste in music say about you?
According to this article at Barking Up The Wrong Tree it says quite a bit. Practically the first sentence of the article asserts that you can predict whether someone is politically conservative or liberal by noting “markers of openess” in a person’s music collection. For me, this is where the article goes…well…barking up the wrong tree. Because the “markers of openess” allegedly denoting a politically liberal person exist in my library/music collection. I am not liberal, politically anyway. And it just goes further off the rails from there. My advice? Just listen to what you like and don’t worry so much about what it says about you. Because whatever it “says about you” is likely to be a (probably wrong) conclusion jumped to by someone who doesn’t know you.
But there are still some questions related to what we listen to and why we listen to it. For example: At what age do you form your taste in music? Many an article has been written on this subject and they all say something different. Some say at a certain age your brain “bonds” to the music you listen to. Some say that you settle on music that coincides with a certain emotional climate occurring in your life at a certain time. And so on and so on. I understand that we want to know why. We’re always asking WHY? But does it matter? I don’t think so.
And finally questions inspired by this post at Althouse: what is your “peak year” for favorite music and how old were you at that time? Well, the answers to these questions may go some way to answering the previous questions because if you can determine your “peak year” you may have some empirical data to fill in the blanks to the previous questions and perhaps a pattern will emerge. I did say perhaps. I also said “if you can answer”. I add the disclaimer because determining your “peak year” isn’t as easy as it sounds. That may be a project for the coming week with the results posted next Music Friday. We’ll see.
My guess is that my “peak year” falls into the mid 1960s somewhere, at least based on my recent Music Friday posts. But I could do music posts all day everyday and still get stuck in any given genre for a good long while. So what does my taste in music say about me? I don’t really know. And I don’t really care.
…and so here you go – Beatles Pancakes (!)
It’s not fair that some people (like myself) have almost zero artistic talent, yet this dude creates art in the kitchen and then eats it.
OK, back to wandering…. ……………………………………..
Oh…almost forgot. hat tip: Ace of Spades HQ
Welcome to another Music Friday. Today I am jumping off a post I did a couple weeks ago featuring The Seekers, who had a hit song written by Tom Springfield, the brother of today’s featured artist Dusty Springfield. Who on earth is Dusty Springfield? you ask, unless you are old like me. Well, since you’ve asked, Dusty Springfield was an English pop singer and Blue Eyed Soul artist from the late 1950’s until the 1990’s, though most of her success came in the mid to late 1960’s. Dusty Springfield was her stage name. Her real name was Mary Isobel Catherine Bernadette O’Brien and she was born in London in 1939 to an English father and an Irish mother. I seem to have a thing for Irish girls. The family enjoyed music, so the children were encouraged to partake. Mary began singing professionally in 1958 (age 19). The “Springfield” alias originated when she and her brother formed a folk group in 1964. Apparently they rehearsed outdoors – in a field – and so they thought an appropriate name for the group would be The Springfields. Each member adopted a nickname and since Mary was reportedly somewhat of a tomboy known for playing football with the boys, “Dusty” seemed like a fitting moniker. In retropsect it is also a neatly fitting description of her vocal style.
As a fan of American pop music, she was responsible for introducing some lesser know American MoTown artists to an English audience as the host of an English TV program called “Ready, Steady, Go!” in the early 1960’s. The Springfields enjoyed some success, but nevertheless disbanded in late 1963. Shortly thereafter, Dusty Springfield released her first solo single, “I Only Wanna Be With You”. The song, released in 1963, charted at #4 in Great Britain and made the Billboard Hot 100 in the U.S., peaking at #12 in 1964. This is the song that introduced her to America.
Here are three performances from British television in no particular order. Note that these are sung live, not lip-synced as later became common for televised pop music performances in the 60’s.
From 1968, “Son of a Preacher Man”
Next: “All I See Is You”
OK, I saved the best for last. This next song charted in the U.S. in 1966. Springfield called it “good old schmalz”, but one of the composers of the song, Simon Napier-Bell, felt that Dusty’s rendition took it to another level:
“There, standing on the staircase at Philips studio, singing into the stairwell, Dusty gave her greatest ever performance – perfection from first breath to last, as great as anything by Aretha Franklin or Sinatra or Pavarotti. Great singers can take mundane lyrics and fill them with their own meaning. This can help a listener’s own ill-defined feelings come clearly into focus. Vicki [Wickham] and I had thought our lyric was about avoiding emotional commitment. Dusty stood it on its head and made it a passionate lament of loneliness and love.” – Simon Napier-Bell
A song that was voted among the All Time Top 100 Songs by BBC Radio 2 listeners in 1999: “You Don’t Have To Say You Love Me”
She lived an interesting life – too many things to write about and not enough time or space here. Follow this Wikipedia link if you’d like the rest of the story. Just two final notes: She was prone to odd behavior such as food fights and breaking crockery which was described by others as “having a wicked sense of humor”. She never had a heterosexual relationship. Though she said her prime ambition was to love a man, she also said “they frighten me”. She died of breast cancer in England in 1999.
The headline of this story at NBC.com is “Stephen Hawking Fears Higgs Boson Doomsday and He’s Not Alone“. I have no idea what that actually means, but if Stephen Hawking fears it then so do I. I guess that’s why he’s not alone. Here is an article that explains what the Higgs Boson Doomsday is. Let me see if I can get this straight – because the Higgs Boson, the energy field of which is the source of mass for everything in the universe, is estimated to be just the right mass in itself to cause the potential instability of said universe, there is a theoretical possibility that said universe might become unstable and instantaneously cease to exist. Yeah. I don’t understand it either. But these guys do and they say it’s possible. Ironically (!) if the mass of the Higgs Boson were different by just a few percent, we wouldn’t be doomed! Boy did we luck out. Nailed it on the first try. Better go buy a lottery ticket.
But don’t worry:
“You won’t actually see it, because it will come at you at the speed of light,” Lykken said. “So in that sense don’t worry.”
Super. We’re all gonna die instantly at any second. But we won’t see it coming. So don’t worry about it. Nope. Don’t give it a second thought.
Stevie says don’t you worry ’bout a thing:
…Pretty Mama. On second thought, forget the lottery ticket. If I won and then the universe ended, I would have to kill myself.
Cross posted at Men Out Of Work Blog