FlaSoxxJim

Streetcore is a really neat album. Have you heard Strummer's "Mondo Bongo"? It's on the "World 2003" Narada compilation, but I don't know if it was released elsewhere. I would llike to track down any more of this stuff if there is any.

"Keep Me In Your Heart" is a great, if haunted, tune. I think The Wind is really a great album, and it's been in my heavy rotation since it came out. "The Rest of the Night" and "Please Stay" are both favorites of mine right now. OK, here's one for the list: Most Ironic Title For a Song Released the Same Day A Warrant is Issued For Your Arrest on Repeat-Offense Child Molestation Charges: "One More Chance," by the Nose-Rotting-Off/One-Glove-Wearing/Whiter-By-The-Day/Elephant-Man-Skeleton-Owning/Oxygen-Tent-Sleeping/Bubbles-The-Chimp-Keeping King of Wierdness Himself.

On the subject of life after the Beatles, anybody out there who is a fan of guitar-oriented power pop dripping juicy Beatle-esque harmonies, check out the Live 365 station Chocolate Frosted Sugar Bombs. There are a few power pop streaming stations, but this one heas a really good mix of stuff. From Badfinger and Big Star to The Deal, Replacements, Material Issue (a phenomemal Chicago band from the late 80s-early 90s), Belew and the Bears etc., to new stuff like astroPuppies and Switchblade Kittens and such. You couldn't listen to this 24/7, but it's a great station when you need your fill of throw-away pop hooks.

I, for one, think that the problem is not that the band were off. I think the problem might have had something to do with the fact that there was a Stone'enge monument on stage in fear of being crushed... by a dwarf!

I have two linguistic pet peeves that most people think I’m a little nuts about. I hate when people use the term “very unique.” By definition, unique literally means ‘one of a kind,’ so very unique is annoyingly redundant and demonstrates the speaker’s ignorance of the meaning of the word. Kind of like when Father Guido Sarducci went off on peoplee saying “forever and ever,” because, “forever-a kind of-a covers it” (insert bad Italian accent here). The other one is the use of the word “creature” to describe animals. As the root of the word is ‘creare’ – to create, to lazily use the word in describing animals risks giving Creation “Science” (#$%!*&%$!) popular credibility, at least at some subliminal level. My apologies to James Herriot (“All Creatures Great and Small”), but living as a veterinarian in Devonshire he never had to fend off school boards in Tennessee and elsewhere still trying to shove this pap down the throats of their students. Call them beasts, fauna, animals, etc., but please not creatures or its cutesy bastardiztion, “critters.”

Eunich.

Eunich.

My copy is second-hand, of course (I was 3-and-half when the Beatles split, so I had a lot of catching up to do later). I got Wonderwall, Badfinger's Magic Christian Music, Wings' Wild Life, and John's Some Time in NYC all for $20 at the first BeatleFest I went to in 1982 or 1983.

You're thinking of the single version released to benefit the World Wildlife Fund I bet (It was later re-released on the blue-cover Rarities collection). It started with an audioscape of geese on a pond and then the flock taking off as the opening acoustic guitar part begins. There were also the overdubed "oh-oh-oh-oh-oh-oh-oh-oh-oh"s responding to the "nothing's gonna change my world" stanzas that I always miss when I hear other versions. Yeah, the Paul on crack/heroin, or anything stronger than goat cheese these days escaped my notice as well. Hopefully more details are forthcoming.

And it shows that there's really no teeth in the penalties. Not kicked out until you test positive for the 5th time?!? Who is dumb enough to get caught 5 times? Players should be banned the second time they test positive.

No, Rhapsody in Blue was his Swan Lake. And An American in Paris was his Nutcracker. Noone has ever fused jazz, blues, gospel and classical like Gershwin. As much as I love Aaran Copeland, Gershwin is America's premier composer.

Hey, SS, this one’s gonna grow on you the more you listen to it. I like your track-by-track comments, and I wonder if you’ll have the same opinion after a few more listenings. My original Let it be is vinyl and so I need to go get the CD so I can make comparisons not from memory. I also have copies of “The Black Album” and Vols. 1 and 3 of “Sweet Apple Trax,” so eventually I may wade through all the versions and figure out which takes made it onto the official releases. At any rate, I know Get Back is not the rooftop version, because that one has John defiantly turning up his amp as the bobbies come on the scene, and Paul does the “You been playing on the roofs again and your Momma doesn’t like that… She’s gonnna have you arrested!!” I think it’s just the remastered tracks from the original single version, without the outro chorus as originally released. I think Winding Road is improved by an order of magnitude on the new release. The grandiosity of Specter’s orchestration for me gets in the way of what I hear as this song being a loving lament at the end of the inhuman grind of being the Beatles. Lyrically for me, it’s not a saga of sweeping triumph, it’s an sad, lost, imploring… “Lead me to your door/Let me know the way,” and finally a fatalistic resignation that the object of the song will “never know the many ways I’ve tried.” Leave the orchestra at home. I like the remixed I’ve Got A Feeling a lot (I’m listening to it with headphones right now). George’s guitar lines and Billy Preston’s electric piano fills are brought more to the front of the mix and it really sounds good to me. You're right, I Me Mine is great. I really like the rythmic changes and more frantic feel the last verse has now. I just listened to the “Fly on the Wall” disk a couple of times. I’m happy that they included alternate versions of the two missing songs (Maggie May and Dig It), and I like hearing all the snippets of pieces that would end up on Abbey Road or ultimately as solo tunes (All things must pass, Imagine, Jealous Guy).

It's there so you don't put your underwear on backwards in the dark.

It makes people weep instantly... Lick your what?!?

I have heard the same thing, but don't buy it. I can certainly believe Paul would credit the inspiration for that song and many others to Llinda - and of course she was and still is the inspiration for many. But, depending on when the intervoews occurred, it could have been at a time when John and paul would not have credited each other for much of anything. The chronology of Paul and John's relationship seems a better fit for a line like "You and I have memories longer than the road that stretches out ahead" than that of paul and Linda at tthe time. Paul started seeing Linda in December 1968, and the Let It Be songd were recorded at the end of January 1969. It seems like the 13 months Paul and Linda had been together is hardly worthy of the long road of memories metaphor. The title of the (decent, not great) VH-1 movie relating a fictionalized version of an actual between John annd Paul at the Dakota in April 1976 was also titled "Two Of Us." It seems an odd title choice if the song was really Paul's equivelent of The Ballad of John and Yoko. Mark Stanfield, who wrote the screenplay, has commented on being struck by how apparent it is that Paul truly loved/loves John when interviews turn to that subject. I have always seen the same thing, and he can downplay that affection in his words but I think his lyrics belie him.

Um, yeah, me neither...

There are arrogant bastards everywhere, but people at some universities just have a lot less to be arrogant about is all Seriously, Carbondale and tthe surrounding area was a favorite trip to make when I was getting my undergraduate degree (Evolutionary Ecology) at U of I. We would go down there to collect bats and pocket gophers and such for mammalogy classes and it was always a lot of fun. It was also nice to see that Illinois has at least a little topological relief somewhere.

Aren't you gonna s*** when you go to heaven and find out God's really a big fan of 12-Tone music? Oh, and the Bay City Rollers.

Eunichs at an orgy!!! i can understand your frustration and I feel for you.

Absolutely cool. I saw this a few months ago when the research was first published, and it's been tickling me ever since. When I play out I sometimes do a send-up medley of G/Em/C/D progression tunes ala Stand by Me/Shama Lama Dingdong/Working on the Chain Gang/Crocodile Cock/Girls Just Want to Have Fun/etc... For a couple years I have included a humorous monologue explaining that the medley is my attempt at proving the "Big Four Chord Theory" as an alternative to the Big bang Theory for the origin of the universe. I never knew how close to being right I really was! (even if I had the wrong key...)

I’m on my fourth listening of it right now. I picked it up on may to work this morning. Wow. I’m not even going to bother with any of the “they should let it be…” crap, and PA is just looking to get a rise out of the Faithful. I got choked up hearing Long and Winding Road without the Phil Specter orchestration on it. Simply beautiful. Dig A Pony, I’ve Got A Feeling, and Don’t Let Me Down are unadorned Lennon/McCartney having fun making music together even as the band was self-destructing. Two Of Us is John and Paul on being John and Paul, the best of times and the worst of times, getting nowhere but going home. All four of them were genuinely happy making music together (if ONLY then) at this time, and it shows on every track. I’m happy with the song versions selected for inclusion. At first, I was waiting to hear the inclusion of some of Paul’s over the top Elvis impersonations on the Two of us Bridge or on Winding Road, or John’s forgetting/butchering his own words on Don’t let Me Down (ala’ a lot of the great bootleg vinyl out there from these sessions). But, the novelty of those gaffs would have worn off in time, and I’m glad they played it straight in selecting the cuts. It’s amazing the first Let it Be ever even came out, given that the band walked away from the project and each other in disgust. The film that was intended to capture the band getting back to “being a great little rock and roll group” really only did a great job of letting us see the most important pop band in history fracture before our eyes. They kept from killing each other long enough to get back into the studio to record Abby Road, their true swan song despite being released a year before Let it Be (and the definition of a group going out at the top of their game). But the Let It Be tracks might never have been released. Lennon eventually insisted that Specter be the one to come in and dig through the abandoned recordings to get an album together. McCartney hated the choice from the start (likely a prime reason Lennon became even more stubborn in the choice J ). Paul rightly felt that a “Wall of Sound” approach to these intentionally lean rock and roll recordings was defeating the original purpose of the “Get Back” sessions. You can say what you want about McCartney, but the sessions never would have occurred without him pushing the others to forget the crap and just make some good music together. The band either would have broken up earlier without Abby Road ever being recorded, or would have persisted for a while doing more in the “White Album” mode, with Paul recording his songs in London, John doing his in NY, Chicago (my cousin was his security for those sessions!) and elsewhere, the two maybe overdubbing on each others songs but no real collaboration. I love the White Album for what it is, but it wasn’t the product of a cohesive unit. The Get Back project was to be the antithesis of that. In terms of musical collaboration, it largely succeeded, even if the Beatles themselves couldn’t survive being the Beatles. The evidence of the success is on the album. Give it a spin.

A Soxtalk site without the Lounge of Love is like sex without the handcuffs and spanking, y'know, just not normal. Welcome back and well done on the promotion.

I remember your original message, and I also remember someone posted saying they were willing to sell a pair they had. did you follow that up? Was the asking price too high?

Wow, some things we agree on, PA (gasp!). I've got nothing to add to your nationalized healthcare plan, other than to say I don'y fully understand all the issues but know our system is broken now and needs fixing. As to the Fair Tax, I've been hoping for that kind of sweeping reform for several years. Everyone who wants a flat tax (i.e., the wealthy), is still looking for a break. The fairest way to raise tax revenue while not penalizing the people earning the most (a big complaint by people in the top tax brackets, and one I can appreciate), is to completely stop taxing based on income, and start taxing based 100% on what we buy. The poor will be taxed tthe least because they buy the least. the rich will only be taxed on what they buy and only at a rate commensurate with everyone else, which seems entirely equitable and apparently far too logical. Two other key advantages not immediately brought up are the billions of dollars saved by almost eliminating most of the IRS. With no way for people to cheat on their income taxes, there's no more need for audits, legal actions, etc. if people want to shrink government, here's one sector where it can be done without jeopardizing essential functions and programs. The other advantage is that everyone buys stuff, including the criminal monetary base not currently assessable via traditional income tax. There's no more tax evasion by organized crime unless there are no purchases made. And it can work toward the message often sent of teh need for personal fiscal responsibility. If you don’t want to be taxed, then save your money rather than making so many non-essential purchases. I’m sure the actual tax rates would be higher that what you suggest, but even a combined fed/state rate of 10% would be acceptable (after everyone got used to it and put it in perspective) without also having to cough up income tax.

I graduated from UIUC WAAAYYY Back in 1989, but it’s a great school. Don’t ever let the low in-state tuition fool you – you would be hard pressed to find a better place to get an undergraduate degree. I had friends that were in the business school, and at least a couple of them knew they were going to have admission problems with their scores and grades, so they applied as LAS General to get in, and then transferred to Business after a semester or two. Jason’s right, talk to an advisor there about your scores and grades and where you stand against other incoming students. The school is HUGE, but people make that more intimidating than it needs to be. If you grow up living in Chicago or some other big city, you still only concern yourself with your own small part of it. Same for going to a big school – you only deal with part of it on a daily basis, but the rest is there when you want it. Lots of extra-curricular stuff to be had, and some of which doesn’t even involve alcohol (though there is a bit of that as well, if I recall… some of my memory is hazy). There has always been a good local music scene, although I know some of the better live music venues have closed or changed management to their detriment. Great arts center, all kinds of opportunities and facilities for intramural sports. Go check it out, you’ll probably really like it.