10 Beatles Songs That Include The Word Little

1. I Feel Fine [I'm so glad that she's my little girl]
2. Run For Your Life [little girl throughout the song]
3. Thank You Girl [I know little girl / Only a fool would doubt our love]
4. Twist and Shout [You know you twist, little girl]
5. Dear Prudence [Dear Prudence, let me see you smile? / Dear Prudence, like a little child]
6. Every little thing
7. Little Child
8. With a little help from my friends
9. All together now [One, two, three, four / Can I have a little more?]
10. I'm so tired [You know I'd give you everything I've got / For a little peace of mind]

Christmas Books 2021

Around this time of the year I like to mention the books that I have been given for Christmas. This varied bunch is from my sons, my wife and my father-in-law. The one on the Universe accompanied a beautiful gemstone collection representing the planets of the solar system. I have read that now and started on the Cromwell biography and the book of Paul McCartney. The one on the Heath is about nearby Hampstead Heath by Hunter Davies, while the other two (Christmas Carol and The Great Gatsby) are novels in the beautiful Chiltern series.

10 Alternative Titles for A Hard Day's Night

1. Quatre garçons dans le vent (French Four boys in the wind)
2. Vier jongens op rondreis (Flemish Four boys on a tour)
3. Perný den (Czech Busy day)
4. Erfiður dagur (Icelandic Tough day)
5. Yeah! Yeah! Här kommer vi (Swedish Yeah! Yeah! Here we come)
6. Yeah Yeah Yeah (German)
7. Tutti per uno (Italian All for one)
8. Os quatro Cabeleiras do Após-Calipso (Portuguese The four hairyheads of the Apocalypso)
9. Gençlerin sevgilisi (Turkish Lover of young people)
10. Os Reis do Ié-Ié-Ié (Brazil Portuguese The Kings of Yeah yeah yeah)

365 Albums 121-135

1. Jan Akkerman 3 Jan Akkerman 1979 
2. Modern Vampires of the City Vampire Weekend 2013
3. Poland Tangerine Dream 1984
4. Cosmo's Factory Creedence Clearwater Revival 1970
5. Violunar Kagermann 1992
6. Tangram Tangerine Dream 1980
7. Adrenalin Rush Gareth Pearson 2006
8. Oceanic Vangelis 1997
9. All that you can't leave behind U2 2000
10. The Memory of Trees Enya 1995
11. Noise of Art Jan Akkerman 1990
12. Hymns III Page CXVI 2010*
13. Beyond the Storm Edgar Froese 1995
14. Happy to meet - Sorry to part Horslips 1972
15. Rubber Soul The Beatles 1965

Death of Best Drummer who turned down The Beatles

The recent death recorded here recalls another bit of The Beatles story and is another reminder that the race is not to the swift. See here.

10 Beatles Songs with food and drink

1. Honey in A taste of honey, etc

2. Bacon in Piggies (Clutching forks and knives to eat their bacon)

3. Wine in A taste of honey (A taste of honey... tasting much sweeter than wine.) and Norwegian Wood (I sat on a rug biding my time Drinking her wine) etc

4. Strawberry in Strawberry fields

5. Tangerines in Lucy in the Sky (With tangerine trees and marmalade skies)

6. Marmalade in Lucy in the Sky (With tangerine trees and marmalade skies)

7. Marshmallow pies in Lucy in the Sky (Where rocking horse people eat marshmallow pies)

8. Fish in Penny Lane (A four of fish and finger pies)

9. Birthday cake in It's all too much (All the world's a birthday cake So take a piece but not too much)

10. Chocolate cake in Ballad of John and Yoko (Made a lightning trip to Vienna Eating chocolate cake in a bag)

[Bonus Tea in Cry baby cry (The duchess of Kircaldy always smiling And arriving late for tea) and rice in Eleanor Rigby. I am the Walrus also had several - cornflake, custard, semolina, pilchard]

Blue Plaque Near Baker Street

I was down near Baker Street on the upper deck of the bus the other day when I saw a blue plaque I had not seen before although it must have been there for some years. I was initially confused by the reference to Lennon and Harrison and not to the others but, of course, that is because Starr adn McCartney are still very much alive. The address is 94 Baker Street, the site of the now dissolved Apple Boutique clothing store, owned in the 60s by Apple Corps Ltd, a company formed by the band. A blue plaque to Lennon was already there and was replaced with a new one naming Harrison, following his death in 2001.

Beatles Christmas

10 Beatles songs featuring harmonica

1. Please Please me
2. Chains
3. Love me do
4. There's a place
5. From me to you
6. Thank you girl
7. I'll get you
8. Little child
9. I should have known better
10. I'm a loser

Fifth Beatle

People seem very keen to dub George Martin "the fifth Beatle". Several people have been connected with this title. Here are ten

 

1 Stuart Sutcliffe (friend of Lennon's, member of the original group)

2 Pete Best (original drummer)

3 Brian Epstein (manager)

4 George Martin (producer)

5 Neil Aspinall (chief roadie, etc)

6 Derek Taylor (media man)

7 Billy Preston (keyboard player on Let it be, etc)

8 Tony Sheridan (singer with the band in the early days)

9 Klaus Voorman (bassist from Hamburg days, on all the solo albums, etc)

10 George Best (long haired footballer from the sixties)

Retro Album "of the week" 44 - Revolver

Revolver is the seventh studio album by The Beatles and my favourite. It was released in August 1966 when I was 7 years old. It marks a progression I guess from the previous year's Rubber Soul also a favourite. It was followed by the allegedly seminal Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band (not a particular favourite). On release, it was widely recognised by critics as innovative. Certainly "Tomorrow Never Knows" and its tape loops, the strings on "Eleanor Rigby" and the Indian instruments used on "Love You To" are quite trendsetting (although Yesterday had strings too). What makes it strong really is the diversity it exhibits, even stretching to include the children's novelty song "Yellow Submarine" with Ringo's vocal and various sound effects.

The cover art was quite progressive for its time and the punning title very clever. Apparently the sessions led to the invention of automatic double tracking (ADT), a technique soon adopted throughout the recording industry. The sessions also produced the non-album single, "Paperback Writer" backed with "Rain".

Revolver spent 34 weeks in the UK Albums Chart, for seven of which it held the number one spot. Three tracks were missing from the American release. This was the last time that policy was followed. The US release coincided with the Beatles' final concert tour, during which they refrained from performing any of the songs live. In the USA it still topped the Billboard Top LPs listings for six weeks.

Good day sunshine and And your bird can sing are two of my favourite songs of all time. I also love I'm only sleeping and For no one.

Meetings, TV Shows, etc

I've been meaning to a sort of general update for a while now. Various things have been taking up my time as well as the regular Sunday and midweek meetings and reading, etc. About 12 days ago I had an ultra-sound scan. I'm still waiting for the results from that.

The day after that I had an officers meeting (which went on a little long) followed a week later by a church members meeting where people were reporting back on no less than four potential new members - two by profession and two coming from other churches. I welcomed in the latter two the following Sunday but the other two will need to be baptised first so we will be arranging that soon.

Then there was a Grace Magazine Trustees meeting at the chapel as we discuss whether and online attempt is feasible. I also have an LTS Board meeting tomorrow.

On Saturday we were giving out tracts in Golders Green. It was rather wet for that sort of activity. I met an old man who claimed to be an atheist. He was quite convinced this was because he knew so much but when I told him he was sadly deluded and asked him if he knew everything he got quite irate. Atheism seems quite fashionable at present. it is difficult for an atheist to show humility, which makes them immediately suspect to anyone who has thought much about these things.

As for TV shows, we have been watching Wolf Hall, of course. I thought the first one was stunning, the second less so but the series looks set to be a classic. I have also been enjoying some BBC4 documentaries - the one on Mike Oldfield and Tubular Bells, the three on recording popular music by Neil Brand (Sound of Song), one on early rock 'n' roll, and the anniversary re-recording of Please Please Me. We also enjoyed the documentary on The secret world of Lewis Carroll fronted by Martha Kearney on BBC 2.
In the midst of all this it was nice to have Dylan around for his birthday. He was in town for an interview.

10 Interesting facts about Dylan Thomas

Nora Summers, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

1. Dylan Thomas Welsh. He was born in Swansea in 1914.
2. His middle name was Marlais, which means 'voice of the Sea'. Dyaln also menas something like son of the wave and so both names are apt as the sea was to be a recurring theme throughout much of his work, especially in 'Under Milk Wood'.
3. His father was Senior English Master at Swansea Grammar School.
4. His wife's name was Caitlin Macnamara. Born in Hammersmith, London, in 1913, she was of Irish descent. They married in 1937 and had three children (Llewelyn, Aeronwy and Colum). It was a very stormy relationship. They lived in Laugharne 1938-1940 and New Quay in 1944 and 1945.
5. They were introduced by Welshman Augustus John, who painted Thomas's portrait in  1937 and 1938 (Alfred Janes and Rupert Shephard also produced portraits).
6. He is one of the Beatles' heroes (John's?) on the cover for the Sgt Pepper album, gave Bob Dylan part of his name and has had his poems set to music by Welshman John Cale.
7. His 1940 work 'Portrait of the Artist as a Young Dog' humorously parodies the title of James Joyce's 'A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man' published 24 years earlier.
8. His most celebrated work was 'Under Milk Wood', subtitled a play for voices. It was in fact commissioned as a radio play. It was broadcast in January 1954 (having been previously performed on stage in New York in May 1953).
9. Under Milk Wood was narrated famously by Richard Burton. Sir Anthony Hopkins later did it too. Burton and Hopkins, born 1925 and 1937 respectively, were both from the Port Talbot area of South Wales.
10. Dylan Thomas died in New York in 1953. He was only 39. He was undertaking a lecture tour of the USA at the time. Caitlin arrived at the hospital shortly before his death. She was institutionalised for a while after. His excessive drinking led to pneumonia. (Nick Cave's 2012 song "There She Goes, My Beautiful World" includes the line "Dylan Thomas/he died drunk/in St. Vincent's Hospital".) 

Long lost Beatles album out today

I notice these two interesting articles on the net, one in Rolling Scone and the other in MNE.

 

 

LOST BEATLES ALBUM

By April Foles

01.04.14 01:04 AM ET

A long-lost Beatles album will see the light of day today, some 47 years after it was first recorded. The Beatles own Apple Corps will be releasing Four sides of the circle, an album they recorded in 1965 that was never released and has never been heard before, The Associated Preps reports.

The Beatles recorded  Four sides of the circle  between February and September 1965 at the famous Abbey Road Studios in London. The producer was George Martin. Parlophone never released the recordings and Apple never tried to acquire them. It was George Martin's son, Giles, who discovered the forgotten tapes in a cupboard deep in the vaults of the Abbey Road studios, having been tipped off about their existence by surviving band member Ringo Starr..

The Beatles were under some pressure after the release of Beatles for sale at the end of 1964 left some fans disappointed. Several months were spent in the studio when time would allow working on a projected new album that, it was hoped, would strike in new directions. Half the album had been completed when Help was released in August 1965 as a stop gap. The project was finally abandoned at the end of September 1965 when work began in earnest on the acclaimed Rubber soul.

"We were looking for a new sound," Ringo Starr told the AP. "We really wanted to extend the boundaries but we finally felt it was a step too far and that our fans would not be ready for such a radical departure”. The group were also under pressure from EMI to be more commercial and when initial recordings were leaked to the suits doubts were expressed.

Although Parlophone never saw fit to release the recordings, Giles Martin claims there is something special about the 12 tracks, which include George Harrison playing koto (in his little known Japanese phase), a guest appearance by Don Van Vliet (Captain Beefheart) and a fully orchestrated number with Paul and Ringo sharing the vocals. Martin says that the album is not the Beatles at their best but it is full of interesting material that fans will want to hear.

Four sides of the circle is due out today.

These 12 "forgotten" recordings are not demos or outtakes, according to a press release. They were unearthed by the Giles Martin, son of Beatles producer George Martin, at the end of last hear after a tip off from Ringo Starr. The album includes George Harrison playing koto with Japanese musicians, a guest appearance by Don Van Vliet (Captain Beefheart) and a fully orchestrated number with Paul and Ringo sharing the vocal (Train back to Liverpool). The track Resolution #19 is highly experimental and anticipates later experiments. Two tracks are credited as being written by Starkey (Ringo Starr) "Baby take it easy" and "Train back to Liverpool".

Produced by Giles Martin, the material was recorded at Abbey Road in London over several months in 1965. The restoration of the album was handled by Giles Martin with the full co-operation of the surviving Beatles and of Yoko Ono and Olivia Harrison, as well as his father George.

Four sides of the circle:

01 Four sides of the circle (Lennon McCartney)

02 Baby take it easy (Starkey)

03 She used to love me more (Lennon McCartney)

04 Haiku for one (Harrison)

05 Sunrise sunset (Bock)

06 Freight train (Cotten)*

07 The man with the passive fist (Lennon McCartney)

08 Train back to Liverpool (Starkey)

10 Rock and Roll Shoes (Willis)

11 I found a girl (Sloan, Barri)

12 Resolution #19 (Lennon McCartney)

* With Captain Beefheart

To hear two of the tracks check here

Times Top 20 Bands

The Times is doing a pop school this week starting today with the top twenty bands. They began with the Beatles and bravely left the Rolling Stones out (and Oasis). Glad to see T Rex there. Didn't expect Focus or Horslips but what about Creedence Clearwater Revival, Roxy Music, the Kinks, the Who?? Fleetwood Mac, Beach Boys, Slade was fair enough.

Another present Christmas 1964

I've been thinking about the Christmas of 1964 and I think it must have been that Christmas that I also received an orange plastic Beatles guitar as above. The guitar survived for many years without strings serving as a prop for miming to records. I had forgotten it had only four strings. Not an issue at the time.

The sausage roll game

Andy Li, CC0, via Wikimedia Commons

I thought of this game the other day. It will only appeal to you if you have a good knowledge of rock music and a childish sense of humour, which many of you don't. Anyway, what you do is you think of a song with the phrase rock 'n' roll in it and replace it with sausage roll (adding other appropriate changes where necessary). So for example

"I love sausage roll, put another dime in the jukebox (vendor?), baby" (Joan Jett)

"So you want to be a sausage roll bar? Then listen now to what I say" (Byrds)

"I said I know it's only sausage roll but I like it
I know it's only sausage roll but I like it, like it, yes, I do" (Rolling Stones) 

"Just let me hear some of that sausage roll music
Any old way you chews it
It's got a pork taste,
you can't lose it
Any old time you chews it
Gotta be sausage roll music
If you wanna dance with me, If you wanna dance with me" (Chuck Berry)

"It's the next taste, new food, pork craze, anyways
It's still sausage roll to me

Everybody's talkin' 'bout the new taste
Funny, but it's sausage roll to me" (Billy Joel)


My favourite so far  -
"We built this city, we built this city on sausage roll
Built this city, we built this city on sausage roll" (Starship)

10 Beatles songs with love in the title

1. Love me do
2. P S I Love you
3. She loves you
4. Words of love
5. Can't buy me love
6. And I love her
7. You've got to hide your love away
8. It's only love
9. All you need is love
10. Real love
(All Lennon McCartney except 4, perhaps you could replace that with Step inside love)

The Shakespeare Experience

It was my privilege last month to introduce Mike Reeves at one session in the Carey Conference. I was explaining then how everyone had told me how good he was and how pleased I was that he proved to be as good as they said. It's a phenomenon I have observed in other spheres. So for example when I was in school they told me how good Shakespeare was and in time I came to see he really is that good, head and shoulders above any of his contemporaries anad most of his successors. Or take the Beatles or pre-Akkerman Focus. I often find myself listening to one or other and thinking, yes, they really were that good.

All that to draw your attention to a blog piece here, where someone has just started reading Dr Lloyd-Jones and had what I call (shades of Miranda's mother) the Shakespeare experience. Seeing it in others is a joy as it confirms what you already know.

Beatles Songs Time References

Seconds, minutes, etc
1. Made the bus in seconds flat
2. Wait, oh yes wait a minute mister postman
3. And in my hour of darkness
4. You said you would be late, about an hour or two
5. In the morning wanna die
6. Tuesday afternoon is never ending.
7. There will be a show tonight on trampoline
8. A day in the life/Things we said today
9. Martha my dear though I spend my days in conversation/So many days you passed me by
10. Uh, oh, many, many, many nights go by
11. Talking in our beds for a week/Eight days a week
12. I'll be writing more in a week or two/ You know its three weeks, I'm going insane

Days of the week etc
1. Didn't get to bed last night
2. Yesterday
3. The night before
4. Monday morning, turning back
5. Stupid bloody Tuesday
6. Wednesday morning at five o’clock as the day begins
7. Thursday night your stockings needed mending
8. Friday morning at nine o’clock she is far away
9. Performs his feat on Saturday at Bishopsgate
10. Two of us Sunday driving not arriving/Sunday mornings go for a ride