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Weekend
The boys had their boosters today so we are a fully triple vaxed family now. :)
COVID-19 is now a major thing around here. Over 1000 cases the past two days and I assume it’s going to move to a much higher number soon. I feel like I am going to get it every time I go out now. I’d like to limit shopping but it’s hard to do that when so much is still missing. There have been some alternate shops that have supplies but now everybody realised it and now there are bigger crowds there and longer lines. And lower supplies.
Today we got a mesh system for our wi-fi. We’ve had some problem spots in the house from way back and this is a means to support our internet use, I guess. Several of my devices have gotten much faster now. The main problem is my laptop, which sometimes is fine and other times is not. It’s not so different than it was before the mesh.
News of current events is hard to watch right now. Tonight the Scientist and I started to watch the “series” Get Back about the Beatles making the Let it Be album and it was fascinating to watch. Each episode runs well over two hours and we saw about half an hour so. I look forward to seeing more.
Here in Australia autumn begins on the first day of March. Our temperatures are staying reasonably hot until Monday. From Tuesday they will be dropping considerably, as though that’s the end of the hot weather. Of course, I know there’s more heat to come but it’s kind of funny the way the forecast is set out.
I had a couple of bunches of bananas that were getting really ripe and finally made a banana bread tonight. It came out rather nice except that it didn’t rise. Or I should say it rose and then fell once it was out of the oven. I’m doing the recipe from memory so maybe I need to adjust the baking powder or soda amount…I’m making another one tomorrow but a request has come to add chocolate chips and we don’t have any. I hope to find some to add and I might make them muffins instead.
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The Beatles: Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band
Although I think I’d been hearing the occasional Beatles song all my life, I didn’t focus much on them when I was younger. I do remember that Ob-la-di, ob-la-da” was the first song I remember hearing and “Hello, Goodbye” not far behind it. I’m sure these were songs getting regular play back in the early ’70s so I would hear them a lot on the radio. My parents had the album Meet the Beatles, which in my memory was just the vinyl record because “somebody” had destroyed the album cover. I’m not admitting to anything but I’m pretty sure there are some fingers pointing my way from the parents. If there is any guilt on my part, it’s long before my recollections began. I do remember listening to the record sometimes while growing up so I did kind of know those songs.
I don’t know exactly what got me started into Beatles fandom but my interest was piqued in 1977 when Capitol Records put out The Beatles: Love Songs compilation. It was packaged with a brown pseudo-leather cover embossed with a gold image of the band and it comprised of two discs. There was a large-sized booklet inside included with the lyrics to the songs printed on “parchment paper” using calligraphy. It was very pretty stuff and I think I still have it in that box filled with vinyl records hidden at the back of the closet. I remember it being said at the time that all Beatles songs were love songs which surely must have been part of the marketing of that album since it wasn’t true. I bought this album and I listened to it often and this was what got me interested in the band. But I could never use that compilation as my influential album. It would just be so wrong.
So instead I look to an album that I found in a roundabout way, thanks to the Bee Gees and Peter Frampton, who starred in that great classic movie “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band”. :D It’s embarrassing now but I saw that movie and really liked it. I think I was interested because of the Bee Gees and also partly due to my beginning interest in the Beatles. I even went on to buy the soundtrack album. I haven’t seen the film in decades but I daresay I would cringe to watch it today. But to early teenaged me, it was good fun.
So there I was listening to the Bee Gees sing their versions of Beatles songs and enjoying them for what they were. But somewhere along the way I felt compelled to find out about the original and this led me to buying my first real Beatles album, Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band.
I’m a Beatles fan and I love this album although I wouldn’t call it my favorite. That honor varies according to mood, day, weather, etc. :D But again I do love this album a lot and as I grew older I grew to appreciate this a lot more. Even today as I listened again, I discovered new things. It didn’t take terribly long once I listened to this to relegate that pale imitation to distant memory.
So how to choose just a few songs to highlight? I think it’s possible I could write about just about every song but I will try to narrow it down.
The title song includes about ten seconds of the combined sounds of an orchestra warming up along with the crowd anticipating the start of a concert. The song is a combination of modern day rock band with electric instrumentation and a horn section reminiscent of the old brass bands playing outdoor shows, all creating the iconic opening. It ends with McCartney as emcee announcing the singer, Billy Shears, before segueing into our next track.
“With a Little Help from my Friends” is sung by Ringo Starr, something of a rarity on their records. It works for this song due to the sincerity and earnestness of his voice. The song lends itself to sing-alongs while listening to it on the radio, particularly with the question and answer dialogue occurring through the song. I know the Joe Cocker version became much bigger than this album track but there’s a simplicity to the way this is sung that really appeals to me. Really, both versions have their merits but I know this one is very much overshadowed by the Cocker version.
I heard the version of “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds” by Elton John long before I heard this version. It was released in 1974 and Lennon even plays on that version under a pseudonym. I liked that version but it doesn’t compare to the original with Lennon’s vocals. This song is a trip through psychedelia and includes Lewis Carroll Wonderland-type imagery. That said, the idea this is a song about lsd has been refuted many times and Lennon said the title was inspired by his four-year old son’s drawing.
“She’s Leaving Home” is a beautiful, lush piece about a daughter leaving home, reaching her way to freedom from the tyranny of her parents. It’s a very touching piece and you can feel for parents and daughter both. The music features a nonet of stringed instruments and a harp and no guitar or drums.
Moving to side two, we begin with “Within You, Without You” a lush piece written by George Harrison. It’s composition is inspired by Hindustani classical music and it was recorded using Indian musicians rather than the band. This is yet another walk in the realm of psychedelia, albeit a totally different sound to Lucy in the Sky.
Just before the final song we get a reprise of the title song. “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band Reprise” is a shorter and more rocking version that loses the horn section altogether and leads into the monumental finale.
“A Day in the Life” is the finale to this album and what a smash it is. It’s primarily a Lennon composition but McCartney wrote the upbeat middle section. It starts off with the mundanity of reading the newspaper and then moves into a session of psychedelia that leads into an almost surreal pop section by McCartney which shifts into a dream before crashing down on the final chord, which reverberates at length before moving to the end bit with a fair bit of background sounds from the studio and some gibberish words being repeated. It’s a fantastic piece of music as a whole and possibly the best song on the album, at least in my opinion.
One last thought on this album is the iconic cover. I tend to picture the cover when I hear songs from the record, particularly the title track. I remember when I bought this album it was neat to look at the cover and see how many people I recognized. There were quite a few I knew but just as many I didn’t at the time. I haven’t examined it so closely in recent years so I wonder how many would be familiar now? Also cool was the fact they printed the lyrics on the back cover, which apparently was the first time it had been done on a rock album before.
So that is my entry into fandom of the Beatles. If I hadn’t gotten there the way I did, I presume it might have happened another way. So it’s worth having gone through some dross to get to the treasure in the end.
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Music in the early years
I was thinking about how I might write about influences on my musical tastes and I will do the album thing but it seems useful to think about the beginnings of my musical tastes.
I don’t really recall having much interest in music when I was very young. That said, I was a big fan of Glen Campbell when I was quite young. I don’t even know what songs I liked at the time as the ones that I mostly recall are some from the mid-70s or so.
I imagine a lot of my music knowledge was centered around what my parents listened to at the time. There was a lot of Charley Pride at my house. My mom was a big fan of it so we heard a lot of his records playing. Olivia Newton John was also quite popular although it was a bit later. I suppose we heard a lot more country music back then. But I did hear pop music too. When I was in third grade I remember the “song” The Streak by Ray Stevens was a thing. Of course I guess that was more from the country side of things too. That song reminds me of a girl named Paris in my class at school who used to sing that a lot for a time. Hmm…I just know there’s a lot of pop music I know when I hear it on the radio. At the very least we heard it in the car.
It wasn’t until the mid-70s I started to take a more active interest in music. I guess it was probably 1975 to be exact. That summer my cousins and grandfather came down to visit us for a week or so. This was when my aunt had the baby she gave up for adoption (even though we were all told it had died)…the one who I connected with a year ago on Ancestry.
Some where along this time I bought my first 45 rpm records. There were four of them at the time although I don’t know if I recall all of them. I still have them somewhere in the house but have nothing to play them on. The big one is Love Will Keep Us Together by Captain and Tenille. It was hugely popular during that summer and my cousin and I both loved the song a lot and sang it all the time while she visited. Even after she’d gone we started writing letters to each other and quoting lines from the song. I think sometimes before this I’d been to Pennsylvania and the big song was Donny Osmond singing Go Away Little Girl. Not sure which year but probably the year before, I guess. I didn’t have the record though. That song is still a favorite, mainly for sentimental reasons. It still reminds me of my cousin, who died many years ago from ovarian cancer.
Another of those records was Calypso by John Denver. I just liked the sound of the song and that has always been my favorite song by John Denver. But I was a fan of some of his other music too. I guess country music played a bigger role than I realized before.
The third single was Afternoon Delight by Starland Vocal Band…which upon reflection was a country group, I think. Funny, I never thought I liked country music all that much but I guess I did have some roots in that area for a while.
I can’t remember what the fourth single was right now. I will have to figure it out later.
To carry on the country theme, I used to like a lot of Eagles songs from their earlier years. I know they were more country rock but it’s still connected. I have pretty much always liked their music but it was only a few years ago that I bought a collection of their music. I guess that’s one of those groups I liked to listen to but I wasn’t compelled to have my own copy. There were lots of groups like that. I guess the reason this came to me was my parents were in a bowling league sometime in the mid-70s and these songs were playing a lot in the background there. We kids used to run around while the adults bowled. I do have ideas of getting a couple of proper albums one day in the future.
Elton John was another artist I heard a lot of back in those days. My parents had the single Daniel which got played a lot in our house. Funnily enough that’s not one that I heard very often these days but it does take me back to those years. But I also remember the era when he sang Don’t Go Breaking My Heart with Kiki Dee really well. That was a radio play thing so I guess I must have heard it in the car a lot. I don’t have any of his albums either although I do hope to get a couple of them one day. Or maybe a compilation.
Neil Young’s Heart of Gold is my favorite song by him and I know it’s almost completely a nostalgic choice. Oddly I remember hearing this played across the street at our neighbor’s house. They had a son who was a year or two older than me and a daughter who was quite a bit younger. My brothers and I were playing there one day and that song was on. I honestly don’t remember much else about that day aside from the song and the fact we were in the son’s bedroom for a time.
I was also just reminded of Helen Reddy from that era too. My parents had at least one of here albums and it was played a lot. Funny to thing we were listening to an Australian at the time (not to mentioned Olivia Newton John). I remember the song I am Woman being really big for a long time. Kind of funny also to think this feminist song got played so much back then considering how non-feminist my mom has become in more recent years.
I was just reminded of The Association as a group from my earlier years. My family had best friends from when we lived in Pennsylvania. They moved to Atlanta around the same time as a us and we lived in the same apartments. Back in PA were were neighbors in an upstairs/downstairs apartment or duplex so of thing. Anyway, we were close with their family all the years I was growing up. I spent the night there many times and I remember hearing the Association music being played. I think Never My Love was the most prominent but I am sure there were plenty of others.
I guess the last music I will mention is probably one of the earlier records I knew. My parents had a copy of the first Beatles album released in the US. It didn’t have a cover from the point I recall it and I think it was mentioned at some time that we kids destroyed it. It may well have been me, in fact. The Beatles will get a look-in at some point of sharing although I haven’t quite worked out which album. So there is definitely some pop music I remember from way back although I wouldn’t say it made me a Beatles fan at a young age.