incendiary

It's turning into a bit of a Beatles' blog, I guess, but of all my neuroses this is easily the most harmless hahaha......

The newly remastered, resequenced and remixed "Live At The Hollywood Bowl" album shows Beatlemania at the height of its' power. The performances presented here exude an energy and enthusiasm that only the deaf would not appreciate what all the fuss was about. If anything, "Live At The Hollywood Bowl" would be as good a starting point for a psychological study of the human psyche than anything one could ever encounter. The sound of 20,000 screaming, hysterical teenagers, mainly girls, doesn't let up throughout the set. And as ever, the Beatles knew when to up a notch in their performances to get the audience to scream even louder. Did they do it on purpose just to wind the crowd up even more? Probably?

Modern technology, as good as it is, hasn't got to a point where the background din can be separated from the Beatles live prowess. The band still sound interested, their set brimming with exuburence and power that later tours would lose. Producer, Giles Martin, son of Sir George Martin, is a chip off the old block. He is as intimately acquainted with the Beatles sound as his father was, and in comparison with the original "Live At The Hollywood Bowl" album of 1977, he has merely dusted down and applied a new sonic sheen to the band's offering. The vocals shine on this re-release, the bass and drums mainly occupy the left channel, lead and rhythm guitars to the right - the shows were originally recorded on 3-track tape in chaotic conditions. George and Giles Martin have given us the live shows that have never done the Beatles justice...until now.

Highlights? The opener, "Twist And Shout" is raucous with a throat-tearing Lennon vocal. "Can't Buy Me Love" is full of urgency and pleading, "She Loves You" is almost as spine-tingling as the single, and "Long Tall Sally" proves that Paul, if any were ever needed, was as good vocally on visceral rockers as his writing partner. They really are THAT good. And this isn't me being a slobbering sycophant, I can listen to this with a critical distance and still say it's incendiary.

Buy. Download, Steal. Or something. This won't happen again.

Something

A bit of blogging for a change!

I'm a podcast junkie. Well, in the sense that there's some of them that I like. Howard Hughes' "The Unexplained" is a favourite, as well as LBC's James O'Brien's weekly "best of" podcast. I used to be an avid listener to Simon Mayo and Mark Kermode's weekly film review that the BBC put in a podcast, but the thing was, it went on for ages, and I have the attention span of an invertebrate, so depending on what mood I was in decided whether I could be bothered to listen to the whole show or not.

But for the past several months, I've been enjoying "Something About The Beatles"  -  a regular podcast hosted by a Brit (Richard Buskin) and a Yank (Robert Rodriguez).

And the link to their website and podcasts is this - http://somethingaboutthebeatles.com/

I like this. It's funny, informative and Richard and Robert as hosts just bounce off each other. They really do know their stuff - each of them have had several Beatles- related books published - and they often play rare tracks, covers, isolated Beatles multi-tracks and have interviewed key authors of Beatles books, such as Mark Lewisohn and Philip Norman.

The one gripe I have with it, regardless that they continually retract their words, is their anti-McCartney slant that casts a large shadow over everything. In Rob and Rich's world, Lennon is an out-and-out demigod, if a bit of a dickhead at times. George Harrison is portrayed as a genius upon whom the Beatles would never have gotten anywhere without his input. And Ringo is Ringo.

But Paul gets the lion share of the gripes, particularly from Richard who can't see that McCartney has done anything worthwhile as a solo artist, where I can beg to differ on many, many levels. The McCartney-sung track "Hold Me Tight" from "With The Beatles" comes in for some savage criticism over the course of the podcasts, yet the excellent Julie Traymor fantasy film "Across The Universe" which contained many reinterpretations of Beatles classics, used the song in some of the early key scenes in the movie. So who knows what????

I've been involved with the Beatles and their story for nearly forty years, and I think I know stuff, yet "Something About The Beatles" always lets me in on a new fact, or something I'd forgotten. I'd recommend it to any serious Fabs fan - as long as you're not that pushed about Paul!!!