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Edited by Joffa: 21/9/2013 01:09:04 AM

Fillmore's Poster Room filled with walls of sound

Joel Selvin
Updated 4:10 pm, Wednesday, September 25, 2013

They ran out of space on the walls of the Poster Room at the Fillmore Auditorium years ago. The most recent addition advertises a Black Keys concert from 2007. Every available inch of the wall space in the upstairs bar and restaurant as well as the adjacent balcony room is covered with framed posters from sold-out Fillmore shows of the past.

You could say the DNA of the entire modern rock-concert era is contained within these walls.

Over the years, the Fillmore has thinned out the collection, removing some posters by bands that had five or six performances memorialized on the walls. Occasionally, the Fillmore rotates some pieces of the collection: Management is still considering options.

"People have suggested hanging it on the ceiling, but nobody wants to do that," says Michael Bailey, who has managed the Fillmore since 1987.

The main walls of the third-floor room overlooking Geary Boulevard are covered with the 287 posters issued for concerts, first, at the Fillmore Auditorium and, after July 1968, at the Fillmore West at Market and Van Ness by producer Bill Graham.

Above the double-door entrance in the corner, the series begins with two posters for the S.F. Mime Troupe benefits that Graham threw at the Fillmore in December 1965 and January 1966. The third poster in the row comes from his first for-profit concert two weeks later with Jefferson Airplane. The weekend after that, Quicksilver Messenger Service was the headliner and, as a door prize, Graham raffled off a mynah bird, which, unfortunately, had gone deaf after spending three nights onstage with the electric rock bands.

There are posters for the first U.S. concerts by Pink Floyd and Traffic, the shows at Winterland where Cream recorded "Wheels of Fire" and Jimi Hendrix appeared with Albert King and John Mayall's Bluesbreakers. Led Zeppelin can be found supporting headliners Country Joe and the Fish.

There is early Fillmore poster artist Wes Wilson drawing a picture of his naked pregnant wife, her hand reaching out for money. Two weeks later, he draws another poster featuring his naked wife, her hand still out, but this one is also decorated with a serpent holding a dollar sign in its mouth. That was Wilson's last poster for Graham.

During the hall's '60s heyday, the room was a largely irrelevant snack bar. After Bailey began running the operation for property owners Bert and Regina Kortz, before Graham returned to the hall where his career started, the Poster Room became a hallmark of the Fillmore's second incarnation.

Initially resistant, Graham started throwing shows at the hall in 1988 and quickly came to love being back in the 1,100-seat shoe box. Closed after the 1989 earthquake and facing a substantial bill for retrofitting, the hall was shut for several years. "Get the Fillmore open now," scribbled Graham on a sticky note two weeks before his 1991 death in a helicopter crash.

The original posters sweep around three walls before the new poster series seamlessly starts, after a 17-year interruption, on the Fillmore Street end of the Poster Room. The acts featured on these latter-day posters are a cavalcade of the rock and pop greats to cross the historic stage over the past two decades under Bailey's management.

The Poster Room became a centerpiece of the new operation. Bailey booked intermission shows by local semi-acoustic acts. The kitchen started serving decent food and there were cocktails where the snack bar had been. "During set breaks, people come in the room. They can have some food, relax, chat," says Bailey. "And that's my resume on the wall."

At first, the posters were made just to advertise the shows and patrons leaving the hall were given posters for the next week's show. Now the posters are printed to celebrate sold- out shows and handed out as souvenirs to audience departing those gigs.

Since the hall reopened in 1994, Bailey has produced enough shows that clever, artful new posters fill the far wall of the Poster Room, cover the hallway outside and blanket the entire balcony room - more than two complete sides of the building. There are more than 1,200 posters in the new series.

Fillmore posters have long been traded by collectors all over the world. A complete set could fetch as much as $250,000, says Grant McKinnon of S.F. Rock Posters and Collectibles. "There's a small handful that are just brutal to find," he says.

He also occasionally has to deal with one of the Poster Room's inventions. When the collection was originally mounted and framed, a handbill to a 1970 concert by Jefferson Airplane for which no poster was ever made was enlarged to poster size and included in the Poster Room collection.

The handbill is well known to collectors as "247A," but some despairing completists have come running to McKinnon after visiting the Fillmore and seeing the Poster Room counterfeit.

"I've had to calm some guys down," says McKinnon.

Impressive as the full display is, it's the early Fillmore posters that cement the room to its extraordinary legacy of hallowed ground for rock history - the Doors, Grateful Dead, Janis Joplin, The Who, Jimi Hendrix, Otis Redding - a staggering, bewildering parade of names in funny script on the old posters. The Irish rock band Them with young Van Morrison on his first trip to the U.S.; Buffalo Springfield with Neil Young and Stephen Stills on the same bill as Hour Glass with unknowns Duane and Gregg Allman. And so on, almost endlessly.


http://www.sfgate.com/music/article/Fillmore-s-Poster-Room-filled-with-walls-of-sound-4843503.php

The top ten: Great bands with terrible names

JOHN RENTOUL SUNDAY 29 SEPTEMBER 2013
   
We have to start on this Top 10, as Tom Doran suggested, with The Beatles, "as it's just a rubbish pun". Beat, Beatles, see? Although that does suppose that the Beatles are a great band. This week's list was a hotly contested, highly subjective affair. A bit like many words, if you look at band names long enough, you realise how peculiar they have been all along…

1. Humble Pie “Steve Marriott’s post-Small Faces band. Epically awful name; reminds me of Creme Brulée, which was Les McQueen’s former band in The League of Gentlemen,” says Tom Doran.

2. Oasis Nominated by Joshua, who also nominated Suede, but I don't like them.

3. The Jesus and Mary Chain Nominated by William French.

4. Echo and the Bunnymen Several nominations.

5. Mott the Hoople Mind you, the band was called Silence before that.

6. Teenage Fanclub "I've got all the T-shirts, but boy am I ashamed to wear them." Stuart Ritchie.

7. Joy Division Also nominated by William French. Not my thing, but people like them and I've always thought it an unusually daft name.

8. Supertramp Taken from the title of a book by WH Davies, The Autobiography of a Super-Tramp.

9. Coldplay Anyone know why?

10. Led Zeppelin "When you think of it…" Peter A Russell.

http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/music/features/the-top-ten-great-bands-with-terrible-names-8842067.html

-- Grateful Dead, "Sunshine Daydream: Veneta, Oregon - August 27, 1972" - No. 19 - Grateful Dead notch its highest-charting album since 1987 on the Billboard 200, as its new archival live release, "Sunshine Daydream: Veneta, Oregon - August 27, 1972," debuts at No. 19.

The band last went higher with "In the Dark," which climbed to No. 6 off the strength of the group's only top 40 Billboard Hot 100 single: "Touch of Grey" (No. 9 peak).
Skrillex, Warren Haynes To Take Part in Grateful Dead Case Study at Billboard Touring Conference

The 16,000 start marks the largest sales week for Grateful Dead since October of 2008, when "Rocking the Cradle: Egypt 1978" bowed with a handful of units more than Sunshine (but still rounded to 16,000). The new album's sales were powered largely by orders placed on the band's official Web site, Dead.net. (It offered a number of exclusive, limited-edition versions of the album.)


http://www.billboard.com/biz/articles/news/digital-and-mobile/5740615/chart-moves-grateful-deads-highest-charting-album-since

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Edited by Joffa: 11/10/2013 08:39:05 PM

The Grateful Dead: eternal sunshine dreamers

A new box set captures the Grateful Dead's best gig and confirms my teenage hippy self's belief: their glorious psychedelia was no one-trip wonder

Nigel Williamson
theguardian.com, Tuesday 8 October 2013 21.48 AEST

In one of rock'n'roll's better jokes, a Grateful Dead fan turns up to see his favourite band and finds to his distress that his stash of drugs has run out. "Man, this band really sucks", he announces as the Dead take the stage and he hears them for the first time in sober-minded clarity.

He must have caught them on a bad night. My first Grateful Dead show in 1972 as a teenage hippy neophyte was unforgettable. The group was at the apex of its acid-laced glory and I had no doubt that they were the finest band I had ever seen.

It's true that in my youthful exuberance I had eagerly partaken of the illicit substances that were invariably on offer at Grateful Dead shows back then. But my stash ran out several decades ago and Sunshine Daydream, a newly released recording of a legendary show from 1972, sounds as good in staid middle-aged abstinence as in stoned teenage memory; invigoratingly fresh and full of wonder, combining breathtaking flights of improvisational fantasy with an intuitive craft, a freewheeling trip down the highway of cosmic American music with its own stash of in-built natural highs along the way.

Back in 1972 on the band's first British tour, I couldn't get enough of the Grateful Dead. I saw them on the opening, exploratory night when they transformed the drafty old Empire Pool, Wembley into a north London outpost of the Fillmore West. Then again a month later at a festival in a muddy field at Bickershaw, near Manchester, held optimistically in the first week of May with inevitably cold and damp results, but where they rallied flagging spirits with a courageous five-hour set. And then finally when they returned to London after the European leg of the tour to sign off with a series of triumphant shows at the Lyceum. They were magnificent every time.

The holy grail in the Grateful Dead experience has always been Dark Star, the band's most cosmic and stellar piece of protean, shape-shifting improvisation, on which lead guitarist Jerry Garcia set the controls for inner space on an aural acid trip that on a good night voyaged for half an hour and more before returning to terra firma. Dark Star was not played at every show and no two performances of it were ever the same, which ensured the journey was always special. I can still remember dancing around the Lyceum with a head full of acid as Dark Star filled the ballroom and willing the music never to stop. It was the first time I'd experienced rock music as an act of communal supplication rather than just another gig.

The Dead were on a roll on that tour, as Europe 72, the triple vinyl album released later the same year, proves. But on their return to America, the band played a show on 27 August, 1972 at a fairground near Springfield, Oregon that has since assumed a near-mythical reputation in Grateful Dead folklore and has become the most requested show from the band's vast vault of concert tapes.

Springfield was the hometown of Ken Kesey, author of One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, founder of the Merry Pranksters and instigator of the "acid tests" at which the Dead had played their first mind-bending gigs in San Francisco in the mid-1960s. After serving time for drug offences, Kesey had retreated back to the family farm in Oregon where he was running a creamery. With the business struggling, the Dead agreed to help him out by playing a benefit show.

What transpired was a counter-cultural homecoming, a gathering of the tribes. The original Pranksters – many of whom had followed Kesey to the Oregon backwoods and whose colourful nicknames are immortalised by Tom Wolfe in his book The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test – were out in force. Tickets were hastily printed on the back of the creamery's yoghurt labels. On what was allegedly the hottest day in Oregon's history, clothing was declared "optional" and the Dead played one of the finest sets of their lives in a belated coda to the original acid tests.

A total of 20,000 free-spirited Deadheads descended on the fairground and to have been among them would have been a teenage English hippy's sunshine daydream. Alas, I was stranded several thousand miles away, still struggling to escape the drab conformity of lace-curtained 70s suburban Britain. Better late than never, many years later, on a sweltering hot August day in 1999 I made a pilgrimage to visit Kesey on his Oregon farm. Several of the surviving characters from Wolfe's book, including Mountain Girl (Carolyn Garcia) and the Intrepid Traveller (Ken Babbs), showed up to meet me. We hung out in the sunshine, had a barbeque and listened to tapes of the Dead, reliving memories of the day when the band had played perhaps its greatest ever show for Kesey's farm.

What is most striking about the recording from that sun-kissed day is the fluidity with which the Dead absorbed and transmuted every genre of vernacular American music, from blues, folk and gospel to country, R&B and rockabilly, and fed them into some of the most audacious, freewheeling rock'n'roll ever made – past and future, outlaw spirit and hippy idealism fused into a soundtrack for a brave new frontier that birthed an alternative sub-culture which survives to this day.

An epic psychedelic jam around Dark Star full of vaulting, freeform improvisation mutates alchemically into a loping take on Marty Robbins' cowboy ballad El Paso. Merle Haggard's country weepie Sing Me Back Home, delivered hauntingly in Garcia's reedy but expressive voice, gives way to the Dead's surging, feelgood acid anthem Sugar Magnolia, with its irresistible sunshine daydream refrain. Throw in the loose-limbed rhapsody of Chuck Berry's Promised Land, the psyched-up folk-blues racination of I Know You Rider and the group's own storied, myth-making compositions such as Truckin', Casey Jones and Playing in the Band and you have cosmic American music at its most potent and joyous.

The event was also filmed and the previously unseen footage is included in the package as a DVD documentary. When the greenhorn filmmakers first approached Garcia to ask if they might film the show, in characteristically laidback fashion he replied: "Why? We just stand there.'' When they persisted, he shrugged his agreement. Predictably the Pranksters then dosed the camera crew with LSD and there's an amateurish but life-affirming simplicity to the footage, an hallucinatory celebration of the counterculture dancing in a sunshine daydream, as if the horror of rock'n'roll's darker underbelly unleashed by Altamont and personified by Charlie Manson, was a world away. And for a few hours while the Dead played, in a sense it was.

Sunshine Daydream: Veneta, Oregon, 27 August, 1972 is out now on Rhino Records

http://www.theguardian.com/music/2013/oct/08/grateful-dead-sunshine-daydream-veneta-oregon?

Edited by Joffa: 14/10/2013 07:36:47 PM

Ministry - With Sympathy (1983)

Alain (as he was known by at the time) Jourgensen in an emotional epitaph with deeply felt synth pop numbers in the form of "I Wanted to Tell Her", "Say Youre Sorry", "Work for Love", "Should Have Known Better" and "Shes Got a Cause"

I Wanted to Tell Her
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LbnytG2m7gk

Say Youre Sorry
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hzaha_W-S5k

Work for Love
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JN5_OK7PEC4

Should Have Known Better
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TXr-EoVqUZM

Shes Got a Cause
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qsQ5iJqeobs

Jourgensen would not revisit the same form of songwriting and production again as he wanted a darker, harder, political voice in his music

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RIP Lou Reed. Velvet underground and Nico one of the best albums ever.

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Just picked up a nifty little thing for my wife, for her birthday. a Special limited edition 200gm Vinyl double album of the Almost famous Soundtrack featuring the original album plus the Stillwater EP on Side 4, 6 tracks that were written by Crowes then wife and member of the band Heart.




A1 Simon & Garfunkel – America
Written-By – Paul Simon

A2 Who, The – Sparks
Written-By – Pete Townshend

A3 Todd Rundgren – It Wouldn't Have Made Any Difference
Written-By – Todd Rundgren
3:52
A4 Rod Stewart – Every Picture Tells A Story
Written-By – Rod Stewart, Ron Wood
3:34
A5 Beach Boys, The – Feel Flows
Written-By – Carl Wilson, John Rieley
4:44
B1 Yes – I've Seen All Good People: Your Move
Written-By – Chris Squire, Jon Anderson
5:56
B2 Seeds, The – Mr. Farmer
Written-By – Sky Saxon
2:52
B3 Allman Brothers Band, The – One Way Out
Written-By – Elmore James, Marshall Sehorn*, Sonny Boy Williamson
4:59
B4 Lynyrd Skynyrd – Simple Man
Written-By – Gary Rossington, Ronnie Van Zant
5:57
B5 Led Zeppelin – That's The Way
Written-By – Jimmy Page, Robert Plant
5:37
C1 Elton John – Tiny Dancer
Written-By – Bernie Taupin, Elton John
6:16
C2 Nancy Wilson (2) – Lucky Trumble
Written-By – Nancy Wilson (2)
2:42
C3 David Bowie – I'm Waiting For The Man
Written-By – Lou Reed
5:43
C4 Cat Stevens – The Wind
Written-By – Cat Stevens
1:41
C5 Clarence Carter – Slip Away
Written-By – Marcus Lewis Daniel*, Wilbur Terrell, William Armstrong
2:32
C6 Thunderclap Newman – Something In The Air
Written-By – John Keen*
3:55
D1 Stillwater – Fever Dog
Producer – Nancy Wilson (2) Written-By – Russell Hammond
3:10
D2 Stillwater – Love Thing
Producer – Nancy Wilson (2) Written-By – Jeffrey Bebe
4:16
D3 Stillwater – Chance Upon You
Producer – Nancy Wilson (2) Written-By – Jeffrey Bebe
3:49
D4 Stillwater – Love Comes And Goes
Producer – Nancy Wilson (2) Written-By – Jeffrey Bebe
3:52
D5 Stillwater – Hour Of Need
Producer – Nancy Wilson (2), Peter Frampton Written-By – Jeffrey Bebe
4:39
D6 Stillwater – You Had To Be There
Producer – Nancy Wilson (2), Peter Frampton Written-By – Jeffrey Bebe
3:59

Ray Davies Reviews The Beatles Revolver: ‘Really It’s A Load Of Rubbish’

by Anorak | 12th, November 2013

IN 1966, The Kinks; Ray Davis reviewed the The Beatles’ Revolver for Disc and Music Echo magazine.

Here’s Ray:

Side One:

“Taxman” – “It sounds like a cross between the Who and Batman. It’s a bit limited, but the Beatles get over this by the sexy double-tracking. It’s surprising how sexy double-tracking makes a voice sound.”

“Eleanor Rigby” – “I bought a Haydn LP the other day and this sounds just like it. It’s all sort of quartet stuff and it sounds like they’re out to please music teachers in primary schools. I can imagine John saying: ‘I’m going to write this for my old schoolmistress’. Still it’s very commercial.”

“I’m Only Sleeping” – “It’s a most beautiful song, much prettier than ‘Eleanor Rigby’. A jolly old thing, really, and definitely the best track on the album.

“Love You Too” – “George wrote this – he must have quite a big influence on the group now. This sort of song I was doing two years ago – now I’m doing what the Beatles were doing two years ago. It’s not a bad song – it’s well performed which is always true of a Beatles track.”

“Here There and Everywhere” – “This proves that the Beatles have got good memories, because there are a lot of busy chords in it. It’s nice – like one instrument with the voice and the guitar merging. Third best track on the album.”

“Yellow Submarine” – “”This is a load of rubbish, really. I take the mickey out of myself on the piano and play stuff like this. I think they know it’s not that good.”

“She Said She Said” – “This song is in to restore confidence in old Beatles sound. That’s all.”

“Good Day Sunshine” – “This’ll be a giant. It doesn’t force itself on you, but it stands out like ‘I’m Only Sleeping’. This is back to the real old Beatles. I just don’t like the electronic stuff. The Beatles were supposed to be like the boy next door only better.”

“And Your Bird Can Sing” – “Don’t like this. The song’s too predictable. It’s not a Beatles song at all.”

“Dr. Robert” - “It’s good – there’s a 12-bar beat and bits in it that are clever. Not my sort of thing, though.”

“I Want To Tell You” – “This helps the LP through though it’s not up to the Beatles standard.”

“Got To Get You Into My Life” – “Jazz backing – and it just goes to prove that Britain’s jazz musicians can’t swing. Paul’s sings better jazz than the musicians are playing which makes nonsense of people saying jazz and pop are very different. Paul sounds like Little Richard. Really, it’s the most vintage Beatles track on the LP.”

“Tomorrow Never Knows” – “Listen to all those crazy sounds! It’ll be popular in discotheques. I can imagine they had George Martin tied to a totem pole when they did this.”

“This is the first Beatles LP I’ve really listened to in it’s entirety but I must say there are better songs on ‘Rubber Soul’. Still, ‘I’m Only Sleeping’ is a standout. ‘Good Day Sunshine is second best and I also like ‘Here, There and Everywhere.’ But I don’t want to be harsh about the others. The balance and recording technique are as good as ever.”

Ends.

http://www.anorak.co.uk/375102/news/flashback/ray-davies-reviews-the-beatles-revolver-really-its-a-load-of-rubbish.html/?

14 Neglected Beatles’ Gems
by Anorak

AS The Beatles go virtual reality and we get the chance to join the band, Ed Barrett picks 14 tracks of neglected Beatles gems:

Back in the early 1960s, popular music (or “the pops” as it was known) was a singles game. Albums (or “LPs” as they were known) were created by the simple expedient of slapping on a couple of already released hits and padding out the rest with assorted rubbish, often composed by managers and producers in order to earn “song-writing” royalties.

Keith Richards (or “Keith Richard” as he was then known) described them as “two hits and ten pieces of shit”. Then came the Beatles’ first LP: “Please Please Me, Love Me Do and 12 other songs”. But this was different: two hits, some classy covers of other people’s hits, and a bunch of potential hits for other acts to nick. The formula was changed at a stroke, and pop music would never be the same again.

The Beatles continued to release best-selling singles (and how) and their albums set new benchmarks of creativity and quality. So prolific was their output that the LPs often contained no singles at all.

Most groups would have killed for 45s like I Saw Her Standing There, All My Loving, Eight Days A Week, Yesterday, Drive My Car and the rest. Yet the Beatles were happy to use them as album tracks, alongside all the other idiosyncratic and innovative songs with which they delighted their fans and kept the competition guessing.

Now that their catalogue has been re-mastered in mono and stereo, attention is once again focussed on Tomorrow Never Knows, Strawberry Fields Forever, A Day In The Life, and all the usual suspects. So here instead, for your listening pleasure, is a 14-track album’s worth of neglected Beatles gems. As the song says, a splendid time is guaranteed for all.

Ed Barrett

P.S. I Love You
(Please Please Me, 1963)

Written by Paul McCartney in Hamburg two years earlier, this was chosen for the group’s EMI audition. Created to fit the prevailing pop template, it nevertheless demonstrates the distinctive Lennon-McCartney style that would flower over the next year.

All I’ve Got To Do
(With The Beatles, 1963)

A good example of how, when the Beatles copied other people, they ended up creating something different in the process. Their first two LPs included several R&B and Tamla-Motown covers, and this is a clear attempt by John Lennon to write a song on the style of the writers he admired, such as Smokey Robinson and Arthur Alexander, whose Anna (Go To Him) had appeared on the first album.

Till There Was You
(With The Beatles, 1963)

Paul McCartney’s sense of musical tradition is often seen as evidence of his tendency towards blandness and sentimentality. But this sensibility – when balanced with his many other qualities – was an important part of the Beatles’ appeal. It increased the scope of their music, taking it to places where others feared to tread, and Sgt Pepper would have been impossible without their willingness to experiment with all kinds of musical genres. This beautifully understated interpretation of Meredith Willson’s Broadway show tune sees Paul at his most controlled.

Don’t Bother Me
(With The Beatles, 1963)

The first George Harrison composition to appear on record, and one of the best. His typically deadpan voice is perfectly suited to this idiosyncratic but hypnotic tune.

I’ll Be Back
(A Hard Day’s Night, 1964)

A downbeat ending to the album-of-the-film-of-Beatlemania. Though structurally unconventional, it appears completely natural – a feature of Lennon’s most interesting compositions. Had it appeared a year later, it might have received the attention it deserves.

Every Little Thing
(Beatles For Sale, 1964)

Sung by Lennon, and melodically and lyrically a typical Lennon song. All of which shows how wrong you can be, as it was in fact a McCartney composition, written as a prospective single. Eventually consigned to side two of one of their least regarded albums, it has remained there ever since.

You Won’t See Me
(Rubber Soul, 1965)

The nonchalance of the performance is in marked contrast to the desperation of the subject matter – and the result is wonderful. Classic mid-period Fab Four: the cool “ooh-la-la-las” of the backing singers are a Beatle-ism every bit as recognisable as the enthusiastic “yeah, yeahs” and “ooohs” of two years earlier. Steve Harley would use the same device to profitable effect a decade later on his smash Make Me Smile (Come Up and See Me).

I’m Looking Through You
(Rubber Soul, 1965)

A good example of McCartney’s craftsmanship. The original version (available on Anthology 2) was an attractive but slightly ponderous mid-tempo number with a hole at its centre. At the last minute, McCartney added a sprightly middle eight which fits perfectly and leads seamlessly into the following verse. The whole thing was thus invigorated, resulting in a perfectly formed pop song.

Rain
(Single, 1966; also Mono Masters, Past Masters)

Recorded with its A-side Paperback Writer during the Revolver sessions, this LSD-drenched sonic assault gave warning of what was to come – backward tapes and all. Lennon’s gratingly harsh vocal provides the template for Liam Gallagher.

Fixing A Hole
(Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, 1967)

This plangent marijuana-fuelled meditation was recorded in the company of a man who had knocked on McCartney’s door hours earlier, claiming to be Jesus Christ. Picks up where Paul’s interlude in A Day In The Life left off. “Somebody spoke and I went into a dream…”

Flying
(Magical Mystery Tour, 1967)

Speaking of which, this pleasing instrumental “dream sequence” from the Beatles’ misunderstood movie has undergone various trippy remixes over the years, and now makes a comfortable living as atmospheric TV background music.

It’s All Too Much
(Yellow Submarine, 1969; also Mono Masters, Past Masters)

More drugs. This Harrison epic was recorded in the early summer of 1967 just before All You Need is Love, and features a similar extended fade-out, replete with snatches of other songs (in this case the Merseys’ Sorrow). It would have fitted perfectly on Magical Mystery Tour, but ended up on the Yellow Submarine soundtrack album two years later. “All the world is birthday cake, so take a piece but no too much.” A delicious slice of British psychedelia.

Two Of Us
(Let It Be, 1970)

The bad-tempered sessions for the album that would eventually be known as Let It Be were mainly taken up with dismal Beatle originals and plodding versions of old rock’n’roll standards. This airy, optimistic tune was a welcome exception.

You Know My Name (Look Up The Number)
(Single, 1970; also Mono Masters, Past Masters)

An important element of the Beatles’ character was their sense of humour. An early amateur recording featured a girl with a National Health eyeball, and their fan club Christmas records were full of clowning, yet this skit on northern clubs is the only fully-fledged comedy number in their commercial catalogue. It features Brian Jones [well, was he?] of the Rolling Stones, who also helped with the sound effects on the band’s novelty hit Yellow Submarine.

Recorded in 1967, it eventually appeared in truncated form as an incongruous B-side to the group’s portentous final single, Let It Be. By then Jones was dead and the Beatles were history. Listening today, the amusingly incoherent ramblings from around the 3.40 mark bear an uncanny resemblance to the Fast Show’s “I was ve’y ve’y drunk”.

The Beatles albums are released by EMI. They are available individually in stereo, and collectively in mono and stereo box sets.

http://www.anorak.co.uk/223804/keyposts/14-neglected-beatles-gems.html/

Ray Davies... What a cat!

Can listen to the bloke all day

Bring out your dead ... Monty Python reunite to pay off their mortgages

Date
November 20, 2013 - 10:25AM

Monty Python to reunite for stage show
The five remaining members of British comedy group Monty Python are expected to officially announce their new show this week in London.

Turns out they were not an ex-comedy group after all. Merely resting. Pining for the fjords.

The Beatles of comedy, the (surviving members of) Monty Python, have confirmed what they have hinted at, flirted with, and otherwise squabbled over for years: a reunion.

I hope it makes us a lot of money

The official announcement is due at a press conference on Thursday in London, but the punchline was spoilt by a nudge-nudge-wink-wink cryptic tweet from group member Eric Idle yesterday, followed by an unsourced exclusive in London's The Sun newspaper, then confirmation from Terry Jones to the BBC.

Jones told the BBC that he and John Cleese, Michael Palin, Terry Gilliam and Eric Idle were “getting together and putting on a show”.

“It’s real,” he said. “I’m quite excited about it. I hope it makes us a lot of money. I hope to be able to pay off my mortgage!”

The group’s last live performance was Live at the Hollywood Bowl in 1982, and their last collaboration was the film The Meaning of Life, released in 1983. Six years later Graham Chapman died of cancer.

Monty Python's The Meaning Of Life (1983) starred Terry Jones and John Cleese, and was directed Terry Gilliam. Photo: Universal/Celandine/Monty Python

Since then the regular rumours of a reunion – including a US tour and a new movie - have never come off, Idle joking that it would only happen “if Chapman came back from the dead”, adding “so we’re negotiating with his agent”.

Last month the group hinted at a reunion in a video of them discussing their work, recorded for a new Blu-Ray release of The Meaning of Life.

They talked about how much material was left after writing Meaning of Life, and Cleese suggested there was enough for a "Meaning of Life Two".

Graham Chapman could be represented by a medium "who's got no sense of comic timing", joked Palin.

Each of the group have gone on to successful solo careers, but stayed in contact and often worked on each other’s projects.

This year Michael Palin was awarded the British Film and Television Academy’s highest honour, the Fellowship, and received the award from Jones who gave an emotional speech of admiration for his old writing partner and friend.

Monty Python’s Flying Circus, which ran for four TV series from 1969 then expanded into stage shows, movies and records, is considered a breakout moment for modern British comedy.

Though its members were influenced by pioneers such as Spike Milligan, it was one of the first shows to take sketch comedy to a new, surreal level, inspiring generations of comedians to come.

It was a collaboration between writer-performers from Oxford and Cambridge, meshed together with the animated weirdness of American Terry Gilliam.

In 2004 their "Dead Parrot Sketch" – written by Cleese and Chapman and performed by Cleese and Palin – was voted the best ever alternative comedy sketch in a survey by the Radio Times magazine.

It scored twice as many votes as the second-placed sketch, which was Monty Python’s "four Yorkshiremen". "The Ministry of Silly Walks" and "The Spam Song" also made the top 10.

Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/entertainment/comedy/bring-out-your-dead--monty-python-reunite-to-pay-off-their-mortgages-20131120-2xttn.html#ixzz2lArAdIP6

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Batch of 59 rare Beatles songs to be released for sale

LONDON: Rare recordings of 59 songs by the Beatles will go on sale for the first time on Tuesday when Apple Records makes them available for download.
Apple, a label founded by the Beatles in 1968, said it would release a series of tracks from the early 1960s that were previously only available as bootleg recordings.
Among the songs to be released on iTunes are versions of "She Loves You", "A Taste of Honey" and "There's a Place", as well as outtakes, demos and live performances recorded for BBC radio.
A spokeswoman for Apple Records declined to explain the timing of the release or comment on speculation that it was aimed at extending copyright over the material.
In 2011, the European Union ruled that copyright over sound recordings should be extended from 50 to 70 years from next year, but only for recordings released before the 50-year term had expired.
The bulk of the Beatles tracks available for download from Tuesday were recorded for the BBC in 1963 but not released.
Others have already capitalised on the changes to EU legislation to maintain control over their back catalogues.
The legislation has been dubbed "Cliff's law" in Britain for the additional royalties it would provide for veteran rocker Cliff Richard, whose songs had been starting to fall out of copyright.
In late December last year, Sony Music released a compilation of Bob Dylan recordings from 1962 and 1963, giving away the reason for the move with a frank subtitle: "The Copyright Extension Collection, Vol. 1."
Sony only released 100 copies of the Bob Dylan recordings. It was not immediately clear whether Apple Records would limit downloads of the Beatles songs.

http://m.thehimalayantimes.com/fullNews.php?headline=Batch+of+59+rare+Beatles+songs+to+be+released+for+sale&NewsID=399613

20 Things You Didn't Know About 'Sympathy For The Devil'
By Mark Beaumont
Posted on 26 Nov 12


In 1968, Mick Jagger came out to his friends, parents and adoring public as an antichrist. He did it with style, declaring his Beelzebub a demon “of wealth and taste” before recounting his famous misdeeds throughout history – leading the Nazi blitzkrieg, sparking the Russian revolution, shooting JFK and getting Jesus crucified – before a backing choir of “woo-woo”ers who seemed to think all this was a right old lark. But how much do you really know about ‘Sympathy For The Devil’? Here are the song’s darkest secrets.

1

If you’re looking for any signs of a ‘Curse Of Sympathy For The Devil’, which anything in popular culture even slightly occultist is required to have, start with the Guns’N’Roses cover for the Interview With A Vampire film in 1994. Slash was so upset that Axl invited a new rhythm guitarist Paul Huge to play on the song that he quit the band, leaving G’N’R to begin a slow, 20-year slide into Shitsville.

2

You might also point to the story that, during the five days of recording the song in early June 1968, a film lamp allegedly started a fire which destroyed much of the band’s equipment, but didn’t harm the tapes.

3

The song’s working title was ‘The Devil Is My Name’, which would have rather undermined the mystery of the whole thing, we suspect.

4
Jagger claims to have taken the inspiration for the idea of a song from Satan’s perspective from Baudelaire. “But I could be wrong. Sometimes when I look at my Baudelaire books, I can't see it in there. But it was an idea I got from French writing. And I just took a couple of lines and expanded on it.”

5
Although, many of the song’s lines have direct correlations with The Master And Margarita by Russian novelist Mikhail Bulgakov, a book about Beelzebub visiting 1930s Moscow, fresh from Christ’s crucifixion. The book, which Jagger received from Marianne Faithful, includes a scene in which Satan performs a magic show, further evidence that David Blaine is the Evil That Walks Among Us.

6
At the original recording at London’s Olympic Studios, the chant of “woo-woo” started in the control room, kicked off by producer Jimmy Miller and a group including Anita Pallenburg, Marianne Faithful and a coterie of “elite film crowd” who’d turn up at the studio to sing along to whatever the Stones were recording that day. Producer Jimmy Miller put a mike in the control room to record them, but their takes were scrapped and re-recorded by Jagger, Richards and Miller in LA.

7
The line “who killed the Kennedys” originally went “who killed Kennedy”, but was changed when Robert Kennedy was shot and killed while the recording was underway.

8
Accepted Stones myth suggests that the band were playing ‘Sympathy For The Devil’ at the Altamont festival at the time when crazed fan Meredith Hunter was killed. Not true; it was ‘Under My Thumb’. Bad luck, scary supernatural theorists! Nonetheless, because of the public outrage at the (wrong) story, the Stones didn’t play ‘Sympathy’ live for the next seven years.

9
The Stones certainly got their fair share of controversy out of the song, though, as religious groups pointed to this track, plus the fact that their previous album was called ‘Their Satanic Majesties Request’, as proof that the band were devil worshippers. This tickled the band no end. “"Before, we were just innocent kids out for a good time,” said Richards, “[then] they're saying, 'They're evil, they're evil.' Oh, I'm evil, really? So that makes you start thinking about evil... What is evil?… There are black magicians who think we are acting as unknown agents of Lucifer and others who think we are Lucifer. Everybody's Lucifer."

10
Jagger believed that the controversy around the track might have kick-started heavy metal’s Satan-bothering bent. “I thought it was a really odd thing, because it was only one song, after all. It wasn't like it was a whole album, with lots of occult signs on the back. People seemed to embrace the image so readily, [and] it has carried all the way over into heavy metal bands today."

11
The recording of the song was filmed by French new wave film icon Jean-Luc Godard, who was so taken by the track that he retitled the film about 1960s American sub-culture – originally called One Plus One – to Sympathy For The Devil for its 1968 producer’s cut. Perhaps Satan told him to do it?

12
The first time Charlie Watts heard the song was when Jagger turned up on his doorstep and played it, solo and acoustic, at his front door at sunset. Considering the lyrical content, Watts was a brave man indeed to let him back into the house.

13
Ahead of the likes of Brian Ferry, U2, Pearl Jam, Jane’s Addiction, Ozzy Osbourne and ‘Weird Al’ Yonkovic, the first act to cover the song was the incongruously fluffy Sandie Shaw. ‘Succubus On A String’, anybody?

14
The song started life as a folk tune in the style of Bob Dylan and was tried in six different rhythms before they settled on a dancey bongo samba. “It was all night doing it one way,” said Watts, “then another full night trying it another way, and we just could not get it right. It would never fit a regular rhythm.” Jagger attributes the power of the song to its samba rhythm which, he said, has “an undercurrent of being primitive - because it is a primitive African, South American, Afro-whatever-you-call-that rhythm. So to white people, it has a very sinister thing about it.”


15
Only two takes of ‘Sympathy’ were recorded, the first one, according to Richards, “a disaster” and the second one “perfect”. Jagger took a method acting approach to the song, taking on the role of Satan while singing. “It's like acting in a movie,” he said, “you try to act out the scene as believably as possible, whether you believe it or not. That's called GOOD ACTING.”

16
Jagger has claimed the song is more about the evils of mankind than the supernatural devil figure, but that doesn’t quite tie in with the appearance on TV show Rock’n’Roll Circus in 1968 when Jagger sang it topless, covered in fake devil tattoos.

17
The “troubadours who got killed before they reach Bombay” line has caused much debate amongst fans trying to work out who it could refer to, the best conclusion being hippies travelling the ‘Hippy Trail’ to India by road, many of whom would be killed or robbed by drug smugglers in Afghanistan and Pakistan. Two words – Air India.


18
Karen in Will And Grace demanded to walk down the aisle to ‘Sympathy For The Devil’ at her fourth wedding. With hilarious consequences.


19
In 1988, Slovenian industrial rockers Laibach recorded an entire album of covers of the song. Have you heard it? Then the number for the Samaritans is 08457 909090.


20
In 1998, Intel Vice President Steve McGeady quoted a verse from ‘Sympathy’ in court as part of the antitrust trial of Microsoft, allegedly referring to Microsoft as the devil. The lines he quoted were “So if you meet me have some courtesy/Have some sympathy, and some taste/Use all your well-learned politesse/Or I'll lay your soul to waste”. Whether he did this standing on the desk, sticking his arse out, pursing his lips and clapping was unrecorded by by court stenographers


Read more at http://www.nme.com/blogs/nme-blogs/20-things-you-didnt-know-about-sympathy-for-the-devil?utm_source=nme&utm_medium=bestofnme&utm_campaign=bestofnme-20%20things%20you%20didn't%20know%20about%20'Sympathy%20For%20The%20Devil'#SikvucQtyyAdHKcv.99

They're the songs that we flipped over

ALAN HOWE HERALD SUN DECEMBER 30, 2013 12:00AM

IT WAS all an accident, rock and roll. It was never an art form; it has always been a business.

And the tensions between the two have unsteadily steered the course of the greatest social phenomenon of the past 60 years.

But because commerce has always run the show, and with penurious artists being forever vulnerable, businessmen set out to determine what it is we wanted to hear: what's a hit, what's not; what you should listen to and what's not worth it.

Thank God, the wisdom of the crowds has so often outwitted the suits of Tin Pan Alley.

And we crowds set the agenda from the get go. This year saw the first music streaming charts in Australia, and, as a result, the death of the B side.

You know, the other side of vinyl single. The song that was upside down and spinning in the wrong direction as you played the hit of the day.

Even CD singles had "B" sides - afterthoughts that turned up as long as you were still listening.

In the old days you had to stand up and return to the turntable to upend a single to hear the other side. By today's standards it was quite a commitment.

Music fans, though - smarter than the men selling them their music - have always been very committed.

It will be 60 years in a few weeks since Bill Haley and His Comets went to a New York City studio and cut the most famous B side of all time: Rock Around The Clock.

The song that gave birth to rock and roll was written by Max Freedman who, were he still with us, would turn 101 next week.

It was the first cuckoo of the rock and roll spring that sprung on us in 1956 and which has distracted a good many ever since.

But it was not meant to be. Abstemious men with accounting degrees had listed Bill Haley's Thirteen Women (and Only One Man In Town) - a Cold War curio about a hydrogen bomb leaving just that number of people in Haley's home town - as the A side. The song we should fall in love with and buy.

But we didn't. On the other side was a microgroove tidal wave waiting to break on our musical shores and change western culture.

Rock Around The Clock was recorded quickly on the afternoon of April 12, 1954. The studio had long been booked, but Haley and his band turned up late, their New York ferry grounded on a sandbar.

Rock Around The Clock was the first No. 1 hit of the rock era and most famous for its startling lead guitar lines played by Donny Cedrone who had just 66 days to live. He suffered a heart attack and died in a fall down the stairs at home before the song he had just bent into a new shape made the Billboard charts.

Cedrone knew the tune well. Hayley and Co has been working at it for two years. But in the 40 minutes they had to spare that afternoon, he set a blistering pace and laid down the guitar break that so inspired Jimi Hendrix and Pete Townshend and hundreds of others.

The B side was born. It was life-changing.

And music executives would get the songs wrong over and again as music progressed through the decades.

Here are a few hits the bosses had consigned to the B side, destined not to be heard, or perhaps fillers on albums:

Every garage band in Australia plays The Doors' Roadhouse Blues, the A side of which was You Make Me Real, which I doubt you were humming in the car this morning.

When was the last time you played Hung On You by the Righteous Brothers? The B side was a 10-year old theme tune from a forgotten movie called Unchained. But the Righteous Brothers' version of Unchained Melody became a 20th Century landmark recording and has been covered by more than 500 artists.

Had record bosses had their way, we may never have heard of a grave-digging, north London would-be Scot called Rod Stewart. They thought his reworking of Tom Hardin's Reason To Believe was single stuff. But you and I turned it over and made Maggie May the hit that kickstarted Rod's solo career. As we'd done with Van Morrison's shouty classic Gloria on the reverse of a pedestrian reworking of the blues standard Baby Please Don't Go.

Paul McCartney, the most successful pop composer of all time, is on record as wishing he had written just two songs: Gerry and the Pacemakers' Ferry, Cross the Mersey and the Beach Boys' God Only Knows.

Ferry, Cross the Mersey was written by Gerry Marsden. A few years ago Gerry told me the melody came to him as he as he sat with his girlfriend, long since his wife Pauline, watching the boats on the river Mersey. He knew he had a hit and hummed it down to his dad on a telephone.

But the Beach Boys' God Only Knows was fully assessed and deemed to be a worthy B side to Wouldn't It Be Nice.

But you and I - and Paul McCartney - knew better.

Alan Howe is Herald Sun executive editor

http://www.heraldsun.com.au/news/opinion/theyre-the-songs-that-we-flipped-over/story-fni0ffut-1226791552654

Fun fact, out of the now 177 comments made in this thread, 90 of them have been from Joffa...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t3Q7e8VafRI

^ Jimi Hendrix wishes us all a happy new year, first of all

Hes going to do this thing, its called "Machine gun"

KISS Talk About Their Legacy, Music That Inspired Them Growing Up, Relationships With Former Members; Extensive 50-Minute Video Interview


http://www.bravewords.com/news/215943?