Year: 2008

Groovin’ On Beatles Oddities

Beatles Alternate Butcher Cover

This is a picture of The Beatles that I bet you haven’t seen. It’s the original concept for what became the infamous butcher cover for the initial pressings of the US LP “Yesterday and Today.” The idea was to give the impression that the woman was being disemboweled. Pleasant, eh?

The Beatles hated the way Capitol in America put out their records, and they felt their material was being butchered. Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Heart’s Club Band was the first LP that was released exactly as it was in the UK. Well, almost. It was missing the inner groove at the end of side 2. This is how it sounded.

[audio:http://www.dograt.com/Audio/2008/MAR/BeatlesChordUS.mp3]

This is how it sounded in the UK, assuming you had a manual record player that left the tone arm down.

[audio:http://www.dograt.com/Audio/2008/MAR/BeatlesChordUK.mp3]

Note the superior sound quality of the British pressing. Listen carefully at 28 seconds and you’ll hear Ringo’s shoe squeak; however, at the end, the full three seconds of the inner groove don’t play. The CD release of Pepper has it played in a loop, but this single-play recording is from an LP.

[audio:http://www.dograt.com/Audio/2008/MAR/BeatlesInnerGroove.mp3]

EMI Assembly Line 1965
Rubber Soul records being inserted into sleeves, England 1965

One of the best known Beatles song anomalies is the false start to “I’m Looking Through You” on Rubber Soul that is missing on the UK version. But instead of that, I’ll offer the rarely heard hi-hat intro to “All My Loving.”

[audio:http://www.dograt.com/Audio/2008/MAR/AllMyLovingHiHatIntro.mp3]

And finally, here’s the end of “Penny Lane” as it was originally heard on the radio in America and Canada. The horn will either sound strange to you or, if you’re old enough, it will be something very distant, yet familiar.

[audio:http://www.dograt.com/Audio/2008/MAR/PennyLaneHornOutro.mp3]

Superman Family Doings

Bear with me for a bit of silliness. Here is a message thread that started with my father pointing out the news about the gigantic Antarctic ice shelf collapsing.

—–Original Message—–
From: George

You might want to think twice about purchasing any waterfront property right now.

Shortcut to: http://www.news.com/2300-11395_3-6235636-1.html

My father’s cousin commented on it.

—– Original Message —–
From: Lawrie

Well, we smart owners of real estate in Arizona are hoping for beachfront property when the “big one” finally cracks down the San Andreas fault and dumps California into the Pacific Ocean.

Here I am, changing the direction of the exchange…

—– Original Message —–
From: Doug

Hey, I saw that movie! It was Superman I. Gene Hackman as Lex Luthor, putting a nuke in the fault. “Bye, bye, California. Hello, new west coast. MY west coast. Marina del Lex.” OK, so I’m a fanboy.

… and this is my younger sister elaborating on what I said…

—– Original Message —–
From: Marianne

Remember “Otisville” on the map? Lex didn’t even allow his loyal follower one measly town!

(Fangirl, sister of fanboy)

…to which I say…

—–Original Message—–
From: Doug

OtisBURG, with the “R” backwards. I’ll check to be sure.

… and Lawrie finishes it off.

—–Original Message—–
From: Lawrie

You guys are just too funny!

Well, we fanboys take this sort of stuff seriously, so I did indeed check, and here’s how that scene in the movie really goes. (Isn’t Gene Hackman impressive? Some actors would have considered this role to be a throwaway job, but Hackman is completely compelling. No wonder Kevin Spacey, who played Lex Luthor in last year’s Superman Returns, borrows from Hackman.)

[flv:http://www.dograt.com/Video/2008/MAR/Otisburg.flv 448 252]

I was wrong! It’s not the “R”, but the “S” that’s reversed; which, now that I think about it, makes sense because it’s a sly reference to Superman’s “S” emblem.

This week the family of Jerry Siegel, Superman’s co-creator and original writer, won a victory in court. A lot of people have linked to the New York Times article about it, and I will too.

Superman was a sensation from the get-go, as was Batman. Bob Kane took sole credit for creating Batman, but a writer named Bill Finger actually had a lot to do with it. The characters were teamed up early in their existence, as heard in this brief clip from an old radio show.

[audio:http://www.dograt.com/Audio/2008/MAR/SupermanBatmanRadio.mp3]

Failover and Over

Wish I could blog more, but I’m afraid that unless you know everything about Microsoft Cluster Service for failover, on Windows 2008 Server, under VMware ESX 3.5, on EMC shared storage, over iSCSI, I can’t talk to you right now. And Sunday is the big 21-mile training run from the starting line of the Boston Marathon. While I’m doing that, the Web host service will be switching my account over to a new management platform. Will anything work Sunday night?

Another Beatles Death — Neil Aspinall

Only a couple of weeks after the passing of Beatles recording engineer Norman Smith, Beatles road manager and business associate Neil Aspinall has died. It would take a long time to explain Neil’s relationship and roles with the Beatles, so I won’t even try. But it’s safe to say that without Neil Aspinall, the massive Beatles Anthology project in the mid-90’s would never have gotten done.

Here’s a link to an obituary in The Los Angeles Times. If that doesn’t work, click here instead. And at this link is the BBC’s write up on Neil.

“Are You Enjoy?”– Pillows Autographs

Special blog post by Eric!

Well, the Pillows thankfully were able to do a second autograph session on the Anime Boston con’s final day, when the crowds were far thinner as many failed to return, probably either due to Easter or frustration/fatigue over the madness of the last two days. The con organizers finally managed to do something efficiently: the hundred people who were allowed autographs each got a ticket that guaranteed them one.

There was a short Q&A panel immediately before, where we learned that neither the name “the pillows” nor the “Sweet Irene” mentioned in one of their songs have any real significance. When asked of what they thought of their American fans that can’t understand Japanese, they replied with “Well, we’re fans of all this American music we can’t understand!” And on their frequent use of big sunglasses: “Rock Star!”

The Pillows at Anime Boston 2008

It’s rather jarring to see how grizzled Suwao and the others have become in the eight years since the anime FLCL rocketed their popularity around the world–compare the vibrantly youthful, scrubbed-clean faces in the “Ride On Shooting Star” video to the craggy jowls, Mick Jagger hair, and flagrant unshavenness in the picture I took. Clearly this isn’t just the result of the trio having two hours of sleep in almost two days, they look exactly like this in their latest music videos. They’re getting older, the band’s had its twentieth anniversary last year. Though for all I know, this could be an intentional, gradual “image” update to coincide with that!

Autographed Pillows CD

I bought their spectacular latest album “Wake up!” at double the list price (you have to expect such things buying Japanese imports at cons), and as you can see, it was signed shortly afterwards by all three of them! Interestingly, the only discernible signature is that of vocalist-guitarist-frontman Suwao, first from the right in the photo.

“Are you enjoy?” was an amusing bit of Engrish repeatedly shouted by them at the concert.