Category: Beatles

Give Pet A Chance

If you’ve been reading the interviews with Petula Clark I’ve linked to, you may have caught a comment about her being in a certain place at a certain time. Don’t blink, or you’ll miss her in this video clip.

[flv:http://www.dograt.com/Video/APR07/GivePeaceAChance.flv 400 300]

Why was Pet there?

“I’d been staying in French-speaking Canada but was starting to have hits with records in English as well. So when I was booked to perform at the Place des Arts in Montreal, I thought I’d do a bi-lingual show. Wrong. It was open war.

“After the show, I was upset and I went to John’s hotel to ask his advice. I didn’t really know him that well, but I do remember he was very rude about the audience.

“There was a very strange atmosphere in the suite and I remember the cameras being there but I really didn’t realise [sic] they were making Give Peace A Chance at the time.”

Al “Capp” Caplin was a full-time jerk. I never did much like Li’l Abner. But in fairness, John Lennon was a part-time jerk. It would have been much more interesting seeing Pet, instead of Capp, talking to John. Recognize any other faces in the crowd?

Synthetic Sir George

Time BeatWaltz in Orbit

I’ve been trying to find a copy of a 1962 single of partially electronic music, Time Beat b/w Waltz in Time, by Ray Cathode. I’ve placed bids, and lost, for the single on eBay, but fortunately I found these MP3’s on WFMU’s Beware of the Blog. [Link] Here are the tracks.

Ray Cathode – Beat Time
[audio:http://blogfiles.wfmu.org/DG/time_beat.mp3]

Ray Cathode – Waltz in Orbit
[audio:http://blogfiles.wfmu.org/DG/waltz_in_orbit.mp3]

Ray Cathode was a pseudonym for a collaboration between BBC technician-producer Maddalena Fagandini and George Martin, who would sign the Beatles to Parlophone Records just a couple of months later. The recording was made for the BBC Radiophonic Workshop, which was set up to create atmospheric music and effects for radio and TV. The 1963 production by Delia Derbyshire of Ron Grainer’s theme for Doctor Who is undoubtedly the workshop’s most familiar work.

[audio:http://www.dograt.com/Audio/APR07/DoctorWho.mp3]

Random Web Page — The Scott Wheeler Story

Scott Wheeler 1954At the link is a Web site I came across by chance. [Link] It’s by a Boston area guy named Scott Wheeler, “The website of the first official Liverpool “Merseycat” musician born in the USA — on the cutting edge of a classic rock and roll sound!”

My take on Wheeler is he’s one of those Beatles fans who’s always hovered around the edges of the entertainment business, looking for a way in. He got a band together in the 60’s, worked in the radio biz, and wrote for a small city newspaper, etc. I can relate, except I’ve never tried my hand at music. Art was my forté.

Wheeler’s site is typical of someone who hasn’t yet discovered blogging software. It’s a collection of static pages that haven’t been maintained for over a year. There are a lot of dead links and missing pictures, but it’s still worth browsing because Wheeler has done some interesting things in his life, including a writing a book about someone at the outer fringes of John Lennon’s life, his uncle Charlie. [Link] One thing’s for sure — Wheeler had a better Superman costume than I did when I was a kid!

Postcript: George Scott Wheeler obituary.

The Key To Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Heart

In Sunday’s Boston Globe, James Sullivan commemorates the 40th anniversary of the photo shoot that resulted in the cover to the Beatles’ Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Heart’s Club Band, by identifying all of the faces in the background. The online version is here, but it doesn’t include a key. The key in the print edition of the paper is small and, in my copy, off-register and nearly illegible.

I’ve made a nice, big key to the list. Click the picture above to see it. It will open a new window or tab, so you can compare it more easily to the list below. The photo is exactly 1024×768 pixels, the most common screen resolution, making it suitable for your computer’s wallpaper, if you don’t mind being unable to find anything on your desktop! Continue reading The Key To Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Heart

Cousin Brucie on WABC Saturday Night Oldies

Cousin Brucie on WABC

Tonight I happened to catch a few minutes of the legendary disk jockey Bruce Morrow on WABC’s Saturday Night Oldies with Mark Simone. Cousin Brucie talks about meeting the Beatles.

[audio:http://www.dograt.com/Audio/MAR07/CousinBrucie.mp3]

Bruce Morrow with Beatles

If you haven’t checked out my tribute to New York radio in the 60’s, click here. The picture above of Bruce Morrow interviewing the Beatles in 1965 is amusing, because the boys appeared bored and disinterested. Maybe they were stoned. Or perhaps they’d had their fill of New York DJ’s. Murray “The K” Kaufman had leveraged his contact with The Beatles during their first visit to shamelessly further his own career.