Prudence Bury will be here soon! Please be patient. I’m working out the details with her of exactly what she wants to say, and how it will be said. Don’t expect an extensive interview. It will be brief and to the point, allowing Prue to save her whole story for better, larger venues. She will be appearing at a Beatles weekend in November. More about that later.
If you’ve never known the name of Prue’s character in “A Hard Day’s Night,” it’s Rita. Pattie Boyd played Jean. Now you know!
I have more posts to publish, but a couple of things have come up, including a surprise bit of correspondence from somebody who I have featured prominently here. I’d like to say more, but I don’t know yet what direction this exchange will take, so for now the prudent thing for me to do is remain silent.
P.S. (24-hours later): Now it can be told. The mystery correspondent is none other than the stunning PRUDENCE BURY herself. I kid thee not. Prue has some things she would like to say, as you will soon see for yourself.
Here in Massachusetts, gay marriage is such a non-issue. The schizophrenic ruling by the California Supreme Court is bizarre. Just give gay people the right to marry and be done with it.
This very funny comedy sketch, with Dean Martin looking surprisingly Abe Lincoln-ish, has Petula Clark counseling an unintentionally married pair. Pet always seemed to loosen up when she was with Deano, and her appearances on his show are a lot of fun to watch. From the apparent ages of the stars, the racy dialog, and a fairly obvious reference to John Dean’s Watergate testimony, I’d say this is from 1973, and not 1965, as claimed.
Lori McKenna, now 40 with a son of 20, put on a great show Friday evening. She was dressed well, but was reassuringly not larger than life.
Lori shares something with Elvis Costello. Her singing voice is strong, distinctive, and immediately recognizable, and it’s very different from her speaking voice. She really cuts through the clutter of many sound-alike women singers.
I have a couple of video clips, and I intentionally didn’t record any of her songs. I want to highlight Lori’s charm as a storyteller, which of course relates to her skill as a songwriter.
This is her entrance…
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…and here’s a fun story that any mom or dad can relate to. You get to see Lori engaged in one of my favorite activities — untangling a cable.
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Lori McKenna is her name. A momma of five, married to a plumber, Lori McKenna is the stand-out best of the best, tipper-topper talent in Boston-based singing-songwriting. Carol and I will be seeing Lori perform this evening. I’ll try to sneak some photos and maybe even a snippet of video.
Here’s how Lori looked for a long time…
… and here she is now, all dolled up after going a bit more over to Country from Suburban Folkie. Personally, I prefer her rumpled “Mom-who-rushed-out-of-the-house” look.
In 2002, when Lori was first catching some national attention, a Boston TV station produced this profile of her.
I bought The Beatles CD’s when they were released over twenty years ago, but I’ve never much cared for the sound of them. I greatly prefer the British Parlophone LP pressings done by Garrod & Lofthouse, that I collected in the late 70’s and early 80’s.
The first taste of the potential improvement in audio quality was, ironically, the release by Capitol of the American versions of the Beatles records on CD. Later, Love came out, with a further promise of future sonic delight. Which is why I’m pleased that the Beatles catalog has been remastered, and is slated for release on 09/09/09 — the day before my birthday. Once again, as I like to do whenever I talk about the Beatles studio recordings, I recommend to you the brilliantly conceived and superbly realized book, RTB: Recording the Beatles, by Brian Kehew and Kevin Ryan.
Details about the coming CD releases are available on BeatlesNews.com. I am, however, slightly concerned by this comment.
Finally, as is common with today’s music, overall limiting — to increase the volume level of the CD — has been used, but on the stereo versions only.
As I’ve discussed a couple of times before, to cater to the portable music crowd, popular music today is highly compressed. I think CD audio should be kept as close to the original recording as possible, without additional compression. Leveling out the loudness levels for the iPod generation should be done when conversion to lossy compression is done, and not before.
As an example of just how different a recording can sound, depending on the source and equalization, I’ll provide a couple of versions of the Beatles’ first EMI single, ‘Love Me Do’.
This recording was ripped at 192 Kbps from the Beatles Compact Disc EP Collection.
[audio:http://www.dograt.com/Audio/2009/MAY/LoveMeDo_EP_CD.mp3]This next take, which I prefer, is a transfer from a 1982 45 rpm Parlophone EP, which I also encoded at 192 Kbps.
[audio:http://www.dograt.com/Audio/2009/MAY/LoveMeDo_AndyWhite.mp3]Both of those recordings feature Andy White on drums, with Ringo relegated to tambourine. Ringo on drums can be heard in this somewhat muffled sounding recording.
[audio:http://www.dograt.com/Audio/2009/MAY/LoveMeDo_Ringo.mp3]Most of the Parlophone LP’s I have were bought at a long defunct shop in Amherst, MA called Backroom Records. I spent many happy hours in that store, scouring the import and used bins. Buying compact discs never held the same gleeful delight for me, which I guess means I’m showing my age.
The demise of the record store as an entity, and the lamenting of the loss of same by owners and customers alike, is the subject of a documentary called I Need That Record, by Brendan Toller, who is a mere 22 years old. I heard about it last week on WBUR in Boston.
One of the faces seen in that video clip is Mike Dreese, co-founder of Newbury Comics, the granddaddy of Boston record stores, which began as a comic book shop. I happen to have a couple of Newbury commercials, shown during Star Trek re-runs on UHF TV in the 80’s, at the dawn of the CD age.
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Another name associated with Newbury Comics is that of Boston rock/punk scene legend Kathei Logue (yes, “Kathei” is the spelling). I made this video a few years ago to show to Kat, who I had hung out with when I was in high school and she was living with a guy in my town. That was before the days of Punk. Before the days of Disco, even!
