Category: Music

Curvebender’s Kaleidoscope Eyes

One of the most impressive and praiseworthy objects I have ever beheld, held, and owned, is the RTB Book: Recording The Beatles, by Kevin Ryan and Brian Kehew, published under their Curvebender Publishing imprint. As I said a year or so ago, at $100 this book is a bargain.

Curvebender has a new Beatles book coming out, called Kaleidoscope Eyes: A Day In The Life of Sgt. Pepper. It’s a collection of photographs, taken during the day in 1967 when recording began for “Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds.”

Limited to 1967 copies, it costs a whopping $495, and at that price I would consider this book to be an extravagent indulgence, so I won’t be buying it. Nevertheless, I hope it sells out and goes up in value.

Over at one of the Wired blogs is this item about a Beatles exhibit at the Museum of Making Music in Carlsbad, CA. The show is curated by Kehew and Ryan, and features original recording and playback equipment that the Beatles used at Abbey Road Studio 2.

You can hear the classic songs coming out of the same speakers used in the sessions, and gawp at the original technology, some never before seen in public.

Gawp indeed! This is almost irresistibly tantalizing. If the exhibit were in New York, I would go.

In other Beatles related doings, we watched Across The Universe with a younger person who commented that The Beatles are “eternally cool.” That’s good to know. Our enjoyment of the movie benefited greatly from watching it with the Panasonic PT-AX200U video projector.

Picking Pet Pics

Recently I went to PetulaClark.net and joined the International Petula Clark Society. Last week I received a copy of latest issue of Petula & Company. Among the interesting items in the digest magazine is Irene Seaton’s story about how she started the PETition to get Pet the title of Dame. At the moment there are 1,052 signatures. There’s only a month left to go!

Issue #134 of Petula & Company also has a photo I’ve never seen before, of Pet at age 25. Here it is, cropped. The full picture shows her in “her Microbat speedboat on the River Mole at Easy Molesey, Surrey.” How bizarre and fascinating! I’d love to know more about this. Was the boat given to her for promotional purposes?

Petula Clark - December 13, 1957

And here’s a photo of Petula I took from a different source. She’s ten years younger here, only 15, and if you look quick you could almost mistake her for Shelley Fabares at the same age.

Petula Clark - January 1, 1948

Backstage With The Beatles

Any idea who these very lucky girls are? They’re sisters.

OK, here are some hints. They’re backstage at the Ed Sullivan Show. What network was Sullivan on? Who, excluding the network boss, would have enough clout with Sullivan to arrange this visit? I promise you know the name.

Randy Bachman’s Vinyl Tap

Saturday night is oldies night everywhere, it seems, even in Canada, eh? CBC Radio One has Randy Bachman’s Vinyl Tap. Randy Bachman was the first name in Bachman Turner Overdrive, and before that with Burton Cummings he formed the core of The Guess Who, a band that had a string of big hits in the late 60’s and early 70’s.

The Guess Who

David Lee Roth had an infamous failed attempt at being a DJ, but other musicians have done well as radio hosts. I always enjoy Nights With Alice Cooper, aired Saturdays over WZLX in Boston. Bachman is also very good. It comes in on 1550 AM on my GE Superadio III, but it’s better to play the live streaming audio.

Tonight, Bachman had an all-British show, starting with songs by Cliff Richard and The Shadows, and finishing, of course, with Petula Clark. Here are the last 10+ minutes of tonight’s program.

[audio:http://www.dograt.com/Audio/2008/FEB/RandyBachman.mp3]

Did you hear “Baby, Now That I’ve Found You” by The Foundations? To my ears this is definitely a different vocal than the American single, maybe even a different singer. I happen to have an original 45 of the song from 1967. And here it is.

The Foundations 45 Single

[audio:http://www.dograt.com/Audio/2008/FEB/BabyNowThatIveFoundYou.mp3]

As always, I’ll rely on Pop Musicologist D.F. Rogers to provide some explanation.

Beatles: Nothing Israel

Yes, I know Ringo has been on the TV talk show circuit, and that he walked off the Regis set. I know Paul had a heart procedure. And I know there’s an invitation for Paul and Ringo to visit Israel. No, I haven’t been blogging about these things. Sorry! I’m a bad Beatles blogger.

What caught my attention about the Israel invitation is that Israel’s banning of the Beatles back in the 60’s sounds so much like something the Taliban would do today. And let’s not forget that fundamentalist Christians burned Beatles records after Lennon’s infamous comment “The Beatles are bigger than Jesus.”