Category: Music

Alakabrodax, Wham Wham Wham

Let’s return to the subject of Beatles cartoons. I most recently talked about them in this post, which has one of my best punniest titles.

Beatles for Cel

All of the Beatles cartoons were produced by Al Brodax. As a kid I watched his syndicated King Features Syndicate cartoons. Brodax cleverly embedded his name into the Snuffy Smith cartoon, ‘Jughaid the Magician’.

 
Andrew at Parlogram Auctions has this comprehensive history of the Beatles cartoon series on ABC-TV.

Brodax went on to produce the vastly superior and well-received Yellow Submarine animation feature; which, until yesterday, I had thought was the last of the Beatles Toons. But no, Brodax took one more swing at the Beatles. His never completed Strawberry Fields project has a strong Ralph Bakshi vibe.

I learned about this extremely curious artifact from a member of the Cartoon Research group on Facebook. There’s more information on the Cinema Crazed site.

The Bootleg Files: Strawberry Fields

Calling All Operating Thetans!

Yesterday’s mention of the Jive Aces’ Scientology connection rates a return to this post from six months ago.

The Hubbard Space Telescope

A soundtrack album was released for Hubbard’s book, Battlefield Earth. My immediate impression was, “What video game is this from?”

Participants in this curious project included Return to Forever ex-pats Chick Corea and Stanley Clark. If you’re familiar with Nicky Hopkins, it will be obvious when his piano playing pops up.

Hubbard’s sci-fi roots are acknowledged at the opening, with tributes to Buck Rogers, Flash Gordon, and Superman. George Lucas similarly gave a nod to Buck Rogers in the opening of THX-1138.

Cover-Ups Revealed

This is fun. Here are 200 original recordings that became better known in covered versions. Open the playlist and scroll to see what’s interesting to you.

Selection #30 is a good one. It was covered by Elvis and later became the basis for what I feel is the worst of all Beatles songs, John Lennon’s ‘Run for Your Life’.

Note: If you go to YouTube, the list keeps going, and going, and going…