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That ol’ Len-Mac magic

For lack of a better descriptive word, the Beatles were magical. The Rolling Stones were cool, the Beach Boys were fantastic, and the Motown singles were super, but there was just something about the four fabs that elevated them above and beyond anything and everything else.

There was sooooo much anticipation before The Beatles first appeared on the Ed Sullivan show, and when we saw them (“Sorry, girls: he’s married”) they vastly exceeded even the most hopeful, optimistic expectation… and that’s what they kept doing! They got better and better, and they never, ever disappointed, unless you’re one of those who doesn’t care for Mr. Moonlight.

What really cemented it all, the breakthrough that elevated the Beatles beyond a teen craze to THE BEATLES as a lasting social phenomenon, was A Hard Day’s Night. The doubtful parents and cynical critics who were so certain the Beatles were just a “yeah, yeah, yeah” fad really had to admit that John, Paul, George, and Ringo were indeed the greatest thing since Schubert and the Marx Brothers put together.

I was not quite nine years old when I saw A Hard Day’s Night, and it had an incalculably powerful effect on me. I couldn’t believe that the girls in the audience were screaming as if the Beatles were there live! Even though I couldn’t hear everything that was said because of the screaming, let alone get all of the jokes because of my age, I enjoyed the experience of seeing the movie so much that the feeling of being there has never left me. In my mind I still can relive the sensation that ran through me when the helicopter lifted off and the end credits started to roll. Mary Poppins was released at almost the same time, and I really enjoyed it, but as delightful as it was it didn’t imprint on my psyche the way A Hard Day’s Night did. (The most uninformed opinion I have ever heard about the movie came from, of all people, my friend Bismo, who said he’s never gotten all the way through it, and he thinks of A Hard Day’s Night as being like an Elvis movie. That’s equivalent to me telling Bismo that I think The Blues Brothers is just a car chase movie with some music thrown in.)

My eldest sister bought all of the Beatles albums as they came out. It wasn’t until I was in college that I realized the American albums before Sgt. Pepper were at best variations of the UK Beatles LP’s and, at worst, complete fabrications. There were two Beatles songs from the UK AHDN album that caught my interest in a particularly unique and vivid way. The thing was, I didn’t know they were both done with A Hard Day’s Night, because this one is on side 1, track 1 on Something New…

http://youtu.be/Z1e-Yk0cAmg

…and this one is on side 2 of Beatles ’65, released months later.
http://youtu.be/q3nksQSRYCI

Things We Said Today and I’ll Be Back had a mood that seemed to come from some place much deeper and different than She Loves You and I Want To Hold Your Hand. They were, to my young ears and mind, strange and compelling. They felt as though they belonged together, and in fact they did. I’ll Be Back was recorded on June 1, 1964, and Things We Said Today was recorded the next day. (“I’ll be back” was later a hit for Arnold Schwarzenegger. ;-)) What Dave Dexter, Jr. did to the Beatles catalog at Capitol Records was both good and bad, and eventually I’ll devote the time and effort to present the material I’ve collected about the much-maligned Dexter.

Saturday notes

  • Took the fam to dinner at the Legal Seafood Test Kitchen (LTK) in Boston. Spent $193, including tip, but worth it for the quality of the food and to celebrate Eric finishing his freshman year of college.
  • How could I have forgotten that the Roku HD player remote controls the fan speed in the Haier air conditioner on the porch?
  • My definition of physical fitness is weighing 165 pounds and being able to run 13 miles (half marathon distance) any day of the year. The way things are going, I may need to come up with a new definition.

Death of a comic book dream

I remember reading this item in early 2008, about a new comic book shop that was opening up.

He wants to draw a different crowd

James Welborn, 34, thinks the average comics shop still feels like a “man cave . . . a smelly hole where a bunch of kids sit around and play Magic cards.”

As he prepared to open Hub Comics, he put a sign in the window promising a different kind of establishment: “a comics shop for NPR listeners.”

Creating Hub Comics has been an act of love. “When I got my first job, I spent probably every dime on comics,” Welborn said, recalling that he would take an hourlong bus ride to a shop in Las Vegas.

Now a software engineer at Akamai, Welborn hopes Hub Comics can become his full-time job, but would be happy if it simply breaks even.

The thing is, the “man cave with kids playing Magic cards” formula is how a lot of shops have survived, and as a business plan “act of love” and “simply break even” sounded shaky to me, but Welborn had a day job that presumably paid well. Hub Comics is a short walk from where my friend Morris lives and I went there a couple of times. The place seemed to have a good combination of location, selection, and atmosphere. I bought a few things and put my name on their mailing list. Then last year there was trouble.

Hub Comics struggles to survive

Hub Comics owner James Welborn sounded the bat alarm in an open letter dated Oct. 13 announcing a plan to raise “basic survival revenue,” including the option to buy “comic credit” and a nine-day sale.

Eric and I went there and dropped more than a hundred bucks, and we returned again after another “emergency sale” mailing was received. When Free Comic Book Day came up this year it seemed that Hub Comics would stay in business, but a couple of weeks ago the manager sent a message saying that Welborn had been seriously injured and was in the hospital. He didn’t say what sort of injury.

James Welborn, comics store owner, dead at 37

Emergency personnel discovered Mr. Welborn in his Summit Avenue home May 16. Police have been investigating circumstances of the death, which included a note on a bathroom door warning of poisonous gas.

I’m running a road race in Boston tomorrow, and I’m planning to see Morris after that. I’ll walk down to Hub Comics and see if the store is still open.

Hastings’ pudding

I never used Blockbuster Video. In fact, 1999 was the only year I rented VHS. Before then I bought and rented LaserDiscs from a great store in Waltham, Mass., called Sight & Sound, that also did a big mail-order business. When talking to Dennis I referred to it simply as “the store.”

Note: Somebody out there will see my name, Douglas Pratt, and think I am the LD/DVD Newsletter Douglas Pratt. I’m not. He’s in New York, I’m in Boston. I met Doug once at Sight & Sound, and I still get his newsletter.

After patronizing the store for quite a few years, the assistant manager of Sight & Sound, a guy named John, told me I was one of their top customers. I asked John who was a better customer than me, and he said, only half-joking, “Roger Ebert,” who really was a customer. Between that shock, and knowing that the DVD format was on the horizon, I knew I had a problem and it was time to stop spending money on LD’s. Breaking my habit was made easier when we moved, and Sight & Sound was no longer on the way home from work.

There was a small, independent business called Video Paradise that rented VHS and, later, DVD. It was a 4-mile drive, but the owner was smart, because not only did he also rent video games — a big plus for Eric — he had drop-off boxes for returns. There was one a mile from home, so we only had to make the longer drive once per week. He was also good about hiring good help and waiving late fees for good customers.

I don’t recall exactly when Netflix flickered into my consciousness, but it was before 2003, when the owner of Video Paradise sold the store. He got out of the business while the getting was good. By then Sight & Sound was gone, swept away by DVD, that had made high quality home video a consumer commodity, instead of the specialty item for a small number of enthusiasts that LD had been.

The new owner of Video Paradise was a problem from the start. He had an attitude and seemed to enjoy displaying it. He didn’t rent video games because he wasn’t interested in them, he ended the drop boxes, and then he hired some obnoxious kids for clerks and instituted truly onerous late fees. We continued going there for another six months, but when a kid behind the counter was being too much of a jerk, I decided the owner wasn’t interested in staying in business, and in January 2004 I signed up for Netflix. Bloomberg has this half-hour profile of Netflix founder Reed Hastings.

Frank talk about Freddie and Fanny

When the Tea Party got rolling, some of the anti-government furor was directed at Massachusetts Congressman Barney Frank for being a primary mover behind the mortgage mess, because he pushed Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to promote mortgages for low income Americans and immigrants. The commercial banks practiced predatory lending, and the investment banks turned sub-prime mortgages into risky securities, but it’s true that Barney Frank shares some of the blame, as explained in this interview with Gretchen Morgenson of the New York Times, on NPR’s Fresh Air program.

[audio:http://pd.npr.org/anon.npr-mp3/npr/fa/2011/05/20110524_fa_01.mp3|titles=Fresh Air: Gretchen Morgenson on ‘Reckless Endangerment’]