Songs for birds and lobsters

Happy 3rd anniversary to my blog!

Here it is, forty years gone by since “Abbey Road” was released. I listened to that record start-to-end so many times I have no idea how many times it was, although it’s been quite a few years since I’ve done that. In ’79, when I bought a high quality Parlophone pressing of “Abbey Road,” it struck me how different it sounded from every previous Beatles recording. It was so smooth it was almost antiseptic. According to Brian Kehew and Kevin Ryan, the difference was the introduction of a solid state console, replacing the old tubed REDD board.

Ten years after “Abbey Road” the music scene had changed a lot, thanks to the anti-Disco movement that was equal parts of angry anarchy and silly fun. Here are some examples of what I was listening to, going into and out of 1979.

From the quirky….

….to the quirkiest…

Lene Lovich Bird song (clip 1979)
Uploaded by libelule64 – Explore more music videos.
…and from the hard….

…to the hardest.
[flv:http://www.dograt.com/Video/2009/SEP/LondonCalling.flv 480 360]

Unsigned, unsealed, and undelivered

Beatles
Photo by Albert Marrion, 17 Dec 1961

I sort of assume that everybody with more than a passing interest in the Beatles has heard the complete recording session held at Decca on New Year’s Day, 1962, but maybe you haven’t. It’s a day that lives in infamy, of course, because they didn’t get signed to a record contract. But the fact is, at that point they still sounded — and looked — like amateurs. Brian Epstein got them into suits in March, but they still needed the ear of somebody who could hear their potential. Listen and decide for yourself. Would you have heard the greatness that was missed by Decca?

Wise words

Today’s Boston Globe has a short editorial called “Aging Boomers: Hit the pavement slowly.” This sentence says it all, for guys like me, because I’ve been there and done that:

Training all-out to overcompensate for fading physical gifts often leads to injuries.

After decades of seeming to be immune to running injuries, the last few years have taught me that exercising smarter, not running more, is what I need to do.

On the Colbert of the Rolling Stone

Since the January inauguration, Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert have shown they aren’t just about knocking Bush. Did they have a choice?

For the midterm elections a few years ago, Colbert shared the cover of Rolling Stone with Stewart. But now Colbert, who is in the second of three weeks away, has the cover all to himself. But what happens when there are no more print editions of magazines? There won’t be any covers of anything anymore. BTW, this blog turns three years old on Saturday, and this is post #1700.

A tip o’ the DogRat toupee to Denro for the tip.