November 17:
♫ Well here we are again, another week
another newsletter. Latest offer by the way: if you’ve read all the main site
(or as much as you want to read) and still want to hear about the latest news
from these newsletters without actually hitting the website every week, drop us
an email asking for a ‘newsletter subscription’ and we’ll add you to the
mailing list until you tell us to push off (it’s alanpattinson00@googlemail.co.uk
for website queries by the way). In the meantime, there might be a few more of
you joining the party soon as I’ve just submitted our site to various search
engines (it might take a few weeks till that filters through, so if our site statistics
start soaring in a few weeks you’ll know why!)
♫ Beatles News: It’s been mentioned before on
these pages, but this week sees the official release of Paul McCartney’s new
album….sort of. Macca has already released two LPs as ‘The Fireman’ in collaboration
with producer ‘Youth’, but thanks to their cut-and-paste sound collages and
lack of any Macca vocals you wouldn’t have known it was him. On this third
Fireman album, ‘Electronic Arguments’, things are a bit different – what
started out as a Beatle fan rumour that these albums might have something to do
with Sir Paul is now accepted as fact beyond doubt. Macca even sings on this
album for the first time, giving the game away completely, and who else could
the forthcoming album lyric ‘you may have my money but you’ll never have
manners’ be referring to but Heather Mills?! Sadly, though, we won’t be getting
the Super Furry Animals munching vegetables as they did on second ‘fireman’
record ‘Liverpool Collage’!
♫ In other Beatle news, get set for
more Beatle cash-in DVDs this Xmas. There will be three unofficial ‘in
performance’ sets featuring John, Paul and George in concert from various
sources that are either deemed to be in the ‘public domain’ or leased from
individual television networks (ie they aren’t owned by Apple, who own nearly
every film clip of the Beatles these days). More news when the sets are
released and we get to see a track listing.
♫ However, the Beatles news that seems
to have sent the pulse of the national media racing this week is that Paul
McCartney has apparently confirmed the existence of an unreleased avant garde
Beatles track ‘Carnival Of Light’, a 14-minute distillation of tape loops and
Beatle ad libs commissioned specially for a London art project. Which is, in
the eyes of us Beatlenuts, a bit of a ‘drop the dead donkey’ story, given that
Beatles historian extraordinaire Mark Lewisohn had already confirmed the song’s
existence as long ago as 1987 while researching his landmark book ‘The Complete
Beatles Recording Sessions’. Macca too has hardly been quiet about this song
either, heard chuntering in a good half-a-dozen 1990s interviews that the other
Beatles had vetoed his song from appearing on the Anthology project where it
would have nestled nicely amongst the ‘Peppers’ era tracks (rumour is George
Harrison got stroppy and replaced the song with the instrumental remix of his
‘Within You, Without You’ track which – ironically – is one of Anthology’s
highlights). However, there’s still no news on when, if ever, ‘Light’ will ever
see the light of day because Ringo, George Martin and Yoko are still reluctant
to release it under the Beatles banner– Macca’s already tried to revive it as a
Beatles spin-off single/ EP/ B-side without success.
♫ Jefferson Airplane news: Yet another
archive Airplane release is hitting the shelves this month, according to the
latest catalogue from beloved mail order company Track Records. The new 3 CD set
is called ‘Flight Box’ and will feature two concerts – a set recorded at Golden
Gate Park on the 5th July 1969 (dating from around the time of the
‘Bless It’s Little Pointed Head’ album) and the last ever concert by the
original Airplane from the Winterland Arena on September 22nd 1972
(is this the same set that came out as the last Jefferson record ’30 seconds
over Winterland’ in 1973 then?!) More news when we can actually get hold of a
copy!
♫
♫
Paul Simon News: Another ‘Track Records’ release this time and another one I
haven’t actually seen in the shops yet so I’m not sure when it’s out. Warner
Brothers’ ‘sight and sound’ series will be releasing a live CD/ DVD set of a
historic Paul Simon concert – but unfortunately that’s all we know – we don’t
even know the year as yet! However, like most releases since Warners bought up
the early Paul Simon/ Simon and Garfunkel catalogue to go with their collection
of later Paul Simon CDs from 1980-date, this set will be released at budget
price from the get-go (its £7 in the catalogue). Again, more news when and if we
get it.
♫ Who News: Things have been strangely quiet on the ‘orrible ‘oo
front for quite some time after an unprecedented bout of activity from
2002-2006 or so. This month, however, sees the release of an archive DVD
featuring a performance from December 1977 at the Gaumont Theatre in Kilburn
and is one of the last to feature Keith Moon before his death just 9 months
after this show was filmed. Even more potentially interesting, however, is the
‘bonus disc’ containing unreleased performances from 1969 and the ‘Tommy’
period when the band were pretty much at their live peak. Again, however, I
haven’t seen this set in the shops – just in the Track Records catalogue for
this month (and no, sadly, they aren’t the ‘track records’ that used to be the
Who’s record label in the 1960s!)
♫ I’m not quite sure where to put this news so it’s
going here: at long long last, after countless inferior rip-offs and imitations
have come and gone on supermarket shelves, the world’s truest psychedelic
musical is finally out on DVD. Yes ‘Godspell’ is here at last, the only true
hippie musical that wasn’t either written by Andrew Lloyd Webber to cash in on
the psychedelia market or was so unenduringly bad it made the whole hippie
scene look laughable (that’s ‘Hair’ I’m talking about. And yes, I know I’m
getting to get lots of rude letters about that comment but it’s true!) It may
be adapted from the St Matthew gospel and it might come with plenty of
religious lyrics that have put many a modern audience goer off, but Godspell is
the closest musical I’ve found to the spirituality in general you get from
collecting ‘flower power’ era music and the Stephen Schwartz melodies are all
first class. The first half-hour of the film is a bit arduous, but stick with
it and if you’re anything like me then by the end you will be greatly moved
(it’s happened every time I’ve seen the film and I’ll be darned if I can tell
you why). Plus, what other musical has the audacity to have a modern-day
re-incarnation of Jesus singing a duet with Judas?! The best known (indeed the
only well known song) is ‘Day By Day’, a gorgeous ballad which rather sets the
peaceful tone of the whole thing, but the best song is the gorgeous harmony
experiment ‘By My Side’ which, frustratingly, is the only song not written by
Schwartz and written by the otherwise unheard-of –again couple Peggy Gordon and
Jay Hamburger. The song was added to pad out the show at the last minute when
preview audiences asked for the second-half to be a bit longer and it’s a
crying shame the pair didn’t write more – only Brian Wilson and CSN have
tackled harmony songs this complex, with five singers harmonising in
counterpoint at one stage.
♫ Anniversaries
This Week: Freddie Marsden, bother of Gerry and drummer in the
Pacemakers, would have been 68 on November 23rd. Events this week:
the death of Crazy Horse guitarist Danny Whitten 36 years ago,
an event that inspired much of Neil Young’s ‘doom trilogy’ (see review no 66;
November 18), Ray Davies flies halfway across the word to replace the offending
lyric ‘coca-cola’ in his new song ‘Lola’ and avoid a BBC radio ban (November
20, 1970), Who fan and amateur drummer Scott Haldin gets the gig of his life
when he fills in for Keith Moon, dangerously ill on animal tranquilisers, who had
collapsed just one song into the Who’s set (November 20, 1973) and, finally,
it’s the anniversary of three important Beatle releases this week: With The
Beatles (1963), the White Album (1968) and John Lennon’s last LP ‘Double
Fantasy’ (1980), all three of which came out on November 22.
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