March 16:
♫ Welcome everybody to the 25th issue of everybody’s favourite musically monkeynuts newsletter, news views and music. Wow – 25 issues, shouldn’t we be getting a gold record for that or something? Come on Paul McCartney, you must have a few to spare! And how do our beloved AAA groups celebrate this momentous occasion? Err, by being quieter than ever before, annoyingly. So not much news to report this issue and things seem to be more normal than a flop Spice Girls reunion. So for this issue Mr Tambourine Man is out singing with the Byrds, Mr Pleasant and Mr Big Man are keeping Ray Davies company, Miss Amanda Jones has been partying with the Stones and Mr Soft has been stopping at traffic lights with Oasis (‘but only when they’re green’). Website wise many thanks to regular reader Lizzie for plugging us so nicely on the ‘fanpop’ website (hope you had a good birthday on Sunday by the way) and just to prove what an absolute anorak I really am check out the ‘Beatles Quiz’ leaderboard on that site where at the time of writing I am currently 1st in the world with 187 correctly answered questions (Yes! I even won a virtual carrot!)
♫ Oasis News: Three bits of news from the world of Gallagher this week. The first is that the third single from latest album ‘Dig Out Your Soul’ is released this week and finally they’ve chosen the best song. The Noel-sung ‘Falling Down’ was our pick of the pops when the album came out (see newsletter 8a) and if you own this and the other two singles you don’t really need to buy the album at all. Second bit of news is that Oasis were plugging the new single on this year’s ‘Comic Relief’ via a very welcome one-off Top Of The Pops Special (what with the seven TOTP2s over Christmas, it seems as if our favourite weekly pop programme has never been away!) Interestingly, Liam G was missing – OK, so it’s a Noel-sung song so he didn’t need to be there, but its not like Liam to miss out on a charity event (despite his rock and roll image!) Have the brothers really fallen out irreparably this time as rumours keep insisting?, is Liam worried that the new Oasis single might beat sales for his own song ‘I’m Outta Time’? (To be fair, that was more the fault of the lack of band unity and promo activities than the fault of the song)
Was Liam just fed up and decided to go awol as he did a la ‘Oasis Unplugged’ when Noel had to take over vocals at the last minute? More evidence came with our third bit of news this week – an 11-track Noel Gallagher acoustic concert that came free with the Sunday Mail, recorded for Roger Daltrey’s ‘Teenage Cancer Trust’. Hmm, there’s something very odd about giving away the soundtrack of benefit concerts for free when they could have raised lots of money as a limited release Grateful Dead style, but at least it added a few tracks that weren’t on the televised concert (including two with guest Paul Weller - one a cover of Lennon evergreen ‘All You Need Is Love’). Shame about the terrible drumming though – Terry Kirkbride only seems to know the 4/4 ‘common time’ signature and sadly most of Noel’s songs played here don’t use it.
♫ And very hippy birthdays this week go to AAA artists Paul Kantner (guitarist and vocalist with Jefferson Airplane 1965-73 and Jefferson Starship 1973-84) who turns 65 on March 17th and Hollies collaborator (and next-door-neighbour of Tony Hicks!) Kenny Lynch, who turns 70 on March 18th. Anniversaries of events this week seem to be heavily Beatlesified and include: the release of Beatles evergreen ‘Can’t Buy Me Love’ (March 20th 1964), the 40th anniversary of the marriage between John Winston Lennon and Yoko Ono in Gibraltar on March 20th 1969 (the only country willing to marry two divorced people at the short notice the Ono-Lennons wanted), John and Yoko’s infamous Bed-In during their honeymoon at an Amsterdam hotel (March 21st 1969), the first appearance of the Beatles at the venue that’s about to become ‘their own’ – Liverpool’s Cavern Club (March 21st 1961) and finally, this week also sees the birth of the Rutles, the legend that lasted a lunchtime and the group the Beatles could have been (but thankfully weren’t), thanks to the screening of Eric Idle’s TV special ‘All You Need Is Cash’ on March 22nd 1978.
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