News, Views and Music Issue 83 (Intro)

December 13:

♫ Welcome dear readers to the – gosh – 83^rd issue of this newsletter. What a fortnight of mixed fortune’s it’s been since we last saw you! On the plus side, we’ve had a mammoth rise in the number of hits to the site

(30 a day now and almost 3000 in total) and would like to welcome all our new readers who’ve joined us from our ‘Google Adverts’ (that’s adverts on the search engine google, not google-eyed adverts I hasten to add!) Readers might also be interested to know that people searching for the keywords The Monkees, The Who and Otis Redding have clicked through to our site more than anyone else! Thanks also to those of you who’ve been writing on our forum with lists of your favourite songs – there’s some very interesting answers there so keep them coming! I’ve also struggled to stay awake through three courses about tax returns now so I also vaguely know what to do if I ever get money coming into this site...

Which, as you’ve probably seen if your reading this, will be a bit tricky as Google have closed our account for placing adverts on our site for reasons known only to themselves (and just as I was putting a ‘google-orientated top five’ together too!) So, gee, thanks for that guys, we weren’t earning much money but it was something – sigh, this site seems to have been one step forward and eight hundred steps back ever since we started it...Let’s hope that our appeal goes OK and that our new trading partners at yahoo are rather more co-operative.

On a happier note, though, The Face Of Bo and I have recently revived our long lost Sims game which has been gathering dust on my shelf for a few years now (ever since our computer went wrong and lost all our hard work in 2007). This year, we’ve added specially built houses for The Beatles and Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young and – as before – the results are scarily accurate! The Beatles house looks like the one in ‘Help!’, but the frosty relationships between all four Beatles is more like ‘Let It Be!’ it has to be said! John Lennon has had arguments with all the other Beatles, likes painting and playing the piano and is the first to make a fuss if he isn’t happy with the way the game is shaping up. Paul McCartney is always in front of the mirror and the Sim most likely to be tidying up and greeting people (even if Lennon gets on with strangers better by making them laugh – and then ruining it by insulting them!) George Harrison keeps pretty much to himself and comes alive (in as much as a computer-generated character can ever come ‘alive’) when painting, playing the piano or, erm, playing chess (I missed that trait in the real Beatle!) Ringo, meanwhile, sulked from day one, spent most of his time in bed and left on day three after one row with Lennon too often! Peace and love, Ringo! All four sims are scarily into music which I swear is nothing I’ve added and usually dream about guitars and musical notes while they’re asleep – spooky! (Paul also dreams a lot about money I’ve noticed!) While stardom is still slow to happen (I wonder what will happen when I add a sim of Brian Epstein?!) George is working as a medic and Paul as a clerk – and having just bought the sims unleashed extra CD-rom I’m going to make Jon Lennon a star!!! (It’s happened before it can happen again!)

As for CSNY it’s early days yet but I can already see a lot of patterns! Crosby is out talking to everyone on the street, whether they want him to or not, Stills is spending all his time either at work (as a telephone psychic would you believe!) or preparing for work, Nash spends all his time tidying up the house (a never ending task!) and Young keeps to himself and seems to eat a massive amount and take lots of baths (erm, I don’t think I’ve quite got his sim right yet!) Anyway, I’ll keep you posted what happens next – and let me know who you think I should build a house for next (I need some more girls at the moment so what do you think about Lulu, Janis Joplin and Grace Slick sharing a house together?! Or, hey, how about re-creating The Monkees pad?!) Meantime, on with the news in the real (and far less interesting) world...

                                                              

♫ Beatles News: This week sees the 30^th anniversary of John Lennon’s untimely death, marked this year by three varied programmes. The first, by BBC News 24, is entitled ‘The Lennon Legacy’ and is being shown twice a day most days from last Friday up to this Friday. It’s presented by the BBC’s American correspondent of 1980 and features lots of unusual footage along with the more common John and Yoko film clips (including a brief but moving clip of Yoko and Sean speaking to the cameras for the first time post-Lennon in 1982). As is usual for the BBC these days there are also two celebrity talking heads speaking – Bono is as egocentric and useless as ever, talking about what Lennon meant to him personally and in his stage life (quite what the inspiration is we never hear, as the clip of U2 poncing about singing about nothing is as wide a gulf as you can get between performers when juxtaposed with Lennon live) and James Taylor, who – for the first time to my knowledge – talks about living in the apartment above the Lennons in the Dakota and having his own altercation with Lennon’s killer the day before the Beatle’s death. 

Second up is an ITV special entitled ‘The Day John Lennon Died’, to be broadcast on ITV1 this Monday, December 6th at 10.35pm. There hasn’t been much publicity for this programme so we can’t tell you much more, but it seems to be a semi-official one as Yoko is giving a new interview about the events leading up to December 8^th 1980.

Thirdly, Radio Two are taking a rather happier approach with their radio documentary ‘John Lennon: The New York Years’ at 10pm this Tuesday, December 7^th. This programme focuses on John and Yoko’s early years in the US, how they moved to the country to track down Yoko’s daughter, how they ended up falling in with some radical groups that didn’t go down at all well with Nixon’s paranoid Government and how a drugs bust in 1969 meant the couple risked deportation every day for two years. More on these next issue.

Finally, last week saw the repeat of the 10 part radio series ‘In My Life – John Lennon Remembered’ on BBC6, a show first broadcast in 1990 on what would have been the singer’s 50^th birthday (with the last part broadcast near to the 10^th anniversary of his death). The story continues this week Monday-Wednesday in the 3am documentary slot, with Lennon’s solo years from ‘Give Peace A Chance’ onwards under the spotlight (and last week’s mainly Beatles-filled programmes are still just about available via BBC I-player as I write).  

Finally, a reminder of Lennon at his performance peak is re-released this month, when the Beatles’ four Ed Sullivan Show appearances comes out on DVD again. I believe this is the third time the Beatles clips have been out complete, this time like the first as complete one-hour shows so you can gawp in amazement at just how different the fab four were to every other act on the bill, from poor jugglers to poor comedians to really toe-curlingly poor singers, not to mention compere Ed Sullivan looking like he’s only just that second woken up (which he had, allegedly, for most of his shows). The new DVD release includes an interview apparently, though who it’s with exactly we’re not quite sure (the set isn’t out in shops yet and Amazon for once isn’t very helpful!) Look out too for Monkee Davy Jones, aged 18, playing the Artful Dodger in a production of ‘Oliver!’ on the first programme, two full years before he found his musical success of his own.

♫ CSN News: We’re still waiting for the two mammoth CSN projects of the year – a long awaited CD release of the band’s superb 1974 record-breaking four hour show at Wembley Stadium and a new album of covers being recorded with Johnny Cash producer Rick Rubin which now seem to be set for 2011 - but in the meantime David Crosby and Graham Nash crop up on a documentary DVD of their friend Jackson Browne. The DVD ‘Going Home’ first came out on video in 1994 but has been unavailable for a decade or so and features Crosby’s memorable plug for his old society-fighting buddy: ‘whenever there’s buffalo starving, who you gonna call? Jackson Browne!’

♫ Pink Floyd News: Yet another Syd Barrett book hits the shelves this week, to go alongside the new Barrett compilation we’ve had from EMI this year. ‘Dark Globe’ is written by Julian Palacios and first came out in 1998 but has now been updated to include the last few years of the former Floyd frontman’s life up to his untimely death a few years back. The rest of the book has extended greatly too, so I’m told.

♫ Rolling Stones News: Uncut have cobbled together issue four of their ‘specials’, this time looking back at the Rolling Stones. Like the John Lennon special in October, the magazine has new double-page reviews of each and every Stone studio album along with some fascinating old interviews from the band as originally published in long-forgotten issues of Melody Maker and the New Musical Express. The early interviews are particularly fascinating, especially the divide between Mick Jagger (‘I’d hate to be performing ‘Satisfaction’ when I’m 30!’) and Keith Richards (‘We’ll still be playing in our wheelchairs!’) which becomes apparent as early as 1963. The photographs too are lovely and the staff have really dug through the archives for them, discovering some unusual and rarely seen pics along with all the usual ones, though for me this magazine isn’t as insightful or as well crafted as the Lennon one and ultimately you get a bit bored of hearing Keith saying the same old things interview after interview (why aren’t there are more interviews with Brian Jones – who gets just two hilarious half-page interviews; Bill Wyman and Charlie Watts – who get one apiece from 1964 and Mick Taylor who gets about a paragraph stuffed inside yet another interview with Mick Jagger). Still worth looking out for for the photographs alone, however.

♫ Neil Young: We’ve had ‘Greendale’ the album, ‘Greendale’ the tour, ‘Greendale’ the film and now ‘Greendale’ the book. This new version of Neil and Crazy Horse’s ecological concept album from 2003 still sadly has nothing to do with the Postman Pat town of the same name but does make the plotline of the album a lot clearer, apparently. This graphic novel by Joshua Dysart and Cliff Chiang has the fiery but naive teenager Sun Green trying to make sense of the insular Californian town she grew up in, wondering why the oil companies who live in the district have no compassion for their workers or the environment and wondering if that really was the devil she just saw walking past her house... Now that someone else has taken on his baby of the last decade perhaps Neil can finally put this convoluted and confusing project to bed?! (Unlike most fans I actively loath this CD!)

♫ ANNIVERSARIES: We’ve got two week’s worth of anniversaries to catch up with this issue, so first up its many happy returns of the AAA to those celebrating between December 1^st-7^th: Gilbert O’Sullivan who turned 64 on December 1^st and Chris Hillman (bassist with The Byrds 1965-68) who turned 68 on December 4^th. Anniversaries of events include: John Lennon and Yoko Ono release ‘Happy Xmas’ (War Is Over) on December 1^st 1971, a date so close to Christmas that the single flops badly on first release before becoming a mainstay of the charts in the festive season of 1972; The Monkees score a record that has still to be broken when fourth album ‘Pisces, Aquarius, Capricorn and Jones’ becomes their fourth non-compilation #1 record of 1967 (December 2^nd); The Moody Blues release the last of their ‘original’ pre-split albums ‘Seventh Sojourn’ (December 2^nd 1972); Members of The Who and associates are jailed overnight for causing $6000 of damage to a hotel in Montreal. John Entwistle is not amused – he slept through all the destruction and has no idea why there are policemen knocking on his door! (December 2^nd 1973); Pink Floyd’s inflatable pig flying over Battersea Power Station (as seen on the front cover of the band’s 1977 LP ‘Animals’) breaks free from its moorings and disrupts airspace for a good few hours, confusing several pilots and getting the band a great deal of free publicity (December 3^rd 1976); Eleven audience members are killed and dozens are hurt during a rush for seats to see The Who in Cincinatti on December 3^rd 1979, an event that contributes to the band’s eventual split in 1982; The Rolling Stones publicise their new album with a fondly remembered ‘Beggar’s Banquet’ with the world’s music press which degenerates into a food fight! (December 5^th 1968); The first of seven specially made Beatles Christmas Flexi-discs is sent to members of the fab four’s fanclub (December 6^th 1963); A busy day for The Rolling Stones who record their classics ‘19^th Nervous Breakdown’ and ‘Mother’s Little Helper’ in the space of a few hours (December 6^th 1965); Four people die at a free festival – one of them murdered by the Hells Angel security - held in Altamont Speedway 40 years ago this week, headlined by The Rolling Stones and also featuring AAA groups CSNY, Grateful Dead and Jefferson Airplane (whose lead singer Marty Balin is concussed after breaking up a fight between Hells Angels and audience; December 6^th 1969 – the film of the tour, ‘Gimme Shelter’, premieres on the same day in 1970); The Beatles’ Apple Boutique opens its doors at 94 Baker Street (December 7^th 1967) and finally, the NME are first to reveal that Graham Nash is leaving The Hollies to work with David Crosby and Stephen Stills in an as yet un-named band (December 7^th 1967).

And for the second week (December 8^th-14^th) it’s bring on the birthday cakes for AAA members Bobby Elliott (drummer with The Hollies 1963-present) who turns 68 on December 8^th, Ray ‘Jacka’ Jackson (lead singer with Lindisfarne 1970-72 and 1978-89) who turns 62 on December 12^th and Frank Allen (bassist with The Searchers 1965-present) who turns 67 on December 14^th. Anniversaries of events include: The Beach Boys release their first single ‘Surfin’ on the independent Candix label a staggering 49 years ago (December 8^th 1961); Pink Floyd release their seminal album ‘The Wall’ – it will go on to be the last #1 by anybody of the 1970s (December 8^th 1979); John Lennon dies outside his Dakota Building home in New York weeks after his 40^th birthday (December 8^th 1980); The Moody Blues with Wingsman Denny Laine score big with their first hit ‘Go Now’ (December 10^th 1964); Otis Redding dies at the age of 27 in an aeroplane crash (December 10^th 1967); John Lennon releases his first solo LP ‘Lennon/Plastic Ono Band’ (December 11^th 1970); Pink Floyd perform their first gig under that name at an Oxfam charity show (December 12th 1966); The Rolling Stones Rock and Roll Circus, also featuring The Who, is filmed but left unscreened for another 30-odd years (December 12^th 1968); John Lennon also plays his first post-Beatles gig with the Plastic Ono Band at Toronto Peace Festival (December 12^th 1969); The Who perform ‘Tommy’ at the Coliseum Opera House in London (December 13^th 1969); Paul Simon scores his first hit in seven years with ‘The Boy In The Bubble’ (December 13^th 1969); Ringo takes a close-up look at the younger trendy pop sensations when he dons a camera for ‘Born To Boogie’, the Apple label’s documentary film about T Rex (December 14^th 1972) and finally, Mick Taylor quits the Rolling Stones after just four albums with the band (December 14^th 1974).