This weekend's Beatle Obituary, or Weekend with the Beatle's (technically, Weekend with A Beatle) post seems like the right thing to do.
Anyone who read yesterday understands that I am not a Michael Jackson fan per say, but do respect his place in music history and his place in my (and possibly your) youth.
I post this not because of the obvious Beatle tie of recording with Paul, but because he was a one time owner of the Apple music catalog. A catalog of music he got for a 48.5 million steal of a deal based on an investment conversation with Paul where Paul suggested he buy music rights. Paul was later angered to hear he purchased the Apple Holdings catalog, but little could be done about it and he had to admit Michael had picked a good group of song rights to purchase. In the first decade Michale owned it outrifht, the catalog returned a profit of 100 million. In 1995 he had to give Bank of America a 50% stake in the catalog due to his overwhelming debt. Which raises the question for another time - how does someone get 300 million in debt?
Anyway - here is the song - not a great song but it has Paul so it is passable.
The weekend post is usually a vain attempt on my part to convert you all to some appreciation of the musical genius known as The Beatles.
I hear from my regular readers that you are all thwarting my efforts and generally just skip over my weekend posts.
This just reflects poorly on you. If you were wise you would skip the weekday posts which are poorly concieved, constructed and written and go for the weekend posts which have less writing and more acclaimed material (a billion gold albums, the major influence on music today, rock and roll hall of fame, and all of that).
Anyway - this weekend is Father's Day and while Jake has come to understand my affection for The Beatle's, I would hardly call him a Beatle's fan. Jake's favorite band hails from Canada and has one of the greatest band names ever - The Tragically Hip. I was not familiar with them prior to Jake and can confidently say I am a convert and a true Hip fan. So, for this weekend's post is Happy Father's Day from The Hip.
So of you three faithful readers - only two of you are on facebook (Flutter - stop lurking and get your own account) and aware that I have started my own evil plot to take over the world. Of course my plan for world domination begins with planting horrible songs in people's heads so they will be so distracted that I can take over the power in a very frinedly way.
All that being said - I daily select a bad song and put it on my facebook page. Today I am going to put out a Beatles's song. It is not a bad song, but it is a literal video version. A redubbed version of the song where the words sung go with the action of the video - lots of fun.
So - today on Facebook is that and so this weekend's Beatle Literal post, or Weekend with the Beatles post, for lack of a better name is Penny Lane.
Had this post ready to roll on the Saturday the nation was swept up with Swine Flu - didn't publish it for no real reason. So here it is - funny how obsessed we were with the "pandemic" and just how quickly we got over it.
This week has seen the swine flu be called pandemic by the media - whether or not the flu is actually meeting the pandemic criteria is a point of serious contention. But the masks are going up and as is the hysteria flag and I can't help but be amazed by the hysteria. All I can say is good thing they didn't have 24 hr news coverage of the plague otherwise the world surely would have self-imploded at that time. So, this weekend's Beatles' Precautions, or weekend with The Beatles, for lack of a better name, proves once again that there is a Beatle's song for everything.
I have already done Piggies - and while that is a great tie for the Swine Flu, we want to focus on how to help - so the song is....
Dr. Roberts
Here is what Behind the Beatles say about the song:
"John Lennon mainly wrote the lyrics to the Beatles Doctor Robert song but Paul McCartney helped out with the middle eight sections. The song is based upon Doctor Robert Freymann who practiced on East 78 th Street . He was famous for keeping New York High and was known to give out speed to his clients as a pick me up. In the sixties going to the doctors for speed in New York was a bit like bar hopping today, with people going from one doctor’s to the other on an amphetamine crawl. It is thought that the Beatles were big friends with Doctor Robert who was well connected with the NYC art scene.
Although prescribing amphetamines was not illegal in the sixties, Doctor Roberts lost his licence in 1968 due to handing out excessive amounts of the drug.
On the song John Lennon takes control of lead vocals while Paul McCartney harmonises."
