reeperbahn 3

the beatles are exerting their domination by this stage. they play the fats waller classic your feets too big. now fats was good but the beatles are doing the definitive version here. macca's voice was never better. the middle bit "bah do bah dop do dah" was just a small bit in the original but macca makes it the best bit. he would remember things like this later eg the coda in ticket to ride, hala haloa in hello goodbye (tho this may be lennons idea) and at the end of cry baby cry (can you take me back where i came from). sort of little kiss-offs that only the beatles could do.

next lennon takes to the microphone for what sounds like twist and shout. however this is arthur alexander's "where have you been all my life". lennon was listening intently to this guy and its no wonder. the guy is a genius although pretty much unheard of. like anna (go to him) lennon's voice is really suited to this. like all the backing here, harrison's guitar fills and licks (which arent in the original) really add to the song. similar crucial licks would appear a few months later when the beatles were working on "she loves you". during these fills lennon can be heard "where you been brother"

paul? - oooh we're gonna hurry?

beatles at the reeperbahn 2

lennon lets rip into a crashing sweet sixteen.

john - "sweet little sixteen". sounds like "la rube"? or maybe "for ruby"?

to begin with, the beatles were always a great cover band. even if they didnt write their own stuff they would probably still have been the biggest band in liverpool. perhaps, thirsty for stardom, they would have released "how do you do it" as their first single. maybe taking whatever songs came their way. because they were better singers than most of the other bands (billy j, pacemakers, freddie etc) they would have got the better songs. they kept on playing shows in hamburg becoming huge in germany and europe due to their rock n roll style. anyway...

straight into the carl perkins number "lend me your comb". you can hear the 3 part harmony here. they would go on to record this one later in 64 but it failed to get on an album.

after that

paul - "afa sound? (german?) " "thank you very much indeed, thank you. Your Feets Too Big"

beatles at the reeperbahn

in december 62 the beatles played their final few gigs in hamburg. a month earlier they had recorded 2 of their own compositions - please please me and ask me why. please please me would be released as their second single in the UK 11 days after their final hamburg gig on december 31st.

luckily enough somebody recorded one of these gigs which was released as the live at the star club lp. the quality is poor but the songs are great. one can only wonder what it would be like if it had been recorded with good equipment.

strangely enough, the beatles didnt perform please please me but did do the other song they recorded in november - ask me why. its an interesting choice - not to play your forthcoming single. perhaps epstein told them not to play it until it was released.

the songs on this are great. almost all of them are covers. these songs were like the beatles training ground as future songwriters. a full tracklisting along with the original performers, can be seen here - http://www.jpgr.co.uk/bls5560.html. info on the four omitted there are:

Where Have You Been All My Life - Arthur Alexander
Sheila - Tommy Roe
I'm Gonna Sit Right Down And Cry Over You - Elvis
Till There Was You - Peggy Lee

the unreleased song - My Girl Is Red Hot could well be a ronnie hawkins or carroll bros tune. of course, this is probably the same tune with ronnie covering the carroll bros one.

the first 5 songs are standard rock n roll fare. its not till the end of the 4th song - hippy hippy shake that we hear some on stage banter. it sounds like:

john: thats a good tune!
paul: thank you my son. thank you masumba?

hard to make out. could be german either? the beatles were probably pissed by this stage. i will be trying to make out what they say in between songs for the next few days - a sort of historic document before all hell broke lose - beatlemania...

well actully its just a beatle dork thing but anyway...

bear grilled

on this blogspot we like to keep one step ahead of the pack

http://owenmartin.blogspot.com/2007/05/bear-necessities.html

earlier this week bear grylls was exposed as a fake.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/news/news.html?in_article_id=474866&in_page_id=1770


as a medium, television is becoming worse everyday. the shows are either set-ups, boring, depressing or operations on someone's stomach.

Anyway, now Channel 4 are considering issuing a disclaimer before each programme "stating that Grylls receives help from survival experts and health and safety officers."

Somehow, that aint good enough. How about:
certain dangerous situations are faked in this programme to ensure the safety of bear and the crew. The island that bear is stranded on contains a five star hotel. Grylls is not alone, per se, some survival experts and safety officers help him out a bit."

all tv needs is a bit more integrity.

Possible Dylan Album

1. Tell Me Momma
2. She's Your Lover Now
3. Positively 4th Street
4. California
5. I Wanna Be Your Lover
6. I'll Keep It With Mine
7. Sitting on a Barbed Wire Fence
8. Can You Please Crawl out your Window?
9. Love Is Just a Four Letter Word
10. Farewell Angelina

Well Ive just been listening to this quite a bit and i have to say its a pretty great listen. It would be very much a lyrical tour-de-force, like the end of BIABH. I had to leave out love is just a four letter word coz joanie's singing didnt fit in well at all. Unfortunately, there are no known recordings of this song by dylan. Anyway, it works great - you've got dylan joking around on some tracks too which is always a bonus. And as Paolo says in the comments the new Dylan Box-set is a waste. So maybe, instead of re-buying the same old songs, you could play around with them like this..

The Lost Single

Great singles that were not on albums are a thing of the past. Only the great show-offs could really do it. You could include B-Sides too - in that case Oasis were the last band able to do it. But in terms of great A-Sides that were not on albums you'd probably have to go back to The Jam for the most recent group. Nowadays, the purpose of a single is to promote an album. Back in the old days you were expected to produce new product every few months. Anyway on to the (preliminary) list:

Bob Dylan - Things Have Changed
Bob Dylan - Positively 4th Street
Bob Dylan - Can you please crawl out your window? (B-side)
The Jam - Going Underground
The Jam - Butterfly Collector (B-Side)
Oasis - Masterplan (B-Side)
Beatles - She Loves You
Beatles - I Want to Hold Your Hand
Beatles - This Boy (B-Side)
Beatles - Hey Jude
Beatles - Dont Let Me Down (B-Side)
Beatles - Rain (B-Side)
Beatles - Strawberry Fields
Beatles - Penny Lane
Beatles - Daytripper
Beatles - We Can Work It Out
Beatles - Ballad Of John & Yoko
The Who - Substitute
The Who - Pictures of Lily
The Who - Anyway, Anyhow, Anywhere
The Who - Can't Explain
The Who - I'm A Boy
The Who - Happy Jack
The Who - The Seeker
The Who - Magic Bus
Rolling Stones - Jumping Jack Flash
Rolling Stones - 19th Nervous Breakdown
Rolling Stones - Have You Seen Your Mother, Baby, Standing in the Shadow?
The Kinks - Dead End Street
The Kinks - Berkeley Mews (B-Side)
The Kinks - See My Friends
The Kinks - Days
The Kinks - Autumn Almanac
The Kinks - Wonderboy
The Kinks - Polly (B-Side)
The Clash - (White Man) In Hammersmith Palais (released on belated US album)

Of course, its all a matter of taste. you could easily pick 5 or 6 more from the beatles, for example. These are just songs I can think of at the moment. There are probably plenty more. As can be seen from this list, the single was the most important thing in the pre-Sgt Pepper era and then that album kind of changed things. As Paul Weller said recently "You'd never get away with that now"

if there's an original thought out there....

bob dylan once said "The world don't need any more songs"(1991)* and he probably had a point. there's a song about everything...well, just about everything. so maybe he came to this conclusion sometime around the Oh Mercy and Under the Red Sky albums. Afterall, he released no original work for 6 years after that interview. An album that was his last real statement - on aging and mortality of course.

After Time Out of Mind, he released 2 albums which were practically cover albums. Using these old tunes and styles (mainly from the 20's, 30's and 40's) he wrote lyrics which reflected his worldview, old codes of conduct, and themes on love. There are also plenty of quotes and allusions from books such as The Great Gatsby, Huckleberry Finn and Confessions of a Yakuza (released in 91 - is this what bob spent his time studying for the next few years instead of writing songs?). There are also plenty of re-arranged lines from the poetry of Henry Timrod in there. I dont buy the argument that these lines slipped into bob's songs unconsciously. Bob probably marked out lines from these works that he liked and incorporated them into the songs.

The desire to write new songs is gone, but bob dylan now is like some out of time crooner from the 30's in a world that has moved on - a time when bing crosby regularly topped the charts. It's hard to imagine a similar singer regularly topping the charts today. But Bob has moved full circle. When he was just a young kid in new york he used to say in interviews "I had to write these songs simply because nobody else had and these were the kind of songs i wanted to sing"

*http://www.interferenza.com/bcs/interw/1991zollo.htm