Cheers?

I don’t know if I’d like porter, but this video sure makes me want one.  In all likelihood, none of us has had the real thing.  I’m sure some of the jillions of craft breweries out there offer a porter, but is anyone drawing it from separate kegs like in this video? Apparently it became a lost art in the early 70’s.  Sad.

Get Happy

If you haven’t played through this whole album lately, do yourself a favor.  I have no foul moods that this album won’t dissipate before turning me into a grinning idiot.  I find “Dracula’s Daughter” (and many others) addictive,  but it’s a bit uncharacteristic; the rest of the album rocks like fuck.  When I finally got around to buying a copy a couple of years ago, it had a sticker that said “10 Brand-New Songs Scientifically Designed To Make Anybody Happy.”  Rare case of marketing matching the product.

Beatles’ Worst Moment?

Overall, I wouldn’t rate this as their worst track.  I don’t much like the song, but it goes well enough until that cheesy organ break comes along.  That break might be their worst moment.  I went back to All The Songs to refresh myself on just what they were thinking.  Turns out George played a fast-vibrato guitar part that John liked but George Martin rejected as too edgy.  So Paul recorded an organ solo worthy of a déclassé 60’s supper club.  Was he being funny on purpose?  Were they just ready to be done with it so thought, “fuck it, it’s filler anyway,  leave it there and let’s move on?”  

Of course everyone, no matter how great, steps in it every now and then.  Beethoven wrote Wellington’s Victory, an embarrassing piece of garbage celebrating, as the name suggests, Napoleon’s defeat. He’d once been a fan of Napoleon, dedicating his explosively innovative 3rd symphony to him.  He later removed the dedication in disgust after Napoleon crowned himself emperor, and subsequently wanted to rub Napoleon’s nose in it after Waterloo.  Defensive and touchy about the work, Beethoven probably knew it was trash. It seems to me that such music (i.e. written for overtly political or moralistic  purposes) is usually garbage.  John Lennon’s preachy songs  come to mind.  But I’d love to hear what pops into your bastardly heads in the Great Artist/Shitty Work category.

Sigh

The Beatles juggernaut rolls on with four biopics in the works, one for each Beatle.  What could possibly go wrong?

Dylan Aleam Jacit

I’m taking Renfield Jr. to see Bob Dylan next month, so decided to familiarize myself with some of his more recent original material.  I think this song’s as brilliant as anything he’s done (admitting that I haven’t heard everything).

What Are They Dancing To?

Here’s a Scopitone of Brook Benton lip-syncing Mother Nature, Father Time while bikini girls apparently dance to something else.

If you’re unfamiliar with Scopitones, they were music video jukeboxes typically placed in lounges and similar adult-oriented locations.  It seems that most Scopitones, like the later music-video format, were more about the girls than the songs. (I remember child-oriented ones, but their format and machines had a different name).  The videos often had the hubba-hubba vibe of 50’s-60’s softcore men’s magazines (like here and here).  Although Procol Harum did one, most rock acts snubbed Scopitones. I imagine they’d started looking dated, like something their dads watched for cheap thrills, down there with carnival peep-shows.  One novelty was a live Billy Lee Riley one, unusual in that it’s not lip-synced.

For you film nerds: I can’t verify this, but I know I read somewhere that French (who invented them) Scopitones used Pathecolor, a very early film tinting process that used stenciling.  Wikipedia claims that the last use of Pathecolor was the 1954 Mexican surrealist classic, Robinson Crusoe, but it’s often stated that it was used in that august cinematic masterpiece, Dr. Goldfoot & The Bikini Machine.

Seeds Documentary!

Not sure how a doc about some of my favorite proto-punks got past me.  This goes straight to the top of my list if it’s available anywhere.