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.

The War on Sugarlumps

“Here Come the Nice” was Marriott/Lane’s ode to their dealer.  The song clearly says, “he’s always there / if I need some speed,” but this one got past the Beeb censors, peaking at a respectable #12.  But sugarlumps?  Forget it. Maybe they were so busy looking for metaphorical drug references that they missed explicit ones.

Something Cringey

I recently re-watched The Beatles Anthology with recent convert, Renfield Jr.  Great series, but I had a hard time making it through this video featuring the hirsute-era Beatles mooning over and frolicking with their significant others.  I’m not sure why anyone thought this would be entertaining, but maybe the point was narcissism rather than entertainment.

Splice or Error?

In his In The Midnight Hour episode, Andrew Hickey tells a great story about the recording of Mustang Sally.  While the tape was rewinding after recording in one take, the capstan flew of the recorder, shredding the tape into fragments and sending them flying all over the room.  The volatile Wilson Pickett was about to explode, when Tom Dowd told everyone to calm down and take a 30-minute break.  Dowd then spliced the fragments, a total of 40 splices, an average of one every three or four seconds.  Hickey plays a 30-second sample containing the only possible splice he can hear (it’s at 2:22) but thinks it’s more likely a drumming error.  Nah, that’s a splice.

I can’t hear the other 39.  Tom Dowd was a badass.

Oh No Crypto Bro

I’ve followed this story with some delight. Apparently Michael Lewis, who wrote The Big Short, has been trailing FTX guy Sam Bankman-Fried around, so we’ll certainly get a kick-ass film out of it someday. Among many, many remarkable facets to the tale is that the crypto market has supposedly lost $2 trillion of valuation this year… and Wall Street has barely flinched.
When Sequoia Capital – allegedly the most intelligent venture capital firm – invested $210 million in FTX last year, it asked to see financial reports and instead was told “we’ll send you a few bullet points.” It’s traditional when investing that much into a firm to have someone on the board, but Bankman-Fried wouldn’t let anyone on the board of directors, which was him, an attorney, and an FTX employee.
For a company “worth” $32 billion at one point.

Zero oversight! What could go wrong?

I’ve followed developing news with Patrick Redford of Defector, who is typically hilarious. But there are several excellent reporters and twitter feeds. Ed Zitron on Twitter is great.

Here, a professor of finance at King’s College splains it to us. He keeps showing photos of Phil Spector for Sam Bankman-Fried, so gotta respect his game:

It’s an exciting time to be in the crypto world.

Mike Love Raps…


…with predictable results. Even the girls can’t save this sad abomination; I couldn’t make it past one minute. According to this guy, the song was conceived as a duo with Bart Simpson for an upcoming Simpsons movie, but the producers declined, feeling that “Bart, after all, has some standards to uphold.” Indeed. Instead, it landed on Baywatch. I might have saved this one for Loathsome Thursday, but this stands in its own category of awfulness. I hesitated to post it at all.