Sic Semper Tyrannis

Hey Daddy-o

All right. So back to my musical adventure down memory lane. In today’s installment, I shall try to relate to you perhaps the most world-shattering musical discovery of my life thus far. I believe it happened either my sophomore or junior year in high school. I’ve got a post entitled “Dear Old Mom,” but today, on his birthday no less, I shall relate mine own father’s most significant contribution to my musical education, and that is an obscure band from across the pond called The Beatles.

I realize nothing new can be said about The Beatles or their music. It’s almost impossible to say anything even interesting about them anymore. However, this is my blog and I would be untrue to my purpose if I left out The Beatles as an obvious assumption.

Jewish folks talk a lot about inheriting faith from the generations before them, and what’s kind of interesting to me is that I first heard The Beatles, in a critical way, exactly like pops did-on vinyl! How cool is that? It was the early to mid-nineties and I was discovering new music on records. My dad had just a few records from when he was probably my age-Stan Getz, the Easy Rider soundtrack, probably some Joan Baez. And I had made my way through the Getz-Gilberto albums (because I was the swinging-est junior high hipster around), but I always ignored his two Beatles records—The White Album and Abbey Road. In my head, I figured I knew what they were all about—even 30 years down the line, I had seen footage from the Ed Sullivan show and heard about “Beatle haircuts.” I knew they sang catchy pop songs like “She Loves You” and “I Wanna Hold Your Hand.”

Oh, but brothers and sisters, I was in for a paradigm shift of unfathomable magnitude that day I finally got bored enough to actually pull that White Album out of the pile of forgotten music in our living room cabinet. Of course, the idea of the plain white jacket with nothing on it was both intriguing and sort of boring to my high school mind. The only thing that struck me visually as I held that treasure in my hands was how “used” those two records looked. The faces of the records were literally gray; they had been played so many times before I ever entered the world.

On a whim, I cued up Disc 1, Side 1 and I must admit “Back in the U.S.S.R.” was catchy to me, but it didn’t sound that far removed from the happy, poppy songs I had heard here and there as a kid. This wasn’t music to set a soul on fire by any means.

Ah, but the sound of the jet engine at the end of the first song segued into the sound of an unadorned, detuned and droning electric guitar melody and it was just all too clear that this wasn’t really The Beatles. The Beatles sang goofy songs about teenage devotion and dressed in funny suits. This wasn’t “The Beatles” to me. It was some kind of musical art. The guitars weren’t chimey and bright; they were actually kind of sad sounding most of the time.

Anyway, I was hooked in by the first few seconds of “Dear Prudence” and I just had to sit down to see if there were any other surprises in store. And boy, were there! Every single song sounded like a different band to me. From the seriousness of “Dear Prudence” to the weirdness of “Glass Onion” and “Wild Honey Pie” to the barrelhouse Jamaican-ness of “Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da.” That’s a shock for you!

I’m telling you, this album was phenomenal! There were so many songs and each of them had a personality of their own. Some songs were just a voice with an acoustic guitar. Some songs had pianos and organs. Some of them were just a regular rock band. One song was just a bunch of crazy sounds.

I came to find out later that this album was made during pretty bad times for the band. Both Ringo and George had quit and rejoined at separate times during the making of the record and they had employed a new method of working, with each writer being responsible for finishing their own songs with very little collaboration with the others. The way I understand it, there were few songs where all the guys were in the room together, probably because they couldn’t stand to be around each other, (and Yoko) anymore.

Be that as it may, I still think it’s a fantastic album of fantastic songs with interesting melodies and harmonies and all kinds of different instrumentation and arrangements. Even the “highlights” for this album are too much for me to get into. Perhaps another post for that, for this is getting long-winded even for me.

Suffice it to say, pop music or rock n’ roll, or whatever you want to call it, was never the same for me after discovering this album. All rules were thrown out the window.

posted by Mike @ 12:53 PM