All You Need Is Love

by The Beatles

— Will that do? ——— Oh yeah, and The Beatles.
— The Beatles, said Jimmy.
— Money for jam, said Joey The Lips. — ALL YOU NEED IS LOVE —— DOO DUH DOO DUH DOO.
— Was tha’ you?
— Indeed it was me, Brother. Five pounds, three and sixpence. A fair whack in those days. ——— I couldn’t stand Paul, couldn’t take to him. I was up on the roof for Let It Be. But I stayed well back. I’m not very photogenic Brother. I take a shocking photograph.

Roddy Doyle, The Commitments

Hey, it’s official:

Now, in a major milestone for the celebration, Apple Corps Ltd, the company founded by The Beatles to manage their creative and business ventures, has formally acknowledged Global Beatles Day.

And more:

On 25th June, alongside online and in-person events around the world that celebrate the band, The Beatles will also release a colourised version of their BBC Our World performance of “All You Need Is Love” for free on YouTube. The first time the iconic performance has been made available online, it will celebrate the iconic performance’s anniversary, mark Global Beatles Day, and give fans around the world the chance to relive that spectacular, global moment from 1967 and share their reaction in the live chat.

“The first time”, really? I’ve seen it before, black and white as well as “colourised” (although I prefer the B&W version). For free.

But of course I’ll be watching it anyway, in a hope to catch a glimpse of Joey The Lips Fagan playin’ DOO DUH DOO DUH DOO on his Gina.

Red Rose Speedway

by Paul McCartney and Wings

I totally agree with Shaad D’Souza: there’s nothing more ridiculous than fifth-anniversary reissues. Second-anniversary reissues, maybe. Classic rock or whatever starts at 40 and, if it isn’t happily forgotten yet, well, let’s celebrate its 50^th anniversary then.

Now we are firmly in the golden jubilee territory. Earlier this year, Birds of Fire, Light as a Feather, The Six Wives of Henry VIII, Who Do We Think We Are!, Cum On Feel the Noize, The Dark Side of the Moon, Larks’ Tongues in Aspic, Houses of the Holy all turned fifty. Ditto The Beatles’ Red and Blue albums (I know, I know, they are compilations, but I grew up on them, so shut up).

Enter Red Rose Speedway, an underrated gem of Macca’s discography and my favourite Wings record ever. Good thing it never made it to double albumhood coz that would be just disappointing. I don’t care what they (Wings) had in mind at the time, but this classic (single LP, that is) version is as close to a concept album as any of their works ever was. Maybe because Alan Parsons sprinkled his fairy dust on it (as he did on Abbey Road and The Dark Side of the Moon).

The Beatles were masters of medleys consisting of songs that only exist in their medleys. Here, we have a good one too: Hold Me Tight—Lazy Dynamite—Hands of Love—Power Cut. I wonder if they thought of making the whole album one big medley. I’d love that.

Here’s a fun factoid: some years ago, listening to “le fil”, a single note “thread” that runs through the length of the 2005 album of the same name by Camille, I realised where I heard this noise before. By some strange coincidence, it was “a feature” of a recording of Red Rose Speedway that we had on a double-track magnetic tape reel in the ’70s. Where this quiet but piercing sound was filtering from remained a mystery. Maybe from another dimension? When I finally got hold of the original, I missed that drone note.

Free live music in Las Palmas, June 2021

Every June, our city celebrates the anniversary of its foundation in 1478. The programme of Fiestas fundacionales this year was very impressive and we were lucky to attend many cultural events. Unfortunately, there were no fireworks in Las Canteras on San Juan Night; that’ll have to wait till 2022.

• 5 June: Rocío Pozo Compañía Flamenca: «#Lorca. Federico García» @ Plaza de Santa Ana, Las Palmas de Gran Canaria
  Spectacular dance, excellent guitarist, quite satisfactory singing and incredibly annoying MC — I wish she stayed home and let the dancers and musicians do their thing.

• 12 June: Las Migas @ Auditorio José Antonio Ramos, Parque Doramas
  The last concert of Musicando this spring season — and it couldn’t have been better! Alicia Grillo (guitar), Carolina Fernández ‘La Chispa’ (lead vocals, dance), Roser Loscos (violin) and Marta Robles (guitar), with Oriol Riart (double bass) and a surprise guest appearance of “our own” Hirahi Afonso (timple).

• 17 June: Rycardo Moreno @ Teatro Guiniguada, Plaza F. Mesa de León
  The last Mousikê masterclass till Autumn. It’s been ages since I held a guitar in my hands so maybe not immediately useful but I found Rycardo’s classification of guitar chords according to emotion (e.g. “feliz como un niño” or “triste, pero no tan terrible”) rather poetic.

• 17 June: Miriam Fleitas & D’Local Groove @ Auditorio José Antonio Ramos
  The funky side of La Local Jazz Band: Miriam Fleitas (vocals) with Miqui Delgado (piano), Samantha de León (electric bass), Luis Merino (guitar), Ernesto Montenegro (trumpet), Miguel Ramírez (sax) and Suso Vega (drums).

• 19 June: Freedonia @ Parque Santa Catalina
  The line-up has changed dramatically since I saw them last time — three years ago already! Still, it was a pleasure to see Freedonia (a)live and kicking with Deborah Ayo (vocals), Israel Checa (drums), Álvaro Galera (guitar), Toni García (trumpet), Jorge Moreno (trombone), Dani Niño (tenor sax), Chavi Ontoria (keyboards), Fran Panadero (bass) and David Pérez (baritone sax).

  

• 20 June: Djazia Satour @ Auditorio José Antonio Ramos
  Fantastic show of Djazia Satour (vocals, guitar) with Benoit Richou (guitar, vocals), Rémi D’Aversa (drums, keyboards, vocals) and Quentin Langlois Andréoulis (banjo, violin, percussion).

• 22 June: The Bootleg Beatles @ Parque Santa Catalina
  What an evening! Two hours of unadulterated Beatles fun, from It Won’t Be Long to Let It Be, courtesy of the Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band consisting of, naturally, John (Tyson Kelly), Paul (Steve White), George (Stephen Hill) and Ringo (Gordon Elsmore), plus Mr. Tambourine-and-keyboard Man (Max Langley).

• 24 June: Sofiel del Pino and Pablo Milanés @ Parque Santa Catalina
  Pablo Milanés is kind of an institution in the Hispanic world; I was not about to miss his performance in Las Palmas. Accompanied by Cary Rosa Varona (cello) and Miguelito Núñez (piano) and only occasionally playing guitar, he revisited his vast repertoire, including Años, Días de Gloria and Yolanda. The supporting act, featuring Sofiel del Pino (vocals, guitar), Totó Noriega (percussion, vocals) and Yuniel Rascón Falcón (guitar, tres), was as great as expected and provided me with a glimpse of «Ya nadie toca como Matamoros», the only Musicando show that I couldn’t attend in April.

  

• 26 June: Sergio Alonso Quintet: «Tributo a Dave Brubeck» @ Edificio Miller, Parque Santa Catalina
  Sergio A. Alonso (piano), Neftalí Robaina (sax), Javier Montero (drums), Carlos Meneses (double bass) and Santiago “Chago” Miranda (guitar). The programme included such Brubeck classics as Blue Rondo à la Turk, Bluette, Bossa Nova U.S.A., In Your Own Sweet Way, It’s a Raggy Waltz, Kathy’s Waltz, Unsquare Dance and, of course, Paul Desmond’s Take Five.

  

Starting 26^th June, the face mask is not obligatory outdoors any longer, provided the safety distance, etc. etc. Looking forward to open-air concerts next month!

Rubber Soul

by The Beatles

Some 55 years after its release, Timur gave me this album as a Christmas present. And we’ve just listened to it. Ah, memories, memories.

I remember very well the 1970 seven-inch EP by Весёлые Ребята with a Russian-language cover of Drive My Car entitled «Старенький автомобиль». The Russian lyrics by Leonid Berger (Леонид Бергер) has nothing to do with the original but hey, that’s creativity for you. (As mentioned before, the B-side had a cover of Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da in English.) I used to hate this version; now I rewatched it and... dammit, I think it’s pretty cool.

«Девушка», the 1969 cover of Girl by Valery Obodzinsky, features even more embarrassing lyrics as well as untranslated chorus «Герл» (!!!). Curiously, the record did not credit Lennon/McCartney while referring to Girl as an “English folk song”. For years, I thought it really was.

I knew a lot of its songs from The Red Album, but it was not until mid-1980s that I heard Rubber Soul in its entirety for the first time.

This 2009 enhanced CD, just like the remastered Magical Mystery Tour, includes the mini-documentary viewable on PC. By now, old CD drive became a luxury that my laptop lacks. Never mind that, I’ll watch it... one day.

Yesterday

a film by Danny Boyle and Richard Curtis

Imagine a parallel universe where The Beatles, Oasis and Coke do not exist but, paradoxically, The Stones, Coldplay and Pepsi do. And why not. Stranger things happen in my own universe. For example, last Friday Tamara mentioned that Riga had been brought to a standstill by Ed Sheeran’s concert. Ed who? The name rang a distant bell. Edward Christopher Sheeran, MBE, that’s who, says Wikipedia. Whatever he did to earn his MBE passed unnoticed by me so far. There’s a ketchup known as “Heinz Edchup”, I learned. Well, I never.

Just five days later, that is, yesterday, I went to see Yesterday in Cines Babel. And there he was, Ed flippin’ Sheeran, quite deliberately making a complete ass of himself playing himself. Not so bad, I have to admit, but the movie would have been great even without him. (Richard Curtis said that his first choice for this role was that of Coldplay’s Chris Martin.) Himesh Patel shines in his debut role, as do most of the cast. Now, who wrote that soundtrack? It’s fantastic.

The White Album

by The Beatles

The White Album was the first collection of the Beatles music that I remember, as an album, from the early 1970s, even though I didn’t hear it in full until (a decade or so) later. Nor did I know how it was called. My cousin had an incomplete recording of it on the A-side of a magnetic tape reel. On the box it was simply written “Double album”. The other side contained some unrelated material which was apparently not worth mentioning. For this reason, the “real” White Album for me finishes with Sexy Sadie, while the rest of it still sounds superfluous.

I was long wondering who was playing the guitar intro of The Continuing Story of Bungalow Bill which, back in the 1970s, appeared to be a pinnacle of guitar virtuosity and a masterpiece in its own right. To my disappointment, I learned from Wikipedia that it

opens with a flamenco guitar phrase, played from a standard Mellotron bank of pre-recorded rhythms and phrases by studio engineer Chris Thomas. It is unknown how the sample was chosen.

To be honest, I am not ready to pay £125 for the seven-disc 50^th anniversary box set. I am quite happy with my not-exactly-remastered edition, thank you very much.

As far as I know, there were no Melodiya singles with the original White Album material (quite unlike the case of Abbey Road). However, I vividly remember the single with the cover of Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da sung in English by Весёлые ребята (the A-side had «Старенький автомобиль», a Russian-language rendition of Drive My Car).

Perhaps my favourite cover version of a White Album song is Dear Prudence by Morgan James and Haley Reinhart.

Happy Birthday, White Album.

Three music documentaries

Last week, Timur and I went to watch these movies at the Monopol Music Festival. In English, with Spanish subtitles.

The Beatles: Eight Days a Week — The Touring Years

a film by Ron Howard

I’ve been listening to The Beatles for as long as I remember myself. I can’t honestly say that I learned a lot of new stuff about the Fab Four from this film. But I enjoyed it all the same. As for Timur, I hope his curiosity about The Beatles is not satisfied. The version we watched in Monopol (as we were warned beforehand) lacked half an hour or so of 1965 Shea Stadium concert. Thank goodness for that, it must have been terrible. Most of The Beatles footage was. On the other hand, the interviews are brilliant.

The film covers, so to speak, The Red Album years. (It also includes, for reasons unknown, a fragment of the famous rooftop concert which was the last public performance of the band but has nothing to do with “touring”.) John, Paul, George and Ringo were getting tired of the gigs but not of each other (yet). Brian Epstein was still alive. The future looked bright.

Score: A Film Music Documentary

a film by Matt Schrader

We went to see this film on Timur’s suggestion and it proved to be much more interesting than its description or trailer would suggest. Not only because, or even not so much because of giants like John Williams or Hans Zimmer who appear there. I was much more impressed by other composers — too many to list here and frankly I forgot most of the names — who also happen to be great musicians, arrangers and/or conductors. Perhaps inevitably, being an American movie, it mainly focuses on American film scores. (By and large, I find American movie music too intrusive for my liking. I wish there were separate volume controls for music, dialogue and ambient noises on the remote.) Even the scenes in London’s AIR and Abbey Road studios show “making of” Hollywood music. It would be interesting to see the idea of Score applied to contemporary European cinema.

Metallica: Some Kind of Monster

a film by Joe Berlinger and Bruce Sinofsky

This 2004 documentary portrays Metallica in the middle of their creative, existential, or midlife (delete as appropriate) crisis. I didn’t know much about the band before and watching the film didn’t make me a fan.

First, Lars Ulrich emerges as a biggest asshole in rock history (to his credit, Lars admits that himself) thanks to Metallica vs. Napster lawsuit. Then James Hetfield goes to Russia to hunt bears and drink vodka. Then Lars decides to sell his godawful paintings at Christie’s to raise some cash (quite a lot of it). All the while, they don’t stop bickering. The whole thing looks like they are unwittingly remaking This is Spın̈al Tap without being nearly as likeable as Spın̈al Tap. And they don’t show too much wit either.

Revolver

by The Beatles

While Revolver was not the first Beatles album I’ve heard — ironically, my first one was The Beatles’ last — it probably was the first I heard in its entirety and appreciated as such. Which is also somewhat ironic considering that Revolver is still just a collection of (brilliant) songs rather than a concept album. Never mind that. I discovered it in 1977 and listened to it a zillion times. Love You To was unlike anything I heard before.

Perhaps I was fascinated by those open endings: Taxman, I’m Only Sleeping, Love You To, Good Day Sunshine, wonderful as they are, fade away when something even more wonderful is just about to happen — wait, I’m still fascinated with them. And then, Tomorrow Never Knows — what was that? Is that how the album was meant to end? Amazing. Rewind the tape, listen again. The only song I felt out of place on the album was Yellow Submarine, and that despite (or because) it was the first Beatles song I ever learned the chorus. So did Yuri when he was about three, although in his rendition it was “we all live in a yellow atmosphere”.

Fret diagrams with LilyPond

If you are playing (or learning to play) guitar, you may have wondered if LilyPond can help to produce the cute fret diagrams alongside (or instead) the classic notation. Indeed it can! For illustration purposes, I chose And I Love Her by The Beatles:

% ****************************************************************
% And I Love Her (Lennon/McCartney)
% ****************************************************************
\version "2.12.3"
verseI = \lyricmode {
  \set stanza = #"1."
  I give her all my love, 
  that’s all I do. __ _ 
  And if you saw my love
  you’d love her too.
  And I love her.
}
verseII = \lyricmode {
  \set stanza = #"2."
  She gives me ev -- ’ry -- thing
  and ten -- der -- ly. __ _
  The kiss my lov -- er brings
  she brings to me.
  And I love her.
}
verseIII = \lyricmode {
  \set stanza = #"3."
  Bright are the stars that shine,
  dark is the sky. __ _
  I know this love of mine
  will ne -- ver die.
  And I love her.
}
theChords = \chordmode {
  fis1:m cis1:m fis1:m cis1:m fis1:m cis1:m a1 b1:7 e1:6
}
staffMelody = {
   \key cis \minor
   r4 fis'4 gis'8 a'4 dis''8(
   dis''8) cis''4 e''8( e''2)
   r4 fis'4 gis'8 a'4 dis''8\((
   dis''8) cis''8( cis''2.)\)
   r4 fis'4 gis'8 a'4 dis''8(
   dis''8) cis''4 e''8( e''2)
   r4 e''4 cis''8 a'4 gis'8(
   fis'2) r8 cis'8 b8 cis'8(
   cis'8) gis'8( gis'2.)
}
\score {
  <<
    \context ChordNames { \theChords }
    \context FretBoards { \theChords }
    \new Staff {
      \context Voice = "voiceMelody" { \staffMelody }
    }
    \new Lyrics = "lyricsI" {
      \lyricsto "voiceMelody" \verseI
    }
    \new Lyrics = "lyricsII" {
      \lyricsto "voiceMelody" \verseII
    }
    \new Lyrics = "lyricsIII" {
      \lyricsto "voiceMelody" \verseIII
    }
  >>
}

The result:

(1)

One little problem here: I don’t like these diagrams. Fortunately, LilyPond has an option to include the (more pleasing) predefined fretboard diagrams. To do this, one has to add just one line to the script:

\include "predefined-guitar-fretboards.ly"

Now the output looks much nicer:

(2)

The closer inspection shows that the last chord still does not look right. The reason is that the table of predefined diagrams does not include sixth chords. Therefore, one has to add this fret diagram manually to the script, e.g. like this:

\storePredefinedDiagram \chordmode {e:6}
                        #guitar-tuning
                        #"o;2-2;2-3;1-1;2-4;o;"

Here’s the final version:

(3)

See photos of guitar chords @ Shutterstock.

Magical Mystery Tour Remastered

by The Beatles

I’ve borrowed from the library the newly (2009) remastered CD of Magical Mystery Tour just to see what the fuss is all about. I saw the reviews saying that the “original” (i.e. released in 1987) CD was horrible and 2009 version is either as bad as that or stunning. I never had that 1987 CD, so I can only compare it with the American LP I remember all too well. After a few listenings I have to confess that I can’t hear any difference (bar the vinyl crackle, of course). Not the best example of stereo panning I’m afraid but this is how I first heard The Beatles: drums in one channel, voice in another one. Anything different — apart from mono — would not sound right. In addition, the CD includes the Magical Mystery Tour mini-documentary viewable on PC, but I don’t think anybody really needs to watch it.

As for the album itself, it is an absolute classic. My favourite song? Far too many for such a short record. Perhaps Your Mother Should Know.

Abbey Road

by The Beatles

Yes, I also used to have this single: БИТЛЗ, Вокально-инструментальный ансамбль (Англия) with songs Сад, Что-нибудь and Встреча (Octopus’s Garden, Something and Come Together, respectively). And another one: Солнце восходит (Here Comes the Sun), Потому что (Because) and Попурри (Golden Slumbers — Carry That Weight — The End). These singles were issued (or should I say, pirated?) by the Soviet Melodiya label. At least the songs were attributed to the band, not just some anonymous “vocal-instrumental ensemble” (a common trick by Melodiya in those days). It was not until 1979 that I heard Abbey Road in its entirety. It also was pirated, of course.

The 40 year-old album still inspires. Petra Magoni and Ferruccio Spinetti do a mean rendition of Come Together, but this cover by Bugotak is something else entirely.

The Beatles on Record

a film by Bob Smeaton

Yesterday, during the Music Technology class in Duxford, we watched a bit of this documentary. The point to illustrate was that, while now they use about eight microphones to record a drumkit alone, “in the olden days” they were able to record the bands like The Beatles with just two mikes. (And genius of George Martin of course.) And the sound was great, innit? Also, check out the mixing desk at about 3:30, apparently that was the state of the art at the time, and it still looks cool.