[David Herrick]

I’m definitely an early Beatles person, although not quite as early as I used to be.  After first hearing a good number of their songs throughout the existence of the group I thought they reached their apex with the Hard Day’s Night album, but now I’d place their peak at Rubber Soul.

It’s not a sharp dichotomy, though.  It’s mostly just a matter of thinking that their earlier not-great songs were just weak, whereas their later not-great songs were simply not intended to be liked by the likes of me.

 

[David Herrick]

Thanks, Bill.  Saturday’s Child was written by David Gates (later of the group Bread), and the guitar solo was played by Louie Shelton of the Wrecking Crew.

I’ve heard that it was under consideration for release as the Monkees’ first single in place of Last Train to Clarksville, and I think that would have been a good choice.  It has a very fresh sound, whereas Boyce and Hart admitted that they wrote Clarksville as sort of a knockoff of Paperback Writer.

 

 

[David Herrick]

An oldies radio station I used to listen to put together a promo consisting of a series of three-second clips from songs that mentioned days of the week.  To the best of my recollection this was the sequence:

Sunday Will Never Be the Same

Monday, Monday

Tuesday Afternoon

Lady Madonna (“Wednesday morning papers didn’t come”)

Nothing’s Too Good for My Little Girl (“a Thursday night meeting”)

Friday on My Mind

Saturday in the Park

Then they played a clip of “Eight Days a Week” and the announcer said something like “The best music of all time… eight days a week!”

Okay, I’m going to dip into the Monkees well once more:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KmXdirsrAF8

 

[David Herrick]

I just learned from the latest video by the Wings of Pegasus guy that Helen Reddy came out of retirement in 2015 to record this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rmvjfKYQu5Y

 

[David Herrick]

Wow!  I wonder if any of today’s chart-topping pop groups could possibly learn to sing like this, even if you gave them a massive incentive to try.

 

[David Herrick]

Wow, this is a toughie!  You’d think, given the association of spring with new life and hope and so on, that there would be a lot of songs in this category, but nothing “springs” to mind.

 

[David Herrick]

Joe, I hadn’t heard about that lawsuit, and I’ve always been interested in that sort of thing.  Thanks for the info.

I can hear the rhythmic similarity in the two songs, with the sudden pauses on the downbeats.  And of course the line “here come old flat top”.

 

[David Herrick]

I pretty much agree with Mike’s assessment.  I also like Come Together because of the clever phrasings like “got to be good-looking ’cause he’s so hard to see”.

I don’t know a lot of John’s solo stuff, but I remember hearing Woman on the radio when it was new, and thinking that it was pretty good.  And I didn’t even know who John was then, so there was no possibility of confirmation bias.

 

[David Herrick]

Happy Thanksgiving to Jacki, Jung, David of Magog, and any others in the club!

 

[David Herrick]

For future reference:

https://www.onthisday.com/music/birthdays.php

 

[David Herrick]

It’s also Jackson Browne’s birthday.

 

[David Herrick]

I agree, Joe.  To be the king you have to be a master of all the aspects of your craft, including songwriting in this case.  And you hear a lot more rock-and-roll artists cite Chuck Berry rather than Elvis as a major influence.

I’ll have to ask my parents whether they boxed up and stored those cassettes and the projector, or if they eventually threw them out.  Before home video they were the ultimate self-entertainment experience for me.  I had forgotten how large they loomed in my life.  I found this demo video:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sX7NmO-k3Jk

By the way, the picture is one I got off the internet.  I don’t even remember the cassette being inside a box.

 

[David Herrick]

This was my first experience with the phrase “Roll Over, Beethoven”:

Does anyone else remember these things from the 70’s?  They were short soundless film loops, usually taken from TV shows, that were encased in a red plastic cartridge which was inserted into a manually powered viewer/projector (as shown in the bottom photos).

Because they were hand-cranked, you could watch them fast or slow, forwards or backwards, frame by frame, etc.  They taught me how drawings and still images are brought to life.

The only downside was that the light bulb for the projector was extremely low wattage, so you could only see them if you watched in the closet.

 

[David Herrick]

The guy in the green shirt is Gary Crosby (Bing’s son).

 

[David Herrick]

Joe, have you ever seen this?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NgZiPO9V_aQ