Welcome to February, all!
This reaches you as the weekend Beatles celebration in Kinsale has come to a close. It featured some of the usual suspects as well as some less expected talents. As this is the inaugural year, it would be great if anyone who attended wanted to give us a report (and the perfect place for this exists - see last week’s newsletter). Looks like it was a lot of fun and I have some friends that participated, so hopefully we’ll see it happen again in a year.
NEWS
In the meantime, this year’s Magical Mystery Camp was made official this past week and yes, I will be in attendance. You can read about the guest roster here. It comes during the week of Paul’s 84th birthday in June - hope to see you there!
So this was the week that photos of the cast in full Beatle drag were made public from the Sam Mendes films in progress. It’s safe to say that half the Beatles fan base online - maybe more than half - true to form, lost their minds. Still apparently clinging to the notion that what the director is staging is a lookalike contest, the commentary flew fast and furious, the majority of it negative. But looking a little deeper, the photos seemed to confirm something that had been my hope: rather than what some people had expected - four parallel biopics covering The Beatles’ story from start to finish and each with a Rashomon-like perspective of the same events, they instead will depict a separate era for each, focusing on smaller stories that together will reveal a narrative throughline. If so, it looks to be a wise approach for so complex and nuanced a story. (As you can see from the photos, they appear in chronological order to be Paul - Ringo - John - George.)
FOND FAREWELLS
I suppose we’ve been lucky to get one month into the year without weekly death notices to mention here but they were sure to come eventually. This past week, we mourn the loss of the beloved star of SCTV and films like Home Alone and TV’s Schitt’s Creek, Catherine O’Hara. Though there aren’t any obvious Beatles connections (although yes, she did star in Beetlejuice), it’s hard to let her unexpected passing go without acknowledgement.
Sometimes a connection does exist but it’s really obscure. Sly Dunbar, one half of the renowned “Sly & Robbie” rhythm section comprised of Dunbar on drums and Robbie Shakespeare on bass, has passed away at 73. The Jamaican duo were renowned throughout the 70s and beyond for the magic they contributed to artists ranging from Peter Tosh and Grace Jones to Bob Dylan and the Rolling Stones. (Here’s a terrific overview.) You might well ask, was there any connection to Fab world? Turns out there was…
Remember Memory Almost Full, released in 2007? Do you remember the concluding track, “Nod Your Head,” issued as a free download single from the collection? Okay, so on the album track, Paul played all the instruments, but: there was such thing as the “Dancehall Remixes” issued as a promotional item. On it were Sly & Robbie, with Sly getting a production credit, for the assortment of remixes of the track (which in its original form ran for under two minutes); here’s one. Rock steady, Sly!
I would be remiss not to mention the passing of “Uncle Floyd” Vivino, a TV institution of the tri-state area for decades. He was ostensibly modeled after one of those characters that sprang up in the early years of TV meant to entertain children after school, but Uncle Floyd’s act was aimed as much at adults who might be watching as to the kids, a sort of satire on children’s TV entertainment that worked on multiple levels. His hipness cred was for real as he featured many an up-and-coming rock act (as well as more than a few established). Besides the dozens you never would’ve heard of, Uncle Floyd featured Blondie, The Ramones, Rockpile, Oingo Boingo, The B-52s, Joe Jackson, NRBQ, Squeeze, The Nerves, and our beloved Smithereens. (You might well ask: where can we see these clips, since the show was notoriously tightfisted about sharing them on YouTube. The answer is: let’s see if anything changes now.)
The Smithereens with Uncle Floyd, 1980. (Did John see this broadcast?)
Among the high-profile fans of the show were New Yorker John Lennon (who in turn turned Bowie onto it). Perhaps 1981 would’ve featured a John and Yoko appearance. Floyd was the older brother of guitarists Jimmy Vivino (of The Fab Faux, among other things) and Jerry Vivino (also part of the Conan house band). You can sample the Uncle Floyd experience as John would have here.
SATB
The SATB Discord is up and running and for anyone who might’ve had any issues getting connected, thanks for your patience with the process (I am learning too) and thanks to Michael Claxton for all his help in making it real and functional. This community will be as robust as there are contributors and members, so please - I am giving you leave to invite in anyone you think would be interested in joining an online community where intelligent Beatles exploring, research and conversation goes on. Any talented Beatles creators, podcasters, researchers, authors etc. are welcome, and everyone will be given free reign to do their thing there within reason. I haven’t yet issued a public invite, but it does look like it is slowly but surely becoming populated, so keep it coming.
Thanks to those who reached out last week regarding my mention of the Museum of Modern Art in Chicago being less than responsive to my request for an interview subject regarding the Yoko exhibit. Some names were supplied and follow up is happening, so I appreciate those who chimed in.
Also, a couple of newsletters back I mentioned the shutdown under threat of some Beatles research sites that went dark, on the basis that powers that be decided that the use of copyrighted images was an infringement (despite the existence of things like fair use and editorial use for educational purposes, etc). I am wondering if anyone reading this is, or knows of, anyone with a solid grasp of intellectual property law that can speak to the possible issues involving podcasters, just as a forewarned is forearmed measure. No one has threatened SATB directly just yet, but I would want to have some kind of solid and legitimate and precedented legal defense theory in hand should they come a knockin’ one day, instead of having to scramble and wonder, “what now?” If anybody knows someone who does, or has direct experience, I would appreciate your input in advance of any contingencies. Thank you!
RE the Illustrated Record show - we got our quota and it’s huge (thanks to Andrew for a last minute influx). Unless you received the email sent this past week following up on your expressed interest, we are good to go and will set about organizing tapings soon…
HISTORY
February 2: On this day in 1962, The Beatles played their first “professionally arranged” gig outside of Liverpool.
Though they’d played Hamburg of course, and Scotland on the 1960 Johnny Gentle tour, this was their first time outside of Liverpool proper, in Manchester. On this Friday evening and just days before the earliest known footage (silent) captured them onstage, the manager of The Oasis Club, Tony Stuart, brought them here.
For our purposes, the significance of this gig is the documented setlist (posted here). Very cover heavy, but also featuring echoes of the Decca audition taped one month earlier: the EXACT same three originals (here’s one), plus four songs that would eventually be recorded for EMI, as well as a good number of covers that would eventually be documented via the BBC. Only three listed here - “What A Crazy World We Live In” - “Dance/“Twist in the Streets” - “Dream” - were never documented at all (as far as we know).
That last one was a Johnny Mercer song dating back to the 1940s, originally recorded by The Pied Pipers, but more recently covered by Johnny Preston in 1960. (Musicologists who studied the fretting and read lips concluded that “Dream” was one of the songs caught on the so-called “Floral Hall” video of February 1962.) The set list is recreated as a playlist here.
The OTHER significance of this day is the probability of it being the day that Tex O’Hara presented the group’s first official bass drum logo to them. O’Hara was a Liverpudlian who was friendly with The Beatles; he also had worked as a commercial artist. Paul had conceived a logo idea, playing upon the potential resemblance of the letter B to the body of a beetle, and sketched out some ideas (later published in Mike McCartney’s Family Album book). O’Hara used Paul’s concept to fully sketch out the design, which was only used by the group until April, when Eddie Stokes conceived and executed the famous drop “T” design, used on his first Ludwig kit.
These early designs were featured in a UK Antiques Roadshow episode.
SEEDERMAN!
A new month means another installment, in this case the penultimate volume. Volume 11 covers the period May 2003 through July 2009. This encompasses Brainwashed, Concert For George, Let It Be…Naked, Ringo’s Soundstage, Chaos and Creation in the Backyard, Liverpool 8, Cirque du Soleil Love, and Good Evening NYC, among other things. There is only one more installment after this one, so see you in March! The episode guide is here and the video is here.
All best,
RR
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