They indeed really were a fine group. Go listen to half a dozen cuts you don’t remember.
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251: The Maysles Brothers, “The Beatles: The First U.S. Visit”
“We got a call one day from Granada television in England. They said The Beatles were arriving in two hours in New York at Idlewild Airport. Would we like to make a film of them? I put my hand over the phone and asked my brother ‘Who are The Beatles? Are they any good?'”
Continue reading...254: Vince Guaraldi/We Five, ‘Cast Your Fate to the Wind’
Life can be quirky.
So you might as well cast your fate to the wind.
And don’t sit under ledges where pigeons are roosting.
078: Paul Simon, ‘The Late, Great Johnny Ace’
John Lennon was murdered 40 years ago today. Paul Simon wrote a song around that event. Even today, my mind gets teary when it lights on John Lennon’s death. He appears in Paul Simon’s song only obliquely, because the song isn’t about John Lennon, and it’s not about Johnny Ace. It’s about Paul Simon, and about you, and about me.
Continue reading...252: The Beatles, ‘Strawberry Fields Forever’
‘Strawberry Fields’ was born of Lennon’s genius. But it was engendered by the miraculous, unique, liberating status of The Beatles.
Continue reading...246: Tom Waits, ‘Kentucky Avenue’
The things you wonder about at 12. Airborne by wonder, lifted on the wings of imagination, from Lima or from Whittier, all the way to places we couldn’t yet even dream of.
Continue reading...293: Sam Robson, ‘Warmth of The Sun’ (Beach Boys A Cappella)
55 years ago I dreamed a dream. Last week the tapes arrived.
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