Sgt Pepper's Alternate Expanded Radio London Club Band

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Sgt Pepper’s Alternate Expanded Radio London Club Band

1. Alternate: the first two tracks recorded during the Sgt Pepper’s sessions were Strawberry Fields Forever and Penny Lane but they were selected as a double-A side single and therefore, following EMI’s principle of not including singles on Beatles albums, never made it onto the album. George Martin apparently said, “I wonder what the album would have been if those two corkers had been included”, so I had the idea to include them. That, naturally, raised the question of what to replace. The obvious choice for me was Paul’s ‘granny song’, When I'm Sixty-Four  which wasn’t written for Pepper (he’d been playing it since the Cavern days) and George’s misfit song, Within You Without You  (which is clearly not a rock song).

2. Expanded: since Beatles albums usually have at least one Harrison song, I felt I should  include the song George actually intended for Pepper, (It's Only) A Northern Song which was recorded at that time but vetoed by Martin as ‘not up to standard’. It sounds great on this recreation, in its original place rather than just on the cartoon soundtrack.

3. Radio London: in 1967, the ‘pirate’ radio station radio London ( 'Big L') had 16 million listeners and was given an exclusive 8-day preview window of Sgt Pepper’s. When later that year the British government brought in legislation to end the pirates, Big L was closed down at 3pm on 14th August 1967. The last song the station played was Pepper’s A Day In The Life. That historical moment is recreated here by adding London's original broadcast ending, where it displaces Pepper's original 'nonsense loop'.
This recreation was made using the mono versions (The Beatles' first true stereo album was Abbey Road).

Tracklisting:

1. Sgt Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band

2. With A Little Help From My Friends

3. Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds

4. Getting Better

5. Fixing A Hole

6. She's Leaving Home

7. Being For The Benefit Of Mr. Kite!

8. Strawberry Fields Forever

9. (It's Only) A Northern Song

10. Penny Lane

11. Lovely Rita

12. Good Morning Good Morning

13. Sgt Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band (Reprise)

14. A Day In The Life

15. 14^th August 1967 (Big L Closedown)

Consider this mix as a fan’s tribute.

The Perfect Abbey Road

The Perfect Abbey Road

 

 

ONE THING THAT Steve Jobs understood that music industry executives didn't is that we love our music. In initiating digital downloads from iTunes he allowed us to create and burn our own playlists and our own versions of classic albums.

This is something I've been doing myself for many years. You see, on almost every album there are either a few fillers -- songs included to pad out the album -- or just songs that we personally don't like. Then there are also the songs not included but we wish they had been. On the Beatles' Sergeant Pepper's, for example, there is the one I don't like, Paul's 'When I'm Sixty-Four' (what John Lennon caustically referred to as 'one of Paul's granny songs') and the one I like but think doesn't belong there, George's 'Within You, Without You'. On the other hand, there are the two songs that even George Martin wishes had been included but weren't: 'Strawberry Fields Forever' and 'Penny Lane'. Whenever I listen to the album these days, those two left-offs replace the two I don't want there.

I have done this kind of thing with many albums: Eagles' Hotel California and The Long Run, Bowie's Heroes/Helden, The Who's Sell Out, and so on.

Likewise, I have my own classic Abbey Road: I've replaced the Paul granny song that the other Beatles hated, 'Maxwell's Silver Hammer' (Lennon even refused to play on it), with the raw-but-powerful version of John's "Don't Let Me Down" that was released on "Let It Be (Naked)". The rest of the album remains unchanged. It is, for me in this personalised version, not only the perfect Abbey Road, but also the perfect rock album.

c Kenneth Rowley 2015

Abbey Road review

Abbey Road as 'replayed and reconstructed' by Sand, Water & Wind. A review by Swazifiction.

If you're a purist you need not apply. Indeed, if you're a Beatles fan -- and especially if you're a fan of the original Abbey Road -- listening to this CD could make you cry. If, on the other hand, you're sitting at your favourite table in your favourite seaside café, sipping a cocktail whilst gazing at the sun sinking down across the surface of the sea, then this might be an album for you. This is the Beatles not so much 'reconstructed' as deconstructed into jazz lounge, a literal café del mar package. It's not very engaging anywhere, which is good because it's not very good anywhere (at times it's actually bad) but the tunes are familiar enough to be hummable. Gone is Lennon's angstful wail for existential release on I Want You, gone is McCartney's alcoholically raw voice on Oh Darling, the harmonies, the hooks, the guitars, the inventive drumming, the rock... everything that made the Beatles such a great group and this such a great album, in fact. But, as I said, if you're in that café, this release works in its own limited way. Mine will be a dacquiri with a slice of lime please. No ice.

The future of pop music

'Amo Noite e Dia' by Oba Oba Samba House

The other day I was thinking of three album titles that are likely not to appear on iTunes anytime soon: 'Chris Brown sings Rihanna', 'Jay-Z: the Reggae Album', and 'Niki Minaj: Worship Live at the Pentecostal Worship Center, Los Angeles', and wondering why this is so. Music is so niche-nuanced these days; mention the name of an artist and you already know what you're getting.

It wasn't always this way. There was a time when pop music was genuinely popular; that is, you didn't have 'hip-hop' charts, 'urban', 'smooth jazz', 'country', 'electro', 'kwaito', and a zillion other categories. No, there was a time when 'pop' embraced everything. The Beatles, for example, wrote reggae songs, Ray Charles sang country; and Aretha sang gospel and latin as well as soul. And everyone heard it all. In those bygone days, listening to the radio meant the whole family was catered for -- the kids, the teens, the mums-and-dads and even the grannies could expect to hear their current favourite songs being played by familiar corny-joke DJs.

But not, it seems, any more. What brought about this narrowing of focus, this fragmentation of music into many parts? Well, of course there are a lot more people in the world now -- seven billion or so, and they all like what they like; and there's a heck of a lot more music too. But I suspect the biggest instigator of the change is technology. When radio was the big thing, the unifying force that it was, it was partly because there wasn't anything else. If you wanted portable music, music on the go, it had to be from a transistor radio. There were no Walkmans, iPods, iPads or even beatboxes. Now it appears that half the world walks around with wires sprouting from their ears. I even saw a hoodie advertised recently that comes with earphones built-in -- 'fully washable', according to the blurb.

Yet I've seen, I think, a glimmer of change, and that's why I think bands like Oba Oba Samba House are the future of pop. 'Amo Noite e Dia' begins with that ubiquitous 4/4 House thump, but a short way through suddenly becomes a samba song. The words are in Portuguese (the title means 'I love [you] night and day'), but the band (they're from Brazil) sing convincingly in English too (check out their reworking of Kings of Leon's Use Somebody). I like the way they're bilingual and eclectic -- Portuguese bleeds into English and Rock sits side-by-side with House, Samba, and boy-band vocals. Oh, and perhaps most embracingly of all, they also manage to include the tradiditional Brazilian tiny guitar (cavaquinho) in their instrumentation and sound. Their albums bang like a mixtape, and I love it. Everything is back in the mix again. They are, to me, a miniature musical representation of the sprawling Internet, the way everything is available, all jumbled up, all up for grabs. And, as they should be, they're fun. Their sound should be chaotic, anarchic, but it's not; what they do shouldn't work, but it does; somehow what should be an unmanageable collision of languages and styles finds a sense of order. They are truly a band for the Internet age. So, welcome to updated radio. Oba Oba Samba House are the sound of our future.

Chems Play Beatles

Listening for the umpteenth time to the Chemical Brothers' magnificent return to form, 2010's Forward, it finally clicked where all the trippiness was coming from -- not so much from allusions to Private Psychedelic Reel, but the Beatles' work circa 1967. Specifically, sections of Forward are reminiscent of the Fab's Strawberry Fields-Sgt Pepper-Baby, you're a rich man-Magical Mystery Tour period. This is apparent from as early as Forward's track 2, Escape Velocity: in this song there's even an upward-scaling chord crescendo that sounds so like A day in the life that at one point I began thinking of Radio London's Final Hour broadcast (A day in the life was the last track played by that pirate station).

But it's not just that crescendo. It's the figuration, the sounds themselves, the swirling effects, and the abrupt shifts in the musical textures the Chems have fashioned here. This album, not those of  E.L.O, is the culmination of I am the Walrus's and Blue Jay Way's legacy. The Beatles, of course, made trippiness a mass phenomenon, so evoking that period makes a lot of sense. On track 4, Dissolve, the trippy elements are there at the beginning, but then there's the refrain, Caroline, Caroline. At first I assumed it was a reference to a girl. But now I'm not so sure. Maybe it's a reference (even if unconscious) to the other big pirate station of 1967, Radio Caroline?

Form Determines Content: LP to CD

It's almost become a truism to say that form determines content; that is, any message is altered by the form used to express it. As a Literature teacher I use this phrase regularly. Here today I'm reflecting again on the change from LP to CD and how that has impacted the artwork (by this I mean the total package, sound and liner notes and image) involved.

My selected example is the Beatles' Abbey Road album. I've been listening to the remastered version recently and thinking about the overwhelming shock of silence that comes at the end of the LP's side one. Let me take you back: the last track of side one as originally envisioned and issued was Lennon's I Want You, seven-and-a-half minutes of desire and its aftermath. The band gets into a lazy, compulsive, hypnotic riff that feels like it could go on forever. Apparently-- I remember reading at the time-- The Beatles weren't sure how best to end the track so they simply cut the tape (btw, I later discovered that the South African cassette edition had a fade-out instead: which was a horrible perversion of the original). Well, that sudden silence always came as a shock, and with the original vinyl that shock lingered and bled into a moment or longer of pondering it and indeed some thinking about the whole of side one. You see, the music quite literally stopped at that point. If you wanted to hear some more you had to get up, walk over to the record player, and turn the album over.

In literature terms, the silence was followed by white space-- the space between stanzas or the space of a chapter break. I Want You was intended to be followed by silence.

But this is not so any longer: I Want You is now followed after a very short pause by Here Comes The Sun and the brilliant segueing drama of the album's original side two.

As useful and convenient as this might be, it obviously does damage to the original artwork. It is like repainting a canvas of Renoir's or reshaping a hand of Michaelangelo's David.

Nowadays Abbey Road can be played in the background, on continuous replay, as an aural wallpaper.

This, for sure, is a pity.

On the other hand, of course, Abbey Road becomes almost a new work. That could be a good thing.

In any event, form determines content.

Furthermore, and more obviously, the imagery of the cover doesn't carry the same weight and impact as with the original LP. Abbey Road's cover is now iconic; but the CD age has diminished the power of the packaging. When The Byrds first flew to rarified heights of influence and glory, their leader, Roger McGuinn, said that LPs were 'electronic magazines'. It was a useful way to think of them then. The newer CDs are obviously of a different kind: more pamphlets than magazines.

The Buttons Of Your Mind

You’re not mine any more
as we take our last walk together
along the midnight shore
before we say goodbye forever.

Shall I call you love, use your name?
Shall I wear my sadness face or look the same?
I am careful to avoid the touch of your hand.
I must not be drawn into the bedroom of your eyes.

You could say you’d see me soon.
But you’re as silent as the moon.
You could say Let’s talk together,
but you think of other men.
I wonder if I ever knew
the more elusive inner you,
for the buttons of your mind
were difficult to find
and my fingers far too clumsy.

[Roger McGough? 1968?]

This was, I think, the b-side of The Scaffold's 1968 hit, "Lily the Pink" & is suitably dada for the time. 1968 was also the year of the Bonzos' "I'm the Urban Spaceman/ In the Canyons of your Mind" & the Beatles' "Happiness is a Warm Gun... Number 9". Also 1968 was the publication of Adrian Henri's "Tonight At Noon" poetry volume, which included a discussion on dada/surrealism & examples of 'poems without words'.