The Beatles Have Left the Building--Will All of Their Fans Please Head Towards the Exits?

With only two of The Fab Four barely standing, pondering the legacy of their artistic impact becomes less and less interesting with each passing day. All that's left to ponder are the reactions of all the other bands when faced with such a pervasive cultural icon.

In the case of the Ace Records comp Beatlemaniacs, you get to hear abundant examples of supreme nobodies attempting to touch the hemlines of Somebodies. Sonny Curtis spells it out deliberately: A Beatle I Want to Be. Others, such as The Fondettes cooing The Beatles Are In Town are much more keen to gaze from afar, enraptured over the fabulousness of the subject at hand (although one wonders why sisters this soulful would be hot under the collar over these honky Brits).

I, however, much prefer the Third Reich and Roll-ness of The Better Beatles, yippee pranksters from out Omaha way who committed a hilarious fuck you to their lesser namesake on a one-off 7-inch single back in 1980. Thankfully, their entire slapped-together oeuvre (along with a heaping of outtakes) is now being offered digitally. Their bizarro version of Eleanor Rigby rips the pathos out of McCartney's hack dime-store-novel setting and recasts it as a hobbled sea chantey. Lady Madonna becomes a nonsensical New Wave stomp, while Penny Lane emerges as some sort of bastard child born betwixt A Flock of Seagulls and Flipper.

Why, you might ask, should I care so much about musicians creating music as a reaction to other musician's music? Because, I reply, emotional scars on blatant display: someone has named their band after me and it's made me feel empathy for what John, Paul, George and Ringo must have felt upon hearing the imitators posted above.

By the way, I'm going to be in LA for the next few days. If anyone knows whether or not Amoeba Records has guard dogs on duty during closing hours, call my beeper. I plan on figuring out a way to spend the night there somehow...

Beatle-Dee, Beatle-Doo

Now that the latest album from Sir Paul McCartney, Memory Almost Full is hitting the stores, it's time to revisit the ongoing Beatles Solo Album Invitational to gauge which former Beatle--dead or alive--has produced the most amount of dreadful solo albums during the last 37 years since Yoko Ono viciously broke them up. By looking at the chart, we see that Paul McCartney is still leading the pack, despite the estate of John Lennon continuing to reissue every flatulence his body ever emitted. In order for Ringo Starr to even begin catching up to these two, he'd have to begin releasing--right now!--a completed new album every six months. This would entail working with a songwriter in tandem, one more prolific than he, but sadly, Elvis Costello has already been burned by his previous musical association with McCartney ("Veronica", anyone?). Robert Pollard would be a promising alternative, and--providing he can stay sober--it would be an amusing juxtaposition to hear Pollard's fake British accent singing alongside Starr's fake American one. Meanwhile, the paltry sum of albums generated by George Harrison make him "the quiet Beatle" in more ways than one! His lackadaisical production schedule can be blamed on his Zen/Hindu/Buddhist/pothead approach to life, resulting in a why-bother-to-make-another-worthless-album-
when-I'm-only-going-to-die-and-come-back-as-a-hamster? attitude, though the actual responsibility must be placed upon his ex-wife and children who (unlike The Dragon Lady Ono) appear to have no interest in milking his legacy at all, turning their noses up at the very thought of mining the vaults for valuable excerpts of third-rate demos recorded during his brief but torrid love affair with Jeff Lynne. Instead of organizing benefits for Madonna (i.e., Shanghai Surprise), he should have been endlessly recording his every waking days in an heroic attempt to overcome what now appears to be a sure-fire victory for his arch enemy Paul McCartney.

A Day In The Life Of The Fool On The (MacWorld Conference & Expo) Hill

Future jailbird Steve Jobs has every citizen of the world at his denim-clad knees during this week's MacWorld Conference & Expo (well, at least those citizens of the world rich enough to afford a $500 phone), and when he's ready to coax a powerful tune from his latest technological innovation, he chooses...Lovely Rita, Meter Maid by The Beatles??? Wouldn't it have made more sense to choose Revolution? Hell, Tomorrow Never Knows would have carried more symbolic weight! By my estimates, over eleventy-billion-zillion songs have been written since recorded tape was invented and this is the one track you choose to play? At least you could have had fun with your musically-clueless image and picked something (anything!) more ear-grabbing off Flabby Road and Flabby Road II. Steve, if you want someone to provide better song recommendations for any future gadget unveilings, just give me a call. You know my name (look up the number.)