Whaddup with this? Did I miss this? Was this discussed around here already?
According to the YouTube poster;
This is a rare John Lennon song written during the Beatles famed 1968 trip to India accompanied by some great shots of the Fab. It’s about coming to India and trying to follow his heart, but knowing that his heart was really back in England where his love waited. It is speculated that Lennon didn’t release it at the time because it would have made public his feelings for Yoko while he was still with Cynthia Lennon.
Some other dude says;
it was recorded 11-12 years after the White Album was released
I heard a song this morning about fools that is my favorite song by the artist performing it. Then it occurred to me that my favorite song by another artists concerns fools. There may be a lot of songs about fools, which I find amusing because unless we’re Mr. T, do we call anyone a “fool” that often?
I pity the fool that runs out of songs about fools. Go!
I was out at the once lively and exciting — now sad and slightly weird — XTC fan site, chalkhills.org, where I found a reference to the ongoing XTC-like work of a guy named Robert Wegmann. Being in possession of a fairly open mind, I headed out to the Internet to see what I could see.
What I saw made me feel deeply conflicted. Here’s what I saw:
And here’s how it made me feel:
I am now officially a middle-aged man. Though I never really strove for any kind of significant success in the field of music, I did keep trying, for the fun of it — and I still write music, of a style not totally dissimilar to Mr. Wegmann’s. My music is better than some, and worse than others — like Mr. Wegmann’s. I sort of feel like I could be Robert Wegmann. I feel for the guy. Hell, I may even feel like the guy.
But I’m not Robert Wegmann, and that, believe me, is a choice I have made very deliberately. I think I am too old for a bowl hair-do. I am too old to mug and wink in a “music video.” I am too old to play rock star on camera — especially while playing a kind of prock that was never really in fashion, not even 30 years ago. And I am too old, for crying out loud, to be pretending to play a Chapman stick. I am too old for this, and so is Robert Wegmann. He and I should just stop.
Guys, I’ll stand up here and you all try to melt into the shadows, ok?
Mod’s recent foray into the orange singles box of his youth and the inclusion of CCR’s superb “Commotion,” along with my recent viewing of CCR live at the Royal Albert Hall in April 1970, got me to thinking about Creedence. I never owned any Creedence singles and until my 30s, probably, never owned any Creedence albums other than an old tape I made of Creedence Gold way back. But just from listening to FM radio growing up, I knew a ton of Creedence recordings. Based on my occasional visits to classic rock radio in more recent times, Creedence is still in very heavy, one might say excessive, rotation, though a more limited selection of songs than in the olden days, I think. I suspect that to many younger listeners Creedence is overly familiar, beaten to death, worn out.
But, jeez, what a crazy burst of creativity their records are. Setting aside the pre-CCR Golliwog recordings, they hit the ground running with their first lp in July 1968, and over the next 2 1/2 years out pour five–five!–albums, ranging from very good to absolute killer: Bayou Country (1/69), Green River (8/69), Willy & the Poor Boys (11/69), Cosmo’s Factory (7/70), and Pendulum (12/70). (Clearly, sleep was not a priority in 1969.) Then, the afterthought of Mardi Gras (4/72). They place 14 songs in the Top 40 during that same 1968-1972 period (including the b-side “Commotion”).
John Fogerty’s post-Creedence records have never much interested me. The first record definitely has its moments and I think Mardi Gras does as well though I don’t know when I last listened to it. So, really, I think when we talk about CCR we are looking at the crazy-prolific 2-year span of 1969-1970. For my money, Green River and Cosmo’s Factory are the best of the lot. I never get tired of all 7 minutes plus of “Ramble Tamble.”
But the thing is, I know next to nothing about Creedence.
My 6-year-old son asked me the other day, Why you do always call me “little friend?”
Well — here’s the answer, my little friend.
Another one that I share with my brothers is the phrase “New Kid in Town” — if you don’t want to hear about something — there’s “a new kid in town.” As in “I don’t wanna hear it…”
What lyrics do you throw out there on a regular basis in various situations?
Traveling through time and space…the orange singles box!
I don’t know about you, but as righteous a practice as I know it is, I’ve never been obsessive about flipping a 45 over and checking out the B-side. Part of it may be my Darwinian leanings. Why should I get too worked up about “sloppy seconds?” Part of it may be because I like to act cool and later be surprised. Eventually I will get around to checking out the B-side, even it it takes me 40-some years, as was the case this past week.
While completing the digital transfer of the plastic orange singles box I’ve dragged through time and space, I decided to burn a lot of the B-sides as well as the better-loved sides. In some cases, I aborted the burn in mid-song. The B-side to “The Hustle,” for instance, was the lowest form of disco-era clock punching ever put to tape. “The A-side is going to buy us some swimming pools,” I imagined Van McCoy saying to his session players, “the B-side can skim for bugs and leaves!” I forget the name of the B-side. It was so bad it wasn’t even funny.
There are singles I’ve bought by favorite artists in their prime that I couldn’t wait to flip over: Elvis Costello & the Attractions‘ singles from my teenage years, for instance, always delivered the goods. The flipside of Dave Edmunds‘ version of “Girls Talk,” the Graham Parker-penned “Creature From the Black Lagoon,” is another one I couldn’t wait to hear—for good reason, as it turned out.
Then there are singles I’ve bought specifically for the hit song on the A-side, often by a 1-hit wonder or an artist whose deep cutz I have learned to put no stock in. Take Elton John. Long ago I realized that anything that’s not worthy of appearing on his Greatest Hits albums has not been worth my time. I’ve bought a couple of full Elton John albums over the years, and the album cuts never stick with me. The last thing I need to do is check out the B-side to “Someone Saved My My Life Tonight,” which come to think of it must have slipped from my orange singles box into another space in the cabinet in which I’ve loaded 45s, cassettes, DAT tapes, and other oddities.
What I’ve learned while burning singles over the past couple of weeks is that it is wise to B-ware the B-side. In some cases, I discovered or was reminded of a relative gem. In others, I thanked my lucky stars that I escaped childhood relatively untraumatized from ever having heard the lesser side.
Stick around and learn which guest was “really tuned into Frank.” We love the surprises that arise from a typical Mike Douglas interview. Moments like these are what warm us up to Frank Zappa. We can’t help but cut him a break.
The All-Star Jam is the place to do whatever it is that you don’t know you’re gonna do.
