{"id":171,"date":"2007-01-25T23:43:23","date_gmt":"2007-01-26T04:43:23","guid":{"rendered":""},"modified":"2008-12-24T17:37:20","modified_gmt":"2008-12-24T17:37:20","slug":"love-the-conversation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/love-the-conversation\/","title":{"rendered":"The Beatles Conversation, With Love"},"content":{"rendered":"<iframe class='youtube-player youtuber' type='text\/html' width='425' height='355' src='http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/noyuG6MAqbA?rel=0&amp;fs=1&amp;ap=%252526fmt%253D18' webkitAllowFullScreen mozallowfullscreen allowFullScreen frameborder='0'><\/iframe><p>By now the godforsaken term <em>mash-up<\/em> has probably lost its currency, but <strong>The Beatles&#8217; <em>Love<\/em><\/strong> album recently was foisted on me by a well-intentioned friend. I&#8217;ve been trying to &#8220;enjoy it for what it is,&#8221; as my friend encouraged me to do, but it&#8217;s bumming me out.<\/p>\n<p>The album opens with the unaccompanied backing vocals to &#8220;Because&#8221;, as if <strong>George and Giles Martin<\/strong> felt the need to show the world that the lads could harmonize as well as <strong>The Beach Boys<\/strong>. <em>Snooze<\/em>. The most interesting thing about this &#8220;mash-up,&#8221; I soon discovered, is that you can hear birds tweeting in the background. Suddenly I felt like <strong>Gene Hackman<\/strong> in <strong><em>The Conversation<\/em><\/strong>.<br \/>\n<!--more--><br \/>\nRingo&#8217;s big solo from <strong><em>Abbey Road<\/em><\/strong> kicks off a remastered, remixed bit of &#8220;Get Back&#8221;, in which I find myself paying more attention to the added space around the vocals than anything else. During the guitar solo, the buildup from &#8220;A Day in the Life&#8221; gets mixed in, as if The Beatles never did experiments in sound in their own records.<\/p>\n<p>The backing track of &#8220;Eleanor Rigby&#8221; is, like the a capella backing vocals on &#8220;Because&#8221;, the sort of move lesser artists do on box sets and bonus tracks to earn what little added credibility they may by highlighting one specific thing they do especially well. <em>Snooze<\/em>. Wasn&#8217;t the greatness of The Beatles the band&#8217;s ability to synthesize and balance their diverse influences and impulses? To this day, their real records don&#8217;t need an <a href=\"http:\/\/www.apple.com\/ilife\/garageband\/\" target=\"_blank\">Apple Garageband<\/a> &#8220;mash-up&#8221; to sound out of this world.<\/p>\n<p>Throughout this &#8220;mash-up&#8221; album, the gimmickry typically bookends the remastered versions of songs. With all the build up I expected something at least slightly mind-blowing, like <strong>The Residents&#8217; <em>Third Reich and Roll<\/em><\/strong>, but I guess you don&#8217;t put a wine-sipping old gentleman and his son on a project that&#8217;s intended to blow minds.<\/p>\n<p>In <em>The Conversation<\/em>, Hackman&#8217;s character is a lonely guy in search of himself as much as any answers to his stumbled-upon investigation. The &#8220;mash-up&#8221; of &#8220;I Wanna Hold Your Hand&#8221; with crowd noises from the Hollywood Bowl concert, or some such frenzied scene, is especially pathetic. <strong>It&#8217;s the album&#8217;s solitary man with tumbler of scotch in the plaid comfy chair beside the brass reading lamp moment.<\/strong><br \/><iframe class='youtube-player youtuber' type='text\/html' width='425' height='355' src='http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/L85EKHDRr20?rel=0&amp;fs=1&amp;ap=%252526fmt%253D18' webkitAllowFullScreen mozallowfullscreen allowFullScreen frameborder='0'><\/iframe><br \/>\nAfter that it&#8217;s a medley of &#8220;Drive My Car&#8221;, &#8220;Taxman&#8221;, &#8220;What You&#8217;re Doing&#8221;, and probably a half dozen other songs that, taken together, make me embarrassed to have grown up such a Beatlemaniac.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>By now the godforsaken term mash-up has probably lost its currency, but The Beatles&#8217; Love album recently was foisted on me by a well-intentioned friend. I&#8217;ve been trying to &#8220;enjoy it for what it is,&#8221; as my friend encouraged me to do, but it&#8217;s bumming me out. The album opens with the unaccompanied backing vocals <a href='https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/love-the-conversation\/' class='excerpt-more'>[&#8230;]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[342],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/171"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=171"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/171\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=171"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=171"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=171"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}