While reading through the huge backlog of weblog posts in my aggregator I came across the 80-odd entries I’d left unread in Wil Wheaton’s weblog. (For those following along at home, that’s all the way back to October 2004 and part one of Viva Las Vegas.) Wil likes to use lyrics as post titles, and the eponymous song of December’s first post jumped right into my head when I read it: fixing a hole. Even though that’s three hours ago now, the song’s still fresh in my brain, and I don’t mind a bit.
It will hardly be unexpected to learn that I’m a Beatles fan. Strangely, though, I don’t own a single one of their records, which also explains the dearth of Fab Four in my MP3/Vorbis collection. (I still can’t decide if the resulting lack of Apple Records content on my Apple iPod is ironic or not.) What I do have, though, is a lot of covers of and homages to their songs, including George Martin’s celebritized In My Life, Eric Idle’s great mockumentary The Rutles (in: All You Need Is Cash) (and its inferior sequel The Rutles 2: Can’t Buy Me Lunch) and Peter Sellers’ readings of A Hard Day’s Night, Can’t Buy Me Love, Help! and all four versions of She Loves You, to say nothing of the references in songs like Lenni Jabour’s Closet. This winter I also had the pleasure of seeing a note for note, cut for cut
version of Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band in Windsor, which had the added bonus of featuring one Alex McMaster playing cello. A Day in the Life live? Wild.
Which all leads to Tim Bray’s recent disturbing sentiment:
Which Sixties band is more important: the Beatles, Cream, or Black Sabbath? The answer: Black Sabbath. Go anywhere and visit the rock & roll bars or scan the FM dial, and you’ll hear a lot of music that sounds like Sabbath. There’s nobody working these days that sounds much like Cream or the Beatles.
It’s sad but true, and it’s why I try to seek out and support great, unique musicians: Lenni, Allison, Brenda, Bruce Cockburn, David Byrne, Dayna, Emm (who, ironically, has covered Crazy Train), John, everyone else mentioned here, and all the others who don’t get the exposure and attention they deserve.
