Idols as tangible as knockers

"Idols as tangible as the knockers on their front doors." That's what the narrator says about Beat Groups, honest.



This is a lovely color Pathé News clip of Liverpool from 1965. The narrator talks about the change from "traditional" Liverpool songs (sea shanties, Maggie May and so on) to Merseybeat.  It's a little dishonest as of course The Spinners (the UK folk group, not the American R&B group) were formed in 1958 and were part of the Great Folk Scare, rather than a bunch of Liverpudlian elders doggedly carrying on an ancient tradition. However, although they weren't actually a vestige of genuine people's music, folk was certainly ubiquitous enough at the time. I know, I had to live through it.

However, the newsreel is quite authentic in its portrayal of the mighty wind that blew away the folkie cobwebs as soon as the Beatles appeared on the scene.  You could compare it to one of those movies that starts in black and white and suddenly changes to color when Modernity In All Its Youthful Glory hits the screen. There's a palpable sense of something in the air as soon as the Beatles footage arrives.  It's worth sitting through five agonizing minutes of Johnny Todd He Took A Notion and Maggie May just to feel the skull-peeling effect of the great leap forward as the Spinners fade out and the Beat Groups fade in.

Speaking of whom, there's quite a lot of high quality footage of The Searchers in the studio recording Sugar and Spice a couple of years earlier. The studio arrangement looks very primitive, but when you see the engineer capture the performance on reel-to-reel and then take the reels over to the disk-cutting equipment you see equipment that Jack White would cheerfully kill for.








Not that Jack needs all that equipment any more. Jack's proposed adventure for Record Store Day (on April 19th) is to record direct to acetate at Third Man's performance room, rush the acetate over to United Records Pressing and press vinyl records in time for the fans to take a copy home with them. Quite a brave thing to do, if there really isn't an intermediate tape, unless he's located the bloke pictured above, now with fifty more years of experience in cutting discs....

Whole Lotta Helter Skelter

What if Helter Skelter and Whole Lotta Love had been the same song?

A mash-up that really works. The bassists get into a tangle now and again, but I guess with McCartney concentrating on the vocals, he'd just go ahead and leave it to JPJ to sort out.  Of course it's a bit of a cheat combining the nastiest, rockiest ever Beatles track with a mid-nasty Led Zeppelin track. Could you do this with Norwegian Wood and Tangerine? (This is a challenge.)

Abbey Road Cam

The Abbey Road zebra crossing, made famous on the cover of the Beatles Abbey Road album, is under constant surveillance by the Abbey Road Cam.

I'm told the crossing has moved since the iconic album cover, but the shot is still mesmerizing -mostly due to the traffic sounds, which are soothing in an ambient fashion. And the crows cawing above the traffic add a slightly aggressive counterpoint to the composition.

Live webcam Here.

Abbey Road is now a listed historic site in Britain, an unusual honor for a landmark which is not a building.

Department of Dancin' White Boys Part II

Much more funny, up to date and culturally important than the clip below, this is the only surviving clip of the Beatles singing Ticket To Ride on Top of the Tops in 1965. The BBC wiped all the tapes of early TOTP during one of its many frugal but stupid moments. This fragment survived because it was shown during a broadcast of Dr Who as a glimpse of the distant past seen through some sort of device in the Tardis.

So it's a glimpse of the distant past showing up as a fictional glimpse of the distant past in a long gone TV show, on the show's internal TV. That's very meta. Deep.



Or just watch the first Doctor and his companions demonstrate how to groove to a Beat Combo in authentic fashion. But wait, they're actors, not real fans. They are faking their authenticity, despite being of the correct non-Austin Powers time period! That's deep too! I need a drink.

Can I just say that at least in the last two clips I've put on the blog, I haven't said anyone is hot? I think that's progress.