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Kitchen Table Kibitzing 9/26/2023: Caution: Zebra Crossing [1]

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Date: 2023-09-26

Franklin Carmichael: Mirror Lake (1929)

Good evening, Kibitzers!

I, personally, am having weather I like a lot, cool and rainy, with tonight’s overnight low dipping down to 44°. Sadly, it's going to warm up again, and by next Monday will go up to 77°, but it’ll be October by then and I hope the used-to-be-summer temps will go away again soon.

I do see that there’s some interesting weather coming to other parts of the country, so I am wishing everyone the kind of precipitation situation they want and need, and not the one they’ve probably been stuck with for way too long.

So, as it turns out, today is the 54th anniversary of the release (in the UK) of the Beatles' album Abbey Road on September 26, 1969. That's not a nice round number, but I love that album and here’s Sept. 26 occurring on a Tuesday, so I’m taking my opportunity.

I’m going to put the full Beatles album here at the top as a single video, since I can’t embed a playlist. It’s nicer anyway, imho, because it plays through like the album rather than awkwardly switching tracks like some sort of evil 8-track tape with commercials.

The video portion here is a seriously meticulous animation; the comment section advises the whole thing comes from the video game The Beatles: Rock Band, which is an official, Beatles-endorsed product (although I imagine its reproduction on YouTube is not, so who knows how long it’ll stay up!) Starting points for each track appear in the first YouTube comment, if you’re interested. [46:50]

In the diary, though, I’m representing each track with a cover version, and sometimes it was pretty hard to pick only one. Links on the song titles are to their individual Wikipedia page, but each song also has its own entry on the full album’s page, sometimes more informative than the separate page (definitely not just the same thing repeated). If you like Beatles trivia, you’re in luck.

Side 1:

This song was an example of “hard to pick only one”, but Tina always wins.

Come Together: Ike & Tina Turner (live in Paris, 1971). [3:34]

Something: Jeff Lynne, Dhani Harrison and Joe Walsh (TV special The Night That Changed America: A Grammy Salute to the Beatles, 2014). Aired February 9, 2014, to mark the 50th anniversary of their first appearance on the Ed Sullivan Show. [3:16]

Some of the songs have a ton of big stars covering them, and some have seemingly been picked up only by less famous people. But talented people nonetheless.

Maxwell's Silver Hammer: Reina del Cid (Elle Cordova) and Toni Lindgren, with Trevor Lindgren and Alex Mielke (live in someone’s living room, 2022). [3:42]

Oh! Darling: Pacifica is two young women, Inés Adam and Martina Nintzel, based in Argentina. They began by singing individually on YouTube and didn’t know each other, but as each developed a following, a fan of both suggested they play together. They met in 2021, and at this point have already played a string of sold-out shows at clubs in New York, based on the popularity of their covers of The Strokes. [3:15]

Octopus's Garden: Ringo Starr and his All Starr Band (live at Masonic Auditorium in San Francisco, California, June 2023). The All Starr Band this year is: Steve Lukather (guitar/bass), Colin Hay (guitar), Edgar Winter (keyboards/saxophone), Warren Ham (saxophone/flute/keyboards), Hamish Stuart (guitar/bass), and Gregg Bissonette (drums). I note that Ringo is 83, yet seems oddly energetic for a man far too old to, say, be president. [3:08]

I Want You (She's So Heavy): Dave Matthews Band (live in Wilmington, NC, May 2023). The song is actually the opening of an unrelated medley. This is one of those songs where covers are difficult to come by. [5:06]

Side 2:

This is one of my favorite songs ever, and I had a lot of trouble picking just one cover (and ended up picking sort of a half-cover). But just to remind us of a hopeful time not long ago, I’d also like to link Jon Bon Jovi’s performance from the Biden-Harris Inauguration broadcast (the whole show was remote, remember?) But the winner is:

Here Comes the Sun: Paul Simon and George Harrison (Saturday Night Live, Nov. 20, 1976). The picture quality isn’t great, but the sound is fine. They sing both Here Comes the Sun and Homeward Bound. [6:38]

Because: So I type “because beatles” on YouTube, and up pops Julian Lennon, and I think, oh, that’ll be nice. Well, LOL. He’s not singing this Because. He’s singing the Dave Clark Five’s Because which, for anyone who was a teenybopper in the early 60s, is freakin’ hilarious. All the fan mags like 16 and Tiger Beat had cooked up this imaginary feud between the two bands, you see, and you HAD to take sides. The idea that baby Julian would grow up to sing a Dave Clark Five song would have struck 12-year-old me as risible. So here it is! [4:00]

Okay, sorry! Here’s the real Because: Plaisir de Chanter (“Pleasure of Singing”) at Saint Sauveur church in La Rochelle, France, Sept. 2020. From their YouTube “About”, translated by Google: “We are Camille, Caroline, Clara, Juliette and Elodie, 5 friends from Alsace and Burgundy. We love to unite our voices and share our pleasure of singing!” [2:22]

The Medley: First of all, since I have been linking the Wikipedia pages for each individual song rather than recap all the interesting tidbits, here are the links for the medley — I’m afraid each songlet has its own page. You Never Give Me Your Money ~ Sun King ~ Mean Mr. Mustard ~ Polythene Pam ~ She Came In Through the Bathroom Window ~ Golden Slumbers ~ Carry That Weight ~ The End.

Since the medley has a lot of songs, I’m including three videos. “Name” performers never seem to cover the whole thing, and that is understandable since it’s 15 minutes long with a lot of sudden gear shifts that don’t make a good showcase for anyone who didn’t write it.

This 1998 collaboration of Phil Collins and George Martin, for a set of Beatles covers Martin chose to do as the last album he’d produce, starts with Golden Slumbers and has, quelle surprise, an extended drum solo instead of the guitar solos. [5:39]

At the Kennedy Center Honors for Sir Paul in 2010, Steven Tyler backs it up to She Came In Through the Bathroom Window. [4:11]

But wait, someone DOES sing the whole thing — the Barton Hills Choir, an elementary-school choir from Austin, Texas. I quote from their website:

The Barton Hills Choir is a youth choir from Austin, Texas led by Gavin Tabone that specializes in music by the Grateful Dead and other classic rock artists. The Choir is accompanied by professional musicians, including guitarist Don “El Cento” Cento, bassist Aaron “Hair Doctor” Dembe, and drummer Jake “Mr. Bubbles” Perlman. Their repertoire spans golden oldies from the Beatles, Elvis, David Bowie, Grateful Dead and Beach Boys to songs from more current bands like Wilco, Muse, The Flaming Lips, Foo Fighters, and Belle and Sebastian.

You should really look at their YouTube channel! I will say that it is remarkable to get a performance like this from kids of this age range, and this is far from the only difficult piece in their repertoire.

Anyway, here we see the choir at the June 2019 choir camp show at Austin High Performing Arts Center. The singers are not identified on the internet for their safety (and yay for the choir on that!) [14:47]

x YouTube Video

Her Majesty: This diary would be a million miles long if I shared all the trivia I read about each song, so I’ll stick to this one thing I learned about Her Majesty (that you probably all knew): it started out in the medley, between Mean Mr. Mustard and Polythene Pam. When Paul McCartney listened to the medley that way, he didn’t like Her Majesty there and directed the engineer to cut it out and toss it. George Martin, however, had taken care to instruct everyone that no Beatles recording should ever be discarded, so the engineer attached the track to the end of the master tape, separated by 14 seconds of silence. It got onto the “playback lacquer” like that, and the Beatles liked it so they kept it.

Anarchist punk band Chumbawamba extended Her Majesty into a longer piece which, unsurprisingly, denounces the royals and the idea of a monarchy. It was released as a limited-edition single sent out free to their mailing list in 2002, to mark the Queen’s Golden Jubilee. [1:49]

[END]
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