Wednesday, November 11, 2009

Lame John


At the age of 12 my mother handed me down 2 Beatle's tapes. Having been bought in the 70's and survived almost 3 decades, I guess it's safe to say they're vintage.



I still listen to them daily, and I still sing along with every single song. Honestly, you can't help not sing to those ballads. The songs are short and to the point, usually with the same verse being repeated over and over and over, so it isn't that difficult to know every song by heart.

I had a friend in the car one day as the cassette played and she made a comment that immediately rang truth: "those songs are made for simpler times and a simpler world".
Well... it isn't entirely true seeing as the Vietnam war was underway, Japan was still going through its post A-Bomb reconstruction and Egypt was still in a state of War with you-know-who and had just witnessed its greatest defeat at their hand. "A simpler world" isn't really the right description, but we get the gist of the comment: musical tastes were simpler and music itself was more to the point.

Take the song Michelle for instance: who on our planet today could ever get away with a song in which the chorus says "I love you, I love you, I love you" in the cheesiest way possible? Some might... but I doubt they'd win a Grammy for it and I guess it would hardly ever be the 42nd most played song in the world.

Rumor has it was John Lennon who suggested this "I love you" bridge to McCartney (who was the mastermind behind the song that was intended originally as a slight mockery of the French Rive Gauche culture that was taking England by storm).

Oh John... how lame!




5 comments:

  1. oh that's for sure! but doesn't it sometimes irritate you how suddenly everybody loves them? when they've only just discovered them a couple of years ago?

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  2. Well, in my world nobody listens to them except a few, so no it doesn't :) actually I feel happy whenever someone fall in love with them. To love songs like Lucy in the stars with diamonds or dream is a passport to good taste!

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  3. there is something magical about simplicity. i hate it when songs get too complicated.. thats why there will be only a handful of immortal classics and melodies. and the rest would be flashes in the pan. and no one would remember. i think most wouldn't even remember who were boys to men.. even though they wrote some brilliant music. but then that was beetle's charm. or i guess i could simply blame it on the era they are from. i dont think that era was by any means simple. not only from a political stand point. even socially. but yet again.. that is a debatable point of view for some.

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  4. Simpler times.

    Read beer in the snooker club!

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