Music Monday ~ "Pickin' up good vibrations"

We accompanied husband's daughter and son-in-law to see a Beach Boys tribute band perform on Friday evening - Woodie and the Long Boards. The concert was housed in an event/ballroom area rather than the usual theatre setting. Dance enthusiasts were able to enjoy their nostalgia both mentally and physically.

Unsurprisingly, dancers were mostly "of a certain age", but quite adept at swingin' those hips and doing all the cool gestures and....well...whatever. You can probably tell from this that I'm not, and never have been, much of a dancer myself. A bit of square dancing and the odd shuffle to a last waltz has been my lifetime limit. My brain might co-ordinate with my fingers for writing or typing purposes, but it refuses to co-ordinate with my feet for dancing purposes. Anyway...

I realised fairly quickly that The Beach Boys must have written many more songs than I'd ever realised. My knowledge extends to what was played by BBC disc jockeys, back in England in the 1960s and 70s, and later by older disc jockeys suffering from chronic nostalgia.

Good Vibrations is Beach Boys' gold standard, Gold Only Knows, Barbara Ann; my own favourite, not written by the band, but a traditional song of the Bahamas Sloop John B, and all their other hits were played, along with some more obscure to all but dyed in the wool Beach Boy fans.

Glancing at the lyrics of Fun, Fun, Fun this morning I realised why, in spite of their great, well-polished sound, The Beach Boys never managed to outshine The Beatles in the UK (for some, they didn't mange to do so even in the USA) :

Well she got her daddy's car and she cruised through the hamburger stand, now
Seems she forgot all about the library like she told her old man, now
But with the radio blasting goes cruising just as fast as she can now
And she'll have fun, fun, fun till her daddy takes the T-bird away
(fun, fun, fun, 'till her daddy takes the T-bird away)

In the UK, back then, we didn't have T-birds for daddy to take away. We were lucky if we had a bike on which to ride to the railway station to catch a train to school, or to work. We couldn't relate, nor I feel sure could some of the poorer families in the USA at that time. We understood Beatles' lyrics, though, we'd lived'em!

Woke up, fell out of bed
Dragged a comb across my head
Found my way downstairs and drank a cup
And looking up I noticed I was late
Found my coat and grabbed my hat
Made the bus in seconds flat
Made my way upstairs and had a smoke
And everybody spoke and I went into a dream...

I read the news today, oh boy
Four thousand holes in Blackburn, Lancashire
And though the holes were rather small
They had to count them all
Now they know how many holes it takes to fill the Albert Hall
I'd love to turn you on......

This is not to say that I was a great Beatles' fan back then, but with this amount of hindsight I can see that while The Beach Boys offered the feel of a privileged and slightly exotic lifestyle, The Beatles, for us were like a familiar plate of fish and chips, with just the right amount of salt and vinegar added.

Woodie and the Long Boards entertained the crowd on Friday evening, in spite of a rather dodgy sound system. It was good to hear lots of foot-tappingly familiar music, and to watch some of our near-contemporaries shakin' their thang on the dance floor.

The real thang for Music Monday:

Music Monday ~ The Beatles just are.....

Stephen Deusner's piece at Salon last week declared: "The year’s most overrated anniversary: Quit celebrating “I Want to Hold Your Hand”....a good song, but other 1963 singles are just as important - and ignored."
Title and sub-head pretty much explain the piece. I found it difficult to see logic in the point he was making, though I do have some sympathy with the thought that there's too much memorialising going on - in general. But I guess it gives journalists something to write about other than chewing over, and over, dire circumstances of 2013, so perhaps it's not such a bad thing after all.

Mr. Deusner names several songs of 1963 which are never memorialised in comparison to the song which made The Beatles a household name in the USA. This was when he lost me. I vaguely remember some of the songs he mentions, but why would they be memorialised, apart maybe from the Beach Boys' single, In My room ? The Beach Boys have retained a place in public affection in much the same way The Beatles have done, though on a slightly smaller scale. Back in 1963, in the UK, I would have wagered that the Beach Boys with their far more sophisticated sound, would have beaten the Beatles hands down in USA's memorialising stakes.

I was unimpressed by the Beatles first time around. 50 years later, living in the USA, after some education on the subject from my husband and his family, I've discovered the true worth of The Fab Four - as I see it. I've come to the conclusion that their strength was as composers and lyricists, not performers. Oh, they performed well enough to delight millions of young fans. They shook their mop-head hair-dos at the screaming hordes, but sang and played neither better nor worse than many other groups of the time. The key, and the real magician, I've come to realise, was and is their former producer George Martin (a post on him is here). He issued a tribute album called In My Life on which an unlikely selection of performers put their own stamp upon Beatles music. It was from listening to this album that I understood why Beatles' music has become iconic. It has true, lasting quality, and in the hands of a genius like George Martin it blossoms, especially when performed by others. Their songs are timeless, malleable, can be performed in almost any style, by any type of voice or voices. Their music can be orchestrated for the grandest symphony outfit in the land, and has been - and is one of my own favourite ways to listen to Beatles music.

George Martin's Love album, a compilation of Beatles music re-arranged, layered, mixed and re-mixed is another example of the music's quality in the hands of a genius arranger. Again, Martin's skills, allied with Beatles' talent produces yet another perspective and opportunity to understand why the Fab Four's work was so much more than appeared on its surface.

Dozens of famed performers, over the years, have chosen to include Beatles' songs in their repertoires. Sinatra sings, for me, the definitive version of George Harrison's Something . Neil Diamond's version of And I Love Her makes me love the song I'd looked on as nothing but a jingle. Johnny Cash sang In My Life; Sean Connery recited its lyrics on George Martin's tribute album - it's hard to listen to that without lump in throat.

If I had to choose a favourite song, actually as sung by The Beatles, it'd be A Day in the Life. I love the English-ness of it, and that opening line never goes out of season! "I read the news today - Oh boy!"

You know....by now the Beatles don't need more memorialising - they just are, like spring, summer, autumn and winter.