Post by Amadeus on Apr 22, 2015 0:09:50 GMT
This review was written back in the autumn:
The White Album/The Blank Canvas
This isn't so much a review as it is a completely biased, fan gushing, 'no fault whatsoever', look at what is possibly the most uncommercial Beatles LP ever which still sold in excess of 4 million by the end of '68. Over 6 million by '70. Not bad for an album that got 'mixed' reviews initially. I do say that it is largely uncommercial because most casual Beatles fans don't know anything off of it except maybe 'While My Guitar...', and 'Ob-La-Di...'.
So what is the reason that I have such an unreasoning attatchment to this 95 bloody minute double LP? Everybody else can review the album and explain it's impact or whatever (if there's still anyone reviewing albums). I'm going for the strictly personal.
I was a North American boy raised on C&W, Top 40, and easy listening, courtesy of my dad. I always like those genres. AND I was totally in love with The Beatles music. Of course my knowledge of The Beatles was mainly pre '66 except for REVOLVER and LET IT BE.
Then a friend at school gave me the white album on cassette (as seen on pg 1 of the collectables thread) with a bunch of songs I never knew before. The short of it is that I was COMPLETELY blown away. It turned out that this album had the biggest influence on me artistically. EVERYTHING I ever went on to create after that point ALWAYS in obvious and not so obvious ways was based on what I saw as the white album template. Everything I have ever recorded, etc,, is in some way or another, influenced by the white album.
In what way? I never knew you could put all those genres of music on the same record. And make an album that bloody long. I never Knew. And I was also blown away by the fact that, what was obviously a very popular group could put out stuff that was so 'out there' to my mind. Polluting the mainstream as it were. You didn't have to stick to one direction. The three tracks in particular that pushed me into the ditch, out from the mainstream was 'Wild Honey Pie' (very silly), 'Helter Skelter', (very heavy, for a top 40 group) and 'Revolution 9' (showing me that ANYTHING could be presented as and consumed as music if you're open minded).
The sheer variety and the non commercial appeal, though, was also a sign of their eventual disintegration. As Gerge Harrison would later say; the rot had already set in. As a result, we got all those songs and sounds. Songs great and not so great, but each one had it's own place on that album. Each one was neccessary for the whole.
It also seems to have a dark undercurrent. Travelling from one end of the album to the other, to me at least, it seems to have a feeling of menace bubbling under.
And this album spawned the onset of lots of different genres. not neccessarily started them but certainly brought them to the overground to people that might have missed thoses underground ideas. Enities like NEGATIVLAND have based whole carreers on Revolution 9.
Helter Skelter brought the heavy metal template to the masses. Non blues based, i.e. no E/A and the return B7. Just an icy tuneless roar. Zep and Sabbath would build on it in the next year. Serious rock songs exist in the form of Dear Prudence and Sexy Sadie and lots more.
I LOVE the light and shade of LONG LONG LONG. A nice very quiet song with the LOUD ominous drum fills. Happiness Is... is absolutely vicious sounding.
Being able to go from dark to light to shades of grey was a revelation for me. It simply never occurred to me to go from one extreme to the other, on the same record! And it wasn't the same old love song thing. In fact, most of it had nothing to do with love.
It was just a great thing for me to hear a very popular, well loved band just go ahead and do whatever they want. Which is what I've done ever since with my stuff.
The other thing is the sheer scale of the undertaking. This wasn't a thin double album that JUST needed four sides. This was a proper movie length LP, 95 minutes and I've always had an obsession with the double album idea ever since. Like a (cliche alert) musical journey through some georgeous, rockin' and absolutely heaving soundscapes. A movie for your ears. Is it any wonder that my next two favorite albums of all time are THE WALL and QUADROPHENIA?
So it was a long period of obsessiveness over listening to this album and making my friends listen to it. To this day I can sing the whole album in my head from start to finish. I even (laugh here) know most of the words for Revolution 9! My obsessiveness even extended to taping the whole album backwards and listening to it. How? I had a multi-track home recorder and just recorded the album onto two tracks and turned the tape over and, there you go. I've since done it digitally so now I have a 'remastered' backwards white album. It opened up a whole other dimension for this album and I noticed sounds that I never noticed when I listened to it forwards. Ha! Backwards. But that means that some of Revolution 9 played forwards as some of the piece was backwards stuff.
The little in between sounds struck me as interesting. The crossfade of Back In The USSR with Dear Prudence, the strange string coda to Glass Onion, the little chuckle at the end of Ob-La-Di, the spanish guitar insert, the fake audience at the end of the singalong. There's alot of colour just on that first side. Happiness Is.... is it the first multi-part prog song, albeit in miniature?
I like how the jaunty Martha My Dear was followed by a completely lethargic I'm So Tired. Isn't that commercial suicide? The animal songs,,, Piggies stood out to me as being a bit on the angry side in spite of the music. I never knew the Beatles could do silly novelty stories like Rocky Racoon. And Rocky didn't just come to have a duel with his rival, his goal was to shoot off his legs! And I never would have thought of explaining why the girl was known by three different names. Ringo's shambolicly played psuedo-country tune was long a favorite of mine. And WHY don't we do it in the road? I used to amaze or annoy my friends, who thought they were Beatles fans, by saying;'Hey! What about this song?'
Side three was the 'rock' side I guess. Just a blast of energy coming from Birthday, ...Monkey...,, the garage blues of Yer Blues. How irreverent! I heard John Denver do Mother Nature's Son before I heard the Beatles version. Sexy Sadie was just an unusual chord progression for a pop song and an unusual lyric. The heavy and light of Long Long Long. But Helter Skelter was the big moment for me on side three. It's just like a nuclear burn in your face! That opened up the idea of noise in music. ambient feedback, bashhing the poo out of the drums etc,...
Revolution 1 was funny 'cos it sounded so lazy and it was around that time also that I read that John recorded the vocal fro that lying on the floor. Honey Pie was great too because Paul was ruining it by throwing in those very self conscious bit about liking this kind of hot kind of music. Doesn't seem so extreme now but in the early '80s as an adolescent, it was downright rebellious. I loved the crunchy guitars of the chocolate song, and the very bleak sounding nursery rhyme of Cry Baby Cry. I always considered the 'Can you take me back' bit as being the beginning intro to Revolution 9. Revolution 9 had a bigger impact than Helter Skelter even. Some scary noises and moods. I was totally entranced. Captivated. Followed by Goodnight. After the sonic assault over the previous 90 minutes, they just send you off with a pleasant but unexpected goodnight lullaby.
The first time I played the album from end to end, my mum and dad were there too. After it was all over, mum said it should be called the Black Album. And I thought that was totally right! It's a dark dark record underlying even the poppy happy tunes. But that could be because As Harrison said about the rot already setting in.
I had a high school band at the time. Except for me and the drummer, the other guitar/bass player and the singer were totally non musicians. But we were great friends and couldn't see being in anyone else's band. It was totally fun and funny. We immediately gathered up some instruments, records, a radio and drinks and layed out our own debut double cassette white album. All recorded in total lo-fi on an assortment of cassette recorders. It was 4 sides of, music, 1 second clips of records and playing with a radio dial and drinking and playing REALLY grim sounding Dave Clark Five and Beatles covers and having drinks. It was hilarious and artistic. Why not? We were impressed. Nobody else was though,,,,
,,,no wait! I'm wrong there was a girl, Laura, I played the album for her, and she said she like the singer. He was the worst part of the band! But she like listening to him. So,,,,
That's my white album. That's what it did to me. And now I have that composite of 100 white albums, as seen on pg four of the collectables thread.
Eat me, I'm done.
The White Album/The Blank Canvas
This isn't so much a review as it is a completely biased, fan gushing, 'no fault whatsoever', look at what is possibly the most uncommercial Beatles LP ever which still sold in excess of 4 million by the end of '68. Over 6 million by '70. Not bad for an album that got 'mixed' reviews initially. I do say that it is largely uncommercial because most casual Beatles fans don't know anything off of it except maybe 'While My Guitar...', and 'Ob-La-Di...'.
So what is the reason that I have such an unreasoning attatchment to this 95 bloody minute double LP? Everybody else can review the album and explain it's impact or whatever (if there's still anyone reviewing albums). I'm going for the strictly personal.
I was a North American boy raised on C&W, Top 40, and easy listening, courtesy of my dad. I always like those genres. AND I was totally in love with The Beatles music. Of course my knowledge of The Beatles was mainly pre '66 except for REVOLVER and LET IT BE.
Then a friend at school gave me the white album on cassette (as seen on pg 1 of the collectables thread) with a bunch of songs I never knew before. The short of it is that I was COMPLETELY blown away. It turned out that this album had the biggest influence on me artistically. EVERYTHING I ever went on to create after that point ALWAYS in obvious and not so obvious ways was based on what I saw as the white album template. Everything I have ever recorded, etc,, is in some way or another, influenced by the white album.
In what way? I never knew you could put all those genres of music on the same record. And make an album that bloody long. I never Knew. And I was also blown away by the fact that, what was obviously a very popular group could put out stuff that was so 'out there' to my mind. Polluting the mainstream as it were. You didn't have to stick to one direction. The three tracks in particular that pushed me into the ditch, out from the mainstream was 'Wild Honey Pie' (very silly), 'Helter Skelter', (very heavy, for a top 40 group) and 'Revolution 9' (showing me that ANYTHING could be presented as and consumed as music if you're open minded).
The sheer variety and the non commercial appeal, though, was also a sign of their eventual disintegration. As Gerge Harrison would later say; the rot had already set in. As a result, we got all those songs and sounds. Songs great and not so great, but each one had it's own place on that album. Each one was neccessary for the whole.
It also seems to have a dark undercurrent. Travelling from one end of the album to the other, to me at least, it seems to have a feeling of menace bubbling under.
And this album spawned the onset of lots of different genres. not neccessarily started them but certainly brought them to the overground to people that might have missed thoses underground ideas. Enities like NEGATIVLAND have based whole carreers on Revolution 9.
Helter Skelter brought the heavy metal template to the masses. Non blues based, i.e. no E/A and the return B7. Just an icy tuneless roar. Zep and Sabbath would build on it in the next year. Serious rock songs exist in the form of Dear Prudence and Sexy Sadie and lots more.
I LOVE the light and shade of LONG LONG LONG. A nice very quiet song with the LOUD ominous drum fills. Happiness Is... is absolutely vicious sounding.
Being able to go from dark to light to shades of grey was a revelation for me. It simply never occurred to me to go from one extreme to the other, on the same record! And it wasn't the same old love song thing. In fact, most of it had nothing to do with love.
It was just a great thing for me to hear a very popular, well loved band just go ahead and do whatever they want. Which is what I've done ever since with my stuff.
The other thing is the sheer scale of the undertaking. This wasn't a thin double album that JUST needed four sides. This was a proper movie length LP, 95 minutes and I've always had an obsession with the double album idea ever since. Like a (cliche alert) musical journey through some georgeous, rockin' and absolutely heaving soundscapes. A movie for your ears. Is it any wonder that my next two favorite albums of all time are THE WALL and QUADROPHENIA?
So it was a long period of obsessiveness over listening to this album and making my friends listen to it. To this day I can sing the whole album in my head from start to finish. I even (laugh here) know most of the words for Revolution 9! My obsessiveness even extended to taping the whole album backwards and listening to it. How? I had a multi-track home recorder and just recorded the album onto two tracks and turned the tape over and, there you go. I've since done it digitally so now I have a 'remastered' backwards white album. It opened up a whole other dimension for this album and I noticed sounds that I never noticed when I listened to it forwards. Ha! Backwards. But that means that some of Revolution 9 played forwards as some of the piece was backwards stuff.
The little in between sounds struck me as interesting. The crossfade of Back In The USSR with Dear Prudence, the strange string coda to Glass Onion, the little chuckle at the end of Ob-La-Di, the spanish guitar insert, the fake audience at the end of the singalong. There's alot of colour just on that first side. Happiness Is.... is it the first multi-part prog song, albeit in miniature?
I like how the jaunty Martha My Dear was followed by a completely lethargic I'm So Tired. Isn't that commercial suicide? The animal songs,,, Piggies stood out to me as being a bit on the angry side in spite of the music. I never knew the Beatles could do silly novelty stories like Rocky Racoon. And Rocky didn't just come to have a duel with his rival, his goal was to shoot off his legs! And I never would have thought of explaining why the girl was known by three different names. Ringo's shambolicly played psuedo-country tune was long a favorite of mine. And WHY don't we do it in the road? I used to amaze or annoy my friends, who thought they were Beatles fans, by saying;'Hey! What about this song?'
Side three was the 'rock' side I guess. Just a blast of energy coming from Birthday, ...Monkey...,, the garage blues of Yer Blues. How irreverent! I heard John Denver do Mother Nature's Son before I heard the Beatles version. Sexy Sadie was just an unusual chord progression for a pop song and an unusual lyric. The heavy and light of Long Long Long. But Helter Skelter was the big moment for me on side three. It's just like a nuclear burn in your face! That opened up the idea of noise in music. ambient feedback, bashhing the poo out of the drums etc,...
Revolution 1 was funny 'cos it sounded so lazy and it was around that time also that I read that John recorded the vocal fro that lying on the floor. Honey Pie was great too because Paul was ruining it by throwing in those very self conscious bit about liking this kind of hot kind of music. Doesn't seem so extreme now but in the early '80s as an adolescent, it was downright rebellious. I loved the crunchy guitars of the chocolate song, and the very bleak sounding nursery rhyme of Cry Baby Cry. I always considered the 'Can you take me back' bit as being the beginning intro to Revolution 9. Revolution 9 had a bigger impact than Helter Skelter even. Some scary noises and moods. I was totally entranced. Captivated. Followed by Goodnight. After the sonic assault over the previous 90 minutes, they just send you off with a pleasant but unexpected goodnight lullaby.
The first time I played the album from end to end, my mum and dad were there too. After it was all over, mum said it should be called the Black Album. And I thought that was totally right! It's a dark dark record underlying even the poppy happy tunes. But that could be because As Harrison said about the rot already setting in.
I had a high school band at the time. Except for me and the drummer, the other guitar/bass player and the singer were totally non musicians. But we were great friends and couldn't see being in anyone else's band. It was totally fun and funny. We immediately gathered up some instruments, records, a radio and drinks and layed out our own debut double cassette white album. All recorded in total lo-fi on an assortment of cassette recorders. It was 4 sides of, music, 1 second clips of records and playing with a radio dial and drinking and playing REALLY grim sounding Dave Clark Five and Beatles covers and having drinks. It was hilarious and artistic. Why not? We were impressed. Nobody else was though,,,,
,,,no wait! I'm wrong there was a girl, Laura, I played the album for her, and she said she like the singer. He was the worst part of the band! But she like listening to him. So,,,,
That's my white album. That's what it did to me. And now I have that composite of 100 white albums, as seen on pg four of the collectables thread.
Eat me, I'm done.