rock and roll musings by Tim Byrnes

TALES FROM THE TOP TEN: PART ONE, IN WHICH DORIS GETS HER HORSE.

      Happy New Year, one and all. Hey, have any of you checked out Carl Simmons' new 'rockcrit' blog Burning Light? There's a link over yonder in the links section (where all good links should be). Anyway, Carl's an old friend and bandmate from back in the 20th century who's been laying out his Top Ten records of all time here at motime. Really incisive, thoughtful pieces about (so far) Television and the 2nd PiL CD. Heartily recommended. Now, the first thing I do when I find a good music writing site is figure out what I can steal. So I decided to come up w/my own, punkrockblues Top Ten Records of All Time.

     Smart, huh?

     Well, nature interceded to assist this last Friday when I was struck with a case of the flu that's kept me basically housebound (apart from walking Buster. Don't worry, I know my responsibilities) these last 5 days. A length of time I took to go through my cassettes, vinyl and CDs, to listen and calculate the ones that mean the most to me, weighed one against another. As I wrote and rewrote lists, changing ranking orders time and time again I was struck more by the absence of certain material, than by what had finally been included. Like no Beatles. No Stones. No Dylan, even. 'Hmmmmmmmm,' I thought, 'this is most peculiar.' How could I, as a 50 year old white male in America, not include at least one Beatles record on a list of the supposed 10 greatest. Ever!!???

     Let's investigate.

     Unless you were there in 1964 you truly cannot imagine the sudden and complete impact the Beatles had on the world. They were everywhere, coming out of radios, tv.s, yr big sisters never shut up about them. They permeated the national conciousness like sleeping gas with a backbeat. Ed Sullivan, Murray the K, the WMCA Good Guys all conspired to weave a nation out of the screams pitched towards these Beatles by the young. Suddenly we had (and some of us were) the Youth Culture. I remember my sister getting 'Meet the Beatles' the same Xmas we got a suitcase style 'stereo hi-fi', a record player that served me from that day through the first pulses of punk. It was like getting our driver's licenses.

     Sot it was certainly the Beatles that got me into rock and roll. I was 9 in '65 and remember the Ed Sullivan Shows. I (obviously) can't explain it, but things were just different the next day. That was the year I, among million of others, started pestering the folks for guitar lessons. The year I stopped drawing superheroes and started drawing guitars and amps. The beginning of whatever I am now, amateur, searcher, barndance mechanic etc. The Beatles put the guitar in my hand, that's for sure, but it was left to other bands to put words in my mouth and different fires in my heart. To this day I own no Beatles records, except a cassette of 'Live at the Star Club' Part One, a 'bootleg' of the boys as a young, sweaty frat band in Germany, speeding their way through classic bar-band rock of the early 60's like wired, wild horses. It's a marvelous rock and roll record, certainly more than a curio, but neccessarily less than the canon that makes the Beatles, well, THE BEATLES.

      I have warm nostalgic feelings towards much, but not all, of their work. The 1st 7 seconds of 'Help', brings me back to my neighbors yard, standing in the swingset sun of the 10 year old's summer afternoon. Anything from Revolver summons black turtleneck sweaters and awkward 6th grade dances. A cut from the White Album comes on the car radio and I'm back in Monument, Colorado, 1968. My mother's dead and I'm like a stranger in my family's house. The countryside feels somehow restrictive, a new beginning gone horribly awry. Something's just wrong.

             "......feel so lonely/wanna die....."

      Abbey Road, Let It Be, and The Long and Winding Road all track in memory like warning signs. Something was ending along with the '60's and childhood. Something that probably never actually happened, or at least was never given the room to move, but something deep and real and vital. The death of possibilities? Something like that, I guess. But the end of the Beatles is still really nowhere in sight. The questions they posed, that we in turn, as a generation, asked then and are in some cases asking today are still valid. Is love really all we need? Maybe, maybe not, but wouldn't it be a hoot if it were? If that naievete could be self sustaining and actually make things work? In any event, the Beatles exist for me today as reminders of time, their music so tangled w/my own memories and perceived experience as to have no musical charms of their own left to me.

     Although I still use the 'Nowhere Man' F to Fm chord change in my own tunes every chance I get. Like I said, the first thing I do is look for something to steal.

Posted by: timbyrnes at 20:14 | link | comments (6)

Comments:

#1  04 January 2006 - 20:41

 

Beatles?

that's where music all began for me.

but it wasn't until i broke my ankle in 9th grade that my mom brought home for me (from the local supermarket, no less) a copy of Magical Mystery Tour. and i utterly was hooked. and it was SO UNCOOL to be interested in the Beatles in 1976. everybody at school thought i didn't know they broke up in 1970!

the next purchase was the "blue" collection that was big then -- it was 1967-70 or something like that -- put out as a nostalgia package of "hits" in the middle 70's. and it came with this little discography of everything released in england and the US. and that became my first music wish/checklist.

and so began my original record collection . . .

limine

#2  05 January 2006 - 16:57

 

No doubt about it, the Beatles were the watershed moment of the 60's. We all remember where we were and what we were doing the 1st time we heard them. I was dribbling a basketball in the hallway of my father's house. I can call the memory up at will, placing myself in a space so real I can hear the kitchen clock ticking.
But I don't listen to them now. I have the 1995 Anthology tv series on tape, but haven't watched it in 10 years. I guess they're like nearly forgotten, distant relatives to me now. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

timbyrnes

#3  05 January 2006 - 17:54

 

ditto, although i followed them through the pop charts from Ed Sullivan forward, it wasn't until Rubber Soul that I felt any emotional connection. Norwegian wood opened some doors. Sgt. Peppers helped me to walk inside. And on and on. The songs that I listen to now tend to be from the white album and forward, but since I have a 16 year old who is doing his own discovering, I revisit some chestnuts second hand -- mixed in with lots of kinks, who, pink floyd and led zepp from the early daze. Hey, let's talk about ray davies a bit, shall we?

howard

#4  05 January 2006 - 18:04

 

"Hey, let's talk about ray davies a bit, shall we?"

I'll be getting to that elsewhere too... :D

Actually, it is a bit surprising that Revolver (or Dylan's Bringing It All Back Home) didn't make my own Top 10. (although, ironically, Plastic Ono Band did.)Of course, my Top 10 doesn't make too many other people's Top 10.... :D

Believe it or not (and this is pretty good carbon dating here), the thing that crystallized The Beatles for me was Beatlemania (the Broadway show... "at the Winter Garden Theatre...") Up to that point, I'd known that they'd done THIS and THIS and THIS.... but it hadn't dawned on me until that point that they'd done ALL OF THOSE SONGS....

burninglight

#5  06 January 2006 - 14:56

 

I'm a bit younger, so my Beatles all came second hand, but I remember my little sister dancing to "Yellow Submarine" in a restaurant that had a jukebox (she was four, it was 1987) and after that every time there was a jukebox it was the first song she played. That's the beauty of the Beatles to me...staying power...there are still 4 year olds that are getting hooked because their parents (or now grandparents) are playing the albums for them.

Cannonball14

#6  06 January 2006 - 20:20

 

Simmons (Burninglight) is really the go to guy vis a vis Ray Davies, so I'll leave that up to him. Plastic Ono Band is the only Beatles related record I still have and I guess I oughta make room fer it on my top ten, seeing as how I'd forgotten it. Ah, what's a number anyway?

timbyrnes

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