I Want to Hear It Again!

A thought occurred.

As the above photo shows, I was recently at the Seattle Symphony's performance of concertos by Beethoven and Mozart. Both spent their creative lives in Vienna. Beethoven because his native Bonn was a mess, and for Mozart because that's where the prestige and money was. During the pre-concert talk, it was noted that Mozart was more popular in Prague than Vienna, that while The Marriage of Figaro had middling success in Vienna, it was incredibly popular in Prague.

That got me thinking.

In this day and age of recordings and streaming, being able to hear a favorite song, or opera, again and again is easy. Even back in the dark days of the 70's, when you had to troop down to the record store and hope they had what you wanted, once you acquired the single or LP, you could listen to it until you were sick of it, found something new, or the record player failed.
For me, I had to because what I really liked was never played enough on the radio while dreak like, Billy, Don't be a Hero, or Seasons in the Sun, seemed to be played all the time. Better to buy the record and listen as much as I wanted to what I wanted.

But what did they do before recording?

Say you scored a ticket to The Marriage of Figaro in Prague and were blown away? What then? There was no buying the record or hoping to hear it on the radio. No going on Spotify and adding it to your list of favorite operas. If fact, it was near impossible to even score the score, assuming you had any inkling or talent for reading a musical score and hearing it in your head.

You're doomed, man!

I suppose if you had the money and the time, you could score a ticket to every performance, but if all you could afford is the one time... that's all there was. Otherwise you were out of luck.

What does all this mean? Well, if it has to mean anything, it's that modern life has a few upsides like being able to listen to the Eagles or Billie Eilish over and over till your ears bleed.

©2020 David William Pearce

Rutles vs Beatles

Let us give our attention now to plain facts and the opinion of others as we delve into this period of debate.

Ok, so debate is probably the wrong word. How's this, let us now juxtapose the Beatles at their weirdest to the Rutles, a band whose legacy will last a lunchtime.

Does that help? Probably not.

A little background. Magical Mystery Tour was the BBC TV show the Beatles put out in 1967. It came on the heels of Sgt Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band and was broadcast on Boxers Day. It did not go down well. Like A Hard Day's Night and Help, the Beatles previous 2 films, Magical Mystery Tour, is the Fab Four running around having a good time with a busload of tourists. Unlike those first 2 films, it's weird, and at times, incomprehensible. It's a great film to see high.

Watching it, you find yourself sensing a lot of deja vu: a flight through the countryside with the land bleached in different colors and hues (2001, A Space Odyssey), John Lennon shoveling heaping amounts of spaghetti on a table (Monty Python's The Meaning of Life), and stopgap photography galore (too many to mention). oh, and no plot.

The Rutles, are a parody band, making fun of... the Beatles, and the era of running from crazed crowds of teenaged girls. It started as an SNL skit and morphed into a film. The Rutles are the most famous fake band after Spinal Tap.

The common tie is Neil Innis, who recently past away, as he is the only songwriter to have songs in both films! His first band, The Bonzo Dog Doo Dah Band-yes, you read that right; it was the 60's remember-is in the film and their first single was produced by Paul McCartney. His song for the show was titled: Death Cab for Cutie, which is the name of a band from these parts.

You can't make this stuff up.

Both are parodies of a kind, be it weird road trips or very famous bands doing weird things. The commonality is the music, which might surprise some, but, at the time, the Beatles were pushing their music through its psychedelic phase, while Innis' parodies of the Beatles oeuvre are spot on and more loving than ironic.

If you have some time to kill or are bored, I highly recommend both.

©2020 David William Pearce

More More More...

Are you ready for the new year? Am I?

I ask this rhetorical question because I've found myself in a rather interesting place. After an eventful and productive 2019, I'm less anxious about rushing into more and more, even if that's what the scribes and sages in the biz say one must do.

And it's not like I've got nothing in the tank. There's a wealth of new songs that I put on hold to finish the album, Winter, and I've still got the monthly open mic, which I host, and a number of shows lined up in these early months.

But I have to admit that as more people become aware of what I'm doing-Which is the whole point of this, right?-there is the supposed need to constantly be doing doing doing more more more that I'm not as interested in. And if I stop, I'm back in the dustbin of anonymity.

And who wants that?

But there is something to be said for taking a break. I haven't touched the recording equipment since March, which is the longest stretch since I took up recording again in 2015. Plus it's new, so there's the learning curve to go with it. The other part is that the music is quite different from Winter and I want to make sure I do it the way I feel it needs to be done, which for me means turning it over in my head again and again.

That too can get tiring.

And as a rationale for doing nothing, it's not like I have a big organization or label to support, so if I do nothing people become unemployed. I don't need that weight hanging over me. That leaves me in no-persons-land of wanting to get to it and wanting to take an even longer break.

Some of this is made more problematic by the fact that as a performer, I'm starting to hit my stride. Hate to lose that.

Feeling sorry for me yet? Yeah, me neither.

Should probably get to it.

Happy New Year!

©2020 David William Pearce