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Oh, drat — 16 Comments

  1. Wow! What a catch! Alleged mob AND political ties. Sounds like she made money the old-fashioned way: she stole it. Now, she has her own “laundering machine”: Paul.

  2. Deer Sir Paul

    You got Obama damn tweety-birds flutterin’ around your head, that’s what you got. You think you’re gonna f*ck like minks, raise rugrats, and live happily ever after? Oh, man.

  3. Neo,

    This is totally OT, but Commentary has reprinted an Updike piece called “On Not Being a Dove.”

    Contentions also has an Abe Greenwald qoute in “Re: Re:Obama’s Recent Middle East Nothings” that echoes Tina Brown’s desire for a reversal of 9/11: “Americans are not looking for Obama to solve problemsm but to end problems.

  4. Let not thy heart be troubled, oh most worthy Neo. I hear Blagojevitch will soon be available.

  5. McCartney may have a lot of money (left after the last one “took him to the cleaners”) but has never seemed to be a very nice person…IMO.

  6. I think he has been overrated as a musical talent, and I think he has, overall, been a very poor judge of human beings.

    Has he been an over achiever during the course of his career? Hard to argue otherwise. But most certainly he has exhibited one of the hallmarks of the people in the entertainment industry: they are very tunnel visioned people who do a very narrow slice of life with great dedication and some talent.

    I can think of a few British rock stars who, in my estimation, have produced better work. Work that is more original and more musically interesting.

  7. Lennon and McCartney alone were never anywhere near as good as they were together, IMO. Both went too far in their own directions without the other to bring the one back. And of course George Martin, the producer, had quite an influence on the “finished product” of the Beatles. The real influence of Harrison is not known, although it can be heard in bits of his own music later after the breakup.

    The Beatles were definitely an argument for support of the “sum of the parts” idea. When their music (as the Beatles) was released, it was always fresh and new, always slightly different than before. Like Elvis, I think their music will always be rediscovered.

    I wish the same could be said for The Yardbirds.

  8. In terms of having an incredible range of musically interesting styles, Gordon Sumner (Sting) is much better than McCartney, both as a part of The Police and later on his own. I also think another Brit who is more musically interesting is Peter Gabriel.

    Don’t get me wrong. I like a lot of The Beatles’ stuff. Truly, I do. But individually each of them is definitely less than the sum of the parts.

    But I’m more into classical music.

    Lately, I’ve been captivated by some music from Hawai’i by The Brothers Cazimero. Just enchanting. If any of you use a broadband web connection, go on over to KAPA FM radio in Kailua-Kona, the Big Island of Hawai’i. It’s a great radio station. My wife and I tuned in to it every day when we were there in September. We vowed to get the web address for the station when we got home.

  9. I agree about Peter Gabriel.
    I read an interview somewhere with Harrison long after the breakup, stating the Beatles were never that good as musicians. Many of their contemporaries, as has been stated above, were much better technically. Clapton played a number of the guitar solos on later Beatle albums, especially on Harrison’s songs, for instance. I did like Harrison’s guitar work, though. Chords, phrasings, etc. I thought he had a unique style, especially his slide guitar work in the after Beatles days. Lennon and McCartney never gave him enough space on Beatle albums. One of their biggest hits, “Something”, was a Harrison tune, with Harrison (with McCartney doing harmony) on vocals and Clapton on guitar.

    As far as musicians, vocalists, and song writers, there are a bazillion virtuosos out there we’ll never hear, simply because they have yet to be in the right place at the right time. Not to mention the slew of unknown session musicians, engineers, and producers who “make” the songs the vehicles that popular vocalists ride on.

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