158 – Not A Second Time – Steve “Boltz” Bolton

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158 – Not A Second Time – Steve "Boltz" Bolton

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Original version – September 11 1963

Ukulele version – December 2011

 

Steve Bolton: Vocals, guitar, dobro

Bryn Burrows: Drums

John Benthal: Ukuleles

David Barratt: Bass

 

Produced by David Barratt at The Abattoir Of Good Taste, Manhattan from recordings made by Bryn Burrows at SAG Studios, Whitstable, Kent. 

 

Photo by Conway & Hagell

 

Written by John Lennon

Credited to Lennon and McCartney

 

ABOUT THE SONG

 

Written and sung by John Lennon, Not A Second Time featured on the group’s second album With The Beatles.

The song was reviewed “The Times’” music critic William Mann, who wrote a musicological treatise on Lennon and McCartney’s songwriting, published on 27 December 1963.

 

“Harmonic interest is typical of their quicker songs, too, and one gets the impression that they think simultaneously of harmony and melody, so firmly are the major tonic sevenths and ninths built into their tunes, and the flat submediant key switches, so natural is the Aeolian cadence at the end of Not A Second Time (the chord progression which ends Mahler’s Song of the Earth).”

William Mann – The Times

 

Lennon was dismissive of the critique. In the Anthology book, Lennon is quoted as saying:

“I still don’t know what it means at the end, but it made us acceptable to the intellectuals. It worked and we were flattered. I wrote Not A Second Time and, really, it was just chords like any other chords. To me, I was writing a Smokey Robinson or something at the time.”

 

In 1980 he returned to the phrase Aeolian cadences, saying:

“To this day I don’t have any idea what they are. They sound like exotic birds.”

John Lennon

 

Despite Lennon’s flippancy, the musical structure of Not A Second Time is noteworthy. In Revolution In The Head, Ian MacDonald described it as "a rambling affair composed of an irregular fourteen-bar verse joined to a ten-bar chorus which sounds like a middle eight."

 

Lennon tended to write his lyrics first, then fitted chords and melody around the words. While the results here are certainly interesting, the out-of-time introduction, barely audible bass and George Martin’s rudimentary grand piano solo suggest it was regarded as little more than a filler track to complete the album.

 

ABOUT THE ARTIST

Steve Bolton has worked with Keith Richards, David Bowie, Paul Young, David Gilmour, Belinda Carlisle, Carl Palmer, Dominic Miller, Manu Katché, John Otway and The Who.

 

 

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157 – With A Little Help From My Friends – Gary Marcus

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(To download on a mac, Option Click on the Download link)
 
Original version recorded March 29-30, 1967
Ukulele version recorded July 23, 2009
 
Gary Marcus, vocals, and guitar 
Kathena Bryant, counterpoint vocals
Mary Farbood:  harpsichord and backing vocals
Tobias Hurwitz:  bass and backing vocals
David Poeppel, additional guitar 
Terry Gourley, additional vocals
Doug Bemis – Backing vocals
Andrew Poeppel – Backing vocals
Luke Poeppel – Backing vocals
Athena Vouloumanos – Backing vocals
Dave Barratt: Ukulele and everything else
 
Produced by David Barratt at The Abattoir Of Good Taste
 
Written and credited to Lennon & McCartney
 
Essay : Gary Marcus
 
ABOUT THE SONG
 
What would you think if I sang out of tune? I, your guest blogger, Gary Marcus, author of Guitar Zero: The New Musician and The Science of Learning, and musical novice, have wondered this many times over the last three years.
 
Like Ringo, I am not known for my singing abilities. Unlike Ringo, I am not a professional musician, or even close; for most of my life, in fact,  I thought that the act of creating music was entirely out of my grasp. I had no sense of rhythm, and little sense of pitch. In 4th grade; I got kicked out of recorder class because I couldn’t play "Mary Had a Little Lamb". It was only my very late 30′s that I got up the nerve to try again.
 
For Ringo, "With a Little Help from My Friends", was a song written for him, not by him, by two of his friends, the little-known John Lennon and Paul McCartney. 
 
In exchange for his tireless stream of tasteful yet rarely showy drumming, the boys agreed to let him have an occasional, once-an-album, go at singing.  
 
For John and Paul, Friends was little more than work for hire; I"m not sure they expected it to become the enduring classic that it has become (#304 on The Rolling Stone all-time list). More likely, they saw it as just a little side project between more serious compositions, written and recorded in a day or two, in March 1967, just before they posed for the album cover of Sergeant Pepper. 
 
Ringo, though, was worried, from the very start. Especially because in the original version, the lyric that followed  "What would you think if I sang of tune?" was not "Would you walk out on me?", but something more Vaudevillian, sure to bring a laugh, but at Ringo’s expense: "Would you throw tomatoes at me?" 
 
Fearing that Beatles fans might do just that, every time he sang the song, Ringo wisely insisted on a line change. Even so, he barely got through the song; the song’s last note was a bit too high for him, higher than he had ever recorded before. Ringo needed considerable coaching, and help from his friends, to make it through.
 
Luckily for Ringo, The Beatles never actually played this song live. 
 
Unluckily for the world, I did. Tone deaf and clueless, and accompanied by 5 of my best musical friends, Jessie Murphy, Amy Schildige, Marcia Webb, Kat Bryant, and Roger Greenawalt "With A Little Help From My Friends" became my first — and thus far only — singing performance before a live, paying audience.
 
That live performance appears, sadly, to have been lost in the mists of time, but Kat and another terrific set of friends and colleagues, listed above, joined me in the studio.  
 
To say I couldn’t have done it without them is a giant understatement.
 
Joe Cocker I ain’t, but this cover comes from the heart, and I hope you enjoy it. 
 
 
ABOUT THE ARTIST
 
Gary Marcus is an award-winning professor of psychology and director of the NYU Center for Language And Music (CLAM), where he studies evolution, language, and cognitive development. He has written four books about the origins and development of mind and brain, is the editor of the The Norton Psychology Reader and is the author of numerous science publications in leading journals, such as Science, and Nature.  Kluge: The Haphazard Evolution of The Human Mind was a New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice. His new book, Guitar Zero: The New Musician and The Science of Learning,  one of 20 non-fiction books to watch for in 2012, will be published by The Penguin Press on January 23.

 

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156 – Little Child – Faiyaz Jafri

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Original version recorded 11–12 September and 3 October 1963
Ukulele version recorded January 6 2012
 
Faiyaz Jafri: Vocal
David Barratt Ukulele and everything else
 
Produced by David Barratt at The Abattoir Of Good Taste
 
Video Directed by Faiyaz Jafri
 
Written and credited to Lennon & McCartney
 
 
 
 
ABOUT THE SONG
 
Little Child is the 5th song from side one of "With The Beatles”.
Little Child is also the 5th song on side one of that album that happens to be in the key of “E”. 
I may be wrong but I can’t think of any album that opens with five songs in the same key. 
Odd. 
 
The recording of “Little Child” is odd also. Is there an earlier recording that has a solo panning from right to left and back again. I believe EMI/Abbey Road engineer Norman Smith was responsible for this as none of The Beatles were allowed to touch the hallowed mixing desk at this point in their career. Even on one of the most trite of their recordings The Beatles made a breakthrough.
 
McCartney himself is quoted as calling it filler, but from an anthropological standpoint  “Little Child” is an interesting lens to view mid-20th Century popular culture though. It has often been criticized for being sexist or even pedophiliac because of lyrics like:
 
Little child, won’t you dance with me?
I’m so sad and lonely
Baby take a chance with me
If you want someone
To make you feel so fine
Then we’ll have some fun
When you’re mine, all mine
So come, come on, come on
 
In my opinion “Little Child” is not really about sex per-se but more about unconscious European attitudes to race.
 
John and Paul were aping a tradition in blues music of using names like – “baby”, “honey pie”, “daddy”, “mama” and “child” as a reference for a lover. 
 
These were terms that came into use during “The Jazz Age”. No one in Britain would have used such terms before World War 2.
 
John and Paul were copying songs by Big Joe Turner, Big Mama Thornton, Little Richard.and dozens of others. It wasn’t consciously racist but it was appropriating another culture and putting into a completely different context.
 
The Beatles came from one corner of The Golden Triangle of  16th, 17th and 18th century slavery. Slaves were taken from the west coast of Africa to The Americas where they were forced to pick cotton in the southern states. That cotton was then then shipped back to the birthplace of The Beatles – Liverpool –  where it was sold to mills in greater Lancashire to make clothing for the rest of Europe. The money from those sales was used in part to buy more slaves from Africa to pick more cotton… and so it goes.
 
But cotton and slaves and money were not the only things exchanged. Pretty soon European concepts of Christianity were taken up by the slaves, and in their  churches by mixing European and African harmonies The Blues was born. Long after slavery was abolished the trade routes were still being used for consumer goods. Liverpool was still the major port for goods that came from The Americas and one of those goods were American “Race Records” – other wise known as The Blues. Those records featured artists like Screaming Jay Hawkins who John and Paul were deeply influenced by. 
 
“Little Child” is part of that complicated conversation created by slavery.
 
This conversation continues today when white British “Yoof” talk in Yardy accents. When I listen to Dub-step artists like Stenchman sing/toast in faux Jamaican patois I am reminded of this record. There is a romanticism of racial oppression that European youth often embrace. I’m not sure why they do it but they do. 
 
Faiyaz Jafri’s ukulele mixes the darker side of the lyric with his trademark vision of neo-archetypes. Obviously Kubrick’s “The Shining”, De Palma’s “Carrie” and “Sisters”, sex and violence and emotionally immature adolescents as well as the ambiguity of eroticism voiced by a patriarch, played a part in the creation of this film.
  
His film creates more questions than answers.
 
Why is the little girl in a padded cell?
Why is she so angry?
Are the events solely existing in her head?
Who’s blood is this?
 
Politically correct?
 
Probably not.
 
Enjoy.
 
 
ABOUT THE ARTIST
  
Faiyaz Jafri is a New York based artist and award winning filmmaker born and raised in rural Holland of Dutch and Pakistani decent. Jafri explores Jungian archetypes in the modern world. In addition he searches for neo-archetypes in mass media and global popular culture.
 
His work has an almost clinically engineered feel to it without becoming cold or soulless. It is this contrast between unnatural perfection and the fact that his work conveys a strong emotion that makes his work at times haunting but always strangely human.
 
His work has been exhibited in the form of film, print, video installations and life size sculptures in New York, Berlin, Taipei, Songzhuang, Hong Kong, Amsterdam, and Turin. More on Jafri and his work can be found on his site bam-b.com and his blog.
 
Filmography
 
2012 Little Child
2011 Professional driver on a closed circuit.
2011 NDS
2011 Hello Bambi
2010 Casulaties of Love
2010 Natural Plastic
2005 POPone
2003 MusicBox
2002 Helen of Troy
2002 Déjeuner
2001 Violence a Surrogate for Sex

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155 – I Feel Fine – Casey MacGill

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(To download on a mac, Option Click on the Download link)
 
Original version recorded October 18 1964
Ukulele version recorded December 13 2011
 
Casey MacGill- lead and backing vocals, ukulele, cornet
Orville Johnson – dobro, mandolin, washboard, sound effects, backing vocals
Matt Weiner- acoustic bass
 
Recorded and mixed at The SunRoom by Orville Johnson
 
Written and credited to Lennon & McCartney
 
Essay Bill Clift
 
 
ABOUT THE SONG
 
It was always about that intro. Yes, there’s been claims and counter claims over the years regarding who was and wasn’t the first to use feedback live or on record but, to my green ears, it was the weirdest, most wonderful thing I’d ever heard. I suppose it seems pretty tame nowadays. That type of sound is a familiar one in the landscape of modern music used, passionately, angrily, joyously and ever more loudly by Townsend, Hendrix et al.  I still remember hearing though, as a nine year old Beatles fan, one cold floodlit* night  on the terraces of Priestfield Stadium (home to the mighty Gillingham Football Club) through proper speakers, loud enough to shake the stands, to spill over and echo around surrounding streets and houses, that strange and eeriest of sounds- feedback from a guitar! Such a feeling of exhilaration. I remember wanting to run up and down the steps of the half deserted Rainham End, which I did, in a state of real excitement, buoyed up by the sound of that intro, much more interested in the music than I had been in the drab footballing display of the previous forty-five long minutes. Two or three seconds of utter joy followed by as perfect a pop-song you’re ever likely to hear,  I (really did) Feel Fine.
 
That intro, in case you didn’t already know, was a happy accident of the Lennon variety when he leaned his guitar against his amp speaker without turning the volume down. With the guitar pickups facing the amp it created this ‘Nnnnnwaaahhh’ noise. They combined it with an A from McCartney’s bass and, voila, that famous catchy sounding intro.
 
What I like about the rest of the song is its sparse simplicity. What we’re listening to is a  classic four-piece pop group, two guitars, bass and drums, given even more space because, instead of a more usual strumming rhythm guitar, John plays the main riff throughout the song which George basically doubles**. Paul’s bass line is simplicity itself and this allows Ringo’s latin laced rhythm and blues drumming to give the song its main drive***. The verse and tag-line is a pretty standard 12 bar blues format but they manage to Beatle it up with a lovely middle-eight, full of unexpected chord changes and rich backing vocals from Paul and George. I love Lennon’s vocal on this one. Effortless, almost lazy, never mind the dozy ‘things’, ‘diamond rings’ lyric, he manages to sell this simplest of packages with a relaxed yet boastful passion. 
 
Years after that gleeful listen at the Gill’s game I used the song’s title in a song of my own, ‘Sake of a Dream’:
 
“ And a drunk takes her time over each glass of wine
She plays ‘I Feel Fine’ on the jukebox.
But one look in her eyes and you know she’s telling lies
For the sake of a dream she no longer believes.”
 
See what I did there? Clever old stick, eh? Apart from its very convenient rhyme it seemed a fantastic choice with which to expose the woman’s loneliness and sadness because the song really is the opposite of that, such a happy, vibrant piece of music. Still makes me want to tear around the Rainham end to this day.
 
*Floodlights erected in 1963 at a cost of £40,000.
**The riff was influenced by a record called ‘Watch You Step’ by Bobby Parker.
***The drum part was what the Beatles used to refer to as a ‘What’d I Say rhythm’, a groove used on that Ray Charles song by his drummer, Milt Turner.
 
The Ukulele version performed by Casey MacGill is unreservedly tied to the spirit of the original. Notice how Casey and producer Orville Johnson recreate the feedback of the original with acoustic instrumentation. Casey’s music is deeply rooted in a mythical-America where joy can be found no matter what the circumstances of one’s life.
 
Although the groove is totally different, this one swinging like a mother, its jaunty naughtiness completely gets the well-being and happiness we’re meant to feel. 
 
I defy you not to grin and bop listening to this red-hot thang. 
 
Nice one Casey.     
 
 
 
ABOUT THE ARTIST
 
Casey has played the ukulele since receiving one as a Christmas gift in 1957. He also plays piano and cornet, performing with Orville and with his band the Blue4Trio. The ukulele has accompanied him on the street in the late 1960s, the Gong Show, the movie Frances, and the Broadway show Swing. Next up, a collection of hapa-haole tunes from the 1930s with Orville on Hawaiian steel guitar! Find more details at http://www.caseymacgill.com and http://www.blue4trio.com
 
 
Orville is a Seattle based musician, writer, recordist, and bon vivant. His seminal Beatles experience was standing in front of a mirror strumming a broom like a guitar and trying to bounce at the knees like John Lennon after witnessing the Fab Four on the Ed Sullivan show. Follow his adventures and find more info about his own CDs and instructional DVDs at http://www.orvillejohnson.com

 

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154 – The Long And Winding Road – Jessica Lee Morgan

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Original version –  January 26 1969
Ukulele version – December 1 – 23, 2011
 
Jessica Lee Morgan – Vocals and ukulele
Nathan MacCormack – Cello
David Barratt – Ukulele and everything else
 
Produced by: David Barratt, Jessica Lee Morgan and Christian Thomas at The Abattoir of Good Taste, Manhattan and Space Studios, Cardiff, UK
 
Vocals recorded by Christian Thomas 
 
Written by Paul McCartney
Credited to Lennon & McCartney
 
ABOUT THE SONG
 
Paul knew the game was up with The Beatles during the Get Back/Let It Be sessions, he probably realized it when Yoko became an ever present addition to their recording sessions during The White Album. It was then that Paul came up with the germ of the idea that became The Long and Winding Road. It is a complicated love song that was at the source of  as much pain as it describes in it’s heart rendering lyric.
 
The opening melody repeats throughout the piece but there is no real chorus. The genius of this song is its ambiguity. You can never tell if the song is at the beginning, middle  or end. The lyric describes a thwarted love that the protagonist will not give up upon. The outcome of this relationship is still in the balance but it is not looking good.
 
It is a love song from Paul to John.
 
Paul knew that he would never give up on John but he also knew that their relationship, both as musicians and as friends, was disintegrating. There is a profound sense of loss and faith invoked by the way the music and lyric combine. This is masterful songwriting that it literally timeless.
 
If you listen to  “The Long And Winding Road” while reading the lyric I am sure that someone close to you will come to mind. It could be a parent, a sibling, a lover or a friend. A slightly flawed relationship that you can not escape. Again and again we find in a Beatles song how the deeply personal becomes the universal and this song is one of the best.
 
Paul knew that he would never escape John. There is a powerful mix of pain, joy, frustration, hope and acceptance in this piece that still moves me in a profound way. John has now been dead for 30 years but still the long and winding road that Paul treads still leads to John’s door. In nearly every interview that Paul does today the shadow of John is not far away but I feel that there is little resentment from Paul about that. 
 
Such is the price of love.
 
So.. to the recording…
 
Several questions arise from the recording and re-recording of this song.
 
1. Did John play bass badly on the song deliberately to screw up the song?
2. Did the rest of the Beatles employ Phil Spector to to piss off Paul?
3. Is the Spector version superior or inferior to the original or the “Let It Be Naked” version?
 
The answers are:
1. Probably not – John was so fucked up at this point he made the mistakes unconsciously. 
2. Probably but Mr Spector was, and maybe still is, a genius so the jury is still out on that one.
3. More difficult to answer… 
 
The Phil Spector version was the 20th and last number-one song in the United States on 23 May 1970, and was the last single released by the quartet.  While that version of the song was very successful,  the new arrangement by producer Spector angered McCartney to the point that when he made his case in court for breaking up The Beatles as a legal entity, McCartney cited the treatment of "The Long and Winding Road" as one of the reasons for doing so.
 
Spector may be a murderer but he did not murder this song. 
 
His overblown approach (18 violins, four violas, four cellos, three trumpets, three trombones, two guitars, and a choir of 14 women) may seem excessive but the effect is grand and sentimental. Two things that Paul has been very comfortable in many of his works. That is not to say that the McCartney arrangement on the “Let It Be Naked” is not great. They both work and I’m glad we have them both to enjoy.
 
One thing I do like is like Spector’s attitude to Paul’s criticism of his production:
"Paul had no problem picking up the Academy Award for the Let It Be movie soundtrack, nor did he have any problem in using my arrangement of the string and horn and choir parts when he performed it during 25 years of touring on his own. If Paul wants to get into a pissing contest about it, he’s got me mixed up with someone who gives a shit."
 
I  agree with Ringo’s take on the two versions, when Let It Be Naked came out in 2008 he was quoted as saying:
"There’s nothing wrong with Phil’s strings, this is just a different attitude to listening. But it’s been 30-odd years since I’ve heard it without all that and it just blew me away."
 
The Ukulele version recorded by Jessica Lee Morgan is a haunting affair. The strings and ukulele parts echo Phillip Glass. The sentimentality of the original Spector and McCartney versions are left behind and we are left with the bare bones of the song. This long and winding road is a lonely one.
 
 
ABOUT THE ARTIST
 
Jessica Lee Morgan is a singer and songwriter with Welsh/Italian blood and music in her genes. She has followed a long and winding road through life and only recently released her first album “I Am Not”. She thinks in harmony, writes from the heart and lets the songs find their own sound, with often unexpected results. Never averse to reinterpreting a cover, she also loves singing songs by Queen, Bowie and of course the Fab Four.
 
Jessica upholds two family traditions of The Beatles and Ukulele: mother Mary Hopkin was the first signing to Apple Records, father Tony Visconti cites his sole musical influences as The Beatles and Beethoven and gave Jessica her first uke, and brother Morgan Visconti contributed his cover of “Think For Yourself” to this very project. After rebelling by working the nine to five, she now works closely with her family in various guises including label head, session singer and archivist.
 
When not singing and writing, she runs a recording company, Space Studios, in the UK with her partner Christian Thomas, and would like to teach the world to sing in perfect harmony.
 
www.jessicaleemorgan.com

 

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153 – One After 909 – Cav Manning

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(To download on a mac, Option Click on the Download link)
 
Original Version recorded  January 30th 1969
Ukulele version recorded December 2nd 2011
 
Cav Manning – Vocals
David Barratt – Ukulele and everything else
 
Produced by David Barratt at The Abattoir Of Good Taste, NYC
 
Written by John Lennon and or Paul McCartney
Credited to Lennon and McCartney  
 
Essay – Sgt. Hank Semoiina
 
 
ABOUT THE SONG
 
"One After 909" was either written by John Lennon with a little help from Paul McCartney (according to John), or, half and half by the two (according to Paul).  Either way, it isn’t surprising that memories have blurred because the song is the product of John and Paul at the start of their songwriting career, say 1957 or so, when their lyrics were still derivative and their finished songs were, well, er, derivative too.
 
And so a 15 year-ish old Paul McCartney sat down with a 16 year-ish old John Lennon, and according to Paul, they decided to try their hand at a traditional blues-train song like "Rock Island Line" (which had just been recorded by Lonnie Donnegan), "Freight Train," or "Midnight Special."  The song they came up with is, to be blunt, pretty rudimentary, the lyrics repetitive  and formulaic, and the theme hackneyed — but why shouldn’t they be?  
 
This was not yet Great Beatles Art, this was a couple of teenage boys cutting up in a living room while cutting school for the day.  It was just good boy-fun, a neat writing exercise for two young kids that would later shake the world, but at present hadn’t done much except smoke a lot of ciggies and nicked coins from their parent’s dressers.  "Hey, let’s write a freight song!"  "OK, is your Aunt home?  Let’s go to yours!""  Even Paul, in his most self-important later moments, never tried to turn the result — "909" — into Beatles Great Art.  He just shrugs and says:  "It’s not a great song but it’s a great favorite of mine because it has great memories for me of John and I trying to write a bluesy freight song."
 
Everything about the song is simple.  The lyrics include moon/June pairings that would make Irving Berlin blush:  "Move over once, move over twice/come on baby, don’t be cold as ice."  Even the parallel third harmony that Paul came up with is straight Everly Brothers (similar to their equally early effort "In Spite of All The Danger.").  And yet, this dumb little song — this songwriting exercise by two wet-behind-the-ears kids — wouldn’t die.  It kept coming back, over and over. 
 
First, one can find on the Internet (and Anthology) a 1960 recording of the song by the Quarrymen, i.e., Paul, John and George on unplugged guitars, in someone’s living room, probably John’s.  It sounds amazingly like the version The Beatles released 10 years later, but there are some fascinating glimpses into the evolution of the band in this version.  Paul and John are already locking in vocally better than most humans could ever hope to, but unlike their later work, sometimes they fail to match each other exactly.  It’s a tribute to their vocal blending that you listen to this version and the most you can say is "Wait — that harmony line wasn’t perfect!  Gotcha, Beatles!"  But it isn’t a fair comparison — they weren’t Beatles yet.
 
The next recording of this song is from March 5, 1963, when they were firmly Beatles.  The soon-to-explode group, which had not yet conquered America (was there ever such a time?) had just finished the historic 585 minute-recording of their seminal "Please Please Me" album, and now, a few weeks later, they were in the studio looking to record a single.  They recorded "From Me To You," "Thank You Girl" and, to kill left over time, "One After 909."  This version of "909" was completely revamped — it was slowed down from the frenetic "Ooom-PAH Ooom-PAH" rhythm of the 1960 version, and sung with a swagger and confidence (and flawless vocal blending) that let you know that this was indeed the Beatles, and not Your Father’s Quarrymen.  But poor George, the late bloomer, played the stinkiest solo on this version.  In the beginning, before he grew up, George could come out with charmingly awkward, jerky leads ("I Saw Her Standing There" being a prime example) but also, pure teenage finger-fumbling as well.  The version from this day is an exercise in the latter.  It’s so bad, the solo, that it’s laughable, prompting John to ask George incredulously after the take:  "What kind of solo was THAT?"
 
Fast forward six years:  The Beatles, exhausted, have blown the world’s mind with Sergeant Pepper and each other’s patience with The White Album.  Paul is chirping away to a completely disinterested John and company, saying "come on, let’s put on a show!"  Nobody cares.  Paul says "let’s make a movie!"  Nobody cares, even more.  To quiet Paul down, they all shuffle, desultorily, to Twickenham Studios, where George gets shocked by microphones, John stares into space and chews gum (and Yoko), and Paul gesticulates wildly with his beard and upper body, trying to get someone — anyone — to do something rocking. 
 
Somehow, in the middle of this disaster, someone starts playing "One After 909."  It makes sense, because to the extent anyone is paying attention, the theme of the day is "Get Back" to "The Beatles As Nature Intended."  "909" is that.  It is not fancy, it is not clever, it is just a dumb little rocker.
 
Soon, because after all, we are talking about The Beatles, the song is in good — no, excellent — shape.  And it isn’t the 1963 version, it is the Quarrymen one from the way back machine, from John’s living room, all those years ago.  AND IT ROCKS!  Billy Preston adds funky keyboards all over the place.  John and Paul are inseparably in each other’s vocal pockets, as they have been for years by this time.  And George?  Well, George plays a solo and guitar licks that blow the roof off — literally.  They are all on the roof, in fact, wearing their wives’ coats (Ringo looks gloriously incongruous in red vinyl), and they are rocking out.  It is pure joy to watch.  Nobody is sniping at anyone; the lawsuits have not begun; Yoko hasn’t yet invaded Mars.  And when you look carefully, at least at Paul, you see that he means it — he is playing and singing with the joy and energy of the same 15 year old that either wrote this song, or helped write this song, or whatever it is….. 
 
But what is it now?
 
Can the ukulele transcend time & space?
 
Today’s 15 year olds, the great grandchildren of the fathers of 909, now make Dubstep. The Great Cav reinterprets the song in a style that alludes to 1950’s America, 1960’s England 1970’s Jamaica and 21st Century Planet Earth.
 
It rocks and rolls and skanks and shanks. It is timely and timeless and still the singer can’t find that train.
 
 
ABOUT THE ARTIST
 
Ok heres info. 
 
Key stuff. 
 
Cav from the roots rebel rousers DOUBLE-05. Dubversive. Nattytude. Superphonic. 
 
Bass desires.
 
Born Norf Londinium. 
 
A Tottenham man to the core. 
 
Child of Jamaicans. Adopted by Brooklyn. Resident of Bedford-Stuyvesant. Quotes " I’m glad my Roots are showing !"
 
" Give skanks and praise"

 

 

 

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152 – Happiness Is A Warm Gun – Dave Foster

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(To download on a mac, Option Click on the Download link)
 
Original Version recorded September 24-25 1969
Ukulele version recorded November  19 2011
 
Dave Foster – Vocals, ukulele
David Barratt – Ukulele and everything else
 
Produced by David Barratt at The Abattoir Of Good Taste, NYC from original recording by Dave Foster
 
Written by John Lennon
Credited to Lennon and McCartney  
 
 
ABOUT THE SONG
 
One of the things I love about this and many other John Lennon lyrics, is that the more obscure Lennon tries to be the more transparent he becomes. On first listening this sounds like totally random sets of words and sounds that have little relation to one another. What he gives us is list of his obsessions one after another.
 
Verse 1: Yoko
 
Verse 2: British sexual repression – ironically the song was banned by the BBC for sexual symbolism. They thought the gun was a phallic symbol.
 
“I need a fix” section – Heroin (which he was using regally at this point)
 
“Mother Superior jumped the gun” – violence and religion which both played a large part of his youth and fascinated him his whole life.
 
“When I hold you in my arms, And when I feel my finger on your trigger, I know nobody can do me no harm
Happiness is a warm gun” – This is the mantra of anyone who has taken heroin. The illusion is that nothing can ever do you any harm. The irony is the drug that is making you feel that way is the the very thing that is doing you harm.
 
According to Lennon, the title came from the cover of a gun magazine that producer George Martin showed him: 
Lennon: I think he showed me a cover of a magazine that said ‘Happiness Is a Warm Gun. It was a gun magazine. I just thought it was a fantastic, insane thing to say. A warm gun means you just shot something."
 
The reference, whether or not intermediately from the magazine, was one of many 1960s riffs on Charles M. Schulz’s culturally popular saying, Happiness is a Warm Puppy, which began in the Peanuts comic strip and became a widely sold book.
 
The song is intensely fragmented due to John’s technique of sticking the part of one song into another. This is it’s structure:
 

She’s not a girl who misses much…
(0:00-0:14):
4 bars of 4/4.
 
She’s well acquainted with the velvet touch…
(0:14-0:45):
1 bar of 4/4
1 bar of 2/4
5 bars of 4/4
1 bar of 5/4
1 bar of 4/4.

 
I need a fix cos I’m goin’ down…
(0:45-1:13):
twice through a 3 bars/4 bars/4 bars series of 3/8 (i.e. 22 bars of 3/8).

 
Mother superior, jump the gun… (1:13-1:35):
thrice through a bar each of 9/8 and 10/8.

 
Happiness is a warm gun… (1:35-2:43):
4 bars of 4/4
3 bars of 12/8 (with the drums doing 4 bars of 4/4 and 1 bar of 2/4!)
5 bars of 4/4 (the final bar entering free time)
1 bar of 2/4 (in free time)
5 bars of 4/4
 
The final Doo-Wop chorus of this song has the exact same chord progression as "This Boy," just in a different key. 
 
This was Paul’s favorite  John song on the White Album. The multiple tunes, themes, textures I think influenced Paul’s later pieces ‘Uncle Albert/Admiral Halsey’, ‘Band On The Run’ and ‘Venus And Mars’. 
 
The version brought to us by Dave Foster’s proves that if you mix sexual repression, violence, heroin but add a ukulele you get HAPPINESS!
 
 
 
ABOUT THE ARTIST
 
Dave Foster should not  be confused with David Foster (producer of Michael Bublé and Celine Dion).
 
Dave Foster was born the same year “Revolver” came out and has been a lifelong Beatle-fan as long as he can remember. He taught himself to play guitar on a broken nylon string guitar (he played el kabong on one too many times) one Beatle song at a time from The Beatles Complete Songbook. He formed the original band Bubble in 1994. They put out an EP with a Lennon-esque version of “Pure Imagination” from Willy Wonka in 1996 and followed that in 2000 with a critically lauded full-length CD produced by Fred Smith (of Television). 
 
In 2005 Bubble were asked to perform a classic album at Arlene Grocery and they chose ”Revolver” (of course). After that they went on to cover many other Beatle albums faithfully including “Sgt Pepper” and “Abbey Road” to family audiences at Lincoln Center, Symphony Space, BAM and other venues. 
 
This year Bubble plan on recording a new original album as well as re-release their 2009 album “Seconds”. 
 

 

 

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151 – It’s All Too Much – Laura Dayan

(To download on a mac, Option Click on the Download link)
 
Original Version recorded May/June1967
Ukulele version recorded November 18 2011
 
Laura Dayan – Vocals
David Barratt – Ukulele and everything else
 
Produced by David Barratt at The Abattoir Of Good Taste
 
Written by and credited to George Harrison  
 
Essay Dave Foster
 
 
ABOUT THE SONG
 
“It’s All Too Much” was George Harrison’s full out psychedelic jam, featuring  the best feedback intros of the entire Fab Four catalog (played by Lennon…who also provided the excellent feedback intro to “I Feel Fine”) and clocking in at just under 7 minutes…just behind “Hey Jude” as their longest pop tune. 
 
LSD and psychedelia were in full swing in 1967 in the world of the Fab Four. Paul McCartney and John Lennon both chose to look back on the innocence of their childhoods through the lens of lysergic and paint sonic pictures of Technicolor landscapes (blue suburban skies and kaleidoscope eyes), but continuing on his spiritual journey George Harrison looked within. Having abandoned the guitar and immersed himself in Indian music, Harrison pulls the single chord drone of the Eastern world into the psychedelic rock world with loud guitars. George is actually playing the Hammond…John and Paul are the ones rocking out.
 
Lyrically, the tune shows off George’s spiritual realizations under the influence of LSD while also being a little critical that culture, much like “Day Tripper”.
 
“Sail me on a silver sun for I know that I’m free.
Show me that I’m everywhere and get me home for tea”
 
George said “I just wanted to write a rock ‘n’ roll song about the whole psychedelic thing of the time. Because you’d trip out, you see, on all this stuff, and then whoops! you’d just be back having your evening cup of tea!”
 
The lyrics showcase both sides of the Quiet Beatle…the soul-searching mystic and the wisecracking cynic, each side balancing the other out, typified in lines like:
 
 “It’s all too much for me to take
The love that’s shining all around here
All the world’s a birthday cake,
So take a piece but not too much”
 
The song, like many Fab tunes from this era, contains a snippet of another tune within it, in this case the line “with your long blond hair and your eyes of blue” from the Merseybeats’ 1966 single “Sorrow” as well as all the other trappings of Beatle psychedelic arrangements – random percussion, backwards sounds, extended outro with horn section riffing.
 
Though not considered a masterwork in the Beatles cannon (or even Harrison’s), the tune is a major part of the “Yellow Submarine” soundtrack, and figures prominently in the film’s climax as one of it’s most trippy visual set pieces and for a film that pretty much consists exclusively of them, that’s saying something.
 
Taken in the context of the movie, the song is very powerful, providing audience with a real jump out of the seats and dance moment. This essayist personally witnessed both audience and theater usher do just that at a 1999 screening. 
 
Of course by 1968 when the movie and song were actually released, George had abandoned acid in favor of meditation and he was making his guitar gently weep once more. 
 
While the original version of the song may have been "too much", the ukulele version is "just right". 
 
It sounds like the version Harrison himself may have recorded had he been under the influence of meditation and not drugs. With a backing evoking the simple shimmer of Harrison acoustic work, Argentine songstress Laura Dayan helps keep the song from floating into the sky like the acid drenched original.
 
Like the demo for "While My Guitar Gently Weeps", it’s very easy to hear the beauty of Harrison’s lyrics and melodies in the more acoustic setting of this great version of this psychedelic gem.
 
ABOUT THE ARTIST
 
Laura Dayan is an Argentinian artist based in Brooklyn for the past two years.
She has performed in great venues in Argentina, Uruguay, Panama, Spain, France, New York, London, to name a few.
 
In 2004 Dayan won a huge competition in Buenos Aires and she and her band at the time were taken to play at The Cavern, the mythical pub in Liverpool where The Beatles started.
 
With the same band, Inclan Funk, she toured for more than 8 years, performing at the most exclusive places in Argentina and the countries mentioned before. They also played at important festivals like  Pepsi Music Festival and the Sumar Music Festival (the biggest music festival in Argentina). 
 
She also had the opportunity to share the stage  with amazing internacional talent musicions like Jojo Mayer, Clark Gayton, Gabriel Gordon, Jonhatan Levy, the guys of "Brazilian girls" band, Avishai Cohen, Ilhan Erzahin, Oscar Giunta, etc…
In 2011 she recorded her first solo album, N.E.N.A, and it is now promoting it all around EEUU.
 
Laura Dayan is delighted to be part of this project and to be able to perform this beautiful song of one of her favorite bands. 
Her gratitude is endless, after all "is all too much". 
 
For more information about Laura Dayan:
www.soundcloud/lauradayan
www.myspace.com/Lauradayan
www.youtube.com/lauradayan
www.facebook.com/lauradayan

 

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150 – I Need You – Ukulele Ray

150 – I Need You – Ukulele Ray

(To download on a mac, Option Click on the Download link)
 
 
Original version –  February 15 – 16 1965
Ukulele version – November 15, 2011
  
Ukulele Ray – Ukulele & Lead Vocal:
Joe Rosignolo – Lead Ukulele, Bass & Back-up Vocals
Jack Nathan – Congas & Percussion
Bob Harkleroad – Lap Steel Slide Guitar
Rockn’ Rolivia – Tambourine
Ross Margolin – Additional Percussion
 
Produced by: Ukulele Ray & Joe Rosignolo at 2656 State Street Studios, Carlsbad, CA – November 15, 2011
 
 Written and credited to George Harrison
 
 
ABOUT THE SONG
  
Need is such a strange thing.
 
Needs are distinguished from wants because a deficiency in “need” would cause a clear negative outcome, such as dysfunction or death. My old mate Abraham Maslow came up with his own hierarchy of needs in 1943 which has become the standard way to describe human need over the last 50 years or so. I’m very fond of Abraham. He stressed the importance of focusing on the positive qualities in people, as opposed to treating them as a ‘bag of symptoms”, which was common practice in psychology during the 40’s – 60’s.
 
 
George Harrison wrote “I Need You” for a very young and impressionable Pattie Boyd with whom he was smitten. I’m sure neither George or Patti believed that George needed Pattie in a Maslowian sense. He could have just about all his needs filled from other sources but he took a shine to Pattie and so the song was born.
 
George took this song and rewrote it in a much more realistic way a couple of years later as “If I Needed Someone” which took the simplistic idea of need to a higher level.
 
 
“Carve your number on my wall
And maybe you will get a call from me
If I needed someone”
 
 
The ukulele version features the unique talent that is Ukulele Ray. Ray builds ukuleles out of soup cans and lunch boxes. He sings, he plays, he writes books, he tells jokes.
 
 
 
 
Check him out…
 
 
 
enjoy.
 
 
ABOUT THE ARTIST
 
Ukulele Ray is a San Francisco-born native, going from street musician/vendor to worldwide prominence by creating a ukulele out of a Campbell’s Soup can (The Warhol Soup-A-Lele) and inventing the "Lunchbox-A-Lele," (a ukulele/lunchbox… suitable for playing and carrying your sandwich and music book) followed by appearances on numerous International, national and local TV, radio, Internet news programs and talkshows. His eclectic pieces have been featured and displayed the world-over in numerous art gallery and museum exhibits.
 
 
Of Portuguese decent and family originating from Hawaii, Ray began playing uke at the  age of four and became a musicical innovator by integrating ukulele as a lead instrument into mainstream music in a variety of genres. His discography includes hundreds of singles and 13 albums. Making music and ukulele history, Ray became Fender Musical Instruments’ first ukulele artist in 2009 and is author of the Hal Leonard book, "Ukulele for Guitar Players."
 
Touring with his band since 2006, with concerts, shows and appearances, Ray starred in his own Las Vegas musical-comedy revue, "UKAPALOOZA," at the Las Vegas Rocks Café and is now in production with his original children’s cooking TV show, "Kids ‘R Cookin," featuring his music, comedy, cooking and Lunchbox-A-Leles.
 
 
You can see the making of “I Need You” at http://youtu.be/UFYt4sSC9cI

 

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149 – Her Majesty – Jon Albrink

149 – Her Majesty – Jon Albrink

(To download on a mac, Option Click on the Download link)

 

Original version – July 2 1969

Ukulele version – November 12 2011

 

Jon Albrink: Vocals, guitar

John Benthal : Ukulele

 

Recorded at Live at Rockwood Music Hall NYC on The Abattoir iPhone.

 

Written by Paul McCartney

Credited to Lennon/McCartney

 

Photo Judy Schiller

 

ABOUT THE SONG

 

There is nothing wrong with “Her Majesty” per se. Lovely melody, witty lyrics, interesting chord structure that references the past while being firmly in the present. Admittedly it does bear a strong resemblance to  the Robert Johnson song “They’re Red Hot” – they are similar, but I doubt McCartney consciously stole from the great bluesman.

 

The Beatles simply should not  have had this song at the end. It just doesn’t fit. They should have put "The End" at the end of Abbey Road. It just embodies all The Beatles stand for, especially the last line "In the end, the love you take is equal to the love you make"

 

To have McCartney take over after the end does him, or the record no favors.

 

The song was originally placed between "Mean Mr. Mustard" and "Polythene Pam"; McCartney decided that the sequence did not work and the song was edited out of the medley by Abbey Road Studios tape operator John Kurlander. He was instructed by McCartney to destroy the tape, but EMI policy stated that no Beatles recording was ever to be destroyed. The fourteen seconds of silence between "The End" and "Her Majesty" are the result of Kurlander’s lead out tape added to separate the song from the rest of the recording.

 

The loud chord that occurs at the beginning of the song is the ending, as recorded, of "Mean Mr. Mustard". "Her Majesty" ends abruptly because its own final note was left at the beginning of "Polythene Pam". Paul applauded Kurlander’s "surprise effect" and the track became the unintended closer to the LP. 

 

The ukulele version features an extended lyric by balladeer Jon Albrink.  His version was recorded live at Rockwood Music Hall with John Benthal on ukulele

 

Her Majesty

 

Her majesty’s pretty and all

but she hasn’t got a lick of sense

Her majesty’s pretty and all

but she’s actually kind of dense

I tried to take her for a walk in the woods

but we couldn’t see the forest for the trees

Her majesty’s pretty and all

That’s why I’m begging on my knees, oh yeah

that’s why I’m begging on my knees

 

Her majesty’s got a nice shape

But her sweater’s getting in the way

Her majesty’s got a nice shape

That’s why a guy’s gotta pray

I tried to get her in the back of my car

but my buddy wouldn’t give me back the keys

Her majesty’s got a good shape

Some day I’ll see her in the breeze, oh yeah

some day I’ll see her in the breeze

 

Oh your majesty, oh your majesty, oh your majesty, oh

Oh your majesty, oh your majesty, vo de oh de oh doh

I tried to get in line for a ticket to ride

But it rained so I went and hid my head

Your majesty, oh your majesty

Guess we’ll have to stay in bed, oh yeah

Guess we’ll have to stay in bed

 

Her majesty’s a pretty nice girl

but she hasn’t got a lot to say

her majesty’s a pretty nice girl

but she changes from day to day

I want to tell her that I love her a lot

But I gotta get a belly full of wine

her majesty’s a pretty nice girl

some day I’m gonna make her mine, oh yeah

Some day I’m gonna make her mine

 

 

ABOUT THE ARTIST

 

Jon Albrink is a New York City based singer/songwriter.  His two CDs of original songs, “Shimmer and Thrum” and “Private Moon,” have garnered praise for their “haunting melodies and arrangements”… “beautiful, soulful, intelligent music”…”perfect lyrics.”  Jon has collaborated on songs withPeter Valentine, Jeff Franzel, Nikki Gregoroff, Amanda Homi, Phil Galdston and Danielia Cotton, among others.  He performs regularly as a solo artist and with Amanda Homi’s “Drumgirl” band. 

 

Jon’s vocal performance is also featured on the recently released “Rosler’s Recording Booth” on the Don Rosler song “Pretty as Ever.” 

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