Comments on: The Beatles Mono Reviews 2 – Please Please Me

By: monstermike

monstermike — Wed, 23 Sep 2009 18:42:45 +0000

It’s possible that the two blind spots might be related.

By: Andrew Hickey

Andrew Hickey — Sun, 20 Sep 2009 14:46:16 +0000

Neil, I am going to delete this. I believe your claims to be untrue (and at least one is absolutely false – “the party has made it a condition of membership that one support this genocide”. I am a member of the party and i do not condone *any* genocide.

However, that is *not* the reason I’m deleting this – rather it is because you are making allegations against specific, named individuals which could very well be construed as libellous, and I as owner of this blog am not going to risk prosecution for criminal libel over your posts. Unfortunately, our libel system is so broken I have no option but to do that, despite my own support for free speech. Also, this comment is off-topic *for this post*, which is about the music of the Beatles.

Please feel free to repost a version of this comment, without anything libellous, under any of my posts dealing with the Liberal Democrats. Frankly, I know little about the Yugoslavian wars of the 1990s, but did not support our involvement in them.

By: Neil Craig

Neil Craig — Sun, 20 Sep 2009 14:34:16 +0000

[Edited by AH - Content redacted due to probable libellous content, including accusing named individuals of complicity in war crimes of which to my mind they are almost certainly innocent. If you want to see Neil's opinions, the link to his blog is left above]

By: pillock

pillock — Sun, 20 Sep 2009 11:28:31 +0000

HA!

By the way, I’ve tagged you for one of my homebrewed memes.

By: Andrew Hickey

Andrew Hickey — Sun, 20 Sep 2009 11:11:39 +0000

Oh, I agree, I’d far rather listen to Anna than Twist And Shout. I suspect the song had a lot more meaning to Lennon personally – certainly the lyric seems to presage all the belle dame sans merci figures who turn up in many of his most personal songs over the next few years, and of course Lennon was the big Arthur Alexander fan in the band.

As for the Buddy Holly influence, it’s incredibly noticeable when you look for it – just listen to the way he sings ‘apologise to her’ in She Loves You, for example. You almost expect it to be ‘apologise to her-a-her-her’…

By: Andrew Hickey

Andrew Hickey — Sun, 20 Sep 2009 11:07:56 +0000

You do. Don’t worry, it’ll be the best two hundred quid you’ve ever spent…

By: Andrew Hickey

Andrew Hickey — Sun, 20 Sep 2009 10:43:23 +0000

I think it’s actually that he had a blind spot when it comes to *Lennon* – how else could you explain his views on Nowhere Man or Across The Universe?

By: pillock

pillock — Sun, 20 Sep 2009 09:48:05 +0000

Amen to your last line, Andrew! And very good catch on Lennon’s Buddy Holly influence.

I just have one or two things to say.

One: perhaps you’re exactly right about Lennon’s vocal on “Twist And Shout” announcing “rock”…well, it’s better than “perhaps”, it’s almost certainly true…hard to imagine Robert Plant existing in a world where “Twist And Shout” didn’t…

…But still, as you know, I wish the world had (or would) take greater note of Lennon’s “Anna” vocal…unduplicatable, and I would argue in the top three of all his vocal performances, if not actually the top…”Twist And Shout” often sounds (to me. anyway) like an attempt to domesticate the weird workings of “Anna”, and make a top ten record out of it…

And, Two…

Oh hell, I forget “two”…but it’ll come to me…

By: Oliver Townshend

Oliver Townshend — Sun, 20 Sep 2009 05:53:53 +0000

This is such an expensive blog. Now I have to track down the mono Beatles…

By: monstermike

monstermike — Sun, 20 Sep 2009 01:09:07 +0000

As great as Revolution in the Head is, Ian MacDonald had a bit of a blind spot when it came to the bluesier, rootsier side of the Beatles’ output, don’t you think?