Happy birthday George Harrison - fans pay tribute

www.liverpoolecho.co.uk
Happy birthday George Harrison - fans pay tribute
Quiet Beatle remembered in vigil in Cavern Walks today
BY JADE WRIGHT
25 FEB 2016


Today (25th February) marks, what would have been George Harrisons 73rd birthday. Pictured at the Beatles statue in Cavern Walks are Liverpool hairdresser Herbert Howe with huge fan John James Chambers. Photo by Ian Cooper 

Happy birthday, George!

The late, great Beatle George Harrison – born on February 25, 1943 – would have been 73 today.

Flowers were laid at a Beatles statue to commemorate what would have been the Quiet Beatle's birthday.

Fans of the iconic guitarist decorated the figure in Cavern Walks, off Mathew Street, and held a vigil in his honour.

Liverpool hairdresser Herbert Howe and John James Chambers, founder of the Liverpool Beatles Appreciation Society, lead the tributes in Cavern Walks.

The Beatles’ lead guitarist was born in 1943 in Wavertree ’s Arnold Grove. Often described as the “quiet Beatle”, George became an admirer of Indian mysticism and famously collaborated with sitar player Ravi Shankar.

Following the Beatles’ split, he released a succession of solo albums, the most successful being 1970’s triple album All Things Must Pass and 1987’s Cloud Nine.

He sadly died at the age of 58.


Today (25th February) marks, what would have been George Harrisons 73rd birthday. Pictured at the Beatles statue in Cavern Walks are Liverpool hairdresser Herbert Howe with huge fan John James Chambers. Photo by Ian Cooper 


The Beatles by John Lennon's car after he passed his L-test 15th February 1965. L-R George Harrison John Lennon (in car) Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr 


Pop Group The Beatles November 1963The Beatles sign autographs for birmingham policemen, who helped smuggle them into the back of the Hippodrome


John Lennon March 1964 and George Harrison bent the rules of croquet when they tried their hands at the game in the grounds Dromoland Castle Ireland - tiring of croquet changed to some friendly sword play 31/3/64 


The Beatles pop group stand in line wearing crombie coatsin Paris January 1964


Beatles files 1967The Beatles at their manager Brian Epstein's home to launch the Sergeant Pepper album May 1967 


The Beatles pop group George Harrison Paul McCartney Ringo Starr John Lennon rehearse for ATV programme with comedian Ernie Wise Circa 1963 


Beatles Files 1963John Lennon Paul McCartney George Harrison and Ringo Starr relaxing between performances at the Coventry theatre on 17 November 1963 playing with scalextric toy cars 


George Harrison of the Beatles pictured amongst the Buddhist American group, The Radha Krishna Temple. August 1969 Z08251-010 



Gallery 'George Harrison memorial concert at Liverpool's St Georges Hall'





Picture by Gareth Jones1st Aug 09Playing your heart out for George...Bands and acts performed at St Georges Hall in tribute to George Harrison.. 




Picture by Gareth Jones1st Aug 09Playing your heart out for George...Bands and acts performed at St Georges Hall in tribute to George Harrison.. 

Review: George Fest recalls lovely tribute full of Harrison's spirit

www.examiner.com
Review: 'George Fest' DVD, album recall lovely tribute full of Harrison's spirit
Steve Marinucci
George Harrison Examiner
February 24, 2016


Dhani Harrison performs his father's song "Let It Down" from "George Fest: A Night to Celebrate the Music of George Harrison

'George Fest: A Night to Celebrate the Music of George Harrison'

“George Fest: A Night to Celebrate the Music of George Harrison,” which hits the streets on CD, DVD, Blu-ray, vinyl and digital download on Feb. 26, is probably the type of tribute he would have loved. It doesn't push to be a spectacle, just a night of good music. And that it is. Produced by son Dhani Harrison and David Zonshine, Dhani Harrison said he envisioned the concert, which took place Sept. 28, 2014 and was part of a celebration for the release of the “George Harrison: The Apple Years” box set, as a small club show where musicians (mostly) from his generation could cut loose on some of the deeper tracks of George's career.

The concert was originally planned for the tiny 771-seat El Rey Theatre in Los Angeles. But demand for tickets forced a move to the (not that much) larger Fonda Theater, which holds 1,200. In an interview on the DVD, Harrison also says he also says it was to bring attention to his father's songwriting.

The film begins with clips and words of George Harrison to set the tone for the evening. Then the concert opens on an unusual note with comedian and late night host Conan O'Brien fronting a band to sing “Old Brown Shoe.” Before starting the song, he jokes he had thought the show was supposed to be a George Michael Fest. But for those who aren't aware, O'Brien has a very good voice and he and the band do a gutsy version of the Beatles song. The band, which kicks through the evening, includes a rotating group that featured Jimmy Vivino on guitar, Austin Scaggs on bass, Greg Wieczorek on percussion and Steven Drozd, Matt Romano and Matt Sorum taking turns on drums.

O'Brien kicks off a great night with surprisingly few down spots. Despite all the young performers, there's no danger of George Harrison music going punk. None of the musicians, young or old, take real liberties with the songs and they are pretty reverential to Harrison's arrangements. The injection of younger voices into Harrison's music adds a youthful spirit. The CD version is music only while the DVD includes interview clips in the film. A booklet of pictures is wedged tightly behind the DVD in the CD/DVD package. Be careful or the cover will rip.

The first half of the concert has some great moments. Norah Jones' version of “Something” is beautifully low key. The Heartless Bastards' version of “If Not For You” is right on the mark. Jonathan Bates' version of “Ballad of Sir Frankie Crisp (Let It Roll)” brings the first appearance of Dhani Harrison and his father's aura with him.

But the second half of the show really takes it higher. It begins with Dhani doing a great version of “Let It Roll.” It's strange to see “Weird Al” Yankovic play it somewhat straight, but he almost does on “What Is Life,” though there's a funny moment during his song where he takes a picture of the crowd with his cellphone. It's even weirder when Yankovic, who is known for writing some crazy songs, explains in an interview on the DVD that he is a fan of Harrison's because he wrote some of the Beatles' "most twisted" songs. Brian Wilson gets help from special guest and fellow Beach Boy Al Jardine on “My Sweet Lord.” Butch Walker's version of “Any Road” is sweet. The climax with the Flaming Lips' “It's All Too Much” and the performers singing “Handle With Care” and “All Things Must Pass” end the evening beautifully.

You could be tempted to call this the junior edition of “Concert For George,” but that would slighting this great evening. Call it a nice companion to that show. The younger performers at "George Fest" bring a fresh perspective to Harrison's music and it's a foundation that his music will continue to thrive on. And that's the nicest tribute to George Harrison one could wish for.


The various configurations of "George Fest: A Night to Celebrate the Music of George Harrison."

Youth on working with Paul McCartney

The Fireman: Youth (at left) and Paul McCartney


www.theguardian.com
‘I treated working with Paul McCartney as art’ – Youth on his five favourite albums
The producer and Killing Joke bassist has produced everyone from Alien Sex Fiend to Bananarama. Here he picks the best albums he has worked on, from Pink Floyd to the Orb
As told to Joe Muggs
Thursday 18 February 2016


‘Punk wasn’t ever about dumbing down’ … Martin Glover AKA Youth, 1980. Photograph: Tim Roney/Getty Images

The Fireman
Rushes (1998)
I treated working with Paul McCartney as art and talked about artistic process. Someone of that stature could do anything, work with anyone, any day – which is potentially a little paralysing. He also wanted to escape his legacy a bit, so the psychology for me as a producer was to get him engaged and inspired about the details of the process. So we’d discuss, say, William Burroughs and his cut-up technique, or Willem de Kooning (who he had known because Linda’s dad was his agent) and his methods, and go from there.




I’d also heard that he liked promptness, so I’d get in the studio really early each morning, and when he came in I’d already have a few ideas running and ready to work with. The album I’m proudest of is Rushes, The Fireman’s second. We’d do a lot of field recording, playing instruments outdoors, sampling natural sounds, even Linda’s horses. I didn’t know at the time that she was dying and we completed it soon after her death, so it’s a real memorial piece to her: she sings and speaks in some parts of it, too, and is very present throughout. It was a heartbreaking experience, but a huge privilege for me in my small way to be part of their journey.


Paul and Linda McCartney, 1997. Photograph: Steve Wood/REX/Shutterstock

Pink Floyd
The Endless River (2014)
When I was 14, before I even knew what getting high was, Wish You Were Here showed me how a record could open a door into a world. It gave me the criteria of what music production could be. So of course, as a producer, I really wanted to get behind the scenes and understand what made that chemistry work. When David Gilmour invited me to his farmhouse, I thought I would be working on his solo album, but as he played me all these outtake tapes from The Division Bell sessions, I gradually twigged, with some delight and trepidation: “Is this going to be a Floyd album?” He asked me to take this material away and “make it sound good” – which is always a nice brief – “and make it sound more like us.” Then he and Nick Mason overdubbed new parts on top. Gilmour’s brilliance is letting the process unfold very naturally, and then going back with a microscopic eye and finessing every detail. It was strange because the Division Bell material had a certain Orb influence in it, and there was older material like Rick Wright playing the Albert Hall organ, too, so we were folding several decades together into something timeless. It’s an album I can still listen to, and it will still take me away somewhere very special.




The Orb
Adventures Beyond the Ultraworld (1991)
The Orb essentially emerged from Alex Paterson’s record collection, morphed through a mixing desk, with beats added. This came out of many, many long sessions DJing in the backroom of Paul Oakenfold’s Land Of Oz club and at the KLF’s Trancentral studios. One thing I’d learned – funnily enough from Pete Waterman, who produced mine and Jimmy Cauty’s [of the KLF] album as Brilliant – was that you should never hide your influences. Quote them directly and, ironically, you end up more original. So when sampling came in, this is exactly what we did. Little Fluffy Clouds was written in my bedroom with a little sampler, and was the linchpin: that, and the backing that Alex made for Primal Scream’s Higher Than The Sun were where it went beyond essentially jamming into something rather more structured, and Adventures Beyond the Ultraworld kind of formed around that. Alex had different ideas going with different people for each track, a few mini-teams working simultaneously, then we brought them into bigger studios and essentially DJed them all together in the final mixing process to create a complete whole. There were no rules for what we were doing, but through a series of fantastic accidents and experiments I think we captured something very special about that time.





Youth performing with Killing Joke, 2015. Photograph: Startraks Photo/REX/Shutterstock

The Verve
Urban Hymns (1997)
There’s something very wonderful about being part of a band’s adventure as they break through. I don’t know what happened to Richard Ashcroft just before Urban Hymns: the band had been this very jamming, psychedelic act on the gigging circuit for two albums – then the songs seemed to just come to him from above, absolutely perfectly formed, with the knowledge of how to sing them. Recording his vocal was probably the easiest I’ve ever done, but the challenge then was to make the music and production reach the same level, and that took over six months. As ever with a band, there’s a lot of conflict resolution for the producer, a lot of: “Well let’s try recording both versions and see which one sounds best.” A lot of stunning material was recorded that never came out and I’m hoping that on the 20th anniversary, maybe some of it can be heard on a special edition. It was worth all of that effort though, and it ended up one of the best-sounding records I’ve ever done - due mainly to Chris Potter who engineered and mixed it. He aced that one.




Killing Joke
Pandemonium (1994)
I suppose it seemed a bit of a risky decision, not just to rejoin the band I’d left a decade before, but to sign them to my label Butterfly and produce them, too. It certainly didn’t go smoothly – we’re all alpha-male types who want our own way, and one discussion ended with Jaz Coleman [singer] hurling a whisky bottle at my head – but it was an extraordinary process. We may have been punks when Killing Joke began, but punk wasn’t ever about dumbing down: I never hid my love of disco and Pink Floyd, and we brought all of that, plus dub reggae, Can and Kraftwerk into what we did. When it came to Pandemonium, I’d had the intervening time to explore production more, and we wanted all those sounds and more. There was classic rock and industrial, too, and we had the confidence to record Egyptian string sections, to even record vocals in the King’s Chamber of the Great Pyramid, to have a brave, adventurous time. And I think all that drama, conflict and history that we had were just channeled right: it became our biggest-selling album and we still close shows with the title track.

• This month the Music Producers Guild
awarded Youth the PPL Outstanding Contribution to UK Music.

Beatles Live Project update

wogew.blogspot.pe
Beatles Live Project update
Posted by Roger Stormo
Wednesday, February 24, 2016


The Beatles Live - news trickles in slowly.

A Beatles news page of the Japanese Universal Music site now has a few details regarding "The Beatles Live Project". The "project" part of the title has been dropped, and THE BEATLES LIVE is the current working title. The page also has the autumn of 2016 as the approximate time of the film's release.

Translating somewhat awkwardly from Japanese, using Google Translate, the page goes on to say that "The Beatles Live" covers the Liverpool era of the band, and chronicles the tour years from 1963 onwards, spanning 15 countries, 90 cities and 166 performances and ending with the August 29, 1966 concert at San Francisco's Candlestick Park. The film interweaves filmed concert footage with interviews with celebrities and officials, exploring the evolution and phenomenal popularity of the group.

The news item goes on to list film credits:
Director: Ron Howard.
Producer: White Horse Pictures' Nigel Sinclair and Scott Pasukutchi. Imagine Entertainment's Brian Grazer.
Executive producers: Apple Corps Ltd. represented by Jeff Jones and Jonathan Clyde, Imagine Entertainment represented by Michael Rosenberg, White Horse Pictures represented by Guy East and Nicholas Ferral.

The production crew has been pretty tight lipped about what's in the film, if there's going to be spin-off products etc. Here's what White Horse Pictures writes on their website:

"The Beatles Live Untitled Project" is a feature-length documentary focused on The Beatles’ touring years, from the early days of the Cavern Club in Liverpool and engagements in Hamburg in the early ’60s to their last public concert in Candlestick Park, San Francisco, in 1966. By their last tour date in August of 1966, The Beatles had performed 166 concerts in 15 countries and 90 cities around the world. The cultural phenomenon their touring helped create, known as “Beatlemania,” was something the world had never seen before and laid the foundation for the globalization of culture.

Beatlemania was not just a phenomenon. It was the catalyst for a cultural shift that would alter the way people around the world viewed and consumed popular culture. At its core the film will be a piece of raw entertainment that includes an undercurrent that explains the climate that allowed for this cultural pivot point to occur. The unique conditions that caused technology and mass communication to collide. The film will also explore the incomparable electricity between performer and audience that turned the music into a movement – a common experience into something sublime. Most of all, the film will aim to illuminate what it was about the band itself – both the music and the musicians – that made the world fall at their feet, to unfurl itself in a joyful wave of youthful revolution that would reverberate through the ages.

Here at the Wogblog headquarters, word has reached us that a two hour plus "rough cut" of the film was screened in Los Angeles this month, and only to people involved with the film project. Still, the fact that Universal Music in Japan now has a news item about it, is perhaps is a sign that we are about to get some more detailed news from the official sources.




As fans of The Beatles, all we need to see is a multi-disc video collection stringing together all available performance footage in chronological order, perhaps linked with a few comments by the Fab Four themselves and Brian Epstein, taken from sixties interviews and press conferences. But that's not a likely scenario. This will be a film targeting a broader audience, and we must prepare ourselves for an ordinary documentary with talking heads and some edited performances from televised concerts, video taped concerts or home movie footage from concerts. If we're lucky, we'll get to see some stuff we didn't know existed. But we'd surely wish that Apple Corps would bring out full concert home video discs as spin off products for the fans. The Beatles' legacy deserves that kind of treatment.

Links:
Official website






www.examiner.com
Get ready: Ron Howard's 'The Beatles Live' movie coming this autumn
Steve Marinucci
Beatles Examiner
February 23, 2016


The Beatles
Apple Corps Ltd.

Universal Music Group's Japanese website has posted that “The Beatles Live,” which is the tentative title of what has also been known as “The Beatles Live Movie Project,” the long-awaited documentary of the Beatles on tour directed by Oscar winner Ron Howard, will be out this autumn. The posting, however, gives no specific date. Speculation has been that the film would be out this fall though there had been nothing previously confirming that. The website says the film was made with the full cooperation of Paul McCartney, Ringo Starr and Yoko Ono, widow of John Lennon, and Olivia Harrison, widow of George Harrison.

The Beatles' Apple Corps first announced Howard's involvement in the project in 2014. One Voice One World had previously invited Beatles fans to send in clips of home movies and photos and set up an official website. As originally announced, the film will cover the Beatles' touring years, including the early days of the Cavern Club in Liverpool and engagements in Hamburg to their last public concert in Candlestick Park, San Francisco, in 1966.

The translated Japanese text, which doesn't have a whole lot of detail, appears to say the film will start in 1961 and include the Beatles at the Cavern Club, plus the start of a European tour at the end of 1963. The film will also feature their debut on “The Ed Sullivan Show” on Feb. 9, 1964, and first world tour. The film will continue through the subsequent two years until August, 1966, when the band decided to stop touring. Production of the film has been pretty under wraps the past couple of years though a crew was seen filming at Paul McCartney's concert at Candlestick Park in San Francisco in 2014.

The Beatles have sparingly released live material through the years. They officially released a vinyl LP combining their Hollywood Bowl shows, but have yet to release it on CD. A live audience recording of the Beatles at the Star-Club in Hamburg was taken off the market after the group put a stop to it. But they have released two double CD sets of songs recorded for BBC Radio. .

Ron Howard is known, of course, for his TV roles as a child actor on “The Andy Griffith Show” and later “Happy Days.” The first full-length film he directed was “Grand Theft Auto” in 1977. He has since directed a long string of films, including “Apollo 13,” “Ransom,” “How the Grinch Stole Christmas,” “Backdraft,” “Gung Ho,” “Cocoon,” “Splash,” “Night Shift,” “A Beautiful Mind” and “The Da Vinci Code.” He won a Best Director Oscar for “A Beautiful Mind” in 2002, and the film also won an Academy Award for Best Picture that year.

Yoko Ono: 'I thought my music was beautiful all along'

www.theguardian.com
Yoko Ono: 'I thought my music was beautiful all along'
She was subjected to decades of vilification. Now everyone from Gaga to Sparks are lining up to pay tribute. How does the 83-year-old artist feel about the world catching up to the Yoko Ono sound?
Alexis Petridis
Monday, 22 February 2016


 ‘I won’t stop’ … Yoko Ono at MoMA, New York. Photograph: Richard Perry/New York Times / Redux / eyevine

oko Ono is giving me a demonstration of her vocal technique. Almost half a century after it was first unleashed on an unsuspecting British public – at a 1968 Ornette Coleman concert at the Royal Albert Hall, while John Lennon was away in India with the Maharishi – it’s still a hair-raising experience, particularly when it’s happening a few feet away from your face. In fact, it’s all the more so because the demonstration is interspersed with Ono’s explanation of how she came upon her unique approach to vocals, and Yoko Ono’s speaking voice is incredibly soft and delicate – not adjectives anyone is ever going to apply to her singing.

It all started when she was a little girl, she says: her family were wealthy, they had maids, “and my mother said: ‘Don’t you ever go to the servants’ rooms, it’s very bad, because they’re talking about things you don’t want to know.’ And sure enough, I just sneaked up and listened to it. And these two teenage girls, they were combing their hair and talking. ‘My aunt had a baby yesterday.’ ‘Oh, really?’ ‘Yes, and she was making noises.’”

At this point Yoko Ono emits a series of frankly terrifying grunts and wails. “And I just thought: ‘Oh my god, a woman does that when she has a baby?’ There was a totally sanitised image about a woman, you know, they were supposed to be just pretty and make pretty noises. Nobody tells you they go...” – more grunts and wails – “You know? So I was scared, and I sneaked back to my room, but that really stayed with me. And years later, I started to create all sorts of sounds.

“Just last year, I was invited to Beijing to do an exhibition and at the opening, I did a little sort of … not a concert, but I said: ‘OK, I’m going to do something in a woman’s voice, you know, and I…” – more screams and grunts – “and they couldn’t believe it! But that’s what it is. I mean,” she smiles sweetly, “don’t you think that we would have maximum expression when we have a baby? The baby is the human race.”


 John Lennon and Yoko Ono launch an exhibition of his artwork in London, 1968. Photograph: Andrew Maclear/Getty Images

It’s not just the disparity between her speaking voice and her singing that make Yoko Ono in person seem an intriguing study in contrasts. A lot of what she says is impressively bullish, with the screw-you confrontationalism of the early 60s avant-garde art world where she first made her name: “I don’t accommodate the audience,” she says flatly at one point. “I ask the audience to accommodate.”

Equally, by her own admission, she chooses her words with a degree of caution, which is presumably the result of having spent the 35 years since Lennon’s death having her every pronouncement picked over for any shred of evidence of an ongoing feud with Paul McCartney. “If I say something, I can forget it, but it just keeps growing in itself. So I have to be careful what I say. But if someone took me differently from what I thought I was saying, well, that’s their problem, really.”

She is funny, smart, entertaining, possessed of an extremely twinkly laugh and very handy with an aphorism – “Life is like a suitcase, you can squeeze a lot in” – but there’s no mistaking a certain steeliness about her. If you ask a question she’s not keen on, she gives you a hard stare, then blithely ignores what you’ve just said and answers as if you’ve asked something completely different. Lest anyone think age has mellowed her, one story she tells about making a recent album concludes with her rounding on the musicians and demanding: “How dare you tell me what to do?”

Then again, a certain steeliness is probably just as well. Today, she seems keen not to dwell on the bleaker aspects of her life, other than to note that “the thing that really made me survive is to create something, to totally immerse myself in it, because that’s a situation I’m so familiar with, and that makes me get on with things”, but nevertheless, you’d be hard pushed to call Ono’s life anything other than turbulent. She’s variously been reduced to begging for food in the aftermath of the second world war; committed to a psychiatric hospital after trying to kill herself; had her eight-year-old daughter abducted by her second husband and raised in a succession of dubious-sounding religious cults [Ono and her daughter Kyoko eventually met again in 1998, after 27 years]; been subjected to decades of public vilification rich with misogyny and racism – even today her name is still a popular jokey metaphor for a controlling spouse – and seen her third husband murdered in front of her.

And yet, here she is, 83 years old, in seemingly fine fettle – behind the sunglasses she keeps perched on the end of her nose, her face looks eerily unchanged from the one you see in the last photos of her and Lennon together – in London to collect a gong for being an inspiration at a music awards and promote Yes, I’m A Witch Too, a second volume of collaborations and remixes of her work on which everyone from Sparks to Moby lines up to pay tribute. She says she loves having her work reinterpreted or remixed, partly because it fits in with an idea she had decades ago: “The first albums I made with John, Two Virgins and Life With the Lions, we called them Unfinished Music, and I think that idea has developed into something: you have a certain artistic attempt and then you openly involve other people.”





Both the award and the album are evidence of the way Ono’s reputation as a musician has undergone a vast reassessment. The music she made with Lennon on 1970’s Yoko Ono/Plastic Ono Band and 1971’s Fly is often brilliant, inspired and genuinely innovative, the result, she says of not really having any understanding of rock music – “I didn’t think I am I going to get to number one on the chart or something because I didn’t even know what a chart was” – and trying to apply “the incredible, intense sounds” she’d heard in modern classical music or free jazz to the format: alternately hypnotic and disturbing, Mind Train or Why bear comparison with the celebrated avant-garde krautrock of Can or Faust.


Yoko and John in New York, 1980, the year he was murdered. Photograph: David McGough/Life Picture Collection/Getty

Even when she started writing more conventional songs, an intriguing idiosyncrasy showed through. Her contributions to 1980’s Double Fantasy are noticeably edgier and more in tune with the new wave era than anything Lennon came up with for the album: Walking On Thin Ice, the song they completed on the day he was murdered, was even more striking, a claustrophobic piece of experimental punk-funk with uncannily prescient lyrics about loss. “It’s so eerie, I mean, I thought of all that before John’s death, and I didn’t know he was going to die, and supposedly John didn’t either, so that happened in a very intricate and strange way.”

But for years, her music was, at best, viewed as a mammoth indulgence on the part of her husband, or at worst greeted with derision and anger: “In the beginning I didn’t understand it, but then I said: ‘Maybe that’s the reaction because people aren’t used to it.’ It didn’t disturb me because, luckily, I came from a totally different musical background: my father was a classical pianist, into Schoenberg and twelve-tone, very strict, there was no way you could satisfy him because his musical standard was so high.”

Lennon was always hugely supportive, she says. He loved making music with her, not least because he knew the results couldn’t be compared to the Beatles. “I’m sure the other Beatles had the same problem: they’d made it very big, but then out of that, what would they do? Ringo went into films, things like that.” And for the rest of his life, Lennon remained steadfastly convinced that others would come round to the results: “He was a very special person, he had very high expectations, he understood that the world is going to change.”


 Yoko Ono performing with her Plastic Ono Band in 2010. Photograph: Lester Cohen/WireImage

She says she isn’t sure when he was eventually proved right – “It’s my arrogance, but I thought it was beautiful all along” – but in recent years, she’s been lauded as an influence by everyone from Sonic Youth to Lady Gaga. Her own albums, usually made with her son Sean, hammer away at rock’s avant garde fringes: 2013’s Take Me To the Land of Hell was as challenging as ever. She fits music in between her career as an activist and a conceptual artist: last year she had a retrospective at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. No, she says, she’s not considering retiring: “I won’t stop. No, I never think that. Artists are obsessive, they want to keep doing it. And I’m an artist. My sole interest is in creating something beautiful.”

Perhaps recalling the earlier demonstration of her vocal technique, she adds a quick qualifier: “When I say beautiful … well, the maximum beauty can be ugly to some people.”

NEW BEATLES RECORD : Live Atlantic City 1964

wogew.blogspot.pe
Live Atlantic City 1964
Posted by Roger Stormo
Monday, February 22, 2016


Due out in March. But is it really from Atlantic City?

The Livewire label is releasing what they call a "classic live performance: FM radio broadcast from The Convention Hall, Atlantic City, New Jersey. August 30th 1964".
Back in August 2014, for the 50th anniversary of this concert, local radio station KOOL-98.3 FM announced that they were going to air this concert. Dave Coskey, president of the Longport media company, reported that staff had discovered the recording in the radio station's archives as they worked to commemorate the concert anniversary. He said . "It's a 50 year old tape, it certainly doesn't sound pristine, but we think the historic value of it outweighs the technical quality," Coskey said. "I sat down and listened to it from start to finish. I thought it was especially cool, I'd always heard about the Beatles in Convention Hall, this is going to be as close as you can get to seeing it."



When the broadcast was aired, Beatles collectors soon heard that what they in fact played, was an old vinyl 1970's bootleg called "Live At Whiskey Flats" - pops, clicks and all. That album contains what most collectors consider to be a concert at the Philadelphia Convention Hall, which took place several days after Atlantic City.



When a collector wrote to Coskey in the aftermath of the broadcast, about this disappointment, he received this reply:

Thanks for your note. I’m sorry that you’re “disappointed”. The recording that we have was marked “Atlantic City August 1964” – which is why we said that “we believe” this to be the recording from Atlantic City. We initially promoted the concert as an opportunity to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the Atlantic City show. We purchased the live Beatles concert from the Hollywood Bowl and planed to air that because it was the same set list and seemed like a good way to celebrate the anniversary. When we found this concert recording we thought the historic value of a live recording was a better way of celebrating the anniversary. Again, sorry that you were disappointed. 

The new release is available to pre-order from Amazon, both in the UK and Germany. Release date is March 11. It remains to be heard if this is the real deal, but we sincerely doubt it is.



Contents:
  1. Twist and Shout
  2. You Can't Do That
  3. All My Loving
  4. She Loves You
  5. Things We Said Today
  6. Roll Over Beethoven
  7. Can't Buy Me Love
  8. If I Fell
  9. I Want to Hold Your Hand
  10. Boys
  11. A Hard Day's Night
  12. Long Tall Sally

Links:
Amazon UK
Amazon Germany

If you visit those Amazon sites, you'll also see advertisements for a pair of Beatles BBC CDs, "Live on Air 1963", volumes 1 and 2. The outfit releasing these is Reel to Reel. Volume 1 was released on 4 Dec. 2015, and Volume 2 is due out on March 25.


Live on Air 1963 - Volume One. Reel to reel. Already released.


Live on Air 1963 - Volume Two. Reel to reel. Due out March 25.

It seems everyone can release Beatles CDs in the EU countries these days without getting hassle from Apple Corps Ltd. or Universal Music.

NEW ALBUM OF JAMES McCARTNEY

www.facebook.com/JamesMcCartneyMusic
My new album The Blackberry Train
Feb 19 2016




I’m excited to announce my new album ‘The Blackberry Train’ for worldwide release on May 6th. Available for Pre order now here -  http://smarturl.it/jamesmccartney The opening track “Too Hard” you can listen to here -  http://smarturl.it/jmccartneyspotify A limited amount of signed CDs are available - get yours here  http://smarturl.it/jmccartneysignedcd

My New Album 'THE BLACKBERRY TRAIN'

I’m excited to announce my new album ‘The Blackberry Train’ which is released worldwide May 6th on Maybenot via Kobalt Label Services. 

You can pre-order the download or a limited edition signed CD here.

The opening track on the album, “Too Hard”, is available as an instant download on iTunes with the album pre-order, and to stream on Spotify.

I wrote “Too Hard” in L.A, and tried to infuse it with a country feel to really bring out that desperation, and the idea of trying too hard. Dhani Harrison came into the studio and we both collaborated on the guitar solo in the song.

With this my second album, I feel that I’ve been both diverse and cohesive. Opening with the invigorating “Too Hard” and closing with the stately and aptly named folk song, “Peace and Stillness.” Between these bookends, highlights include the rough-edged and urgently melodic “Unicorn,” the anthemic “Peyote Coyote,” and the soulful ballad “Prayer.” One very personal song is the winsome and reflective “Waterfall”, which was inspired by memories of my mother.

It’s all been an evolution. This set of songs definitely has a harder edge, but it’s a continuation of my last album. The main thing for me is to not conform or compromise.

To accurately capture the music in my head, I sought out the distinct audio stylings of Steve Albini. The results make for an edgy and eclectic album with fastidiously crafted songs documented in the studio with glorious purity.

I like the music to have elements of the avant-garde, psychedelic, and be just a little against the grain. But in the end, it's about having as much emotion as possible for me, musically and lyrically. It’s all about the music being cathartic, heartfelt and true.

I hope you enjoy my new music & thank you for your continued support!

James
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The Blackberry Train Track Listing:

Too Hard

Unicorn

Waterfall

Paralysis

Ballerina

Peyote Coyote

Fantasy

Alice

Ring a Ring O'Roses

Prayer

Peace and Stillness