Best Beatles cover ever.
posted on Apr 29, 2008 - View this thread

Gravelter Skelter [video, WTF content].
posted on Apr 1, 2008 - View this thread

Lennon and McCartney's Studio Reunion. On March 28, 1974, John Lennon was in a Burbank studio producing Harry Nilsson's "Pussy Cats" album when Paul McCartney dropped in. The room froze and remained silent until John said, "Valiant Paul McCartney, I presume?" Paul responded: "Sir Jasper Lennon, I presume?" The tension broken, a jam session [Part 1] [Part 2] [Part 3] [Part 4] ensued featuring Lennon on guitar and vocals, McCartney on drums and vocals, Stevie Wonder on electric piano and vocals, Harry Nilsson on vocals, Jesse Ed Davis on guitar and Bobby Keys on saxophone. A bootleg of the session has circulated under the title "A Toot and a Snore in '74".
posted on Mar 30, 2008 - View this thread

Former Beatles roadie Neil Aspinall has died of lung cancer. He was the head of the Beatles’ Apple Corporation until about a year ago, when he resigned after the settlement of a long running dispute with Apple Computer.
posted on Mar 26, 2008 - View this thread

Sooooo... Macca finds himself £24m ($50m) worse off after his acrimonious divorce from strong woman / mentalist* Heather Mills. Mills also loses her appeal against keeping the text of the ruling private (read it here - PDF), maybe because of her 10 minute diatribe on the steps of the court yesterday, or because of her numerous TV appearances, but probably not because she threw a glass of water over Macca's lawyer, er, alledgedly. But the main point, of course (and thank you Dallas), was - what the heck was she wearing?
(*delete as approporiate depending upon your POV)
posted on Mar 18, 2008 - View this thread

Fears that malevolent aliens will tune into this week's broadcast of The Beatles' song "Across the Universe" have been voiced by scientists.
posted on Feb 7, 2008 - View this thread

Mahrishi Mahesh Yogi: 1917-2008
posted on Feb 5, 2008 - View this thread

I Wanna Hold Your Stairway The Beatnix perform Stairway to Heaven... as the Beatles might have done it. Probably not much different than the Rutles might have done it.
posted on Dec 19, 2007 - View this thread

The Now Sound of the Sixties is what's groovy, baby! Even Big Bands and Canadians are getting warm, wild, wonderful with the crazy sounds of that love generation. Check out Ella Fitzgerald singing Sunshine of Your Love and Lord Sitar's I Can See for Miles. Sergio Mendes & Brasil '66 do Wichita Lineman and Day Tripper, while lounge act Jackie & Roy do a rare cover version of the Beatles' The Word. The Alan Copeland Singers can't stop Goin' Out of My Head, but the Back Porch Majority looks like an outtake from A Mighty Wind with the hippie anthem, Get Together. But the hippest hep daddy of them all is Bing Crosby, who has both a Beatles medley and another medley of hit '60s tunes.
posted on Dec 5, 2007 - View this thread

Twist and Shout. Twist and Shout. Twist. Twist and Shout. Twist. Shout. Twist and Shout. Twist. Twist and Shout. Shout. Twist. Shout. Twist and Shout. Twist. Twist and Shout. Twist. Twist. Twist. Shout.
posted on Oct 15, 2007 - View this thread

"God is a concept by which we measure our pain. I'll say it again: God is a concept by which we measure our pain" - A production reel by animation house Amoeba Proteus. Another of their productions: The site for The Fountain. Song by Lennon. (Via)
posted on Sep 19, 2007 - View this thread

Christs, Communists, & Rock 'n' Roll is an excellent introduction to a tradition of anti-rock writings and recordings by the Religious Right. In the 1960s, there was David Noebel who wrote Communism, Hypnotism, & the Beatles and The Marxist Minstrels. In the early 1970s, Reverend Riblett constructs a seven-foot cross out of rock music records and sets it aflame with gasoline. Michael Mills finds hidden Satanic messages in Bow Wow Wow and the Grateful Dead, while Bob Larson valiantly debates Mandy, a 13-year-old fan of the Cure. The motherlode is probably the cassettes of John Todd, who traveled the fundamentalist circuit in the 1970s claiming to be a former witch and a member of the Illuminati, but that's just the tip of the iceberg. (more inside)
posted on Aug 20, 2007 - View this thread

The Rutles: All You Need Is Cash may be the most elaborate parody of the Beatles ever constructed, including satirical tributes to the appearances on the Ed Sullivan Show, Yellow Submarine, and the rooftop concert at Apple Records. Check out some other fine parodies who picked up where the Rutles left off: The Mosquitoes on Gilligan's Island, Chris and the Alphabeats on Sesame Street, Letter B and Hey Food by the Beetles, the Be Sharps on the Simpsons, A Hard Day's Night of the Living Dead by the Zombeatles, Peter Cook & Dudley Moore's L.S. Bumble Bee, the Powerpuff Girls Meet the Beat Alls (parts 1 and 2 with commentary by Mojo Jojo), Beatles spoofs in a Polish sitcom and a Bollywood musical, Beatallica sings A Garage Dayz Nite, the Chasers' I Am Thesaurus, and the Beatles go bar mitzvah.
posted on Aug 6, 2007 - View this thread

Cracked Pepper by ccc and ill chemist is a mash-up of The Beatles' Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band and an amazing array of songs you know. While not quite on par with the focus and sheer audacity of DangerMouse's Grey Album, Cracked Pepper is a smart, rich, and rewarding listen. Available track by track or as a torrent. See inside for tracks sampled.
posted on Jul 30, 2007 - View this thread

The author of the excellent (and previously mentioned) 60s/70s soul music blog Funky 16 Corners has put together an awesome compilation album available for free download, called Rubber Souled, featuring soul covers of Beatles classics; the results are intriguing, from Stevie Wonder's funked out version of We Can Work It Out to a nightmare inducing Bill Cosby cover of Sgt Peppers.
posted on Jul 25, 2007 - View this thread

Birth of the Beatles On July 6, 1957, John Lennon and Paul McCartney met for the first time at The Woolton Church Parish Fete where The Quarry Men were appearing. John Lennon was impressed that Paul McCartney could tune a guitar and his knowledge of rock & roll lyrics.
posted on Jul 6, 2007 - View this thread

All This and World War II [trailer; IMDB] is a 1976 musical documentary that mixes World War II newsreels and movie clips with Beatles covers. Looks like Hitler disapproved. [lots more inside]
posted on Jun 29, 2007 - View this thread

I thought I'd seen pretty much every bit of performance footage (whether live or lip-synched) featuring the Beatles, but lately I discovered some clips on YouKnowWhere that I hadn't seen before, and I'd wager there's more than a few folks out in MefiLand who've also missed these: a proto-psychedelic promo clip for Rain, and another promo clip for Hey Bulldog, and finally, this rarity, an alternate take of the promo clip for Hello Goodbye. Just for good measure, here's the more familiar (but still somewhat obscure) version.
posted on Jun 7, 2007 - View this thread

It was 40 years ago next Friday (June 1) that the Beatles' Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band was released, becoming one of the most influential releases in rock history. It is the number one favorite album of the British public and has been ranked by Rolling Stone magazine as No. 1 of the 500 Greatest Albums of All Time. "When Sgt. Pepper's came out, it was an album that surprised people on every single level. The vast majority of the millions who bought it had never seen a gatefold sleeve, they’d never seen lyrics on the cover, they’d never seen a cover like that—a real piece of art—and they never heard music (side A | side B) like this. The combination was so dynamic that it’s still being talked about 40 years later."^* John, Paul, Ringo and George talk about the tracks.
posted on May 25, 2007 - View this thread

Moptops in suits. Not necessarily the ones you were thinking of.
posted on May 9, 2007 - View this thread

Introduced to Western culture by the Beatles in their single Norwegian Wood, the sitar has featured prominently in North Indian classical music for centuries. Princeton-based computer scientist Ajay Kapur updates the instrument with his ESitar, an audio and video controller that uses gesture input (PDF) and machine learning algorithms to facilitate joining the computer with Ajay in his sitar performance. Undergraduate engineering students at the University of Pennsylvania work from the other direction, building RAVI-bot, an award-winning, self-playing robotic sitar (YouTube) programmed to generate music from classical Raga scales and melodies all on its own. For those in the Philadelphia area, be sure to check out a live performance of RAVI-bot at the local Klein Art Gallery.
posted on Apr 19, 2007 - View this thread

Sgt. Pepper's 2.0 . fourty years later, BBC 2 is preparing a recording session (with the original recording instrumentation and Geoff Emerick) to be aired on 2 June. Oasis, The Killers, Razorlight, James Morrison, The Fratellis, Travis and the Kaiser Chiefs are the artists currently announced. Not the first time someone covers the Beatles (there's even a mashup, previously covered on Mefi).
[via]
posted on Apr 6, 2007 - View this thread

The Beatles are Bigger than Jesus. It was 41 years ago today, that the Evening Standard published a Maureen Cleave interview with John Lennon, in which he declared the Beatles “more popular than Jesus”. Later in July, DATEbook, an American teen mag, printed only the Jesus statement and nothing else from the interview. The firestorm of reaction in the US was immediate. Radio stations nationwide, but particularly in the South and in the Midwest, banned the playing of Beatles records [Real Audio]. Death threats against all of the Fab Four poured in. In Cleveland, a preacher threatened to excommunicate any member of his congregation who listened to the Beatles, and in the South, the Ku Klux Klan burned the Beatles in effigy and nailed Beatles albums to burning crosses. On August 11, Lennon held a press conference in Chicago, where he apologized, sort of [Real Audio]. The press conference was on the eve of the Beatles’ last tour of their career. Many say this epsiode, as well as the riots that accompanied their tour of the Philippines (also in July), as well as the accumulated stress of being on top of the world for nearly four years at that point, precipitated the beginning of the end of the Beatles.
Is it true though? Are the Beatles bigger than Jesus? Though this was unanswerable in 1966, thanks to the magic of the web, we do know the answer today: according to Google, the answer is no. Still, other views persist.
posted on Mar 4, 2007 - View this thread

On this day (February 7) in 1964, the Beatles arrived in America for the first time.. Two days later they made their first appearance on the Ed Sullivan Show (YouTube, approx. 9 mins.). Read a transcript of their first American press conference, snippets from other 1964 interviews, and a fictional 1963-64 blog written from the point of view of a 15-year-old fan in New York.
posted on Feb 7, 2007 - View this thread

♫ Get Back ♫ - It was 38 years ago today, Sgt. Pepper and the band last played.
[Previously parodied on The Simpsons. Other notable appearances in Springfield.]

Bonus Track - 10mm B&W dailies from the 'Get Back' studio sessions.
posted on Jan 30, 2007 - View this thread

How come we can't get these? On Feb 9th there are two sets of Beatles stamps being released in the UK. Jealous? I am.
posted on Jan 26, 2007 - View this thread

Meet the Smithereens. [warning: streaming Flash audio]
Nine years after their last album and 43 years after the original was released, The Smithereens cover the Beatles' Meet the Beatles album [review; this article has more background].
posted on Jan 25, 2007 - View this thread

...He expressed regret that he had said that the Beatles were more popular than Jesus and enclosed a gift for the Oral Roberts University. After quoting the line "money can't buy me love" from "Can't Buy Me Love" he said, "It's true. The point is this, I want happiness. I don't want to keep on with drugs. Paul told me once, 'You made fun of me for taking drugs, but you will regret it in the end.' Explain to me what Christianity can do for me. Is it phoney? Can He love me? I want out of hell."

It's BACK! Otis F. Odder (of The Bran Flakes and Comfort Stand Recordings is reviving his 365 Days project on the WFMU Beware Of The Blog! Hot damn! He opens it with the complete recordings of the Michael Mills Satanic Messages Radio Show and the complete Beatles Forever recordings (previously excerpted in the first incarnation). (Previously on MeFi)
posted on Jan 1, 2007 - View this thread

A good book is always a joy, and a good, free online book about The Beatles' Revolver album (PDF) is a real treat for fans of the Moptops at thier most transitional. Paul Ingles has a bunch of audio interviews to peruse. Somehow, everything was just right.
posted on Sep 14, 2006 - View this thread

You may have never heard of it, but you've damn near certain heard it. The Mellotron (FortuneCity link) is a keyboard instrument; each of its keys triggers a tape with a pre-recorded instrument on it. It was effectively the world's first sample player. [more inside]
posted on Sep 7, 2006 - View this thread

So Paul McCartney is 64, Now What? [NYT] Sir James Paul McCartney turns sixty-four today. Will we still need him? Will we still feed him? Probably not, given his recent divorce. Happy Birthday anyway!
posted on Jun 18, 2006 - View this thread

Yesterduh. [more inside]
posted on Jun 16, 2006 - View this thread

The "Fifth Beatle" has died... Well, no, not this "Fifth Beatle", or this one (they've both been dead a long time). Certainly not this one. In fact, on some lists, he was The Seventh Beatle. BTW, another "Fifth Beatle" is doing some strange things with the Fab 4's music...
posted on Jun 6, 2006 - View this thread

Lennon Letter Sells £12,000. In 1971, a New York Times article accused the Beatles, and other white artists, of imitating and exploiting American black music in their early cover records. Lennon responded angrily, "Many kids were turned on to black music by us. It wasn't a rip off, it was a love-in."
posted on May 25, 2006 - View this thread

Beatles moments part I and II. A proper use of 30-second clips.
posted on May 21, 2006 - View this thread

I am me and Rummy's he Iraq is free and we are all together See the world run when Dick shoots his gun, see how I lie
posted on Apr 19, 2006 - View this thread

Spend 4:16 in trippy classic rock mash up video/music heaven. [Pardon the You Tube link]
posted on Apr 14, 2006 - View this thread

Miles Davis? Kanye West? The Beatles? Oh... you mean Muzak? Ike played it in the West Wing, NASA used it to soothe astronauts' anxiety. But it's not just your daddy's elevator music anymore.
posted on Apr 6, 2006 - View this thread

Beatlemaniac It took Alan W. Pollack 10 years to pick apart every Beatles song and describe in detail the mechanics behind the music.
posted on Mar 20, 2006 - View this thread

Mix your own version of John Lennon's "Revolution 9" (warning: embedded sound), read the transcription of its spoken parts, and listen to it backwards.
posted on Feb 3, 2006 - View this thread

Hippocamp Ruins Sgt Pepper's A group of electronic artists have worked on a "ruined" version of the Beatles Sgt Pepper's classic. Designed to accompany and contrast with the ".... Ruins Pet Sounds" release from earlier in the year .... this ruined release exists to be compared and contrasted to the original album and its artistic competitor Pet Sounds. The original classic is recontextualised through the humour and vision of these artists whose approaches to the tracks aims to re-examine Pepper's through a filter of 2005 technology.
posted on Dec 10, 2005 - View this thread

It was twenty-five years ago today. John Lennon was murdered in front of the Dakota building in Manhattan. While there have been many conspiracy theories surrrounding it, most reasonable people agree that his assassin was simply deranged.

Rest in peace, John. We'll keep imagining in your absence.
posted on Dec 8, 2005 - View this thread

John Lennon: The Wenner Tapes. A BBC program centered around never-before-aired audio of Jann Wenner's benchmark 1970 Rolling Stone interview with John Lennon, available online for the first time at the BBC. (Text excerpts from the same interview.)
posted on Dec 5, 2005 - View this thread

All hail the King of Fuh Since 1965, Stephen "Brute Force" Friedland has been a professional blower of minds. He began his musical career penning the first existential/psychedelic girl group record, graduated to tapeworms and sat-upon sandwiches, then was personally signed by George Harrison as an Apple artist with the sly and ultimately unreleasable "King of Fuh." (Turn it inside out. There, you see. MP3.) But oddball songs of love and linguistic quirkiness are just the tip of Brutie's iceberg. In 1969, he swam half way across the Bering Strait in a symbolic plea to warm up the cold war. He does deliciously absurd stand-up prop comedy interspersed with song. And his eyebrows are a work of art in their own right. So all hail the Fuh King, who has never compromised his deliriously batty vision, and at this point assuredly never will.
posted on Nov 20, 2005 - View this thread

The Savage Young Beatles. Photos of the boys from the 1950s and early 1960s. An early color photo. The first photo as the Beatles. All from The Beatle Source, a collection of photos, music and acetates. via the Presurfer.
posted on Oct 10, 2005 - View this thread

Maxwell's Silver Hammer (Flash)
posted on Aug 13, 2005 - View this thread

What's your favorite Beatles record? Now you can listen for those anomolies.
posted on Aug 8, 2005 - View this thread

While My Ukulele Gently Weeps Kick off the weekend with some crazy uke playing from Jake Shimabukuro.
posted on Jul 22, 2005 - View this thread

Shatner [QuickTime]
posted on May 13, 2005 - View this thread