Beatles Anthology

Here is an interesting picture of John Lennon (out of focus) on stage at the Budokan Hall, Tokyo Japan in 1966. (LIFE magazine)

One of my favourite parts of The Beatles Anthology series is the 1966 visit to Japan. It’s a place I’ve always wanted to visit myself. And the fact that John Lennon met his future wife (Yoko Ono) only a few months after that trip, makes it somewhat interesting as well.

The best parts of The Beatles in Japan video clips are the concerts at the Budokan Hall. Watching the video you get a glimpse into an authentic Beatles concert in full colour. The performance was considered by The Beatles to be substandard as it was one of the rare concerts where they could actually hear themselves play. It was only ever officially released as a laser disc in the 1980’s (in Japan of course!) but I have seen bootlegs on VHS and DVD (plus most of the footage can be be found on youtube).

This was the last world tour The Beatles would give and it included Germany, Japan, The Philippines, and finally America. The setlist for most every show was:

Rock n Roll Music

She’s a Woman

If I Needed Someone

Day Tripper

Baby”s In Black

I Feel Fine

Yesterday

I Wanna Be Your Man

Nowhere Man

Paperback Writer

I”m Down

The only new songs to play live in ’66 were “Nowhere Man”, “If I Needed Someone”, “Day Tripper” and “Paperback Writer”. They also neglected to try to to play anything from their new album, Revolver, although “Paperback Writer” was from the same sessions.

Standards like “Rock-N-Roll Music” and “She’s A Woman” (a great version is on the Anthology 2 CD set, with George’s guitar solo sounding just a bit psychedelic) were still predominant. Or maybe they didn’t want to play anything from Revolver as I remember hearing one interview where George Harrison said they had got fed up with it by the time it was completed. However, the scene in the Anthology where they are revisiting the original master tapes of Lennon’s tone poem “Tomorrow Never Knows” (which closes the album), George, Paul and Ringo are thrilled at the re-listening.

It’s also interesting that this 66 world tour was the last gasp of world Beatlemania. “Strawberry Fields” and “Penny Lane” were just around the corner.

Picture of 1995 Beatles from : www.riprense.com/beatlessong.htm

A Little Less Juxtaposition Please

I was watching a Skydiggers interview last Saturday on youtube (just do a “skydiggers” search on youtube, I forgot the link)and though it was a treat to watch a new interview of the Diggers, unfortunately, it was kind of a wasted opportunity. I can’t remember how many times the interviewer (Jian Ghomeshi of the CBC) tried to complicate the process by sticking in the word “juxtaposition” as many times as possible to make the interview sound “intellectual”(Maybe he didn’t write the questions himself?). I found this approach unnecessary and just plain wrong for the subject at hand…a rock band. All he had to do was ask “So tell me about your new album? What songs do you think are the best on it? How long did it take to record?” pretty simple eh?

Instead he tried to make a point that Skydiggers music, sounding rural, was created by urban folks…an interesting point to make but it kinda fell flat and the two Skydigger’s Andy and Josh were tongue tied for some of the “juxtaposition” questions. So to whoever wrote those questions, keep it simple please…

Photo credit: Danya Hawerchuk

http://www.flickr.com/photos/dhawerchuk

Visit Danya Hawerchuk’s Flickr site for some great concert photography. I like her style.