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« "The Song That Brought Disaster!" from 'Ripley's Believe It or Not!' Comics, January 1954 | Main | Mining the Audio Motherlode, Volume 200 »

February 03, 2013

Comments

Dangold

According to Shazam, the second version here is by Los Norte Americanos (apparently a 1960s Herb Alpert clone).

S.A. from S.F.

My favorite cover is the Teenage Fanclub version.

K.

I love the Teenage Fanclub version too

Bob Purse

Thanks for the info on the second version!

Emmanuel Transmission

I just don't get the worship of the Beatles or especially John Lennon. A lot of their tunes were filler. A lot of them were great pop songs, but no better than ABBA or Phil Collins. Their big advantage was a) being first and b) George Martin. John Lennon himself was as pretentious and self important as Bono, with some extra underlying psychopathic, misogynistic nastiness. The Ballad of John and Yoko was most memorable for giving me, a nine year old, the cue to sing "Christ you know it ain't easy" until I got smacked on the ear for "taking the Lord's name in vain".

SPB

I just don't get why some people like trashing The Beatles just to seem different. Bono wishes he could be Lennon! y'know who wrote tons of songs about Lennon's "underlying psychopathic, misogynistic nastiness"? John Lennon did. But good catch, there, 40 years later.

That's not why I'm commenting though... FYI Los Rockin' Devils were one of the biggest Mexican rock'n'roll bands of the early to mid 60s. They did a lot of covers, this is the first time I've heard this one & thanks for it. Later than any of the other material of theirs I've heard. Pretty much any compilation of pre-psych Mexican r'n'r is going to have Los RDs tracks on it, and you can go into any Mexican department or store store and find a CD of the greatest hits of the band if they have an oldies section.

Yair

Here's something you probably don't know, a famous Israeli singer called Arik Einstein recorded a Hebrew version of the song. The band playing is the monstrous psych band The Churchills.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b0es0pGzeJU

radioman02

Los Norte Americanos:

http://www.discogs.com/viewimages?release=2575261

mr. mike

The "Dawn Patrol" show on San Diego's KGB-FM (101.5) used to use the Percy Faith version as background music for one of their call-in contests that verged on being a prank call, I can't remember which one it was. That morning zoo group moved around a lot; they're now on 100.7 "Jack-FM" as "Dave, Shelly, and the Chainsaw."

MrFab

I love the Rockin Devils, tho oddly enough, they misplace the apostrophe. It's actually spelled (on my albums at least) Rockin Devil's.

Michael Newman

Mike Melvoin's version from "The Plastic Cow Goes Moog" is a personal favorite of mine.

jimson

"A lot of them were great pop songs, but no better than ABBA or Phil Collins. Their big advantage was a) being first and b) George Martin"

HA! Now, to be fair, Abba did write some great songs, I could see the argument for Phil Collins too, but "a) being first" is kind of nonsensical. It's like saying "All Neil Armstrong did was get to the moon FIRST, big deal!" Anyone who does something 'first' is important. And the fact remains, those songs are now considered standards, jazz groups cover Lennon/McCartney almost as often as Rogers/Hammerstein, so it's not just "being first" that matters here, the songs stand up on their own, even without George Martin.

Concerned Citizen

ABBA's good but none of their songs have the depth of the Beatles' best stuff. There's nothing in Phil Collins' catalog that rivals "In My Life," "Happiness Is a Warm Gun," or "Tomorrow Never Knows," (Phil did cover "TNK" on his first solo album, though). Nor do either of those artists rock as hard as the Beatles rocked. Have you heard "Helter Skelter"? How about their early stuff, from when they were the tightest, loudest Beat band in England, bar none? And no one in pop or rock 'n' roll history can compete with the sheer volume of great songs they produced. Hating the Beatles is childish.

Ivy

Arik Einstein's version knocks it out of the park. Awesome.

Ivy

I'll never forget the face off between Lennon and cartoonist Al Capp at the Montreal Bed in 1969. Capp gave John and Yoko a hard time about the song's lyrics. At Capp’s exit, Lennon sang an impromptu version o with a slightly revised, but nonetheless prophetic lyric: “Christ, you know it ain’t easy / You know how hard it can be / The way things are goin’ / They’re gonna crucify Capp!"

Doug Eklund

Does anyone recall a post in the last six months about Revolution #9 and its similarity to a John Cage composition with radios, etc? I thought it was on the FMU blog but can't find it--thanks in advance

Doug Eklund

Sorry, just found it. “Rozart Mix” by John Cage…performed at Brandeis in 1965, inconceivable that Yoko didn’t hear this and she and John were “inspired” by it in creating R9. Food for thought!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MckifQZuIxE

Jim

Always liked this one. It's not Ticket To Ride or Tomorrow Never Knows, but it is a pleasantly autobiographical lyric. One of the many strengths of the Beatles was that texture, the ability to create pop songs or psychedelic rock or ballads equally well, developing new ideas as rapidly as assimilating ideas from others and modifying them into the Beatles' style. And with three gifted songwriters in the same band, there was a lot of creative wealth. But as much a fan as I am, I have almost given up on Beatles bootlegs--to me, there's very little of value in hearing discarded takes when the 'official' versions are almost always superior.

stu

Sorry it took me so long to comment on this. I was busy piling through all those U2, Abba, and Phil Collins tracks *(that are better than the Beatles' work. (It took me three minutes.)

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