Full Albums: The Beatles’ ‘A Hard Day’s Night’

 Posted by at 12:30 pm  1 Response »
Oct 142022
 

Full Albums features covers of every track off a classic album. Got an idea for a future pick? Leave a note in the comments!

Hard Day's Night covers

After watching all eight hours of Peter Jackson’s Get Back documentary, and another three hours of interviews with Jackson about the making of Get Back I had to put on A Hard Day’s Night to restore balance. I had to get back to a time when John Lennon was firing on all creative cylinders and Paul McCartney was slacking.

In early-to-mid 1964, Lennon was engaged, prolific, and self-confident enough that the Beatles finally released a full album with all original material: AHDN. No covers! All 13 tracks are Lennon–McCartney compositions, officially, but 10 of them are really Lennon’s. And they are all good to really good Lennon songs, too, except for the ones that are great, like “If I Fell” and the title track.

If McCartney’s contributions were few in number, two of them loom large in the catalog: “Can’t Buy Me Love” became the album’s first #1 single, while his ballad “And I Love Her” stands with McCartney’s best songs of any period. Mostly, though, Paul was not quite finding his stride in ‘64, much like John in the Get Back period.
Continue reading »

In Memoriam: Shel Silverstein

 Posted by at 5:00 pm  3 Responses »
May 102013
 

In Memoriam pays tribute to those who have left this world, and the songs they left us to remember them by.

Where I come from, Shel Silverstein was a demigod. —David Mamet

Shel Silverstein was the unofficial poet laureate of everyone’s childhood. His books — The Giving Tree, A Light In the Attic, Where the Sidewalk Ends — were instrumental in showing that kids could handle some of the adult themes in life without becoming degenerates, or maybe even that it was okay to be a degenerate. That’s not to say the bluenoses didn’t try to stop him: A Light in the Attic placed midway in the top 100 books banned from the 1990’s. Some bristled at Silverstein’s adult side, even though he saved his more salacious material for songs and adult poems that weren’t meant for children. That material is definitely a product of the sixties and seventies, detailing everything from every sexual fetish imaginable (“Freakin’ At the Freakers Ball”) to every drug available (“The Perfect High”). Some of it we’ll feature today, the 14th anniversary of his death (or at least of the day they found his body).  Read on. Continue reading »

Jackson Browne, Lou Reed, and More Celebrate Woody Guthrie’s 100th Birthday on New Tribute

 Posted by at 9:00 am  No Responses »
Jul 202011
 

As part of the upcoming 2012 year-long 100th birthday celebration of Woody Guthrie comes Note of Hope, a twelve song covers tribute of mostly unreleased Guthrie songs. Woody’s daughter Nora Guthrie is at the helm producing the project which features bass player extraordinaire Rob Wasserman joining up with a fantastic selection of artists. The legendary American singer-songwriter and folk musician is getting the birthday party he deserves. Continue reading »