GOO GOO GA JOOB

My Beatles obsession may have officially hit feverish proportions these past few weeks.

I have been in love with this band since 1978. Ironically, it was not even their records that did it to me. It was seeing the so-bad-it's-awesome movie "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band" that corrupted me at the age of 10.I had never heard music like "A Day In The Life" or "Here Comes The Sun" before. You just didn't get songs like that on top 40 radio in the age of "Do Ya Think I'm Sexy?" and "Funkytown". As if the mere viewing of this cocaine-fueled cinematic monstrosity had not affected me deeply enough, the actual songs burned a hole into my heart and bones where it remains today.

School, friends and being a normal kid just didn't matter anymore.

At some point in my teens, I had amassed every piece of vinyl they released, including all their solo work in the seventies and eighties, not to mention multiple copies of several titles on different labels. Not to mention dozens of books and magazines on the band. By the age of 16, I was not merely a hardcore collector, I was a Harvard professor-level authority on the subject.

Fast forward to the late summer of 2009, I am just finishing up this amazing autobiography by Philip Norman called John Lennon-The Life. 800 pages I dedicated my summer to reading and I made it through all the better for it. I honestly thought to myself before getting this book, "What could i possibly not know about John's life after all these years?"

Turns out, a million things. The book carefully details his parents' and grandparents' lives and relationships, the events leading up to his birth and subsequent abandonment by both parents, and his childhood and teenage years beautifully and succinctly. The second half of the book flies through his last twenty years on Earth at a dizzying speed, much like what I felt his actual life was like. It competently illustrates his many personality quirks and foibles, his brash confidence battling internally with his raging insecurities. I don't feel the author left any stone unturned and I am happy to report the book never falls into crass exploitation or gossip-page innuendo. Ultimately, I finished this book feeling that John was a very complicated man unsuccessfully trying to live a simple life.




I also sold off a heavy chunk of those aforementioned LPs from my teens to build up enough store credit to buy the newly remastered Beatles CD catalog that hit the world on 9-9-09. (A Lennon reference I'm sure I was not alone in catching). Parting with all that weighty vinyl was an honest load off my mind. It was getting harder with every move into a new place to rationalize keeping it unplayed and untouched after all these years. The sacrifice was well worth it.

The new CDs sound beautiful and give the music the sonic makeover it had been waiting for since the inception of digital music technology. The original pressings in 1987 were good for that time but hardly revolutionary. They really just sounded like virgin vinyl processed onto a CD. Now, you can honestly hear a crispness in the acoustic guitars and a thunder in the drumming i never noticed before. The vocals no longer have an unnecessary echo or hiss like before. On some songs, there is a presence in them so strong it feels like the vocal tracks are being recorded in front of you.



The packaging is superior with all new liner notes on the history and recording of each title, brand new photos unpublished anywhere, and each CD comes with a 5-minute exclusive mini-documentary viewed on any PC.

Fantastic. Beautiful. Thrilling. The best stuff on Earth just got better.

Earlier this week, one of my other favorite bands, Cheap Trick started a nine-day engagement at The Las Vegas Hilton performing the Sgt. Pepper album in its entirety. If any American band can pull off a fitting tribute, it's Cheap Trick. The band has all the catchy songs and goofy charm that i heard in The Beatles, but with an edgier, sarcastic undercurrent in their sound that to this day gives them an almost punklike snarl.

The show starts off in a very un-Vegas way with a live band (not Trick) playing a Fab Four medley backed by a 30-piece symphony orchestra. Joan Osbourne, Ian Ball and Rob Laufer all take turns on a few numbers admirably. After the spoken introduction of "Ladies & Gentlemen, the best fucking band you have ever heard in your life..." Cheap Trick come out and just rock the joint in their usual way. I have seen these guys over a dozen times in a dozen years and they are still consistently great. This was especially exciting just because it was something different than a CT greatest hits package show, which i also like but have watched twice too many.

Many thanks to Robin, Rick, Tom and Bun E. for trying something different and challenging with great SUCK potential but never actually meeting that.

I would love to say that my obsession has found some sort of peak but I know it never will. There are some things in life you can outgrow or change your mind about, like clothes or politics. But I cannot imagine singing songs of love and life will ever get old. No matter how old we get.