Solo projects appear and disappear with little ripple at times. But the Micky Dolenz-Christian Nesmith-Circle Link vinyl EP on 7a Records does not deserve to go quietly. It is a wonderful, if short, musical trip that's a pure delight. According to Christian Nesmith, Mike's son, the recordings came from his and Circe Link’s live streaming show when Dolenz was a guest. The songs are all acoustic versions.
Side A features a medley of two songs, “Porpoise Song” and “Good Morning, Good Morning.” “Porpoise Song,” probably the quintessential psychedelic tune, is much more relaxed here. And for maybe the first time, you can hear all the words! It goes into “Good Morning, Good Morning,” the “Sgt. Pepper” Beatles song that Dolenz saw being recording when he met the Beatles in London in 1966.
Side 2 opens with “Crying in the Rain,” the song written by Carole King and Harold Greenfield and done by many including the Everly Brothers, Peter & Gordon, Bobby Vee and Tammy Wynette. The version here is a great version that Dolenz, who normally is heard singing rock, sings very tenderly, backed by Nesmith and Link. It's followed by another Monkees song, “Randy Scouse Git,” which gets quite a different sound when it's done acoustically.
Only 500 copies of the EP are being pressed on purple, translucent vinyl. 7a would not say for sure whether the tracks will be available on CD at a later date, but hopefully these songs will get wider distribution. They deserve it. And hopefully, there will be more where these tracks came from.
Rating: Four stars (out of four).
7a Records also recently put out another unusual release featuring Dolenz, a two-CD“An Evening With Peter Noone & Micky Dolenz.”This is exactly what it says – a recorded talk between two music veterans, although in a room full of people.
The men discuss their careers – Noone talking about his performing at an early age and working with Herman's Hermits, while Dolenz talks about his pre-Monkees career, his audition for the show and what it was like being a Monkee. There's a lot of material between the two CDs, including several new stories.
You get to be a fly on the wall for their revelations. It's an unpretentious and casual conversation with no pressure.
Paul McCartney's Up & Coming Tour -- Thursday, August 19, 2010
"There have many wonderful stories during the Up and Coming Tour, what with all the people who lived their dream to meet Paul McCartney. But how about this? Proposing to your girlfriend during a show and having it acknowledged by Paul McCartney.
It happened in Pittsburgh on Aug. 19th. Here is Luke and Michaela's story as they sent it to us."
"Our 15 minutes of fame came with a little luck, a little planning but really, it was all due to the generosity of one Sir Paul McCartney. I had planned to surprise Michaela by taking her to the show. I asked her to go to Pittsburgh on the 19th without telling her why. The subterfuge would not last. She soon went to the web, typed in Pittsburgh, August 19th... and bingo! Staring back from her monitor were countless entries about the concert.
In the days that followed, she never let on that she knew, though I always suspected she did. I let her think that I didn't know that she knew. I wanted to surprise her. She wanted me to have fun surprising her. Ah, the games lovers play!
While the concert didn't come as a shock to her, the front row tickets did. I warned that our seats might not be as good as the ones we'd had in Vegas for Macca's show at The Joint last year. They could have an "obstructed view". (You never know just where they're going to put the speakers, right?)
We entered the floor area from the back of the arena. Each step drew us closer to the stage. Upon reaching the halfway point, she turned to me and said "Exactly what row are we?"
"One", I replied. Her smile was priceless.
Upon reaching our seats, Michaela began phoning her parents and friends, excitedly telling them that we were in the front row. While she was doing that, I scanned the vicinity for anyone who looked like they might be able to get a note to Paul. Hope began to dim when I realized that most of the people in the area were locally hired security. I thought to myself, "Oh well, it was a longshot at best".
In any case, I was determined to pop to question during MY LOVE. I mean, how cool is that? Asking the woman you adore to marry you while Paul McCartney is just a few feet away, singing the greatest love song ever written...should make a woman feel special.
Eventually, a lovely lady by the name of Shelley appeared in the restricted area. She began talking with the guards. "Oh, everyone is so emotional backstage. We were all crying back there because tonight is the last show of the tour." she said.
It's now or never.
I approached Shelley with a previously typed note. The heading was simple enough... MARRIAGE PROPOSAL IN THE FRONT ROW TONIGHT. The letter went on to explain that I was going to ask Michaela to marry me during the guitar solo of MY LOVE and that it would mean the world to us if Paul could congratulate us from the stage.
I handed the paper to Shelley, asking if she could take the note backstage.
"Who do you want me to give it to?" she asked.
"Paul, if possible". I revealed the contents and that the element of surprise was key.
She smiled and said, " I'll give it to his head of security." I thanked her and quietly returned to my chair.
A few minutes had passed when I noticed several people in the secure area were looking and pointing at me. Finally, an older, tough looking gent motioned for me to go over there.
"Is this your letter?" His accent sounded like he'd seen his share of fisticuffs in the pubs of England.
"Yes"
"I'm Paul's head of security. I had to come out and eyeball you to make sure you're not a looney."
"I understand completely."
"When do you want to do this?"
"During 'My Love'."
"Right. We'll see what we can do." He disappeared behind the black curtains and velvet ropes.
By this time, Michaela had become curious about my dealings with people I'd never met before now.
"What are you doing?" she asked.
"Oh, I just sent back a fan letter."
"You're lying."
My beloved knows that I'm not the fawning admirer type. Because of my line of work, I've met famous people from time to time and have never written to a celebrity...until now.
"Well, I was hoping to get an autograph." That response seemed to placate her.
The show started. Everyone knows how wonderful that moment was. Paul strolled onstage. "Venus and Mars" rolled into "Rockshow." We were off and running.
Knowing the setlist in advance was like being on a Saturn 5 rocket waiting for liftoff. I knew that "My Love" would be the 11th song. With each passing tune, a most important milestone approached.
"Jet." "All My Loving." "Letting Go."
Sweaty palms...(Good Lord! I'm in junior high again)
"Drive My Car." "Highway." "Let Me Roll It."
Hey...I haven't seen the ring since leaving Indianapolis! Is it still in the box?!?!
"Long and Winding Road."
Ring check good. Michaela was facing the stage the entire time so she never saw me sneak a peek.
"Nineteen Hundred and Eighty Five."
Tunnel vision.
"Let 'Em In."
A heart is pounding in my chest. Hopefully, I'll get to propose before the coronary strikes.
Then...a long single note from Wix as Paul introduces "My Love."
The first chord hits. I look at Shelley. She had reappeared along with a number of staff/relatives in the aisle. They were all anxiously waiting for the big moment.
She smiled. "Yes, this is it...go for it!"
Paul was singing. Our little portion of the world grew suddenly brighter. A spotlight was shining down on us. So much for waiting on the guitar solo. I worried that the tech director
would think I was chickening out if I didn't do it right then and there.
So I jumped my cue. I took Michaela by the shoulders, turning her to me. The ring box opened.
"I love you Michaela. Will you marry me?"
With a sudden look of shock, hands to face, tears welling in her eyes my one, my only, my all... said "Yes".
We held each other. The crowd reaction was incredible.
I slipped the ring on her finger...another embrace.
Once again, 19,000 people cheered with us.
As we looked to the stage, Paul smiled at us and gave us the thumbs up. When the song was done, he rose from the piano, looked at us, made the heart symbol
and another thumbs up.
He then approached the center mic and said to me, "I heard you were going to do that!" "Wait a minute, did she say yes?" After I got a confirming nod from Michaela, Sir Paul replied, "Ok, just checking." He then said, "Ladies and Gentlemen, that's Luke and Michaela. They're officially engaged."
We smiled back, trying to yell thank you to him as Michaela waved her new ring and nodded.
Later in the concert, someone held up a sign requesting "Ram On." Paul obliged. As he sang "Give your heart to somebody soon right away..right away"
he looked at us again, gave us a sign of togetherness and hope by raising crossed fingers and thumbs up once more.
Upon leaving the arena, we were greeted by so many well-wishers. Everyone of them was so very kind. We were truly touched. It was an incredible evening for us, the happiest. Imagine, proposing to the woman you love, her acceptance and then the first person to congratulate you and announce your engagement is none other than
Sir Paul McCartney.
Such an incredibly generous act from a man who has already given so much of himself to the world. We can't thank him enough.
As for the marriage plans, no date has been set. After all, this was a surprise. The only people with advance knowledge were my mother and the staff at the
jewelry store in Indianapolis. It's been more than a week since it all took place. Our sleep cycle has yet to return to normal. We're still basking in the glow of it all. The concert, the great seats, the kindness of a living legend and a promise to each other to live out our lives together all combine for the memory of a lifetime.
Every time I think about it I'm stunned. I'm shocked.
Ringo Starr became the latest to protest a controversial new law in North Carolina by announcing in a statement issued on April 13 that he was canceling an upcoming concert by himself and the All-Starr Band in the state. House Bill 2 law says the LBGT community can use only the bathroom of the sex listed on their birth certificate. The statement's posting on his Facebook page has received over 18,000 likes since Wednesday.
The concert was scheduled for June 18 at Koka Booth Amphitheater in Cary, North Carolina. “I'm sorry to disappoint my fans in the area, but we need to take a stand against this hatred. Spread peace and love,” Starr said. “How sad that they feel that this group of people cannot be defended." His statement also asked his fans to support those working to overturn the law.
Starr becomes the latest to object to the law, which was passed by the state legislature in reaction to a bill in Charlotte, North Carolina, that would have allowed transgender people to use the restroom of the gender they identify with. Bruce Springsteen recently canceled a concert in the state because of the bill. In a statement, he said, “Some things are more important than a rock show and this fight against prejudice and bigotry — which is happening as I write — is one of them. It is the strongest means I have for raising my voice in opposition to those who continue to push us backwards instead of forwards.”
In addition to the LBGT section, the law also includes provisions restricting expanding work anti-discrimination protections. It was pushed through the state's General Assembly in a special session, according to CNN.
Fox and A&E have also recently threatened to not film any projects in the state because of the law, according to Variety. The NBA has also threatened to move its All-Star Game in 2017 unless the law is repealed. Hundreds of North Carolina residents participated in a rally in Raleigh on April 8 objecting to the law, ABC 11 reported. The ACLU has filed a federal lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of the law, according to NPR.
Tickets purchased for the June 18 concert through the box office using a credit card and also by phone or online will be refunded automatically to the original credit card holder, the venue said. But those purchased with cash must be returned to the box office for a refund.
Bruce Spizer’ encyclopedic books on the American releases by the Beatles have been outstanding sources of information for the detail-driven Beatles collector. These books have included “The Beatles Story on Capitol Records,” “Songs, Pictures and Stories of the Fabulous Beatles Records on Vee-Jay,” “The Beatles on Apple Records”, “The Beatles Solo on Apple Records” and “The Beatles’ Swan Song.”
Moving on to the British releases was the next logical step. His next book, “The Beatles For Sale on Parlophone Records,” will be published in October.
In a phone interview with Beatles Examiner, Spizer said the idea for the book came last year from Frank Daniels, co-author (with Perry Cox) of “Price Guide for the Beatles’ American Records,” for which Spizer wrote the foreward. Daniels also assisted Spizer with “The Beatles’ Swan Song,” Spizer’s sixth and final book on the Beatles’ American releases that covered records on the Swan, United Artists, MGM, Decca, Atco and Polydor labels.
“Frank Daniels had sent me an email suggesting I do such a book with him. And Frank had said for the last couple of years, he had been compiling information about all the different label variations of the Beatles’ UK recordings and felt that there should be a book on it and wanted me to do it,” Spizer said. “Frank and I have had a good working relationship before.”
He says the challenge for the Parlophone book was different than his other on the Beatles’ releases. “In this one, what made it more difficult for me was that was that when I started the book project, I did not own a lot of British Beatles records.”
Also, he said, “the British had a tendency to constantly tweak their labels. Some of that was due to the fact that in the early days, they were using film for the label copy for the film, but actually typesetting. So each time they ran out of a label and printed up more, they had to re-typeset it. So in the case of the EPs, you might have a dozen different label variations for a record.”
The worst example of this, he said, was the EP “The Beatles Hits.” “Part of the problem was that they might say, ‘Well, this EP will sell about 40,000 copies,’ and they’ll press 40,000 of them. When they realize they needed more, they’d say, ‘Let’s do another 20,000.’ Then those sold out, and they were like, ‘Oh, my gosh!’ I think they never realized how many copies they could sell. So they never printed enough labels. I noticed it more with the EPs than the singles.”
“What the book does,” Spizer says, “it shows the records that came out in the ’60s, and as such, with the EPs, you’ll know what the jackets look like. You’ll also know that they were laminated. So if you have a jacket that isn’t laminated and has interior folds, then it’s a later jacket most likely from the mid to late ’70s.”
Spizer says he started thinking about the book last spring, committed to doing it last summer and completed it in about a year. “I wanted to go to England first and do some research, then decide whether or not I thought I could do a job that would live up to my prior books.
“I spent a lot of time at the British library going through music magazines and found Record Retailer very helpful,” he said.
“I really approach the project the same way I do a lawsuit,” said Spizer, who’s a lawyer when he’s not writing Beatles books, “in that I want to be very thorough, go through whatever documents I can, interview whatever people I feel will add to it. But at the end of the day, I want to put it together quickly and don’t want to ask for a continuance, as it were.”
The interviews in the book were taken from prior talks with George Martin and Beatles engineer Ken Townshend. He also credited Roy Matthews, who had worked for EMI beginning in the mid ’50s at their factory in Hayes. “Roy was very helpful, had a wonderful memory and went over all sorts of things, such as the actual process of pressing the records, how many records could be pressed in an hour and things of that nature,” he said.
The official release date for the 444-page book is Oct. 5, which is also the 49th anniversary of Parlophone 4949, the Beatles’ “Love Me Do” single. The book includes a pamphlet that has a checklist of the Beatles’ record releases in England from ’62-’70 and ads from dealers who specialize in UK records.
The book, which costs $69.98 for the book itself (with slipcase and collector’s editions also available), can be pre-ordered now through Spizer’s website, www.beatle.net. He says anyone who pre-orders the book before mid-July will receive it around August “if all goes as planned.”
He says he hopes to have the book available at the Chicago Fest for Beatles Fans Aug. 5-7 and the Liverpool Beatle convention during International Beatles Week Aug. 25-31.
[stextbox id=”black”]This article is the original work of Steve Marinucci. Under no circumstance may any portion of this article be broadcast, copied, published, rewritten or used without the permission of the author. To purchase this or any other article by Steve Marinucci, please email beatlesexaminer@gmail.com.[/stextbox]
While the picture of the man depicting “Sgt. Pepper” in the Beatles “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band” album looks like a character out of a story book, he was actually a real person. His name was James Melvin Babington, and author Bruce Spizer says his new book “The Beatles and Sgt. Pepper: A Fans’ Perspective,” reveals his identity and a little of his history for the first time.
Spizer, who talked about the discovery and the book this week on the weekly Beatles podcast “Things We Said Today,” credited the find to Frank Daniels, who wrote an essay for the book on Babington under the pseudo name Max Gretinski. “Both of us try to top each other with finding obscure stuff that I jokingly say only you, me and 15 other people in the world will care about,” Spizer told the radio show. Babington’s identity was confirmed by one of the men who were involved with creating the cover, Spizer said.
In the essay, Gretinksi (Daniels) details some of Babington’s military history, including his service in the 16th Queen’s Lancers in the Second Boar War and the First Calvary Brigade in South Africa. While much wasn’t known about his history in 1967, Babington’s face was, the essay says, because it was included in the book “Celebrities of the Army.”
“You knew about Beatle cards, but in the UK they had military history cards. And Major Gen. Babington was also one of these people that was on a card,” Spizer said. “So I think the artists got the idea to have the ‘Sgt. Pepper’ cutout card from those cards and out of those cards picked this one as their model.”
And there’s no question about whether the picture in the “Sgt. Pepper” album is Babington. The book includes side-by-side pictures of Babington and the mythical Sgt. Pepper. “As they said in ‘Yellow Submarine,’ the resemblance is uncanny,” Spizer quipped.
The discovery comes on the heels of the release of several CD sets by the Beatles May 26 that include a new remix of “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band” by Giles Martin, son of the late Sir George Martin, and Sam Okell based on the original monaural mix which was preferred by the Beatles and that had several differences from the stereo mix. The largest set, six discs with four CDs, a DVD and a Blu-ray disc, includes the remix, discs of album outtakes, rarities and a monaural version of the album, plus video content.
The animated film Yellow Submarine has been shown a lot of love from both The Beatles and the public in its 60 years since its release in 1968. Starting today (July 9), to celebrate the movie’s 50th anniversary, fans in the U.S. will be treated to theater screenings of the best-looking version of the film they’ve ever seen….
When the film was originally released a half-century ago, the expectations weren’t high for it, according to Beatles historian and author Bruce Spizer. “No one really expected much from the Yellow Submarine feature-length cartoon,” he offers. “The Beatles were not enthusiastic about the film, perhaps concerned over how they were depicted in the [U.S. Saturday morning] cartoon series. United Artists refused to count the cartoon as the third Beatles film under its contract with the group, agreeing only to serve as the distributor for the movie. But when it came out, the film exceeded all expectations. It was psychedelic, hip and funny. Visually it was like a Peter Max painting come to life. It was full of countless puns. Its message was the power of music and love.”
“When Yellow Submarine was first released back in 1968, it was understood as a kind of ‘head movie,’ the sort of film you go to see after dosing yourself in advance with hallucinogens,” Dr. Kenneth Womack, Dean of Social Studies and Humanities at Monmouth University and author of several Beatles books, tells Billboard. His books on the Fab Four include a two-volume biography of the group’s producer Sir George Martin of which the second volume, Sound Pictures, will be published in September.
“But at the same time, it presaged today’s animated masterworks, where fun-loving characters and their colorful environs delight children, while the screenplay is laden with just enough sophisticated humor and punning wordplay to capture adult imaginations,” he continues. “The upgrades to the film, including the digital treatment of the music and the animation, have rendered Yellow Submarine into a much sharper and more engrossing experience. For viewers who have seen the movie in its various incarnations since its premiere, each new version has breathed fresh life into the film, making for an evolving experience that pays dividends with each subsequent viewing.”
“Yellow Submarine serves as the perfect way for fans to introduce The Beatles to their children and grandchildren, or just to share the experience with them,” Spizer says. “The film is as fresh, clever and exciting 60 years on as it was in 1968. It’s all in the mind, you know.”
Spizer will be introducing the film at several screenings July 13 through 15 at the Prytania Theatre in New Orleans.
By Steve Marinucci
7a Records also recently put out another unusual release featuring Dolenz, a two-CD “An Evening With Peter Noone & Micky Dolenz.” This is exactly what it says – a recorded talk between two music veterans, although in a room full of people.
