Entries from September 2009 ↓

Entertainment Weekly recently published a list of the 25 best and five worst Beatles songs.  I’m not really interested in the “best” list - things like that are completely subjective and can vary.  However, for some reason the list of the five worst songs intrigued me:

05 “Flying”
04 “Don’t Pass Me By”
03 “Dig It”
02 “Wild Honey Pie”
01 “All You Need Is Love”

I don’t really have a list of Beatles songs I don’t like as much as I have a list of Beatles songs that I’m really tired of hearing, and it would look something like this:

05 “Twist and Shout”
04 “Birthday”
03 “Let it Be”
02 “Hey Jude”
01 “Hey Jude”

“Hey Jude” goes on there twice because I’m really tired of hearing it and it just goes on and on, especially in concert. Back to the Entertainment Weekly list - the first thing is that having “All You Need is Love” and the worst seems like a bit of a troll in order to get people worked up.  Yes, I’m tired of it, but a lot of people - including my wife - really love it.  If you want to call it overrated that’s fine, but saying it’s that worst….I don’t buy it. Another thing is the inclusion of “Don’t Pass Me By”.  Not only is this my favorite Ringo song, I would probably put it in my top 20 and possibly top 10 Beatles songs.  Songs like that are why the White Album is so great - just a collection of great songs and you never knew what was coming up.  I also like “Flying” quite a bit but I get that since it may be a little too weird for people. The other two I get as well but to me they weren’t really official songs, just little throwaway bits they had on their albums.

I don’t know where I’m going with this other than it really makes me sad when people slag “Don’t Pass Me By”.

When I first heard about the Beatles remasters I figured I would buy one or two and that would be it. In this case I bough Abbey Road (my favorite Beatles album) and the White Album (what I consider to be their most interesting). After hearing the two of them I’m pretty sure I’m going to end up with all of them with maybe the exception being Yellow Submarine since I bought the remastered version a few years ago.

The quality of the remasters is amazing. I never thought the original CDs sounded bad but the difference is incredible. With the new versions you can hear the separation of each instrument in the song, but not to the point of distraction.

The thing that keeps being discussed with the remasters is that the bass stands out more, and that’s absolutely true. For the past year or so I’ve been more aware of how good Paul McCartney’s bass playing was on these albums and having it brought forward made me appreciate it even more. The other thing is that you can hear other instruments, like acoustic guitars, that you didn’t know were in the song before.

I’m normally not a big fan of buying remasters when I had the album before, but for me it’s completely worth it. Next up will probably be Magical Mystery Tour and Beatles for Sale.

Hard Rock Haven has a great review of Saturday’s Steel Panther show in Kansas City. The show quickly sold out and I thought about getting some tickets off Craigslist but in the end I wasn’t up for driving an hour each way to go see it.