Labyrinthitis

Having watched my way through all 800 hours of Get Back , Peter Jackson's documentary built (mostly) from the raw footage resulting from the filming sessions that resulted in Let It Be , here are a few random thoughts and extemporizations... (1) It will be of little interest to anyone who is not interested in The Beatles, and in the process of how a band creates and refines songs, and records them.   (2) If there was any mystery as to why and how The Beatles split (and there shouldn't be), this clears it up once and for all. It's clear from the start they're not  a band any more.  Only Paul seems particularly motivated towards making new Beatle music (albeit, with a heavy dash of wanting said music to be done his way). John is only interested in getting high and Yoko, and seems bored with the whole proceedings.  Ringo looks bored and tired.  And George is in a snit the whole time because John/Paul won't pay any attention to his latest songs (among other t...

When I was a kid, about 13-14, I saw Tina Turner being profiled on ABC's 20/20 news series.  This would have been around `80-`81.  She was working the comeback trail, playing clubs and I guess at one point working day jobs to keep food in the fridge.  I wasn't the immersed music geek I am now at that age.  I was just getting into listening to rock radio a lot.  I didn't know much about Tina Turner.  I'd seen her on variety shows a couple of times but didn't know quite what to make of her back then. I knew there was such a thing as spousal abuse, or as we called it back then, wife-beating.  But I was shocked that such a powerful-seeming woman could have been subjected to it.  And by the gruesome realities of it she so unflinchingly shared.  And I watched a clip of her belting out an aching, gospel-y version of "Help". The music I head there didn't necessarily move me (though I later came to appreciate her version of "Help"), but her story did....

... And so I had simply  stopped listening. I told myself that the trouble was I was tired of old music,  and there was no new music that excited me. I wondered if I were coming to  the end of an era—was rock and roll no longer going to be important in my life?  Then I gave up trying to censor my thoughts. Immediately there were plenty  of records I needed to hear: Blood on the Tracks ; Loaded ; Heat Treatment and  Howlin’ Wind ; Astral Weeks ; Exile on Main St. ; The Bessie Smith Story, Volume 4 ... (Ellen Willis, Village Voice, 1977) Willis was writing about personal crisis as much as about lack of interest in current music, and about how punk rock, particularly The Sex Pistols energized and reinvigorated her passion.  But it is the first couple sentences that resonate so strongly for me. I became a passionate rock and roll fan in my late teens. With rock books and rock writers such as Dave Marsh, Lester Bangs, Greil Marcus, Robert Christgau et al le...