http://online.wsj.com/article/SB117951917528607822.html?mod=tff_main_tff_top

In polite diffidence I have removed any quotes.

Thank you for your correction Douglas.

Best regards

Graham Bernard

Definitely a thing to celebrate.

That is - however - for the more, say, mature of us...

Ask anybody under 40 and 90 percent will answer: Sergeant who??

But it was ceartainly a good time - Highschool - with the gang - and.. - and..

Yeah, Yeah, yeah..

:-)
Einar Ritsmer
Copenhagen, Denmark

The Mothers of Invention made a mock of the Sgt. Peppers album called We're only in it for the money. The cover (by Cal Schencel) was a "replica" where the band's name was written out in vegetables instead of flowers etc etc. Frank Zappa called Paul McCartney and asked him for permission, but Paul (is reported to have) said: That's what lawyers are for. Frank said: Rock musicians are for telling the lawyers what to do. He did not get his permission, and his then record company chickened out into reversing the cover; making the planned front and back appear on the foldout face (it's a double cover). If you fold it all out and bend it further you'll see how closely it it matches.

What Grazie pointed out is that the Sgt. Peppers album came out 40 years ago. Spot thought he saw a mis-quote.

To me though, Rubber Soul is the greatest Beatles album of all time. It was their first "concept album", and full of poignant lyrics and musical genius.

Speaking of Paul McCartney, about 10 years ago I was talking to a 20-something girl in a club one night and mentioned something about Paul and the Beatles. She said, and I swear this is true, "He was in a band before Wings?" Of course, there are probably kids now that haven't even heard of Wings, much less the Beatles. I feel so old (and for good reason.)

John

Oh my, I remember only too well the day it was first played on air down here. It was sports day but one of my mates had managed to bring along a rather large transistor radio...

Does anyone still call them "transistor radios" even?

Bob. (Feeling older)

No, it's trance sistah ratios now.

John! Precious, . . totally precious!

However, ( it is Friday after all .. . ) my Grand Nephew has got himself a poster of Mr Hendrix. Has grown his hair long. Takes great joy in describing how Jimi set light to his guitar and thinks ELL was his finest LP.

Oh, and unless somebody can correct me here, BBC2, week before last, recounted this episode in our rock annals( was it Roger Daltry?)that it was at this Marquee gig ( the guitar set alight incidence) that Eric Clapton was seen visibly shaking, and was heard to say, and after witnessing what he'd just seen, what he was going to do next? It was something along the lines of . . going home to practice . . . .

The rest, John, as they say, is - most definitely - history.

The Marquee! Has any venue witnessed more of the evolvement of rock as we know it?
Tor

You don't know it? Watch Blow Up. The Marquee is the London club where Jeff Beck (then with the Yardbirds) is ramming his Strat into his AC30 and going on to smother the Strat against the floor.
(Actually not an easy thing to do in real life. Electric guitars are solidly built, and the Fender Stratocaster more so than most. They must be, to give your tone sustain. In fact it's easier to burn them.)

>The Marquee! Has any venue witnessed more of the evolvement of rock as we know it?

The Filmore in San Francisco has to be right up there.

(Will you still need me age is not very far off for me.)

40 years on and there's still 4,000 holes in Blackburn, Lancashire.

> 40 years on and there's still 4,000 holes in Blackburn, Lancashire.

hee hee. Too far to check. On the roads? Video?

Anyone still care to tuuurrnn me oonnnn?

I am once again reminded of my age........
Thanks guys.

I remember purchasing records at that time, looking through all of the albums that I wanted then going to the cash register and taking the latest Beatles album from a neatly stacked pile about 4 feet high next to the register. Then I noticed that everyone that purchased records pulled one of those albums from the stack as they finalized their transaction. Talk about premiem rack space. And they didn't last very long so they would bring out another pile of them. (Albums were large thin vinyl discs with groves in them with a label in the center)

JJK

My experience buying the album illustrates an interesting contrast between '67 and '07.

I think I actually bought the album on June 6, but it was completely by chance. Each time I visited a store with a record department, I always browsed the bins of artists I favoured. Until the moment when I noticed "Pepper" in the "Beatles" section of the record bins, I had no idea that it was coming.

In contrast, my 20 year old daughter knows the scheduled release date of every CD and movie she might remotely be interested in seeing or hearing.

I think I prefer the completely unexpected surprise of my generation to the endless anticipation of hers.

I remember sitting on the floor of my dorm room listening to it... Well, I don't actually remember, things from that era are a little hazy, if you know what I mean. But I know I was amazed and delighted by what I was hearing. Those were the days when pop music was really interesting....

Dude, Wings was awesome. I remember my first riff I ever learned was the riff from Let Me Roll It.

Here's a little perspective to make me realize my age.

I distinctly remember this day in 1987 when Pepper was released on CD, I thought about how old Pepper was, etc...and now it's 20 years after THAT date.

Woof.

Here are the (apparently) Top Albums of 1987 from Billboard based on weeks on the Top 40. So it was "20 years ago today" since these gemstones...

Licensed to Ill Beastie Boys
Joshua Tree U2
Whitney Whitney Houston
La Bamba Los Lobos - Soundtrack
Bad Michael Jackson
Tunnel of Love Bruce Springsteen
Dirty Dancing Soundtrack

The funny thing is, I still think of some of these albums as "recent"

Does anyone still call them "transistor radios" even?

You had transistor radios? :O)

I remember one build-it-yourself radio kit I bought when I was 14. Two vacuum tubes on an open metal chassis, a variable capacitor for changing the "wavelength" (on the AM band), and a potentiometer knob to adjust the volume. I plugged in the soldering iron and carefully soldered in all the other little components. Now lemme see here, where's the 6.3V filament juice coming from...? There was no transformer in the kit. Hmmm. And the feeding of the plate high voltage...? Hmmm. There's gotta be something in the instructions about this....

Oh! Oooohhhh! The secret was in the power cord. A 3-wire power cord to be exact.

The instructions said to be REALLY careful to connect the neutral wire to the chassis, so you wouldn't get electrocuted before your time.

Then they went on to explain that the third wire was made of a resistive material, dimensioned to offer a voltage drop from 110V to about 6.3V to feed the tube filaments...

They even had an International Kit with a "220V Adapter" for which by now you should have figured out the design. That's right, resistor wire to cause a voltage drop from 220V to 110V. So they had to make sure that the soldering iron had the same current consumption as the vacuum tube radio...

It all worked, but I can't help wondering if UL (Underwriters Laboratories) ever saw this kit...

It was not for the faint of heart (unless they needed urgent defibrillation :O).

Lower Manhattan. 1997. A "record" store on lower Broadway that still stocked some audiotapes at the time. I'm looking for scene change music for a short showcase, and I ask a cashier who's about 17, half out of curiosity, do you still have records. She says, "I'm sorry sir, we can't let you look at our records." (The 'sir' was like a dagger to a guy who still has his yellow butterfly patch from his bell-bottom jeans.)

I say no, not paper records, I'm looking for Jerry Lee Lewis, do you have him on cassette? (When I was about 9 his "Great Balls of Fire" woke up my soul even before Elvis, before the word "groovy" was coined.) She turns to her manager in the back, who is a hoary 25 or so, and calls out, "Do we have any Jerry Lewis tapes?"

I took my business elsewhere.

P.S. Few people really remember that being a 'hippie' was all about freedom, tolerance, and the courage to explore new things. All the other stuff--the drugs, the street demonstrations, living in near-poverty, that's what the ones who couldn't tolerate all that unproductive activity, condemned.

But we're still here, living in the mainstream now.

Far out.

"Then they went on to explain that the third wire was made of a resistive material, dimensioned to offer a voltage drop from 110V to about 6.3V to feed the tube filaments..."

"It all worked, but I can't help wondering if UL (Underwriters Laboratories) ever saw this kit..."



As a Ham Radio Operator I shudder at some of the thing I have seen and done over the years. Sometimes the rule of the day
seems to be safety second.

Terry

This is far from trivial. An early color TV from Europe sold in this country had a 'live' chassis. The plastic case and knobs might have protected the user from an active - neutral mixup in the house wiring but it didn't protect the poor bugger who climbed up onto his metal roof to adjust the aerial.
The only question that seemed to go unanswered was if the volts or the Gs as he hit the ground killed him.

Bob.

http://www.newyorker.com/online/2007/06/04/070604on_audio_colapinto

The New Yorker has a big profile on McCartney this issue. The article is not online, but they have this audio with the author.