Wednesday, August 29, 2012

Sunday, August 26, 2012

Part 3 - THE BEATLES- "John Is In Fact The Leader Of The Group"

PART 3

1968 -
single:
LADY MADONNA - PAUL
THE INNER LIGHT - GEORGE
Single number seventeen (and you know what I mean) is the first single released without a primarily written song by John. He wanted Across The Universe to be the single. The horns certainly help the A-side, along with some more Beach Boys style backing vocals. The B-side is maybe George's finest hour. Or, at least his best melody.

single:
HEY JUDE - PAUL
REVOLUTION - JOHN
Like the Hello Goodbye single before it, this is another head scratcher in the singles department. The original Revolution (found on "the white album") was deemed too slow by the other Beatles so John rewrote it with a fast tempo. Still, it wasn't accepted, instead the A-side is a slow song from Paul! What the hell? John must have been a tad confused by the whole affair. This single was the band's best selling one ever, in spite of the over seven minute A-side. John's rewrite features some of the dirtiest guitars they ever recorded.



(cover design by Richard Hamilton)
album:
The Beatles
After the colorful, eye-catching album covers of the previous years, this ninth album from the band was their first and only double album and adorned with a white cover (hence the nickname, 'the white album'). No singles were released from this album! 30 original songs! After the somewhat uneven nature of 1967's output, John, Paul and George rose to the fore with a delightful collection of songs that neatly ran the gamut of popular song genres. There were rules, too. Neither Paul or John could have more than two songs in a row on the album and their output restored a parity. The songwriters also should have shared producing credit.

Saturday, August 25, 2012

New York City Police Kill Gunman AND Wound 9 Bystanders

From the "you just can't make up this stuff" department comes the stunning story of a police shoot down of a gunman in New York City that came only minutes after Mayor Bloomberg spoke on his radio show once again about the need for gun control. Unbelievably, even though all the bystanders were shot by the police, Mayor Bloomberg callously used this tragic event to call for laws to enforce stricter gun laws on civilians and not the police! He also fabricated details by saying all the bystanders were hit by fragments or ricochets.

(This man, a bystander, was shot in the elbow by police.)
Even though Americans are still awaiting any surveillance video from the Aurora, CO theater shootings, for example, NYPD released video of the police shooting of the gunman within hours of the event.

The sequence of events has a disgruntled ex-employee walking up to his former boss on a busy sidewalk and shooting him in the head several times. He then put the gun back into a black bag he was carrying and fled the scene. Around the corner from the initial shooting, a construction worker alerted two police officers to the gunman who was walking in front of the entrance to the Empire State Building. As can be seen on the released videos, the two officers come up behind the gunman and appear startled when he stops, turns around, reaches into his bag and pulls out his gun, pointing it at them. Before he can shoot them, the officers shoot at him with 16 rounds, striking him several times while also hitting nine bystanders. The gunman falls to the sidewalk on his back and raises his arms a bit as he rapidly succumbs to his wounds.

(The gunman falls to his knees while being shot by police.)
It is a miracle that none of the bystanders were seriously hurt or killed. The Mayor's fragments story doesn't wash as one man was shot in the elbow, a woman was shot in the knee and another was shot in the neck. Finally, after the gunman is shot, he falls on his back and dies, but the NYPD rolls over the dead body and cuffs it!

(The dead gunman now lying on his stomach and handcuffed.)

Monday, August 20, 2012

MASS MANIPULATION - A Study Of The Aurora Theater Shootings

At this point, a month out from the horrific shootings at an Aurora, Colorado movie theater, to question any part of the official story is to invite derision as a tin foil hat wearer or the certainty that questioning equates you as a supporter of the shooter. These reactions are to be expected because they are one of the many byproducts of mass manipulation. Questioning equals conspiracy theory and questioners are conspiracy theorists. Or the wearer of tin foil hats.

With this study, I would like to move past this knee-jerk equation of what defines questioning of any official story. I am not proposing a conspiracy theory. My main purpose is to ask questions of the simplistic official story of a very complex case. Due to this complexity, only one portion of this story will be examined in each post. Along with asking questions there will be an examination of the mass manipulation that came from nearly every corridor of power from the Mainstream Media (MSM) outlets to the White House.

#1 "THE Strange Case Of Jordan Ghawi"

Jordan Ghawi is the brother of one of the victims of the shooting, Jessica Ghawi. He identified his sister as a victim within minutes of the shootings. Because of that twitter post and others, plus a blog he started, her death became known to the MSM fairly early on in the coverage. What a great, tragic story they had with Jessica Ghawi. For, she was one of them, an aspiring sports reporter for a radio station in Denver, branching out into television. If that wasn't enough, she had barely survived a mass shooting in Toronto at Eaton Centre only six weeks earlier, which she blogged about under the name of Jessica Redfield. You just can't write better copy than that for a breaking news story.

Sunday, August 12, 2012

Part 2 - THE BEATLES - "John Is In Fact The Leader Of The Group"

PART 2

1966 -
single:
PAPERBACK WRITER - PAUL w/JOHN
RAIN - JOHN
After taking a well deserved break early in 1966 and another one after their last tour in August, The Beatles released only 16 songs this entire year. Their twelfth single marks the beginning of Paul dominated singles. It would be over a year and a half between John's last A-side and his next in the summer of 1967.
Paperback Writer is notable for being a non-love song and Paul's new Rickenbacker bass guitar was quite an ear-opener for the time. The B-side certainly showed the advanced experimentation in John's work. The first use of backward vocals on a record.

single:
YELLOW SUBMARINE - PAUL w/JOHN + DONAVON
ELEANOR RIGBY - PAUL
The A-side has Ringo singing one of band's more catchable melodies written mostly by Paul with help from John and an uncredited Donavon, whose song Mellow Yellow may or may not have been a direct influence. The B-side features Paul backed by a string octet and a haunting refrain. Another #1 single and the only one starring Ringo.


(cover collage by Klaus Voormann)

Thursday, August 9, 2012

THE BEATLES - "John Is In Fact The Leader Of The Group"

PART 1

In October, 1962 The Beatles gave their very first radio interview barely three weeks after the release of their first single, "Love Me Do/P.S. I Love You" on Parlaphone Records. While explaining to the interviewer that the lead guitarist is not the leader of the group, Paul McCartney says, "...John is in fact the leader of the group." In looking over the recorded output by the band it is clear that John Lennon was the leader of the group, writing a vast amount of the group's songs through 1966. Then, in 1967, his songwriting declined drastically as Paul took over the group with his songs until the following year when John began to reassert his dominance. This resulted in an uneasy alliance between Lennon-McCartney which could not be sustained, eventually leading to John leaving the group he had founded and was "in fact" the leader.

When The Beatles started out, the currency of their trade was records, specifically the coveted singles, the seven inch vinyl 45rpm discs that were the mainstay of the record industry. It was unusual at the time for a songwriting duo such as Lennon-McCartney to write a majority of their own output. It is no secret that Lennon and McCartney were very competitive and they actually co-wrote very few of the group's songs. The following is a chronological look at the rise of the leader of the group's songwriting output, it's sudden decline and eventual re-emergence.

1962 -
single:
LOVE ME DO - PAUL
P. S., I LOVE YOU - PAUL w/JOHN
Being neophytes to the big recording studio, John and Paul readily agreed with their new producer, George Martin's song choices for their first single. The A-side was a song Paul wrote back in 1957 and prominently features John's harmonica. The B-side was another Paul original with some help from John. The single peaked at #17 in the United Kingdom and #1 in America after the group made it big there in 1964.

Wednesday, August 1, 2012

I Am Not An Animal - I Am A Human Being!

WARNING: Pissed off American ahead!


I'm on food stamps. For over a year. And it's people like the person who wrote that positive shit above, that makes me not only more able to face another day of doing the American hustle, but also be proud to be an American. What's that dear readers? The American hustle? You know, trying to find a job and keeping a roof over my head.

But this American, he compares me, a person on food stamps, to an animal! Isn't that fucking great?

To be poor be poor in the United States of America today is worse than it was in the last decade of the 21st century. I speak from my own experience. I have never been truly homeless, I have only spent a couple days on the streets. But I have lived what most Americans would consider a sub-standard life for the last eight years. But why the flying fuck should that matter because I AM AN ANIMAL!

Without food stamps, I would be forced to, what? Lose my phone? Sleep on the streets? Or go into your fucking pantry like any self respecting ANIMAL would and steal your food, but not before I killed your pet dog, too.

You may see me roaming the streets, breaking into grocery stores to steal all your meat because god knows, AS A HUMAN like an animal, without food stamps I should be able to forage for my berries and leaves and cows, OH MY!

Meanwhile, the Corporations and Banks steal more from your American pocketbook than this ANIMAL ever could! And you know what's truly funny? You gladly open your wallet to those fucks but would like to slam it shut on this ANIMAL!? Then you deserved to be raped, and raped repeatedly by the Corporations and Banks who won't even give you the common courtesy of a reach around. May you and any others that think like you that I am an ANIMAL be set upon and masticated by both Smokey The Bear and Yogi Bear (+ BooBoo) you pious fucks!