geekent’s stuff’n things

If you can believe it, I’ve never sat down and listened to a Beatles album before. Ever. Seriously. My mother being a “golden oldies” kinda lady I’ve of course heard all the usual “Best Of..” tracks and I’m well familiar with all the radio tunes, but what about all those ‘tweener tunes, the songs that don’t quite get the same play (you’d think given their impressive yet limited output the classics stations would play pretty much everything at some point, but no, they tend to play the same couple dozens songs (a little “Help”, a little “Drive My Car”, and too much “Octopus’ Garden”). But what about tracks like “Girl”, or “I’ve Just Seen A Face”, “Being For The Benefit of Mr. Kite” or “Norwegian Wood” (the latter of which I’m only familiar with because of the P.M. Dawn [remember them..."Set Adrift on Memory Bliss"?] version from 1993, which just isn’t right… I later realized that Cornershop also did a hindi version of it as well, and I only know “Across The Universe” because G.I. Joel does a rendition of it at the end of Word Wars)? I mean, why “Ticket To Ride” and why not “Tell Me What You See”? Why “Let It Be” and no “Two of Us”? It’s weird.

Aden’s laptop, which I’m using to work from home today, has a sizeable contingent of The Beatles’ catalogue on it, and their tunes I find, given my general familiarity them, makes for some good background listening. But it’s kind of turned out to be distracting as for every two songs I can let be, there’s one that I’m not familiar with.

What I’ve quickly become aware of is what albums the songs I do know are placed on, and the evolution of their style over each album… and also most of Ringo’s songs stick out painfully from the rest, far less sophisticated and even annoying compared to the rest.

I should put together a mix of the tunes I’m not familiar with for my pod. A “Not the best of the Beatles” if you will.

Albums: Help, Abbey Road, Rubber Soul, Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, The White Album, Let It Be