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Hell Hounds and Juggernauts

  This is going to be about giving credit where credit is due. Come Hell or high water.  When we listen to songs, we're not only listening to what was created in that moment, or what came out at that time. We're listening to the history of music. And in truth, humankind. That's what Art does. It's a visual, oral, aural sensory interpretation of our centuries long journey into .... whatever we are heading towards. Wherever that goes.  The Artist or the collective making such pieces, is telling the story that we all must go through. Being born. Living. Dying. In some minds, anything less than telling that story is not Art. That's what Oscar Wilde thought back in 1891.  Now, I have said that the community by means of organisation of machinery will supply the useful things, and that the beautiful things will be made by the individual. This is not merely necessary, but it is the only possible way by which we can get either the one or the other. An individual who has to m
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I Dig George

 It's common knowledge I dig George Harrison.  Apart from Ringo Starr, he's really the only Beatle I can stand. But this isn't about what I can't stand about others who aren't George. This  is about why I dig him. There's a lot of reasons to do so.  First and foremost, the man was no Saint. Nor did he pretend to be. As far as his philosophies and dogmas, they never truly bothered me. I mean in a way of saying, they never compelled me to rail against what he was presenting, nor feel he was preaching to me about what I should think or feel. I tend to believe his thoughts and feelings were earnest. For himself primarily, and for others should they feel the same. You didn't have to. You didn't even have to listen to the song(s). But never once did I feel his lyrical content was something that forced me to go to a church, or temple, or Pizza Hut to get salvation. I believe he was earnest. And genuine in his beliefs. He also had the balls to call Hallelujah an

It's Only A Harrisong

  Yes. He'd been awfully poor up to then, actually ... some of the stuff he'd written was dead boring. The impression sometimes given is that we put him down ... I don't think we ever did that, but possibly we didn't encourage him enough. George Martin 1971 Yikes. Okay, let's not get into the " I am unaware of what I did, even though I just did it " denial spree George Martin wistfully tells the interviewer at Melody Maker in 1971. ( 1 ) We'll ignore that. What we want to address firstly, is why would one include songs on albums they considered "dead boring" when the goal of those albums is to $ELL $ELL $ELL units. And you definitely don't open up albums with dead boring songs, so something like Taxman should be put ... last. Not first on an album marketed for huge sales and capital gain. Melody Maker : Was he given an allocation of two songs per album? MARTIN : Not really. He'd write, with difficulty, and he'd bring them and we&