Billboard, April 4, 1964

Tuesday, September 15th, 2009 • Horrorthon Posts

As I mentioned: top five slots.

Beat that. (Obviously, nobody ever has.)

Remastered

Saturday, September 12th, 2009 • Horrorthon Posts

I’m on an insane deadline and under tremendous stress, so I’ll make this quick (I only allowed myself fifteen seconds to provide a picture, which is why the above is so crude). But I had to mention 1) that (through various Jack Sparrow-type channels) I’ve acquired both the Stereo Box and the Mono Box in their entirety (as lossless .FLAC files that I converted to variable-bitrate .mp3s) and 2) that it’s an explosive, astonishing, incredible experience to listen to all of it. My cat seems to be giving me a look that says, “Enough with the damn Beatles!” after two solid days of nothing but.

I could go on and on, but suffice it to say that the whole thing is superb beyond words; that the mono mixes (which I’d, mostly, never heard before, and which are considered the “true” mixes, since the Beatles and George Martin were directly involved in a way that wasn’t true for the subsequent stereo versions) sound absolutely incredible, and that everyone who can afford it (including myself, later) should go buy this stuff. John Lennon said that you “haven’t really heard the ‘White Album’ until you’ve heard it in mono,” and, after having my socks blown off by “Helter Skelter” (which lacks the “blisters on my fingers” coda in its original mono rendition) I’d be inclined to agree. At the other end of the scale, the first-ever stereo discs of the first four albums (Please Please Me, With The Beatles, Beatles For Sale, A Hard Day’s Night) are, well, I’m running out of superlatives, but those 1987 versions were such muddy, thin fare by comparison to what they’ve done here.

What’s particularly amazing is this: when you talk about mono vinyl to cassettes to old 1980s CDs to modern digital remasters, it’s like talking about VHS to DVD to Blu-Ray—it’s a similar progression—except that, with movies, we all remember going to the theater and seeing the stuff “for real.” With recorded music, there’s no equivalent, unless you were one of the lucky dozen or so people who were actually in the room at Abbey Road studios when these tracks were first recorded. My point is, nobody has ever heard this before. It simply wasn’t physically possible. The entire Beatles legacy is based on vinyl recordings that are totally inferior to the 1987 CDs, which are equally inferior to these remasters. I don’t even know how to think about that. Anyway, it’s amazing what’s been given to us by those four; a gift, as we know, equal to the love they took. Yeah, yeah, yeah!

I’ve got this whole “Avatar” thing all figured out

Monday, September 7th, 2009 • Horrorthon Posts

Okay, go with me for a minute here. I suddenly realized what this whole damn Avatar thing is all about.

For more than ten years, James Cameron made movies like this:

Right? You can almost hear the “clang…clang” of steel on steel; the blast of bullets; the explosions; people yelling “This ain’t no drill, slick! Make me proud!” and “We’re in the pipe…five by five!” and high-fiving and more explosions and bullets and lots of machines and exoskeletons and clanging steel and more explosions. Pure testosterone!

Then he makes a movie like this:

And it’s the biggest hit of his career. It’s the most successful movie ever made, and it earns a Best Picture Oscar and earns him a Best Director Oscar. Millions and millions of fourteen-year-old girls all over the world go see it again and again.

Confusing, right? After a decade of macho sci-fi action, suddenly he’s made the ultimate chick flick…and it’s gotten him nothing but acclaim! So what does he do next? Nothing, that’s what! For ten years, nothing (except screwing around beneath the ocean). It’s got to be a major identity crisis, right? With, maybe, some gender/machismo issues tied into it? I mean, this is a major tough guy, at least vicariously, right? (Look at that first montage again.) And suddenly he’s all “My Heart Will Go On.” You might say he’s almost a…a visitor in a strange, alien landscape of feminine feelings and situations.

Kind of like this guy, right?

Check him out…Mr. Military Tough Guy, who probably knows how to fire every weapon ever made and how to fix the nuclear reactor…but he’s on his way into….the land of fourteen-year-old-girls!

It’s a magical land of unicorns and rainbows and shiny candy, and he’s going to love it there. (The trailer’s only line is, “This is great!”) It’s a good thing it’s not really him, then, isn’t it? It’s an “avatar” of him. Because everybody knows that sci-fi Navy SEAL types aren’t going to go anywhere near the magical land of lollypops and candy and “my heart will go on” for real. It’s the “avatar” falling in love in a My Pretty Pony animated landscape. The sci-fi soldier is “really” back in the chrome-plated steel warship; he’s not “actually” there to drop a diamond in the ocean or whatever romance-novel stuff awaits his “avatar.”

Anyway that’s my dime-store-Freud interpretation of what “The King of the World” is up to. He’s made the opposite of The Matrix! It’s a movie in which the superwarrior has to unleash his inner wuss.