Michael Gerber • Hey Dullblog, the Beatles fan blog

Songs the Beatles Didn’t Do

By Michael Gerber|2015-01-06T17:29:52-08:00January 5, 2015|Unreleased/Outtakes|

Just waiting for PJ Proby to make it famous. Over the weekend I Stumbled Upon this great little webpage, which was compiled by Columbia U. Beatlefan Joseph Brennan 'way back in the heady days of the late 90s, when the vaults of Abbey Road were still exhaling their treasures. I've always wanted to do a post that was a one-stop shop for all the tracks like this, and Brennan's page seemed like as good a starting-point as any. Commentariat, I'm counting on you to add more to it. A Beatles/JPGR-version is linked to the title; and the cover version is [...]

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Paul McCartney and Kanye West: “Only One”

By Michael Gerber|2015-01-02T19:18:24-08:00January 2, 2015|Paul McCartney|

Paul McCartney and Kanye West at the Grammys in 2009. If this track's any gauge of what's to come, Paul McCartney and Kanye West is a match made in heaven. Kanye's singing, Paul's on the organ. According to Stereogum, "Kanye and Sir Paul started recording together early last year in a Los Angeles bungalow with McCartney improvising on keyboard and West improvising on vocals." Kanye says this about the lyrics of "Only One": “My mom was singing to me, and through me to my daughter.” The poignancy of that surely wasn't lost on McCartney.

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The Beatles cocktail?

By Michael Gerber|2015-01-04T00:30:32-08:00December 31, 2014|Beatle-inspired|

When you're a Beatle, every day is New Year's Eve. It's New Year's Eve, that most unabashedly alcoholic of holidays, and so my mind turned to an obvious question: if you were making a drink called "The Beatle," what would it be? Drinkify.org (.org? is it educational?) offers this opinion: "6 oz. of Mezcal, garnish with an olive." Mezcal? Why mezcal? That has as much to do with John, Paul, George and Ringo as rice wine with baby mice. What springs to my mind immediately -- as it does yours, too -- is Scotch and Coke. Was it in "Cellarful [...]

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I need your help!

By Michael Gerber|2014-12-30T10:56:30-08:00December 30, 2014|Housekeeping|

We can DO this Will you help me crash Dreamhost? Dullblog's been intermittent since the 23rd, but I've finally fixed it. Not really how I envisioned spending my Christmas week, but these things happen. Now I need to test the new setup. It would really help if everybody who reads this shares a favorite post or two (or ten). Facebook likes are good, submitting to StumbleUpon or Reddit or Digg would be even better. My hope here is to give us 24 hours of much, MUCH larger traffic than we've ever had before. That's the only way to be sure [...]

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Joe Cocker and The Beatles

By Michael Gerber|2014-12-22T13:53:37-08:00December 22, 2014|Billy Preston, Cocker, Covers, Obituaries|

English rocker Joe Cocker. They don't tell you when you're young, how your world falls away person by person. The ever-morbid social network informs me that spasmodic English rocker Joe Cocker has died, after a long battle with lung cancer. According to the BBC, "Sir Paul McCartney said he was a lovely guy who 'brought so much to the world.'" Not sure why the lovely guy part isn't quoted too; maybe Paul swore a lot, and they paraphrased it as "a lovely guy." That's what happened in my world, at least. Cocker achieved the near-impossible: he made Beatles covers that [...]

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The Making of John Lennon

By Michael Gerber|2014-12-22T10:56:05-08:00December 20, 2014|books|

Now here's a book for Dullbloggers! After all the breath expended on the topic of John Lennon -- a large cloud of it by the man himself -- I'm dogged by the persistent feeling we're no closer to finding out what really made him tick. But there's a new book on Mr. Chief Beatle that approaches him from two new, and potentially very fruitful, directions: his hometown, and his relationship with Aunt Mimi. Francis Kenny's The Making of John Lennon is an "investigative biography" which attempts to untangle some of the knottiest strands of Lennon's personality, and place the man [...]

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John or Paul

By Michael Gerber|2014-12-17T12:49:52-08:00December 17, 2014|Documentaries, John and Paul|

Reader Nicole wrote in yesterday: "Sometimes I think I will scream the next time I hear or see Lennon VERSUS McCartney. However, this video has gained a little traction in the past day and it really interests me. Lennon storms it, but it's the way people answer and their reasons (sometimes given, sometimes not) which are the interesting bit, to be honest. Note the apologetic way some people answer McCartney, for example. Highly recommend it, not for stirring up contention between fans of either of them but because who answers, what their answer is, and why they answer the way they do [...]

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Blackbird by Beautiful Noize

By Michael Gerber|2014-12-15T11:41:07-08:00December 15, 2014|Covers|

Woefully behind on posting -- working on several new ones -- in addition to a roundtable discussion of John/Paul fan fiction (watch this space). In the meantime, please to enjoy this video sent in by reader Raffael Holzhauser. Raffael wrote: Here's a little music video of my band's cover (or let's say reinterpretation) of Paul's "Blackbird." I hope you enjoy it! I did, Raffael, thank you. Hope the rest of you enjoy Blackbird by Beautiful Noize. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C3dbowVdpSU

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Where’s Ringo?

By Michael Gerber|2014-12-10T11:49:46-08:00December 10, 2014|Beatles merch, books, The Fest for Beatles Fans|

In Pacific Palisades, I think Back in October at LA's Fest for Beatles Fans, I was taking a final gallop through the merch bazaar before Kate came to pick me up. A few final hugs and handshakes for vendors I'd spoken with or seen talk about their books; a quick glance here and there to see if there had been anything I missed. Frankly, I'd already spent too much and was determined not to spend any more -- and then I found a charming book called "Where's Ringo?" It's a lively Waldo-style hunt-and-find, with each detail-crammed illustration taking place at [...]

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Do female Beatles fans understand John and Paul better?

By Michael Gerber|2014-12-08T14:00:31-08:00December 8, 2014|John and Paul|

Is everybody seeing the same thing? Even close? Commenter Linda asked a provocative question this morning which I felt was worth its own post. I'll paraphrase it: Do you think that female Beatle fans see the relationship between John and Paul more clearly, more accurately, more totally than male Beatle fans do? Here's Linda's comment: Do more women than men see the John and Paul relationship for what it really was? That is, not simply a “rivalry” or two “business partners” who were “very different” and just about every other person in their orbits were more important to them than [...]

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