Beatles on the Web Archives | Page 2 of 3 | Hey Dullblog, the Beatles fan blog

John Lennon, “Hollywood Scumbag”?

By Devin McKinney|2015-07-27T08:52:04-07:00July 27, 2015|Beatles on the Web, John Lennon|

DEVIN McKINNEY • This turns up on one's Facebook feed today: "It's Not Just Cosby: Hollywood's Long List of Male Scumbags," a Daily Beast mow-down, inspired by the Bill Cosby revelations (or confirmations, more accurately) of several beloved or at least well-compensated male stars whose prevailing public profiles belie repellent acts committed out of the spotlight. Among the scumbags rounded up by poster Asawin Suebsaeng is one John Ono (ne Winston) Lennon. If you think it's wrong to link to this story here at a Beatle-celebration site, to feed its clicks and so forth, you might be right. But it's a Beatle-related [...]

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Fab Foto Fakes: Photoshopping Beatles History

By Devin McKinney|2015-04-15T16:01:30-07:00January 20, 2015|alternate history, Beatles on the Web, John and Paul, Photos|

DEVIN McKINNEY • There used to be a fun little shadow business going in fake Beatles records—songs with a Beatlesque sound, or just a Beatle-sounding name on the label, that got taken, however briefly and inexplicably, for the real thing. The Knickerbockers’ highly convincing knockoff “Lies” lay at one end of the scale, with something like “The Girl I Love” by “the Beatles”—in reality, a New Jersey doo wop group known elsewise as The Five Shits—at the other. (Castleman and Podrazik’s All Together Now [1975] gave the first comprehensive listing of these purposeful or inadvertent fakeries, under the succinct and irrefutable chapter [...]

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The Beatles as rock gods…literally

By Nancy Carr|2014-12-28T13:52:46-08:00December 18, 2014|Beatle-inspired, Beatles merch, Beatles on the Web, India, rishikesh|

NANCY CARR • Sarah Yakawonis, who runs the Etsy shop Yakawonis Quilling, has created images of each of the Beatles as a literal rock god, with intriguing results. Looking perfectly contented, George. George, perfectly at home With George's affinity for Indian spiritual traditions, it's appropriate that he comes off particularly well (his portrait incorporates aspects of Krishna). With his beads and meditative posture, George looks like he'd be right at home in Rishikesh, and as if he could hold his serene pose indefinitely. Watch out for that fire, John. John, creating and destroying If John were a Hindu deity, [...]

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Putting HuffPo’s Beatles Test to the Test

By Devin McKinney|2014-08-07T16:54:23-07:00August 5, 2014|anniversaries, Beatles on the Web, Revolver|

#12. This is not a sandwich. DEVIN McKINNEY • I’m the first Beatle Superfan to admit there’s a world of things I yet have to learn about them. That’s one reason Mark Lewisohn (look just to your right) is worth reading. So it’s with an ‘umble spirit that I report being both slightly let down and vaguely comforted, in a smug Superfannish way, by an annotated listing that appeared today at The Huffington Post, bearing the challenging though just slightly qualified head, “11 Things You Probably Didn’t Know About the Beatles, Even if You’re a Superfan.” I won’t, of course, [...]

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Those McCartney e-tickets may be stolen

By Nancy Carr|2014-05-06T04:01:08-07:00May 6, 2014|Beatles merch, Beatles on the Web, concert|

NANCY CARR * Paul McCartney's "Farewell to Candlestick Park" show, on August 14, is generating some crazy reselling action—tickets for the sold-out show are being hawked for up to 20 times face value. If you're looking for tickets, take a tip from my recent experience and do everything possible to ensure you're not buying stolen tickets that have been cancelled and will be worthless at the gate, as happened to U2 fans some years ago. After I bought tickets from Ticketmaster through the American Express presale last Thursday, my email was hacked: and so soon after I bought them, it looks like someone [...]

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Liv Warfield got “Blackbird” wrong: Ten covers that get it right

By Nancy Carr|2014-12-30T21:34:48-08:00April 7, 2014|1968, 21st century references, Beatle-inspired, Covers|

Liv Warfield NANCY CARR * Last Friday Liv Warfield, best known for her stint in Prince's New Power Generation, performed her new song "Blackbird" on The Late Show With David Letterman, declaring "Paul McCartney got it wrong / I ain't never want no song / I ain't special, I ain't strong / Black . . . bird." It's not clear to me why Warfield, who was born in 1979, is so angry about a pro- Civil Rights song released in 1968 -- especially when the song is pitched in such a universal key that it can apply to any person or [...]

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The Beatles and History

By Michael Gerber|2014-02-24T11:05:11-08:00February 21, 2014|1964, Beatles Criticism, Beatles on the Web|

MIKE GERBER • Devin's excellent post on James Marcus' graceful, slightly Slate-only-smarter Letting Go of The Beatles spurred some thoughts, which were too long to put in a comment. I wrote this in haste and I can feel the dullness of my tools (doing a lot more business-stuff than writing-stuff these days), but I paste them below. It was fifty years ago today… Beginning in May 1964 and ending that November, the BBC broadcast a 26-part documentary called The Great War. Produced with the cooperation of the Imperial War Museum and its analogues around the world, it is a fascinating examination of that [...]

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I’m So Tired: Responsive Notes on the Phenomenon of Beatle Fatigue

By Devin McKinney|2014-02-22T06:34:28-08:00February 21, 2014|Beatles Criticism, Beatles on the Web|

There's no fatigue like Beatle fatigue. DEVIN McKINNEY • Beatle Ed points me to this most interesting, warmhearted, clear-eyed essay by James Marcus, “Letting Go of the Beatles,” posted yesterday at the Harper’s site. Even we, the besotted, must accept the validity, as we cough the exhaust fumes of the recent 50th-anniversary ballyhoo (which Hey Dullblog did its share to amplify or perpetuate), of a certain feeling of fed-upness with all things Fab. So Marcus’s piece gets me, and probably a lot of other Beatleheads of considerable duration, thinking. To delve into all the points where he and I are [...]

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The Beatles Invade America: CBS News celebrates the 50th Anniversary

By Devin McKinney|2014-02-05T06:36:52-08:00February 5, 2014|1964, Beatles on the Web, Beatles tributes|

DEVIN McKINNEY • To mark the 50th anniversary of the Beatles’ arrival in America, a mere two days away, CBS News plans a live multimedia event from the Ed Sullivan Theater in New York, site of a certain world-claiming triumph on February 9, 1964. In anticipation of both anniversary and event, CBS has amassed an impressive collection of video and audio chronicling the happy invasion, and commissioned a number of new pieces from Fab Four scholars, chroniclers, and analysts—among them John McMillian, Larry Kane, Bruce Spizer, and (eep!) yours truly. (The title of my squiggle, “From moptops to hippie chic,” is not [...]

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Beatles analogy by judge in NSA spying case

By Nancy Carr|2013-12-17T19:17:56-08:00December 16, 2013|21st century references|

Justice Ringo, appointed for life NANCY CARR • You know you're the biggest band in history when a federal judge ruling about the NSA's surveillance program uses an analogy to your members to explain his judgment. The whole article is here, but I've excerpted the Beatles-related part below: “Appeals Court Judge Richard Leon invoked Founding Father James Madison and the Beatles in a frequently scathing ruling. Leon, appointed by then-President George W. Bush, ordered the government to halt bulk collection of so-called telephony metadata and destroy information already collected through that program. But he suspended his order as the case [...]

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