The Beatles as video game

As a guy who learned to play guitar and piano at a young age, I'm sort of against kids playing games like Guitar Hero on the principle they could be learning to play a real instrument instead. I've never played any of them, despite having an Xbox 360. But that may be about to change. The maker's of the Rock Band games announced yesterday it was doing a game based around the music of The Beatles.

The game will aim to feature the entire Beatles catalog and will offer an "experiential journey" off the band...

"This game will take you on a journey from the Beatles first album Please Please Me until the last album at Abbey Road,” said Apple Corps CEO Jeff Jones. “It will span samples of the whole catalogue all the way through.” (source)

Here's an "imagining" someone did of the game using The Sims engine:


Still, despite the fact Sir Paul says "The project is a fun idea which broadens the appeal of The Beatles and their music. I like people having the opportunity to get to know the music from the inside out," I can't help thinking that many of the kids who'll play it would be better off "having the opportunity to get to know the music from the inside out" by learning to play it on an actual musical instrument. What if Guitar Hero (with Buddy Holly, Chet Atkins, Carl Perkins, Chuck Berry, Little Richard, and Elvis Presley songs) had been around back when John, Paul, George, or Ringo were teenagers in Liverpool??

Happy All Hallows Eve

"A Witch's Tangled Hare" (1959)

"One for My Baby (and One More for the Road)"

All alone in a crowded room, looking for rainbows in the bottom of a glass...
Paraphrased from the Wikipedia entry (the smaller text):

"One for My Baby (and One More for the Road)" was written by Harold Arlen and Johnny Mercer for the musical The Sky's the Limit (1943) and first performed in the film by Fred Astaire. It was popularized by Frank Sinatra.


The "One for My Baby" sequence from The Sky's the Limit:

Harold Arlen described the song as "another typical Arlen tapeworm" - a "tapeworm" being the trade slang for any song which went over the conventional 32 bar length. He called it "a wandering song. Johnny (Mercer) took it and wrote it exactly the way it fell. Not only is it long - forty-eight bars - but it also changes key. Johnny made it work." In the opinion of Arlen's biographer, Edward Jablonski, the song is "musically inevitable, rhythmically insistent, and in that mood of 'metropolitan melancholic beauty' that writer John O'Hara finds in all of Arlen's music."

album cover pic source
From Young at Heart (1954), this arrangement is very similar to the one used four years later on Frank Sinatra Sings for Only the Lonely:

Sinatra recorded the song several times during his career: In 1947 with Columbia Records, in 1958 for Frank Sinatra Sings for Only the Lonely, in 1962 for Sinatra & Sextet: Live in Paris, in 1966 for Sinatra at the Sands and finally, in 1993, for his Duets album. The latter, featuring Kenny G., closes the album and critics have noted that Sinatra almost seems to cry the final words "It's a long, long... man, it's long... road."

I'm afraid I don't know the specific year of this live Sinatra performance, but based upon his hair and the condition of his voice, I'd say it's just before he "retired" in June 1971. This is indicative of how, as he could rely less and less on his voice (particularly on ballads and softer songs), he became more and more of an actor and narrator of songs and interpreter of a lyric, most obviously on "One More for My Baby (and One More for the Road)":

Wallis, Texas

Wallis, Texas

Holub's Five & Dime


Frank Pazderny Building, c. 1909 (Hardware, Eagle Cafe, Barber Shop)







2 hidden treasures (I'll have to check back again in January, February):




Wallis Theater

It was a very good Lear

Sinatra at home with a replica of the Christina II on the piano. (source)
Private Air Daily has a fascinating article about the fate of the Learjet Sinatra owned for a couple of years during the mid-60's, the Christina II. If those cockpit walls could talk! From the article:

If ever a plane played among the stars, it was N175FS. From June 1965 until he sold it two years later, Frank Sinatra and his famous friends logged more than 1,500 hours on the small, powerful early business jet. Sinatra routinely used it to shuttle the Rat Pack from Los Angeles to Las Vegas and his home in Palm Springs. He wooed Mia Farrow in it, and intimidated Michael Caine, then dating his daughter Nancy, in the back.

Celebrity private-plane culture was practically invented on it: At a time when few had their own private jets, when most Americans had never seen a private jet, Sinatra and his plane were like Hollywood's version of the first kid in class with a car. Dean Martin borrowed it to fly to movie sets. Marlon Brando and Sammy Davis Jr. took it to Mississippi to meet Martin Luther King Jr. for a civil-rights rally. Elvis Presley eloped with Priscilla Beaulieu aboard it.

With Dino (note the color - orange was Sinatra's favorite color)
Check it out. There's much more to it, complete with a cool slideshow.

Related post: "Hangin' out with Frank"

Sinatra takes a pie in the face

As hard as it is to believe today, the Friday night version of the Soupy Sales Show was wildly successful. I guess when you had the choice of three or four channels, people weren't too picky (or drunk). The show received more fan mail than all of ABC's network shows combined. It was also the first show in history to beat the long-running Rawhide in the ratings race. His thing was pie-throwing (with accompanying "thwak!"), he and cast apparently landing some 19,000 of them. Dozens of stars are said to have "begged" to be on the receiving end. And so it was Frank Sinatra and Sammy Davis Jr. (with Trini Lopez) found themselves on an episode (I'd say around '65):


On a related note, at about 6:33 in this video, Frank can be overheard discussing the "logistics" of pie throwing at Jilly's. Soupy Sales is one of the celebs seated around the table:

The Concert in Central Park

For those who view this blog while at work, and your employer has opted to block YouTube, I apologize for my heavy use of it (particularly within this post).

On September 19, 1981, Simon and Garfunkel reunited for a free concert in New York's Central Park. More than 500,000 people were in attendance. A live album from the concert was released the following March. The video of the concert contains two songs that were left off of the live album: "The Late Great Johnny Ace" and "Late in the Evening (Reprise)." "The Late Great Johnny Ace" was interrupted by a fan rushing the stage. Both of these songs appear in the DVD release. "The Late Great Johnny Ace" is not listed in the track listing but appears between "A Heart in New York" and "Kodachrome/Maybellene."

1. "Mrs. Robinson"


2. "Homeward Bound"


3. "America"


4. "Me and Julio Down by the Schoolyard"


5. "Scarborough Fair/Canticle"


6. "April Come She Will"


7. "Wake Up Little Susie"


8. "Still Crazy After All These Years"


9. "American Tune"


10. "Late in the Evening"


11. "Slip Slidin' Away"


12. "A Heart in New York"/"The Late Great Johnny Ace"


13. "Kodachrome/Maybellene"


14. "Bridge Over Troubled Water"


15. "50 Ways to Leave Your Lover"


16. "The Boxer"


17. "Old Friends"


18. "The 59th Street Bridge Song (Feelin' Groovy)"


19. "The Sounds of Silence"