Reality show
..be
registered, I imagine it’s not as easy to get away with it these days.
Musicians are big on moonlighting. Well, with musos it’s not so much moonlighting
as multi-tasking. I sometimes wonder what that does to the more sensitive audience
members. I remember feeling quite disturbed when Ringo had to take some time
off to have his tonsils removed, and I was very relieved when he made it back
to his drummer’s stool in time for the show in Christchurch, (allegedly
the shortest Beatles’ show on the tour at about twenty five minutes).
I’m still glad I saw the Stones with Brian Jones – and the original
Beach Boys without all the add-ons. And The Who. But then something happened,
and it became quite the thing to swap members around. I was quite interested
to see the Yardbirds with Jimmy Paige rather than Eric Clapton for instance,
but with the balance was upset for me this time by half the band wearing bell-bottoms
and the other half wearing straight legs. I didn’t get that.
I see they’re going to broadcast Across The Universe to the universe.
I hope it’s the Beatles’ version and not the version attempted on
The Grammys some years back. If there was a moment that portrayed perfectly
how the current crop of American entertainers don’t quite get the Beatles,
this was it. To be fair, it’s not just American entertainers. I caught
the episode of Australian Idol when the contestants had to sing a Beatles’
song, and half of them were truly floundering.
I got one of those lists today – you know, the ones that ask, ‘You
know you’re really old and fucked when..’ Some of them rang true.
All you want from groupies is a foot massage and back rub
You need your glasses to see the amp settings
You feel like hell before the gig even starts
Most of your crowd just sways in their seats
You check the TV schedule before booking a gig
You need a nap before the gig
You don’t recover until Tuesday afternoon
Feeling guilty looking at hot women at the bar ’cause they’re younger than your
daughter.
Your hearing has deteriorated so badly that you actually ask the guitar player
to turn himself up.
You call out the next song only to have someone remind you played it ten minutes
earlier.
from the Cakewalk Sonar forum
Back to the universe briefly. As I have declared, I’m an atheist and I
prefer cool, reasoned scientific dicussion to panicky collective hymn singing,
but I can’t help thinking that a lot of unquestionably brilliant minds
have focused on the Big Questions for thousands of years, and maybe their conclusions
are just as difficult for the layman to appreciate as pure maths or quantum
physics, but maybe their descriptions are more appropriate simply on the grounds
that they tend to be inclusive rather than exclusive, and because they’re
prepared to accept there is something out there that’s ultimately beyond
our comprehension.
It’s getting late..