We never thought anything could be done to make Let it Be listenable. Hailed by critics as a song that, “achieved a popularity well out of proportion to its artistic weight” and that it was “‘Hey Jude’, without the musical and emotional release,” it has haunted the airwaves ever since its unemotional release.

We hate to be negative about anything, and this cover has really changed our minds about this song. In fact, it’s the greatest Let it Be cover since The Long and Winding Roadrunner.

‘Twas a cutlass swipe or an ounce of lead
Or a yawing hole in a battered head
And the scuppers’ glut with a rotting red
And there they lay, aye, damn my eyes
Looking up at paradise
All souls bound just contrawise
Yo ho ho and a bottle of rum.

Fab four fanatic transforms North Carolina home into Beatle shrine

Wed Jan 6, 2008, 3:31 PM
By Jacob Winston Clemens
The Associated Press

RALEIGH, NC. – John MacLeon, a man who affectionately refers to himself as ‘MacLennon,’ is a habitually caffeinated Beatle fanatic who is taking care of business eight days a week at the antebellum home he calls “Liverpool Two.”

Knock on the door anytime. It’s OK to arrive at 4 in the morning, and the 75-year-old former dancer will escort you through his disconcerting, floor-to-ceiling collection of photos, records, figurines, cardboard cutouts, candy wrappers, clocks, lunchboxes and other random kitsch featuring the Mop Tops.

“I’d kill myself right now if it would bring them back,” MacLeon says in his odd Southern US meets Liverpool hybrid drawl, greying hair trimmed with a bowl, in the style of the early 60’s.

MacLeon says he rarely leaves Liverpool Two, rarely sleeps, and is powered by up to 24 cans of Beatle Cola a day (Beatle Cola was a short-lived Coca Cola product that MacLeon bought by the case in 1984 and has been drinking ever since). “When I run out I’ll just start on another Beatle drink, there’s Beatle Heinekin, Beatle Gatorade, Beatle Punch, and Beatle Pale Ale. I do happen to like the soda though.”

Liverpool Two is in New London, North Carolina, a town with a population of 326. It’s a convenient stop for fans on a Beatle pilgrimage, situated about between Birmingham, Alabama where the infamous Beatle record burnings started in 1964, and the Mid-South Coliseum in Memphis, Tennessee where they played their last US performance after a firecracker terrified the band onstage.

Until Liverpool Two became a magnet for off-beat tourism, New London was best known for its traditional shotgun homes and Spanish moss gardens.

“He’s our number one attraction,” says Nellie Winchell, assistant director of the local tourism bureau and general store.

Nellie reports that people often call for information about Liverpool Two, and that the Japanese and the British are the largest groups of overseas visitors. MacLeon doesn’t have a working telephone, so the townsfolk holler to let him know when visitors are coming.

MacLeon is so obsessed with the Fab Four that 26 years ago, he named his only son after the man he considers the world’s greatest entertainer and humanitarian. “My son was born John-Paul Geogingo MacLeon. Folks’ll sometimes ask if his name is French and he always says, “Sont les Mots qui vont tres bien ensemble.” He laughs.

Floors creak beneath visitors’ feet as they walk through the 157-year-old home warmed by space heaters that sit perilously close to raggedy Beatle wigs and stacks of papers and magazines.

For $5, visitors get to experience sensory overload, lit by mood lights and lava lamps.

Doorways are decorated with several Sgt. Pepper patterned curtains in ’70s-era hues of turquoise and paisley. There are photocopies of a newspaper with MacLeon’s all-time favourite headline: “Yeah, Yeah, Yeah.”

A poster-sized display in the entryway declares — “Nothing’s gonna change my world..”

“My ex-wife told me, ‘Make up your mind. Either me or the Beatle collection.’ So that put an end to that,” MacLeon says with a giggle.

MacLeon says he has owned his home since the mid-1970s, and that he’s had 399,000 visitors since he started opening it to strangers since the late 1980s.

Gerald Thompson, a 27-year-old drama teacher at the nearby University of North Carolina, said he has been to Liverpool Two a half-dozen times and recently took his wife and three friends for a nighttime tour.

“It’s kind of surreal.” Thompson says. “It kind of puts in your mind, ‘WTF? Is this guy for real?’ You don’t ever know. But it doesn’t matter because it’s a good time.”

MacLeon says that he became a Beatle fan when he was 13, and that he attended 120 Beatle and Beatle tribute concerts. “If they know a Beatle song, I’ll pay good money to listen,” he jokes.

In Liverpool Two, MacLeon claims to have 35,000 records and 25,000 CDs. He says he has 185,000 square inches of carpet that once was in Abbey Road. He constantly monitors radio and TV shows and records any mention of his idols, claiming to have 31,000 videotapes and 43,000 audio recordings. There’s a scrapbook filled with tiny slivers of paper — 1 billion mentions, he says, of the Beatles.

“There’s my burial suit up here to come back and haunt my ex-wife,” MacLeon says, pointing to a double-breasted pink military number, complete with sombrero, in one of the front rooms.

Caesar Lennon of Los Angeles, who has performed 21 years as Los Beatles Fabuloso (The Mexican Beatles), says he has toured Liverpool Two at least a dozen times and is attracted to its folk-art glamour. He once donated one of his stage outfits to MacLeon’s collection — a vintage crushed-velvet marching band jacket with a rhinestone studded Blue Demon luchador mask.

He says John-Paul Geogingo MacLeon is a walking encyclopedia when it comes to the Beatles, and he also helped his father give tours for several years. “The son would translate in a high pitched, whispered monotone: ‘What my father said was McCartney slippers…,’” Lopez recalls.

The younger MacLeon moved to an undisclosed location in the mid 1990s. A phone listing for him could not be found, but it’s rumoured he’s involved with the anti-Beatle website Suck My Beatles.

Lopez cautions that Liverpool Two “might be a slight warning about what too much love can do. All you need is love, sure, but this much love kinda creeps me out.”

The ceiling of the TV room is covered with baseball card-size Beatle pictures and visitor comments printed on fluorescent pink, blue and yellow paper. Wrote one man from Pensacola, Fla.: “This is as close to Heaven as a Beatle fan can get. This is FAB!!!”

Copyright © 2010 Canadian Press

Special thanks to Gary Ligi for alerting the world to this sad tale.

A beatle tribute cruise is preparing to set sail. The week long nautical nightmare leaves from Ft. Lauderdale Florida in March, sails the western Caribbean, visiting Belize, Costa Maya and Cozumel. This could have been a beautiful trip, but for some reason they’ve decided to turn this pleasure cruise into a floating insane asylum. We fear for the sanity of any pirates foolhardy enough to board this craft in search of booty, the best they could hope for is a handful of novelty can openers and a sharp blade to remove their ears before madness sets in.

If you’re wondering how anybody could be masochistic enough to not only to subject themselves to a bizarre and degrading form of torture, but also to pay $1200 per person (plus $297 for tickets to the special beatle events), you must not be familiar with the average beatle fan. Highlights of the ‘beatle cruise’ include some very impressive specials guests: three beatle photographers, two beatle authors, a beatle painter, a guy who does something called ‘beatle brunch’ and a tribute band.

We could go on to further discuss the atrocities which will no doubt begin moments after the vessel enters international waters, but instead we’d like to leave you with an actual quote from the official Beatles Tribute Cruise website. These words say more than a thousand pictures. Remember, this is meant to encourage you to go on the cruise, not to make your eyeballs bleed or your brain shudder.

Do you want to know a secret? Your mother should know you won’t see me because I’ll get back to follow the sun after I’m back in the USSR because Doctor Robert’s fixing a hole where the rain gets in. So hold me tight. With a little help from my friends I’ll call your name because I want to tell you this boy should have known better if I fell for Penny Lane on a magical mystery tour. Thank you girl, I hope we can work it out when I’m 64.
Your friend,
I am..
The Walrus
P.S. I Love You.

If this doesn’t convince you to make reservations today don’t put away that credit card, there’s also a Rick Springfield cruise and an Elvis Cruise. Hopefully there’s also be a Heaven’s Gate cruise in the works for all those who can’t get tickets in time.

For more info:

http://www.beatlestributecruise.com/index.html

http://www.tbnweekly.com/editorial/local_entertainment/concerts/content_articles/122209_leconcert-03.txt

I’m unsure where, or why. All I know for sure is that in 1975 Cher teamed up with Tina Turner and what seems to be a young Dame Edna to produce a nightmarish rainbow clad beatle medley monstrosity, guaranteed to scar and terrify the entire family.

Warning – Don’t Watch!

Two days before the concert a carload of gunmen burst through the conveniently unguarded gates, shot Marley’s wife Rita in the head and shot his manager Don Taylor several times. Miraculously, Marley was only grazed in the arm and chest. He played the gig anyway. Immediately afterward fled his home, spending 14 months in exile.

Also in 1976: The beatles turned down 230 million dollars to play a charity event, and Oblidi Oblida was released as a single.

Peter Tosh’s fierce criticisms of Jamaica’s rulers during the ‘78 One Love Peace Concert led to him being beaten nearly to death in a jail cell. Burning Spear, Max Romeo, Big Youth, Lee Perry and the Upsetters, Linton Kwesi Johnson and countless others fought against class politics, discrimination, racism, capitalism, colonialism, violence and corruption.

Also in 1978: In an interview with ‘Gig’ magazine, world renown session drummer Bernard Purdie revealed that he played on at least 21 tracks on the Beatles first three albums, adding that he was paid by Brian Epstein to keep his mouth shut in the amount of “five figures.” (He also claims that guitar overdubs were made on several additional track by session musicians and that Ringo was never allowed to play on any recordings.)

Fast forward to 2009, not since UB40 has reggae been dealt such an insulting and disrespectful blow. Reggae music, once feared by the authorities and celebrated by rebels, has been infiltrated by beatlemart! Once proud, outspoken artists like Steel Pulse and legends like U Roy have somehow been hornswagled into dumbing down, rolling over, and playing on the latest beatle abortion entitled Easy Star’s Lonely Hearts Dub Band. What kind of politricks used to snare these artists is unimaginable.

The music of the FF is desperate for any kind of improvement, that much is obvious. After more than thirty years of being force-fed leftover beatle droppings, the public is slowly becoming aware there is an alternative to this prepackaged, refried, regurgitated crap masquerading as music.

But, reggae? First of all, the fabby’s have already tried it. The groundbreaking musical pioneers they were, as soon as the first strains of this new music drifted across the ocean, they decided to steal it. Does anybody remember how the beatles broke yet another world record by writing the worst reggae song in history, Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da? It remains one of the few songs that still induces instantaneous projectile vomiting when played to an unsuspecting listener. Lennon once referred to it as Paul’s Granny Shit. Large up, Lennon. Reespek!

The moptops had no business playing this music. Can you imagine these polite little English lads, after being knighted and having tea with the queen, going into the studio and recording Linton Kwesi Johnson’s, Inglan is a Bitch? In the same way, reggae should stay as far away from the beatles as it can. Does beatlemart have to ruin everything with it’s quest to ‘blandify’ the universe for the sake of selling the same terrible songs to the same morons who already own fifteen versions of each? Let the oppressed go free!

Oh well, at least recording an album of beatles music in reggae is an incredibly original idea. Oh wait…

Becaas learn dis man, dis sociaty yu ave three class a people in dis sociaty. Yu have de upper miggle class, yu have de miggle miggle class, and de lowa miggle class. I an I who is de poor and de underprivilege an de sufferer in de getto happen to be in de lowa miggle class…who control de Jesas an dem big bank account in Switzalan an dem ting dere. Dem guys juss say well we cyaan mek dem ting dere happen inno! Is few lickle big guys taak dem ting dere inno de de poor suffa at all time. Rite now me cyaan even get soap a shap a raasta cassle thru dem big blood baat guys dere.

-Peter Tosh
Excerpt from Live at the One Love Peace Concert.

Standard English Translation:

Because learn this man, in this society there are three classes of people. You have the upper middle class, you have the middle middle class and the low middle class. You and I who are the poor, underprivileged and the sufferer in the ghetto happen to be in the lower middle class. There are some bug guys who control the money and those big bank accounts in Switzerland and other such things. Those guys just decide they cannot make those things happen [progress for the masses]. A few big guys talk about those things there, but it is the poor that suffer all the time. Right now, I can’t even get soap in the shop, a Rasta Castle (rass cloth), because of those big blood bath guys.

Sounds a lot like the fine folks at beatlemart. Coincidence, or prophesy?

Click here to view the embedded video.

The lyrics were assembled by Christopher Guest and Tony Hendra (most recognizable as Spinal Tap’s manager Ian Faith), the latter also channels Lennon on this recording. The music was performed by Melissa Manchester, who also provides the Yoko imitation at the end, shortly after the primal scream session.

Please enjoy responsibly:

For an exhaustive explanation

Click here to view the embedded video.

You don’t need to buy it, but you do need to see it. Walk Hard

This session was organized by none other than the legendary Chet Atkins, Mister Guitar himself. Upon hearing a tape of this aspiring, unknown player, Chet proclaimed Lenny Breau to be, ‘The Greatest guitarist ever to walk the face of the earth.’ Thats no small praise. For the sessions Chet brought in a successful co-producer named Danny Davis whose previous work helped polish country artists and bring them to a more mainstream, pop audience. Davis made it his goal to commercialize the album in order to get disc jockeys more interested in playing it. As much as he tried to dumb down the music so the beatle-brained public wouldn’t have a seizure upon hearing an original idea, Lenny was not to be tampered with. His mind and playing too free to be confined to the rigid structures of conventional pop.

Although Lenny disliked rock music and held great disdain for the entire genre, at Davis’s insistence, and not wanting to disappoint his idol and mentor Atkins, he was persuaded to record some popular tunes during the two recording sessions, alongside of his original idea of laying down several originals, and his jazz, country, bebop, flamenco and classical takes on some jazz and country standards.
Several months later when the album was finally released Lenny was shocked to find that so many of the tunes were left off in favour of the more commercial, radio friendly numbers like King of the Road, Monday Monday, and inexplicably, A Hard Days Night. Even so, the flashes of brilliance overshadowed their inclusion.

The album received great critical acclaim, but not even the inclusion of an FF tune could breach the barriers of bad taste built by the beatlemania brigade, and sales were minimal. Nobody cared. A few months later Atkins arranged for another recording, this time in Lenny’s comfort zone; a club in front of an audience of his peers. The choice of material was completely his choice. The result, The Velvet Touch of Lenny Breau…Live!, has been called one of the most important jazz guitar albums ever recorded.

Lenny Breau led a short and tragic life, and although he released many incredible and unprecedented albums, he died penniless and virtually unknown, like most great artists. Conversely, Hootie and the Blowfish and REO Speedwagon both had huge hits covering the beatles. Lenny’s albums are mostly out of print now, while Magical Mystery Tour is still gets pumped out like a clogged toilet.

Anyway, I can’t leave you with that horrid song as the last thing ringing in your head, here’s Lenny playing The Claw by Jerry Reed, from …Live!

This is a clip from the documentary ‘The Genius of Lenny Breau.’ It was filmed during the recording of his first album.

If you’d like to read more about him, here’s a good place to start:

One Long Tune, the biography of Lenny Breau

Velvet touch is still out of print, if you’re interested in hearing it you can get a copy here for free: Link

A fitting quote. Just when you thought it couldn’t get any worse, here comes beatle Lullabys. I’m not sure who the intended audience is for this one, my guess its one of two people:

A) The fan who never gets bored of listening to Revolver and ends up staying awake all night basking in beatle blather, working themselves into such a frenzy at the sound of forty year old pop songs that they’re constantly late for work, showing up in their moptop wigs and drooling in a semi-catatonic, FF induced state of delirium. In other words, the average fan in need of a sleep aid.

B) Infants who can’t defend themselves.

I’m hoping the correct answer is A, if not there’s a new form of child abuse on the market just as dangerous as the epidemic of fat diabetic kids in America. This is no different than conditioning children to think that its a good idea to strap bombs to themselves or training them to become child soldiers. Maybe not quite as extreme, but its exactly the same method used.

Conditioning these young minds from infancy that this is not only music, but good music, is basically taking away any freedom of thought these poor kids are entitled to as human beings, programming them to believe that the only option in life is to stand in line with all the other open mouthed gawkers at the trough of the beatles, waiting for the honour of buying the next re-release. This is Burgess’s Ludovico Technique, this is Orwell’s Newspeak, its unspeakable and disgusting abuse of trust and power. I’d rather have my toddler not only breathe second-hand smoke, but smoke two packs a day!

Anyway, we’re always good for an example:

Here is the link to Amazon, not to buy it, but to complain and try and help rid the world of this scourge:

Rock A Bye Baby

It seems they had it planned all along.

Daniel Kaproth has informed us of an important, yet nauseating addition to this story:

Sadly, this is not the first time this kind of shit has gone down. Indie-pop-dipshit-whatever did this about six years ago. Only THIS could happen in a post-9/11 world…

If you followed the link you’re probably wondering just who this Jason Falkner is, and just how much of a loser must he must be to be to stoop to this level. The truth is, it doesn’t matter. His pathetic attempt at a beatlemart cash advance has crumbled any semblance of artistic credibility this precious little brown-nosing-indie-employee-of-the-month-pretty-boy might have held while he was fellating the editor of Doucebag Monthly for a feature article.

Thanks Daniel!