Music time

Unsurprisingly, for both men producing at such a rate resulted in works of varying quality. This reality, combined with Dickens’ and McCartney’s investment in audience response, led to ego-bruising encounters with criticism. Despite popular success, both men were stung by accusations of sentimentality and shoddiness, and both constructed a public persona as a screen for this vulnerability. Dickens cultivated his image as “Boz,” the friendly champion of the common folk, and McCartney has usually played the role of upbeat performer still in touch with everyday people. These personas are not lies, I would argue, but selective presentations of their real personality traits and values. Born performers, Dickens and McCartney strove to combine getting the audience and acclaim they needed with protecting a private life genuinely important to them. —"McCartney as the Dickens of Rock," guest blogger Nancy, Hey Dullblog
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“He had a peculiar way of bending the strings,” Mr. Gibbons said, citing Mr. Hill’s linebacker build as the source of an audible physicality he brought to his sound. “The natural way of bending a string is pushing it upwards on the neck. Instead of pushing three or four times and getting a vibrato effect, he would push the note up to the higher note, return back to zero, and then pull the string down and it would stretch up to that same note. You have to be stronger than an ox to do it.” —"Finally, an Album for a Rock Star Who Never Was," Andy Langer, NYT

Your most humble and obedient servant: Table-Talk for December 26, 2008

I. Dzyd Brian revisits his teenage sonneteer self, and more:

An hour or two ago I dreamt that I and some coworkers were missing our top rows of teeth. On the bare gums in the tops of our mouths, we wore "reversible" dentures.

II. John Lennon's "paranoid close readings of some lyrics from Ram." (Via.)


III. Dzyd Andrew's Flaubert's Parrot :

I prefer to think that this newspaper was clipped in Manhattan, where the paperback was purchased by a wonderful bespectacled clean-shaven man. My dad lived in Manhattan at the time, and I lived with my mom across the Tappan Zee Bridge in Rockland County. I visited dad in 80s Bachelor Manhattan every other weekend, sometimes every weekend. I might’ve touched this newspaper when I was four years old!

(Also see: "an ouroboros of one's own").

IV. An interview with Jenny D. at the Columbia Political Review:

When I sign a letter “Your most obedient and humble servant,” is that a falsification of my relationship with the person to whom I have addressed the letter? What about if I ask my servant to say that I am “not at home” to visitors—is that safely perceived as a conventional “white lie,” or do I actually degrade my own truthfulness by practicing these forms of supposedly innocent deception?

The kind they used on "Penny Lane"?

At Stereogum, Dizzyhead Brandon explains the post horn to Sir Paul:

He was curious about my tattoos and wanted to know the stories behind them. I gave brief explanations, trying not to cut into our time. Listening back to the tape, I basically rushed him ("Um, Pynchon… and that's from this other book."). Sorry, Paul.

Things We Said Today — Three is the magic number

Some last notes on the McCartney kerfuffle from Brooklyn Ed and West Coast Mike. And for good measure, Our Molls weighs in a final time.

And there's a classic Jenny D post up, on the power of threes in exercise, professoring, and music:

My great pleasure in those years was sightreading chamber music in some farfetched variant--you know, like reading the viola part in a string quartet on the clarinet--or else having a maniacal week of rehearsals in the small orchestra for a school musical, when my genius music teacher Al Clayton realized that he could rent me an instrument at the beginning of the week & I would be able to play it by the end of the week & it was both cheaper and more educationally valuable than paying a pro! So I had those funny little stands where you can rest your clarinet and your English horn or whatever funny combination of instruments you need depending on the orchestration of the particular show. And in general the work you do on each instrument is specific to that instrument and yet also has some cumulative benefit for your playing in general. And triathlon is just like this, it's a threesome of activities each of which has different sub-challenges (climbing versus sprinting on the bike, different sorts of running at different distance, working on the transitions between) and all of which go wonderfully well together, and it is what I am most excited about doing in future!

The Unsinkable Mollie Wilson

Dizzyhead Mollie didn't care for the New Yorker's piece on Paul McCartney, and her reasons were sound and stylishly put. (I would expect nothing less! M. wrote the inaugural "Essay" for me, over at the PTSNBN, a delicious skewering of Madonna's shouldn't-have-been-a-book, Mr. Peabody's Apples.) Mollie's so good her post made me rethink my own enthusiasm. (That's probably too strong a word—I wrote here that I found the repetition of hoary Beatles chronology comforting, like an origin myth. OK, I'm a sap.)

I linked to her post yesterday. This morning, Dizzyhead Devin mentioned some sort of kerfuffle over at Restricted View...lo and behold, there is time for fussing and fighting, my friend: The author of the piece has posted several miffed comments on Mollie's blog, and the whole thing was picked up by the Huffington Post. Mollie responds as civilly as she can...but the New Yorker writer continues to get massively worked up; he throws in plenty of generalized "zingers" about blogging, which are juvenile in a way Mollie's criticisms never are. ("If only bloggers ran the actual publishing world!" "Damn, this blogging stuff is fun! You just kind of type away...") Most irksome is his sense of superiority; of course he's a better writer than our Molls; he writes for the New Yorker! She's just a blogger...

Mollie's headline today: "I could make it longer, if you like the style..."

Game, set, match: Wilson!

Blowing your mind — Origin myth — Download this song

I liked Aimee Mann's piece in the Times on Sgt. Pepper—appealingly written:

My ignorance extended to the opening song, which I took at face value as a real live introduction of the singer Billy Shears, who, whoever he was, became my favorite, with his dopey baritone, in humble gratitude for his pals — bless them, it all was so innocent, those marmalade skies and winking meter maids (whatever they were). The darkest moments were with the runaway girl — although a throwaway line in “Getting Better” (“I was cruel to my woman, I beat her...”) gave me pause. He beat her? What the heck? But hey — things were getting better all the time, so ... I shrugged and let it go.
And then things took a weird turn: a nightmare cacophony of strings, someone blowing his mind out in a car — what was that? Did he get shot in the head? What were the holes in Albert Hall? Things had gotten creepy and dark, and it lost me. I started skipping that last song.

(I remember being mystified at that line in "A Day in the Life"...and about Billy Shears!) Last night I read the recent New Yorker piece on Paul McCartney, not thinking I'd be too interested ...but it was pretty good, and I got a little choked up reading about how the Beatles formed, etc., a story I've read dozens of times, maybe a tiny bit of new info (a new quote or something) each time round—it's like an origin myth...it is worthy of our continued attention!

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REALIZED: I've been doing a lot of Beatles posts lately—just wanted to alert readers to this incredible artifact on Dizzies Team Member Hua's blog: Gilberto Gil covering "Sgt. Pepper"!