I went on Amazon yesterday to purchase The Beatles Stereo Box Set and was informed it was still on back order. Borders noted that the set will be available on a limited basis in October on a “first-come, first-served” basis. The Mono version, which sells for $30 more than the Stereo version, is also on back order. So the Beatles obviously remain popular.

One topic I have always found interesting is the distinction between Lennon’s songs and McCartney’s songs. Of the 200 plus songs the Beatles wrote, perhaps about 30 had some form of  collaboration between the two, with maybe 20 being jointly written completely. Yet, I have always found this distinction very misleading. Their influence on each other was so deep that their individual songs really were effectively collaborations. Besides the obvious difference in sound between, say, Wings and McCartney written Beatles songs, I have constructed a “Beatles” trivia quiz below to demonstrate this point.  I assert that we think we can tell the difference because most of us know the songs well. But in reality, they were highly influenced by the other and are more similar than we sometimes realize.

I think the quiz is of high difficulty.  Of course, for some it may seem easy. Listed below are 12 YouTube links to well known Beatles’ songs. The object of the game is to guess the song writer. Being statistically oriented, to pass one needs to beat the “coin flip test.” The probability of guessing nine or more correctly by randomness alone is about 7% (I am ignoring  some factors–see below).  So 75% will be considered passing. My guess is the average score of all participants will be lower than that. You can cheat, of course, and do better.

Some hints.

One of the 12 songs was written jointly by Lennon and McCartney. I doubt anyone will guess this one. One song was written by neither. Guessing “neither” correctly results in a full point. Guessing “who” correctly gets another point; guessing “who” incorrectly subtracts 1/2 point.  Three of the songs were written where, for example,  one of the two was dominant with an “assist” by the other. These songs are also worth double points. These are usually listed as follows: “Lennon; with McCartney,” or vice versa. This means a total of 16 points can be earned and 9 still be passing. If one guesses “Lennon,” but it was really “Lennon; with McCartney,” one still gets a full point. A guess of an “assist” which is wrong subtracts 1/2 point. I doubt many will get extra credit.  Seven of the 12 songs were written by either Lennon or McCartney.

A really good amateur should get 11 points. I assume even a good amateur will not guess the joint song. To achieve 12 or higher means you are either in the business, you cheated, you have a photographic memory, or you are way too into the Beatles. I thought I was a Beatles expert but I would be borderline to pass this. The best I could have possibly done was 11.

Answers to each question can be found at a link provided at the end. Feel free to submit your score.  No cheating! I will attempt to list them from most easy to most difficult, but that is subjective of course. I begin with two very simple ones.

Here we go:

12) “I’ll Be Back”

This song is from Hard Day’s Night.  If you miss this one, then your odds of passing are pretty slim. Still, the sound of this song is very similar to number 11.

11) “Things We Said Today”

Also from Hard Day’s Night.

10) Do You Want to Know a Secret?

Sung by George Harrison on the their first British hit Album “Please Please Me.” Is this a trick by me or a gift?

9) Day Tripper

This song was recorded during the Rubber Soul sessions, but was only released as a single with “We Can Work it Out” as a “double A sided” single.

I’m Happy Just to Dance with You

Also from the album Hard Day’s Night and sung by George Harrison. Is this a trick by me or a gift?

7) If I Fell

Fourth one from the Hard Day’s Night album. Is this a trick by me or a gift?

6) What Goes On

Sung by Ringo on the Rubber Soul album. Is this a trick by me or a gift?

5) Money

Recorded in 1963 and appeared on “The Beatles Second Album.” Is this a trick by me or a gift?

4) Bad To Me

One of three hits by Billy J Kramer and the Dakotas, who were managed also by Brian Epstein.  It was recorded in demo form by the Beatles but never released.

3) A World Without Love

Never recorded by the Beatles but was the single biggest hit by the twosome, Peter and Gordon.

2) Good Night

This is the last song from the “White Album.” Ringo sings and is the only Beatle who appears on the song. Is this a trick by me or a gift?

1) I Call Your Name

This song was recorded live in 1967 at the Monterey Pop Festival by the Mamas and the Papas. The Beatles also previously recorded, and wrote, the song.

For answers to the above questions one can go to this Wikipedia Link—List of The Beatles songs

People not familiar with copyright law might be surprised to hear that McCartney-one-half of music’s most-successful songwriting duo-must pay royalties to perform his own hit songs.  The fact certainly seemed to grate on McCartney, who frequently made mention of it in interviews.  But even more surprising, at least to those not acquainted with the intricacies of copyright law, is that Sir Paul will one day be able to re-acquire the rights to his music without even having to pay to buy them back.

This is true because of the Copyright Act’s reversion provisions, which allow the original author of a copyrighted work to reclaim the work many years after assigning it away.  It is this same right to reclaim lost copyrights that will soon make millionaires of the heirs of Joe Shuster and Jerry Siegel, Superman’s creators, when they conclude their pending lawsuit against Warner Brothers. 

Congress, seeking to protect content creators who sell the copyrights in their works before understanding the works’ true value, inserted in the Copyright Act the right to reclaim a copyright-generally by terminating an earlier assignment-after a certain number of years have passed.  For copyrighted material created before 1978, these rights will most often be available 56 years after the work was created.  So in McCartney’s case, he should be able to reclaim the copyright to a Beatles song first published in 1964 in the year 2020, and he (or, likely, his children) will retain those rights for the final 39 years of the copyright term.  

For newer works-specifically, anything created after January 1, 1978-the original author has the right to terminate a copyright assignment after 35 years.  So, sticking with McCartney, he and Wings released the album “London Town” in 1978.  Assuming he immediately assigned the copyright to the record company-which is common in the industry-he would most likely be entitled to terminate that assignment 35 years later, in 2013.  These reversion provisions, then, will become an important news item in the coming years, when composers, authors, artists, and other content creators begin to reclaim works they created and assigned away in the late 1970’s.  Because of the complexity of the reversion provisions, these efforts to reclaim copyrights will no doubt spawn dozens of high-profile lawsuits as well. 

There are media rumors that Jackson has left to McCartney the publishing rights in Jackson’s Beatles catalogue.  If so, we may never see the coming legal clash between two of music’s biggest superstars.  But thanks to the Copyright Act, even if Jackson left the rights to somebody else, Sir Paul may still get his music back soon enough.

People once heard, told, acted out and retold these tales, taking active roles in creating visions of life and its possibilities in imaginative ways, instead of flopping on couches with a Monster Burger in one hand and a Bucket o’ Suds in the other, passively awaiting the predetermined outcome of one steroid-based extravaganza or another. This says something disturbing about the contrast between ancient and modern civilizations and the ways the perception of reality can either be generated by humans or imprinted upon them, unless you’re the CEO of an international fast food conglomerate or a viewer engaging in a fierce wind-breaking competition during a broadcast’s inevitable male-enhancement advertisements or rain delays. 

In terms of giving one’s ears and mind something more interesting to do, then, where is the contemporary equivalent of music as interesting as “Dharma For One” by Jethro Tull or Pink Floyd’s “Money“? Heard anything as refreshing and widely accessible as a “Cars” by Gary Numan or a “Walk On The Wild Side” by Lou Reed lately?  And where are geniuses the likes of George Clinton and Prince, lavishing funk beyond measure upon the collective consciousness and contributing to a more harmonious cultural groove?  

Consider for a moment that the Captain of the P-Funk Mothership and the Artist Formerly Known As He Is Now did not have to fill James Brown’s shiny boots or restrict their expressions to genre-specific limits, but made it up themselves and let it fly.  So did the aforementioned musical luminaries, and the earth rocked on its axis between listener’s ear-holes.  Therein lies the clue to the death-rattle of rock music.  The verdict: Murder One with a bullet, even with Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr reuniting briefly for David Lynch’s Transcendental Meditation benefit. 

This has nothing to do with the good work floating around by the likes of Crystal Method, Flyleaf, or Radiohead, for instance.  Music is not dead, nor are musical ideas, popular or obscure.  It’s the culture that has been laid low, with the aid of the old scapegoat “corporate greed”, true, but more so by conformity of thought regarding the disposability of music and artists.  Creative writers and musicians, that is to say, real artists, do actually exist, as opposed to hacks motivated solely by “stardom” and its blandishments. These genuine artists, capable of growing and expanding their audiences for lifetimes, are essentially defenestrated by the media conglomerates that snatch them off the streets as soon as they either fail to turn a profit or bring in a profit that is smaller than that required of them. 

Meanwhile, absurdly, record companies will willingly hemorrhage money in the maintenance of “stars”, throwing hundreds of millions after them with the net result of bringing in a fraction of that investment as profit.  If, say, for some reason, “99 Red Balloons” had sold 27 million units of product years ago, Nena would have been packing venues for years afterward, with sales driven by high-dollar promotional hype in the expectation of the record label for lightning to strike twice. Forget Economics 101.  If that sounds like an allusion to the career of Michael Jackson, how dare anyone think such a thing of such a fabulous, larger than life superstar?  So now we’re back to myth and legend, and regard to proportionality in terms ancient and modern.  If it is impossible to wait for a hit to come into existence, it becomes necessary to create one, regardless of the cost.  That cost comes in the loss of what someone like Nena might well create with a modicum of long-term vision on the record label’s part.  This implies, however, the somewhat metaphysical notion that, in art, as opposed to mere product, anything is possible, particularly with conditions conducive to creativity. Such conditions are sorely lacking in the outlined scenarios, which have deteriorated for decades now.

Such narrow thinking applies not only to struggling artists, but to established ones as well. John Kay of Steppenwolf and Boz Scaggs spring to mind as musicians having earned previous acclaim who could even now produce fine works, and likely hits, if the machinery in place made more room for respect for artists, as the American Recordings label did with the late Johnny Cash. This would mean wasting fewer resources throwing whatever a company thinks some mindless demographic will buy at the wall and hoping it will stick rather than stink, as it usually does, so that’s probably out.  That does not change the fact that Cash took Grammy Awards for those recordings in the last decade of his life. 

When legend and myth reflect reality, they evolve over time.  When they are created in fifteen minutes and tossed aside fifteen minutes later, with that method of production being a paradigm and a fixed idea leading to permanent stagnation and atrophy, what happens is what is happening now.  A music culture built on originality, defined by unpredictability and dependent on freedom, dies.  Something new, something unknown, or different in that it comes from outside the understanding and control of the failed system, gradually appears to replace it. 

Presently, the funeral wake is ongoing, prior to Rock’s interment, for which no plans have been made.  Rock Music is survived by its stepchildren, Bombastic and Melodramatic Pop (no relation to Iggy), Max Volume of Interminable Adolescence, and Dim Nostalgia of One Hand Clapping.  

Pass me that Beatle and I’ll sing you a bottle song.

Unanimity of public opinion over popular song has passed.  Music, which used to unite, now divides.  Eminem and Ludacris would have been unthinkable thirty years ago.  We live in an antinomian age where it’s hip to defy conventional wisdom long after every vestige of conventional wisdom lies in tatters.  Where Keats’ Grecian Urn once proclaimed, “Beauty is truth, truth beauty,” today’s antinomian consumer proclaims, “Whatever,” in a voice oozing ennui.

Cultural arbiters such as The New York Times, Entertainment Weekly, and People regularly cover hip-hop as serious art, generally in the music section.  But if music is a combination of rhythm, harmony, and melody, where does hip-hop, with its chanting and choruses “sampled” from better songs fit in?  Is it music?  Not by definition.  It’s a perpetuation of “the dozens,” the tradition of black cultural put-downs and sports-style cheerleading set to a beat.

The Billboard Top 100 is depressing.  The artists are either rappers or American Idol survivors.  It’s great that Stevie Wonder sings a song with the Jonas Brothers, but where is the new Stevie Wonder?

Thank God for the divas.  Thirty years ago, the divas were Diana Ross, Aretha Franklin, Martha Reeves, Patti LaBelle and their ilk–real women with real songs.  Today’s divas are Britney Spears, Christina Aguilera, Whitney Houston, and Ashlee Simpson.  Can anybody hum anything by Britney Spears or Christina Aguilera?  How about the Back Street Boys, ‘N’ Sync, or Justin Timberlake?  Today’s divas, exemplified by the vocal acrobats on American Idol, prove their divaness by avoiding the melody.

There are Top Forty artists who still value craft.  Occasionally, a real song makes it on the play list.  Maroon 5 and Leona Lewis suggest song craft is not entirely dead.  It has merely been driven underground.

What an underground.

If you’ve never hummed a Beatles song, have no love for The Who, Cheap Trick, the Raspberries, Gerry and the Pacemakers, Stone Roses, Tom Petty, Linda Rondstadt, the Bangles, the Beach Boys, the Beckies, Badfinger or the Byrds, stop here.  Go back to your X-Box.

Like Australian convicts, eucalyptus trees and the nutria, pop music has flourished in exile.  Thousands of bands have taken advantage of new technology to record themselves, and offer their product over the Internet.  Thanks to downloadable programs like GarageBand.com, you don’t even need to produce CDs.

Most self-released records go for twelve to thirteen dollars.  Not cheap, but they offer things no major label can match: unalloyed joy and soaring pop song craft.  Peter Townshend, lead singer and guitarist for The Who, coined the term “power pop” to indicate the type of complex, joyful, upbeat music pioneered by the Beatles.  Power pop songs use harmonies and have at least three chords.

PowerPop keeps track of many of these bands.  Most have their own websites.  All pursue song craft with skill and passion: The Offbeat, The Churchills, The Davenports, The Wigs, The Wellingtons, Scott Miller, Sloan, L’Avventura, Superdrag, The Shazam, Heavy Blinkers, Bryan Scary, Hindu Rodeo, Michael Carpenter and Ness, to name a handful of the more important bands.

Independent popsters are more politically savvy than their gargantuan Top 40 Counterparts.  (Did you ever imagine that Bruce Springsteen, who started so well, would end up spouting socialist crap?)  Hindu Rodeo in particular gets it.  On their first, self-titled album, “Evil White Man” gleams with pop smarts and a great hook.  “I wish I was a woman/ So I’d think with my head/Not just the one ‘tween my legs/So I’d live twice as Long/Dance on my grave when I’m gone/But I’m an evil white man.”

Their second album, Nalladaloobr, is even better with brilliant, incisive, and danceable songs such as “McLife,” “American People” and “Somebody’s Eyes.”

Greg Pope’s Popmonster which dominated ‘08’s Top Ten Lists, proves the power of the lone artist working by himself.  Unbelievably, Greg Pope recorded every sound: drums, guitar, keys, you name it, and provided all the vocals.  The results are one of the most dynamic shout-it-out rock records since Born to Run.

The songs are way beyond my baby don’t love me, dealing with family responsibility in “I Got a Life” and individual responsibility in “Burden.”

Other power poppers who do it all themselves include Bryan Scary on his first record, Ed James, Josh Fix whose Free at Last came out of nowhere to land on everybody’s Top Ten, Jason Falkner, Roger Joseph Manning Jr., Michael Behm, and the Well Wishers to name a few.

Bill Majoros of The Foreign Films released a two disc debut set in 2007 that compares favorably to The White Album for sheer breadth and scope.  The Foreign Films play with an overwhelming emotional power that most modern bands can’t grasp.

Some power poppers achieve major label success but they are the exception and not the rule.  Barenaked Ladies and Fort Collins, Colorado’s Color Me Pink are two such bands.

Seattle-based Sub Pop has offered haven to The Shins, Fleet Foxes, and Flight of the Conchords.

Not Lame Records is foremost among the tiny independent labels carrying the power pop torch.  Not Lame’s premier act is the Nashville-based Shazam, a trio with soaring, anthemic songs and enormous guitar.  Not Lame’s owner, Bruce Brodeen, is a devout Christian who trained to be a Lutheran minister.  One day he had an epiphany: he was to start his own label.  Not Lame has rescued stunning power pop from the past such as the two Toms records, another one man band in the person of Tommy Marolda.

New York-based Rainbow Quartz Records is another outstanding power pop label, specializing in finding acts from all over the world.  Especially Sweden.  During this season of ABBA revival it comes as no surprise that the dark Scandinavian countries produce some of the sunniest music ever recorded.  In particular, Rainbow Quartz’ Marmalade Souls is a haunting evocation of Mommas and Poppas era rock with a spark of fresh genius.

Rainbow Quarts is also home to Andy Bopp (Myracle Brah) and RockFour, the tightest rockin’ psychedelic band to ever emerge from Tel Aviv.

You can find most of these bands on fan sites such as Powerpopaholic and Absolute Powerpop.  Every year going as far back as I can remember has been notable, but 2008 was one of the very best.  You can find my Top Ten list and numerous others at:  Not Lame Blog.