“Beatles tribute asks: When I get older, will you still love me?” plus 2 |
- Beatles tribute asks: When I get older, will you still love me?
- VIDEO: Re-living The Beatles' Cavern debut
- Photos: 47 Years Later, Remembering the Beatles
| Beatles tribute asks: When I get older, will you still love me? Posted: 09 Feb 2011 03:36 PM PST
"There are three generations of Beatles fans here tonight," the rather dorky Graham Alexander kept saying Tuesday night, dressed up like Paul McCartney. He was talking about the audience but, frankly, he could have been talking about the guys onstage — although I'm not sure there was a bona fide representative of the youngest generation up there with the guitars and the fancy Sgt. Pepper's outfits. Most of these guys are veterans of "Beatlemania," and that was not, alas, yesterday. Well, they say rock 'n' roll belongs to no single demographic anymore. So there's no reason you can't play Beatles songs when you've worn a little tread off your radials — and the guys who make up the cast of "Rain" certainly know how to lovingly and precisely re-create those songs, with careful attention to period-specific sound, even down to the amplifiers. I'm just not sure it's wise for them to pretend they're evoking the precise moment when the young Beatles first played Shea Stadium or startled a swooning America on the Ed Sullivan show. I'm not sure what that adds. But then such details are glossed over throughout "Rain," a cover-band-tribute show souped up with some second-rate video interludes. Error-ridden second-rate video, I'd add, given that we see a montage of the Fab Four arriving in New York on British Airways, several years before the airline was created. The screens certainly contain no wonders: "Hello, Goodbye" is accompanied by the words "Hello" and "Goodbye" flashing on the screens. In lots of different fonts. Such imagination. Such risk. "Rain" also seems to sense the folly of impersonation — at one point in what purports to be a re-creation of the Ed Sullivan sequence, Alexander throws out a quick "Hello, Chicago." Well, why not? It's not like anyone is overwhelmed with the verisimilitude. In fairness, plenty of people around me had a good time — in some party-hearty, cabin-fever cases, a very, very good time — singing along with these perfectly decent and perfectly predictable treatments of Beatles songs. The show contains more than 30 of them. "This Boy," "Hey Jude," "Eleanor Rigby," "Strawberry Fields" — all are picked and plucked. A video camera trained on the audience and set to black-and-white allows us all to feel like we're fans at Shea. Well, hardly. But people play along. I am partial to the voice of Steve Landes, who plays John Lennon. It's not that Landes is terribly close in sound to Lennon, which is probably why l like to listen to him. He has a rich and vibrant tone — almost polyphonic, really — and he captures that sweet spot between lyrical bite and melodic celebration that we all associate with this music. This fine singer has a deep sense of the essence of his great man. I just wish they'd let him lose the wig. It looks a bit silly. This entry passed through the Full-Text RSS service — if this is your content and you're reading it on someone else's site, please read our FAQ page at fivefilters.org/content-only/faq.php |
| VIDEO: Re-living The Beatles' Cavern debut Posted: 09 Feb 2011 09:14 AM PST It is the 50th anniversary to the day that The Beatles played their first gig - at the Cavern Club in Liverpool. The original Cavern was demolished in the 1970s to make way for a shopping centre, but there is a replica club nearby and it is holding a variety of tribute events. Dave Jones, who organised the anniversary event, told the BBC: "It's great for us, it's great for the city and it just demonstrates how evergreen the music of The Beatles is." One fan said he came to Liverpool 20 years ago after meeting John Lennon in a Tokyo coffee shop, and has stayed ever since. He told the BBC: "I especially like the lyrics, especially those that John Lennon wrote - they fit with oriental culture as well." The BBC's Laura Bicker reports from Liverpool. This entry passed through the Full-Text RSS service — if this is your content and you're reading it on someone else's site, please read our FAQ page at fivefilters.org/content-only/faq.php |
| Photos: 47 Years Later, Remembering the Beatles Posted: 09 Feb 2011 09:29 AM PST [fivefilters.org: unable to retrieve full-text content] Beatles on Ed Sullivan |
| You are subscribed to email updates from beatles - Yahoo! News Search Results To stop receiving these emails, you may unsubscribe now. | Email delivery powered by Google |
| Google Inc., 20 West Kinzie, Chicago IL USA 60610 | |
0 comments:
Post a Comment