My old bud Blue Gal, for some unknown reason, posted this video on her blog today:

In the summer of 1979, I had a job at “Pizza Pub #1,” right by the train station in Roslyn, NY. We had one very very regular customer who’d come in every day without fail. He’d order two slices and a coke, and put two songs — the same two songs every time — on the jukebox: I Will Survive and Roundabout.

After all those plays almost 30 years ago, plus all the times my older sister played the song (she used to go see Yes in the round at Madison Square Garden every year), plus having it slowed down for me here… I STILL CAN’T UNDERSTAND THE DAMNED LYRICS!

Call it morning driving supersonic in and out the bonnet?

Mamas come out of the sky and stand there?

Tent your summers we’ll be there and laughing too?

Wha??

One other thing: if you watch the video, take note of how bored Rick Wakeman looks. He’s got one word going through his head, over and over: faster!

Do you remember the Beatles?

I do, but just barely. I think I was about six years old when the band broke up, and I’d only known about them for a year or two at that point. At the time, I was a fan. My older sister had a couple of their records — I know that Meet the Beatles was one of them.

I may have lost my taste for their music by the time I was 11 or 12, but that doesn’t mean that I don’t accept the fact that they hold an important place in the history of popular music. My seventh-grade music teacher certainly never failed to point out something they (or their producer) did that no one else had ever done. And everyone knew not just the band, but the individual members:

• John Lennon was the sardonic, iconoclastic, political one.
• George Harrison was the spiritual one.
• Ringo Starr was… I don’t know. The one who wore a lot of rings.
• And then there was Paul McCartney, “the cute one.”

These aspects of their individual personalities can be seen in their lives and careers in the years after the band broke up. Lennon married a conceptual artist and became deeply involved in the peace movement. Harrison’s interest in Eastern religion can be heard on albums like All Things Must Pass, Living in the Material World and of course The Concert for Bangladesh. Ringo continued to be Ringo, I suppose.

McCartney remained cute. He formed the band Wings, and included his wife Linda in the group, not because she could sing or play an instrument (she couldn’t — great photographer, though). He just liked having her around. That’s cute. Wings did release Band on the Run, which many people viewed as a pretty well-done record, but for the most part during the 70s and into the 80s he put out some cute stuff, like “Silly Love Songs,” “Let ‘em in,” “Cook of the House” and “Coming Up.” He did the theme song to a James Bond film, featuring the memorable line “But in this ever-changing world in which we live in”. That’s either stupid or cute, and given the source, I guess it was generally deemed cute. He made that god-awful film with Tracey Ullman, and she put him into a video she made, in which he mugged it up as the cute one.

Well, now it’s 2007. McCartney turned 65 earlier this week. And what are we seeing on the eye of hell these days? McCartney hawking his new single in an advert for iTunes.

Everybody gonna dance tonight
Everybody gonna feel alright
Everybody gonna dance around tonight

Everybody gonna jump and shout
Everybody’s gonna sing it out
Everybody gonna dance around tonight

If he was ten years old and he performed that for his dada and mum, that would be cute. He isn’t ten years old. He’s 65. This is just sad. Does he really want to be remembered as the composer of “Hey Jude,” “Yesterday” and this?

Remember when Paul McCartney sold a piece (or maybe all) of his song catalogue to Michael Jackson and Beatles songs started showing up in commercials on the eye of hell? I’m not a fan, but I thought it was kind of sad. Of course now, you’ve got Dennis Hopper shilling for Ameriprise to the hippy sellouts with their hippy sellout music in the background. This is to be expected from that generation. They were born to sell out.

Apparently, I’m now old enough that the music of my youth is starting to show up in commercials. For example, this spot for the video game Major League Baseball 2K7:

What’s that song playing in the background? Why, it’s “Breed” by Nirvana. Courtney Love has taken on Larry Mestel as a “strategic partner,” which basically means she sold a percentage of the rights to the Nirvana catalogue for about $50 million. As she put it,

We’re going to remain very tasteful, and we’re going to [retain] the spirit of Nirvana and take Nirvana places it’s never been before.

Right, Courtney. Do you really think Kurt had a collection of men scratching themselves and spitting in mind when he wrote

I don’t care
I don’t care
I don’t care
I don’t care
I don’t care
Care if it’s old.
I don’t mind
I don’t mind
I don’t mind
I don’t mind
Mind. I don’t have a mind.
Get away
Get away
Get away
Get away
Way, way from your home.
I’m afraid
I’m afraid
I’m afraid
I’m afraid
Afraid, of ghosts!

If you have…
Even if you need…
I don’t mean to stare.
We don’t have to breed.
We can plant a house,
Or We can build a tree
I don’t even care.
“We could have all three,”
She Said…

I don’t pay a lot of attention to baseball, but does it really involve quite that much angst?

Naughty, naughty, Courtney.

Tags: Nirvana, Kurt Cobain, Courtney Love, Music, Marketing, Baseball, Video Games