"And I should have told him, 'No, you're not old.'/And I should have let him go on, smiling, babywide."

 

"Lather" came up in the "Rock Mix" that Spotify made especially for me today, as I was smiling — babywide? — on my morning run today, the day after my birthday, my 71st birthday, or as I like to put it, the first day of my 72nd year.

Lather's friends in the song — who've "stopped being boys" — are 33 and 27. I mean one (the banker) is 33 and the other (the commander of his "very own tank") is 27. They're not each 33 + 27. But I can see that those numbers add up to 60, and I am 11 years old than that. "Lather" is a song facing the confusion of becoming 30ish. Lather himself has just turned 30, and he seems to be clinging to outright babyhood, as the band suggests maybe that's just fine... or good enough for Lather anyway.

It's a whole other matter breaking into the decade that begins with a 7, which I like to come out and say is the 8th decade of life. Speak plainly! And look for what is good. Some people — the glass-half-empty folks — say that as you get older, with more of your days behind you, each day is a smaller percentage of the total time you have lived, and thus, the days seem insubstantial and short. But the other way to see it is that is that each day now is a bigger percentage of the time you have left. Today might be 1% of the rest of your life. It might be 100%! Are you giving today what it deserves? It is so much.

As I listened to the old rock songs that Spotify had strung together for me, I visualized myself — I was running through the woods — looking over at the me who existed at the time I first heard a particular song — it was "Too Many People" — and I waved at myself in the 70s and sent the message that everything will be fine when you are in your 70s. You'll be able to run — in the woods! — and you'll have this music in your ears because a computer — an "electronic brain," as you call it — will know you like it and will pump it directly into your head. 

And you won't care so much about your birthday, because 2 days after your birthday will be something called your "bloggiversary." There will be something you do for the first time on January 14, 2004, and you will proceed to do it every single day for 18 years and counting....

Althouse is productive, you know....

The many voices of Paul McCartney.

May I recommend this highly detailed episode of "The Beatles Naked" podcast? 

I'm not yet half way through, but I'm so impressed with the analysis. There's so much of it! With the music played, so you can judge for yourself. 

I was interested, for example, in the discussion of the emotional effect of any slightly out-of-tune singing. Is it "soulful"? And has our experience of it changed over the years as present-day music is electronically tuned to perfection?

And is it the case that there is a song that only Paul McCartney can sing and that song is "Helter Skelter"? The Wikipedia article on the song cites a number of cover versions, but the only one mentioned in the podcast is Bono's. It is mentioned with a scoffing laugh (just before saying that if Kurt Cobain had tried, he might have succeeded). I just annoyed myself by listening to the Mötley Crüe version. I also sampled a little of the Marilyn Manson "Helter Skelter." Here's the awful Oasis version.

I'm no expert, but I'd say if you're just going to do it like Paul and just approach what he did, why do it at all? As an homage? But it's an homage with a song that got its reputation twisted up into the Manson murders. Bono said Charles Manson "stole" the song from The Beatles and he was "stealing it back." 

Having just written about the connection between Trump's January 6th speech that — intentionally or unintentionally — seems to have inspired the storming of the U.S. Capitol, I'm interested to stumble so soon into this story of a vocal presentation that may have inspired murder. According to one Manson follower: 

When the Beatles' White Album came out, Charlie listened to it over and over and over and over again. He was quite certain that the Beatles had tapped in to his spirit, the truth—that everything was gonna come down and the black man was going to rise. It wasn't that Charlie listened to the White Album and started following what he thought the Beatles were saying. It was the other way around. He thought that the Beatles were talking about what he had been expounding for years. Every single song on the White Album, he felt that they were singing about us. The song 'Helter Skelter'—he was interpreting that to mean the blacks were gonna go up and the whites were gonna go down.

Of course, there's no way to hold The Beatles complicit in a murder scheme. At most, they could have thought that too many people are too attached to them and looking for messages and crazy connections and maybe they ought to stick to the peace-and-love songs so they don't accidentally inspire murder. It would be a different matter if The Beatles knew before they put out the White Album that there was a violent group set to rise up when The Beatles gave the signal "helter skelter."

No better metaphor.

I can think of no better metaphor for this presidency than Donald Trump not wearing a face mask to a face mask factory while the song “Live and Let Die” blares in the background. pic.twitter.com/mJzU1HW7HA

— Jimmy Kimmel (@jimmykimmel) May 5, 2020

He wore goggles. To keep his tears off you.

ADDED:

What does it matter to you?
When you got a job to do
You got to do it well
You got to give the other fellow hell...