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it is a shame that john lennon was killed as he was, in the same way that it is a shame that anyone is killed in parallel ways, for no reason, absurdly.
i do not think he is a martyr.
i do not find him to be a culture hero.
but it is a shame.
i know this is a kind of memorial thread, so i'll say this:
on the beatles:
even though endless repetition has driven a stake into the heart of most of their recorded output for me, there are things that i still think are interesting and that make me happy when i hear them--usually it is the tape loop work, like at the end of strawberry fields, the whole of tomorrow never knows (still my favorite beatles song), revolution no. 9....much of which was john's doings...and i can still listen to "revolver" from time to time.
frankly, the beatles are not the only group that i started out being really into that repetition has destroyed for me: bob marley and the wailers are another--i need to hear the old original studio one tracks to listen to him any more---in both cases even though i know that these are great musicians and really great songwriters. repetition is too big. these are among the pleasures the degeneration of commercial radio destroyed.
another band reduced to total sonic debris, same cause: led zeppelin.
they started out simpler, so the destruction was absolute.
anyway, finding out more about george martin's background as radio producer and expert tape manipulator made me think about them differently...which is something, considering the depth of the repetition effect.
of john's solo stuff, i have to say that i am only still at all interested in some of the plastic ono band stuff. working class hero.
i think george is still underrated, as the first triple lp has tons of great stuff on it: many of george's beatles tunes were as good or better than the central combine's work.
but george succumbed to facile pop bloat soon thereafter, and i dont remember anything interesting me after the concert for bengaladesh came out.
ringo. why?
paul.
paul paul paul.
paul.
ugh.
in the seemingly endless field of stuff that is his solo output, he put out some stuff that can only be understood as a kind of 4 minute life-sucking void of such awful power that words nearly fail.
ebony and ivory for example.
but that is not the worst.
there are others whose horrifying nature is such that i cannot look directly onto them.
the sonic equivalent of h.p. lovecraft's old gods.
ghastly.
just ghastly.
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a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle
spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear
it make you sick.
-kamau brathwaite
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