Video: The Beatles last performance--Get Back on a London rooftop (with Billy Preston on keyboards)

The Beatles final performance took place on a London rooftop outside their recording studio, with a few dozen people watching. Fortunately it was filmed, and it's on You Tube (at least until Apple Corps pulls it!).

The Beatles recorded Get Back (and performed this concert) with Billy Preston in April, 1969. The single—one of their last—was on the charts 23 weeks, and peaked at No. 1 for six weeks.


You may need to click play 2x

Get Back
by John Lennon and Paul McCartney

Jo Jo was a man
Who thought he was a loner
But he knew it couldn't last
Jo Jo left his home in Tuscon, Arizona
For some California grass

Get back, get back
Get back to where you once belonged
Get back, get back
Get back to where you once belonged
Get back Jo Jo

Go home

Get back, get back
Back to where you once belonged
Get back, get back
Back to where you once belonged
Ooh, get back Jo

Sweet Loretta Modern thought she was a woman
But she was another man
All the girls around her said she's got it comin'
But she gets it while she can

Get back, get back
Get back to where you once belonged
Get back, get back
Get back to where you once belonged
Get back Loretta

Go home

Get back, get back
Get back to where you once belonged
Yeah get back, get back
Get back to where you once belonged

whoooo

Get back Loretta
Your mummy's waiting for you
Wearing her high heel shoes
And her low neck sweater
Get back home Loretta

Get back, get back
Get back to where you once belonged
Yeah get back, get back
---o0o---

Painting: Keelin Curran deconstructed/reconstructed

click keelin to enlarge

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The folk song "Side By Side"

Oh! We ain't got a barrel of money
Maybe we're ragged and funny
But we'll travel along
Singing a song, side by side

Don't know what's comin' tomorrow
Maybe it's trouble and sorrow
But we'll travel the road
Sharin' our load, side by side

Through all kinds of weather
What if the sky should fall
Just as long as we're together
It doesn't matter at all

When they've all had their quarrels and parted
We'll be the same as we started
Just travellin' along, singing a song
Side by side; side by side

________________________________

And then, there is a twisted British version:


Side By Side

We got married on, Sunday,
The party didn't finish till, Monday,
And when the guests had gone home,
We were all alone, Side by side.

Well we got ready for bed then,
And I very nearly dropped dead when,
Her teeth and her hair, she placed on the chair,
Side by side.

Well the shock did very near kill me,
When a glass eye did fall,
Then her leg and then her arm,
She placed against the chair (wall?),

Well this left me broken hearted,
For most of my wife had departed,
So I slept on the chair,
There was more of her there,
Side by side.
---o0o---

Video and Lyrics: Elvis Costello Performs Nick Lowe's (What's So Funny 'Bout) Peace, Love, And Understanding?

(What's So Funny 'Bout)Peace, Love And Understanding?
by Nick Lowe

As I walk through
This wicked world
Searchin' for light in the darkness of insanity.

I ask myself
Is all hope lost?
Is there only pain and hatred, and misery?

And each time I feel like this inside,
There's one thing I wanna know:
What's so funny 'bout peace love & understanding? Ohhhh
What's so funny 'bout peace love & understanding?

And as I walked on
Through troubled times
My spirit gets so downhearted sometimes
So where are the strong
And who are the trusted?
And where is the harmony?
Sweet harmony.

'Cause each time I feel it slippin' away, just makes me wanna cry.
What's so funny 'bout peace love & understanding? Ohhhh
What's so funny 'bout peace love & understanding?


So where are the strong?
And who are the trusted?
And where is the harmony?
Sweet harmony.

'Cause each time I feel it slippin' away, just makes me wanna cry.
What's so funny 'bout peace love & understanding? Ohhhh
What's so funny 'bout peace love & understanding? Ohhhh
What's so funny 'bout peace love & understanding?

<---o0o--->

Harry Potter: Hey mates! Look at me bum! Daniel Radcliffe Nude Onstage In Equus

click on Daniel Radcliffe's bum to zoom in

"Warner Bros have been building up their publicity machine for Harry's first - chaste - screen kiss when the next Potter film (Harry Potter And The Order Of The Phoenix) comes out in the summer. "Now our star is out there doing full-frontal sex. We've been blown completely out of the water by this."

In what is one of the most memorable examples of career suicide ever committed, Daniel Radcliffe began starring in Equus in the U.K., appearing nude in a long scene. Executives at Warner Bros, the studio behind the film versions of the Potter books, were"utterly dismayed" by publicity shots of Radcliffe naked. Studio chiefs are petrified this could possibly put the skids to their multi-million-dollar cash cow. Some folks even alluded to Radcliffe being replaced as the young wizard. His naked sex partner in the play, Joanna Christie, 24, plays the stablegirl with whom he has a relationship.

You think the suits at Warner freaked out about the publicity stills? How do they feel abut Radcliffe airing out his willie for a full ten minutes on stage?

Equus previewed in London last night, and opens February 27th.


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House of Representatives Tells The President To Take His Surge, And. . .Uh. . .Insert It Into A Place Where "The Sun Don't Shine"

Click The White House Bummer Flag To Enlarge

The Democratic-controlled House lobbed a toothless, but still stinging, rejection of President Bush's Surge™ into Iraq today, according to the AP.

So begins a potentially hairy showdown between the executive and legislative branches over The President's madness prosecuting an unpopular war and unjust war, with acceptable losses of 3,100 American boys and girls (and climbing).



It was a bi-partisan and non-binding vote: 246-182.
---o0o---

Evolution by an unknown artist

Frank Zappa & The Mothers of Invention—If We'd All Been Living In California "lyrics"

FZ put a tape of a band meeting on his album Uncle Meat. The band was obviously struggling--making a few hundred bucks a month each. I don't know which band member Frank was talking to, but it was one of these guys:

Ray collins (vocals)
Jimmy carl black (drums)
Roy estrada (electric bass)
Don preston (electric piano)
Billy mundi (drums)
Bunk gardner (piccolo, flute, clarinet, bass clarinet, soprano saxophone, alto saxophone, tenor saxophone, bassoon)
Ian underwood (electric organ, piano, harpsichord, celeste, flute, clarinet, alto saxophone, baritone saxophone)
Arthur tripp (drums, timpani, vibes, marimba, xylophone, wood blocks, bells, small chimes)
Motorhead sherwood (tenor saxophone, tambourine)
Ruth komanoff (marimba, vibes)

"If We'd All Been Living In California"
Frank Zappa and an unknown Mother of Invention

FZ: Ok, now you still want to get your name in the magazines. And he wants 500 dollars a month.

Unknown Mother: Where does it come from? We worked one gig this month. And thats....so what do we get? Two hundred dollars for this gig up here if we're lucky. If we're lucky, we'll get two hundred. And it will be two weeks before we get it.

FZ: Probably.

Unknown Mother: I mean after all, what is all this sh*t in the newspaper? If we got such a big name, how come. . .we're starving man! This f**king band is starving! And we've been starving for three years. I realize it takes a long time but God damn it! Does it take another five, ten years from now.

FZ: There's some months when you're not going to work as much as other months. There's some months when you're going to make a lot of money and if you average it out, you do make more than two hundred dollars a month.

Unknown Mother: Expenses are sure high too. If we'd all been living in California, it would have been different.

FZ: If we'd all been living in California, we wouldn't have worked at all.

Unknown Mother: Oh, that's true. Well, we're not working now anyway. We worked one gig this month Frank. What's wrong with getting two months in a row of this good money? Or three months in a row? Then we could afford to take three of four months off and everybody can. . .After the first month I can get just enough ahead, but if I had two more months man, I'll get ahead. Because I'm not living very extravagantly, I'll tell you for sure.
---o0o---

Poem: Ephemeral Communications

click to enlarge Frederick Remington's Smoke Signals


Native American smoke signals
May be the most transitory
And ephemeral communication of all,

Next to the voice
—A whisper
In your ear—

That transmogrifies instantly
Into memory
While the smoke signal

Takes its own sweet time
Rising
And drifting slowly and inexorably

Toward Heaven,
Achieving evanescence
Somewhere in the troposphere.
---o0o---

Video (and lyrics): Elvis Costello performs Radio Radio on SNL after a false start on Less Than Zero

This is the famous "false start" clip of Elvis Costello & The Attractions on Saturday Night live (circa 1977). He had cleared the song Less Than Zero with the show, but a few seconds in, decided he didn't like it, and the band stopped and launched into his great song Radio Radio.

There is an oft-repeated story that producer Lorne Michaels was so angry about the switch in tunes that he stood off camera in the wings and gave Elvis a double middle finger throughout the performance.

Radio Radio is an eloquent and vitriolic statement about radio, and no doubt one reason it upset the suits on the show is that much of what Elvis sings/writes about radio applies to their medium as well. . .




Radio Radio
by Elvis Costello a/k/a Declan McManus

I was tuning in the shine on the light night dial
doing anything my radio advised
with every one of those late night stations
playing songs bringing tears to me eyes
I was seriously thinking about hiding the receiver
when the switch broke 'cause it's old
They're saying things that I can hardly believe.
They really think we're getting out of control.

Radio is a sound salvation
Radio is cleaning up the nation
They say you better listen to the voice of reason
But they don't give you any choice
'cause they think that it's treason.
So you had better do as you are told.
You better listen to the radio.

I wanna bite the hand that feeds me.
I wanna bite that hand so badly.
I want to make them wish they'd never seen me.

Some of my friends sit around every evening
and they worry about the times ahead
But everybody else is overwhelmed by indifference
and the promise of an early bed
You either shut up or get cut out;
they don't wanna hear about it.
It's only inches on the reel-to-reel.
And the radio is in the hands of such a lot of fools
tryin' to anaesthetise the way that you feel

[Chorus]

Wonderful radio
Marvelous radio
Wonderful radio
Radio, radio...
---o0o---

Video and lyrics: Geroge Harrison's Crackerbox Palace

This is a bent video—not surprising when you remember how close George was to the Monty Python gang (some of who appear here). It is one of my favorite post-Beatles tunes by George.

How can you not love the trans-gender nanny, the bobbies, images of barbed-wire, freaky costumed dancers, gargoyles, fantastic women in lingerie, and the spooky Mr. Grief. And George ends this twisted tune so typically: "Know that the Lord is well and inside of you." No matter how twisted things become, you're still walking with The Lamplighter.

I've been on a George-jag lately, re-immersing myself in the Wilburys, and listening to the Concert for Bangladesh. And, of course, the great Beatles remix album, Love, that has rarely left my playlist since it was released.



Crackerbox Palace
by George Harrison

I was so young when I was born
My eyes could not yet see
And by the time of my first dawn
Somebody holding me . . . they said

I welcome you to Crackerbox Palace
We've been expecting you
You bring such joy in Crackerbox Palace
No matter where you roam know our love is true

While growing up or trying to
Not knowing where to start
I looked around for someone who
May help reveal my heart - someone said

While you're a part of Cracerbox Palace
Do what the rest all do
Or face the fact that Crackerbox Palace
May have no other choice than to deport you

I welcome you to Crackerbox Palace
We've been expecting you
You bring us joy in Crackerbox Palace
No matter where you roam know our love is true

Sometimes are good . . . sometimes are bad
That's all a part of life
And standing in between them all
I met a Mr. Grief - and he said

I welcome you to Crackerbox Palace
Was not expecting you
Let's rap and tap at Crackerbox Palace
Know that the Lord is well and inside of you

(Chorus)
---o0o---

Radical Islamic Extremists Snowboard Into U.S. Embassy?

Radical Islamic Extremists Snowboard Into U.S. Embassy