Some thoughts on current reading and current events...

As I mentioned here on Sunday in my Music Sunday post, I am currently reading - plowing my way through, really - a biography of John Lennon (Lennon: The Man, the Myth, the Music - The Definitive Life, by Tim Riley [2011, Hyperion; 765 pages]). It's an interesting and well-written book, but it's long. Very, very long. And, because I'm emotionally invested in it - I've been a Beatles fan for decades and, for all his flaws as a human being, a fan of Lennon and his work, I sometimes have to just stop reading for a while and digest what I've read and prepare myself to go back for the next bit - it is taking me some time to get through the thing.

Earlier this morning, I was reading a portion of the book where the author was writing about the time right after the Beatles broke up, about how the band had become by then a symbol of something larger than just a collection of four very talented musicians, and about how fans at the time were so unwilling to let go of the possibility of a reunion. If you were around during those years, between the break-up and when John Lennon was murdered, you know that there was always some rumor or another that the Beatles were going to get back together, either for the long term or for at least a one-off show. Of course, the reunion never came, despite occasional offers of huge amounts of money to do so. There were a number of collaborations by various configurations of the band's members through the years. The closest any kind of reunion ever came to happening, however, was on Ringo Starr's third solo album, "Ringo" (1973), on which the other three Beatles appear in various places, but never all together on the same song.

Even as a fan of the band, I never was really that enthusiastic about a reunion. It always seemed to me that it just wouldn't be the same as it had been, and it seemed kind of pointless. There had been the Beatles, and then there wasn't any more, and that was okay because all four men were doing other things. That's just the way the world works. It would have been nice if the band had stayed together, but since they didn't, I thought, it was time for everybody, fans included, to move on to the new reality.

Except maybe not so much.

I saw an item online a couple of days ago which said that the two remaining Beatles will be performing on the Grammy awards show, which will be broadcast on January 26. The occasion is the awarding of the Recording Academy Lifetime Achievement Award to The Beatles. None of the items I've seen - and I checked around the Internet to make sure I wasn't imagining that first item and that it wasn't just a rumor - have even said whether Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr will be performing together, just that they will both be performing. Still, when I saw the notice, I went from zero to "Oh, my god, I have to watch that" in about a nanosecond. This, even though I hadn't previously given a thought to watching the show at all. The Grammys, to be honest, have not been a viewing priority for me in years.

Apparently, a reunion of the remaining Beatles is something I've wanted to see more than I realized.

Or, maybe, I'm just getting old and nostalgic. I'm not really sure what the deal is. All I know is, I do want to see that. That, and I hope that the people who put on the Grammys show don't screw it up.

Music Sunday on Monday: The Record of the Year Edition

Pretend it's Sunday. No, really. Just for a few minutes, pretend that it's Music Sunday and this post isn't a day late. Blame it on the cat that adopted my roommate at the end of the week.

Since last night was the Grammy Awards (boring show, as far as I'm concerned, but that's beside the point), I thought I'd review some of the past winners of "Record of the Year", one of the most anticipated awards each year when the Grammys are handed out.

In 1960, Bobby Darin's version of "Mack the Knife" won as Record of the Year. This Kurt Weill/Bertolt Brecht song from "The Threepenny Opera" is one of my favorite songs, and Darin's version is my preferred version of the song. This clip is a live performance, but I'm not sure where or when it was given:



An instrumental, "A Taste of Honey", by Herb Alpert and the Tijuana Brass won Best Record in 1966, beating out, among other songs, The Beatles' "Yesterday". This video of the song is from about 1966 or 1967, depending on which source you believe:



The next year, Frank Sinatra's "Strangers in the Night" won this category. Among the other songs nominated in 1967 were "Monday, Monday", by the Mamas and the Papas, and something called "Winchester Cathedral", by The New Vaudeville Band. I'm not sure, again, exactly when this live performance of the song was given, but it was years after the song first came out:



Just in case you've never heard of "Winchester Cathedral" (the song, not the actual cathedral), it is best described as a novelty song, which might leave you wondering exactly how it got nominated for any kind of a Grammy, much less Record of the Year. It was popular at the time, but, well, just listen and tell me if you think this is really award material:



Fast forward a couple of decades, to 1986, when Grammy voters awarded Record of the year to USA for Africa's "We Are The World". I suppose just the fact that they got that many artistic egos into the same room at the same time was an accomplishment of epic proportions. The fact that they got a pretty good song out of it, I think, is even more astonishing given the wide variety of singing styles involved.



Among the songs "We Are the World" beat out for this award were Bruce Springsteen's "Born in the USA", Don Henley's "The Boys of Summer" and Dire Straits' "Money for Nothing", all very good songs that might have won in another year.

Perhaps the most surprising Record of the Year winner, given that it was so political, was in 2007, when "Not Ready to Make Nice", by the Dixie Chicks won. It was the song they recorded in the wake of the controversy over singer Natalie Maines' comments regarding then-president George W. Bush and the (at the time of the comments) impending invasion of Iraq. But it is a wonderful song:



Since it is Monday, and since I should be writing Movie Monday instead of Music Sunday today, let me just recommend the documentary "Shut Up & Sing", about the controversy in the aftermath of the comments that led to the song. No matter what side you are on regarding those comments and the fallout from them, it is a good film that deserves to be seen.

There are many other songs I could have included here that have won Record of the Year over the years, but these are some of my favorites.