Stephen's "King George" comments.

A lot of people my age looked to their parents to bridge into the Beatles catalog. If you are 35 or younger, you can have no memories of the Beatles, just a collective cultural education of them, their relevance to their times. And if you're lucky, nobody crammed the relevance of the Beatles down your throat, and you could discover them. If that happened, then the Beatles became your music. After all, the music didn't die. The recordings, whether on vinyl, tape, or AM or FM, were always there, as they were in the beginning, and forever shall be. Liberating, in our case, as the history of the times need not saddle all those songs down.

In my case, it wasn't my parents who introduced me to GH It was my sister's boyfriend at the time. He had a double-cassette box of The White Album. And really, all he did was leave it on the tape deck in the living room. Doing one of my multi-hour sessions of listening to random tape and vinyl, I played through tape one several times. Then tape two. A rarely have music epiphanies, and... well, I didn't have one then, either. It was only when I played the tapes at night when "While My Guitar Gently Weeps" (and, for what it's worth, "Rocky Racoon" and other WA staples) sunk in. The whole White Album plays best at night.

Anyway, the songs continued to survive, the Beatles were forever canonized, and the members went on. George made All Things Must Pass, which I do associate with my mom, who loved the triple-vinyl. I went on to hear George on the radio for years, then "Cloud Nine" came out in 1987. Then the Traveling Wilburys. By that time, I was eschewing "old farts" for the trappings of college pop. (Well, sorta. I wound up getting a Van Morrison bug in 1990, but I'd all but forgotten about TW Vol. 1, which I bought a mere six months and a lifetime before). Morrison often sings out the same complaints VM does: the music business is full of shit, and I'm just a humble carpenter. Nice work, could I get it? Call it Garth Brooks-level bullshittery; Brooks once stated that all his ('90s) fame allowed him to cash his checks more easily at the local grocery store. Oh, I bet it did. Sometimes I think all famous recording artists are sort of dicks. Like me. Save for nazi sympathizers and perpetrators of violent crime, it usually comes out in the wash. Sometimes.

1. Rocking Chair in Hawaii.
Right off, I'm sensitive about the Electric Light Orchestra. That is, the Jeff Lynne influence. I assume Tom Petty wanted to sound that way after TW in the 1990s, when he learned to fly and all that, and I also assume George was a-okay with it, as well. Perhaps I'm just hearing that production value. I can't say I liked that "new", tweaked up, buffed-down sound. The image TM connects here is very fitting. Knowing George died before this was relesaed, knowing he was dying while he was recording this.. that's makes what sounds like a quiet, unoffensive track like this a little more poignant, I suppose. Poignant is a way overused term, but I'll use it here, just this once.

2. Ski-ing.
Ahhhhh, here we are. Can't get any more pre-Lynne than this! My favorite George Harrison guitar work is right fromt this era, and some of it is right here. I bet...heck, I'd like to think if George had more influence as a Beatle, this would have been side 2, Track 1 on Sgt. Peppers. Or extended to 20 minutes for album three on the White Album. I suppose no living soul will ever be able to divorce this song from the iconography of the time. Not a revelatory track, nor was it meant to be, I suspect.

3. How to Know God.
And we're flying through. Kind of like falling asleep during the recording of track 3 here and waking up in 2001. Maybe 3 could cross-fade into 4. Keeping with the sensibilities of the artist, who did not have the answers but still searches, three decades on. Of course, I'm assuming that Harrison is sincere about that. The line" How to know God, page 130" could be a comment from a syncophant following dilligently, or someone selling the concept. Maybe at 40 secods, we would have known the answer.

4. Wah-Wah.
I, too, hear this one as something of an extended jam, and I love it when the horns show up, and then the horns come around and interplay with George's guitar. If in fact the lyrics are a dig at McCartney, then I can be okay with that, because otherwise I could really have just erased them all out. It's just a sentiment the song's loud, driving guitar and horns already make blaringly clear.

5. Pisces Fish.
Gotta scrape out the memories of the Crash Test Dummies doing some similar mmm-mmming in their one song that was on the radio that one time. Mmmming is just a tricky thing to do, I think. I didn't care for that song but I do like this one, even if I have some of the same reaction PM has to the use of the word "crap". But, is there any other way to get that image out there? "Crap" is unfairly maligned as a verb (or noun, for that matter) in our culture. I say, if we're going to infuse a little Gaia philosophy in a song that probes one's mortality, then crap is a fact. Have we time to sort all of these things out? Indeed, good question.

Some times my life it seems like fictionSome of the days it's really quite serene
I'm a living proof of all life's contradictionsOne half's going where the other half's just been

So maybe that's just crap, but I refuse to think it's just a throway lyric.

6. Party Seacombe.
So much like "Magical Mystery Tour" it could have been a leftover from that time. Or bits and pieces that George took to the studio and topped with some new guitar or something. So if we can get "Love" and have it be the new Beatles album, maybe this just demonstrates the futzing was always happening. Apparently these sessions included Eric Clapton and Peter Tork (at least, so says IMDb). I like it, but it does sound like something that accompanies an image. I do actually think it's a bit eerie, with that organ, which sounds like an empty children's park in the rain.

7. All Things Must Pass.
So far, the CMC mixes I've heard have at least one song I go back to when I'm done, or look ahead to when I'm playing the disc through. This is that song for me here. And while the message is a simple one, it's the way the music comes together, not in resigned acceptance, but in hope. Maybe it's that skippy guitar (steel guitar, I think), or the declaritive horns (gotta love the horns again). Love it.

8. George on Ringo.

Chit-chat gone trippo. Enough said.

9. When We Was Fab.
Given its airplay and MTV rotation from 1987, this is absolutely the song with which I'm most acquainted. I don't know why the chorus sends a chill through me, but after twenty years, it still does. Maybe it's the obvious, the imagery of the Beatles and the time and all of that. And how it's all over, baby blue. Agreed, whistful, but not sad. The music does the evoking. Dan: I guess the question is, do many people remember "Captain of her Heart"? I guess so. I heard it in Muzak form the other day.

10. Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea.
She's just stalking you, George! Don't make light of it! Just kidding. Yes, I find this a light song about big things. I hope things worked out okay.

11. On the Bed.
With a title like that, what images come to mind? I like this, particularly in the context of the other instrumentals from way, way back. Dan really loved this one, which encouraged me to go back and listen to it more closely. Looking at my original notes, I said something like GH being commissioned by the BBC to write the music for the evening news. Or something snarky like that. I heard the horn but not the buildup. Still, I'm less into it that the group, perhaps.

12. Isn’t it a Pity.Along with "All Things Must Pass", the other track here that I love the most. Maybe it's that simple acknowledgement of humanity. Ugly, flawed, beautiful people we tend to be. And again, the music does the work. Hey Jude, you had such a nice extended flow, we'll borrow it.

Favorite: All Things Must Pass Away.
Song I wish were here: Hell, I love "What is Love" so much. But it's hardly a "deep cut".