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These Are Those Things

Pressure, Competition, Disruption, Change, Betrayal, Unity, Community, Collaboration, Creation

One of my favorite creation tales is the story of The Beatles’ Sgt. Pepper’s & The White Album.  I am no expert and I am sure I get the details wrong, so please feel free to correct me, but in my version it is a great example of the conditions that can lead to creative output (Note: since writing this I have made some amendments)

We all are told that Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band is the great album of the rock era, the first true exploration of the art form.  Whether that’s true or not is open for debate, but what it is the first album that The Beatles had no back catalogue to exploit.  

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These Are Those Things

The Beatles Live In Budokan 1966

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These Are Those Things

More Beatles Punchlines In Need Of The Jokes

We all make some bad decisions in life. I hear some folks confess fear that something stupid they did way back when will end up on YouTube. It will. It’s true. But know what? So what. If it is true about The Beatles, it will also be true about today’s pop stars, and just as no one cares about those mistakes, you shouldn’t care about your mistakes. We should learn to live like clowns. Why so serious?

Which is a long way of saying why I was so excited when @jonarcher tipped me to this tidbit of the Fab Four trying their hand at Willie The Shake.

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These Are Those Things

Ringo, Paul, & George In A Park With A Ukulele

What’s the joke that gives that as a punchline? I don’t know but this is that video. 1994.

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These Are Those Things

The Origin Of My Love Of Pranks?

My son and I share a great enthusiasm for pranks.  Maybe it is a gene.  I have been trying to pinpoint when I recognized that they were one of the great things that could be accomplished in our short stay.  I am still searching the memory stacks, but this rates in terms of filmed history.  I was probably eight years old when I saw it.  And granted, it’s not an outright full throttle prank, but in watching it you know rules are broken and fun is had.

Giving myself over to these short seven minutes, I also get caught up in the filmmaking.  What a great simple idea.  The wind alone makes it all feel so free.  The sense of spontaneity and the growing awareness as the crowd gathers are so rich.  That one shot of Yoko is so romantic.  And John will forever have one of the greatest rock and roll voices.  Fashion-wise, I think they are at their peak here too, with their maximum radical cool phreak flag high.  And where is the piano?  The cameras?  And who are the bald guys that first gather on the roof?  Are they going to steal their hair?