Even though I've listened to it a zillion times, today I listened to Julia and for the first time ever, noticed that they double-track John's voice (and I think his guitar, too) starting when the refrain begins. I think there's even a section where they start triple or quadruple-tracking.

Odd how you can listen to something a thousand times, but not notice something until listen #1001.

Cool story!

Speaking of left ...

Y'know what I always wanted to know? When did Paul get his first left-handed guitar.

"I've Just Punched a Face" seems to be going through something similar that I did last year regarding the Beach Boys - the exception being, I never really disliked the BB's for any particular reason, I just didn't pay much attention to them and didn't have any strong feelings about them, either yeah or nay. Even the Pet Sounds I had bought several years earlier was just "OK." However, in spring of last year I started getting into Good Vibrations, then read somewhere that it was originally supposed to be on an album called Smile, which was never released, except that the recording sessions had just been released several months prior. So on a whim I bought TSS, got hooked, and then started buying every BB album I reading everything I could about them. "I've Just Punched a Face" seems to be about where I was in maybe June of last year. I predict by early next year the novelty will wear off and he'll just regard the band as one of his favorites, but cease obsessing over them.

It's kinda fun "discovering" something that lots of people liked but you always scratched your head over, until you finally check it out and "get" it. After some while of checking out their stuff and reading all you can about them, you've absorbed most of what you're reasonably going to absorb, and the initial obsession wears off. Then you don't listen to the music as often - which can actually be nice because on the occasion you do listen to it, it's a bit "fresh." There's a few Beatles albums I've been deliberately avoiding for about a year just so that I don't get tired of them.

Lately I've been going on a bit of an Animal Collective "thing." But their repertoire I find palatable is a bit limited to date, so after just a little more than a month I think I'm starting to run against a wall.

@Bubbly,

Yeah I knew I was forgetting several. Thanks!

I Feel Fine is awesome!

OK, this is a MUST-WATCH. First take of "I'm Looking Through You." I can't decide whether I like this version better, or the released version. I like the middle-8 in the released version (which this lacks), but much of the rest of this version is really, really good. I particularly like the verses:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-IIvxT_Dow4

Compare to the released version:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KulSQjjQVPE

I had a friend in college who thought this song was, like, the culmination of human civilization, or something.

Personally I like the "official" version of Here, There and Everywhere best. It's such a big departure from the rest of Revolver that it really does a fantastic job of adding something different.

BTW, if you're listening only to the Parlaphone albums, you're going to miss a few songs released only as singles, and/or which appeared only on the American versions of the albums.

This, IMO, was a notable artistic breakthrough in '65 and one of my favorite Beatle songs: We Can Work It Out. Best played loud or on headphones:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x0kKjDmiypY

Rain, an even bigger artistic breakthrough in '66, recorded between Rubber Soul and Revolver. Prelude to stuff on Revolver.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VQCwSqyaRo0

One of the least known Beatle songs - Hey Bulldog:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M8DfB-wqp5g

Fun kid's song:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sDdo7T9BkxM

It's All Too Much, another lesser-known song:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Oes9_poAIg

Clapton's Guitar - While My Guitar Gently Weeps:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xzDyycsXmN0

A bit sloppy playing, actually, but it worked out great anyway. Can't notice the sloppiness behind the vocals.

I knew a guy once who said he hated the Beatles ... except for the White Album.

Come to think of it, I seem to recall meeting someone else who told me that, too.

White Album is a great album, but it's only maybe #5 or so on my ranking list of Beatles albums.

I seem to recall reading somewhere that John had also grown tired of highly-produced stuff and wanted to go back to "the basics." The plain, unadorned cover of the album was symbolic of that move I think, too.

Maybe we need a whole section dedicated just to ML topics, so that if you don't want to see threads about him just don't go to that section. 

Question for those more knowledgeable than I...although George Martin was credited as producer, how much did he actually do vs the band?

Good question - no doubt he had a big influence on much of their sound, the only question is, how much? In one interview he said, to the effect, that prior to their midddle stuff he acted as an "encourager" who tried to get them to do more interesting stuff. Somewhere around their middle stuff they didn't need encouraging anymore, and he became more of an "enabler."

Trivia: The instrumental parts for "She's Leaving Home" is the only Beatles song not scored by Martin. Paul was in a rush to complete the song (for some unknown reason), and Martin was working on something else when Paul called him to write the score, so Paul called this other well-known London scorer to do it for him instead. When Martin found out later he was really pissed off, but when they went to record the instruments he went ahead and conducted it anyway.

"She's Leaving Home" without the vocals. That's Martin doing the countdown in the intro:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L8zu4S58Tgs

If you're starting to get into the Beatles you'll probably want to check out some of the sans-vocals, sans-instruments and alternate tracks. Guitars on "She Said She Said" is one of my favorites:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MAN7HByXXxY

["I had to mute the video, beach boys are a terrible band and this terrible song was an extremely poor choice for this presentation"]

Love the one and only comment to the article. 

"I had to mute the video, beach boys are a terrible band and this terrible song was an extremely poor choice for this presentation"

I hope he was kidding.

I feel the same way. Makes it hard sometimes. Music is so subjective that IMHO it is impossible (not to mention ghastly and stupid) to be correct about saying any one band is THE greatest of all time.  With that said...

I feel like a complete moron after listening to the rest of the discography. Was I seriously that critical? Was I so blinded by irritation at many people praising the Beatles and dismissing every other band that I let that blind me?! I had intended to resume posting my thoughts on each track last night, but I ended up playing through the rest of the stuff without taking notes. Needless to say, I am now of the opinion that 'Tomorrow Never Knows' may just be the greatest song ever written.

So THERE!

Sgt. Pepper takes quite a bit of listens to "get" if you know what I mean. It grows on you, but hey, it definitely doesn't grow on everyone. I can pretty well do without When I'm 64 and Within You Without You (the better of the two, but a little too long in duration IMHO).

Not sure how many people are aware of this, but When I'm 64 was deliberately put right after Within You Without You because the two songs are polar opposites. Side 2 opens with this mystical, dead-serious philosophical and exotic song, which is immediately followed by one of McCartney's "schmaltzy" songs. IMO it works great - the contrast and change in mood could not have been more drastic.

Personally I like When I'm 64, yes it's schmaltzy but in a good, catchy way. I particularly like the harmonies and woodwinds in the line, "You'll be older too." That and a couple other lines make the song a bit more than a standard schmaltzy tune.

I agree with you, the growth is really quick. I equate it to Surfin USA being so much better an album than Surfin Safari.

Good observation. And one step further, I find that Hard Day's Night is similarly the same kind of big leap over With the Beatles  that Surfer Girl  is over Surfin' USA.

IMO Hard Day's Night and Surfer Girl were arguably each band's biggest songwriting breakthroughs. Among other things, in both albums, both bands discovered the art of writing really nice ballads.

Fantastic way to greet the world!

Purrbrations
Catomo
Purray
The Fur of the Cat

There is no Sgt Pepper of our generation - we don't even have a Beatles, and I reckon we'll never have a 'Beatles' esque phenomena again.

I sort-of agree with you on this, but that's why I added the qualifier "of the 21st Century." As you noted, given how fragmented the music biz has become this century, it would probably be hard for even a super-duper fantastic album to ever do as well as a Beatles album did these days. Or a Thriller. So ... I meant relative to the times.

I don't like SJ nearly as much. I even like Centipede Hz better.

I don't mind their voices. Plus, they're so covered up with electronics you can't tell what they really sound like anyway.

Am I the only one who thinks Merriweather Post Pavilion could someday be regarded as the Sgt Pepper or Pet Sounds of the early 21st Century?

Yeah I always liked this song too.

[The Jazz Theory of Brian Wilson]

This might give you some ideas:

The Jazz Theory of Brian Wilson

^
Y'know I've often thought similar things. I don't see why they couldn't still have done some beach and/or surfing songs once in a while - just make them highly sophisticated beach or surf songs.

For example, I could imagine a song about a surfer riding the waves, and he's way far out, and suddenly the wind and waves pick up and he's not ready, and he's not a super-expert surfer, so he's trying desperately to get back to shore before it gets worse, and the seagulls overhead are "laughing" at him, and the beach is empty so there's no one to rescue him, so he has to rely on himself, and he's afraid he's not going to make it. And once he gets wiped out by a big wave and thinks, for a moment, that he's going to drown, but he doesn't, and finally he just barely makes it back to shore which gets him thinking about the special-ness of life. But the whole song is metaphorical, and now and then some lyrics are inserted into the song telling the listener the song is *really* about something else.

Stuff like that.

Off-topic, sorry.

If The Association could fit well into the '67 festival and be well-received, I see no reason why the BB's could not also.