Abbey Road | johnozed

Tuesday today. Let’s see, Bill woke me up again this morning at 6:50 which was fine. I was out of bed and doing my thing. Bill is off to his sleep apnea test tonight which leaves me solo. Not such a bad thing, though the bed will be emptier than it should.

Looking forward to President Obama’s press conference tonight. Still a refreshing thing to see and hear a world leader speak so intelligently and with authority. For some reason the right wing nuts have been going off on the fact that Obama reads from a teleprompter. What the fuck is that about?

I know the previous President, you know, the door knob, had difficulty pronouncing nuclear correctly, but all they could do is complain that Obama reads from a teleprompter? What? Did they think Bush was talking off the top of his soft skull?

They also have been complaining that Obama is busy multi-tasking. I know, that’s not right, especially since the door knob before him had difficulty watching TV and eating pretzels.

Yesterday was a busy Facebook day. Last night I was posting with a few other people, specifically Pat Longo. Nice guy, friends with my brother Frank and other WFMU types. Pat doesn’t like the Beatles. Says they’re overrated.

I can see how he might say that though I obviously don’t agree. For me, my love for the Beatles, isn’t just the music. It’s the whole cultural phenomenon that started 45 years ago and continues to this day.

They still sell plenty of records and books, and soon they’ll be on Guitar Hero or perhaps Rock Band. I don’t know, I’m not a gamer. For the seven years that they were active, they were in my eyes, four of the coolest people on the planet. Clothes, hair, & attitude still resonates. I know, I’m biased.

I love playing their songs on guitar and singing along. I’ve read their books, from badly written biographies to trainspotters writing about every recording session to the smallest detail. Moms and dads and kids liked them and still do.

I was devastated when John was murdered, and was very upset when George was attacked by an intruder and I cried when he passed away a year or so later. I shed a tear or two seeing Paul live at Madison Square Garden in 2005, and smiled sweetly when I saw Ringo do a morning set at Bryant Park for Good Morning America.

I think they were and still are amazing. There were moments that I resented them for casting such a large shadow on everything that came afterwards. The resentment was momentary and faded away and still I loved them. They probably resented the shadow that they had created and were forced to live in. Still, they weren’t going hungry.

I think one of the first musical memories I had was of my brother Frank playing Strawberry Fields Forever and when it faded out and in at the end he turned out the light in his bedroom and scared me. Strawberry Fields Forever makes for a better musical memory than Winchester Cathedral which could actually be the first song I actually recognized.

I owe my Beatles fixation to my brother Frank who gave me my first Beatles LP as a consolation for not taking me to see the bicentennial fireworks like he had promised. It was Abbey Road, their last album. Which in a way makes sense for me since I tend to do things backwards.

I started collecting their records, looking for the original Capitol Records rainbow edged albums, or releases on the Apple label, buying import singles with songs I never heard before, like The Ballad of John & Yoko.

Side note: one of the reasons that I took the job at McMann and Tate aka Wolff Olins was because they helped design the Apple Records label back in 1968. And that didn’t go so well for me 38 years later.

I just figured out a few weeks ago that John, Paul, George & Ringo, which I’m sure you know is sometimes how they’re mentioned, is the order that the band was formed. Maybe it was obvious, maybe I’m a dunce.

From July 5 1976 until December 9 1980 I felt I might have a chance of seeing the four of them perform again, or at least release a record. We know how that turned out.

But I still play them, I’m still enthralled, and I’m still a Beatles fan, and you know you should be glad. Yeah yeah yeah!

Today is the fourth of July. The country is 232 years old. Or at least the Declaration of Independence was stated on this day. Actual independence didn’t happen until a number of years later. In 1976 was the bicentennial. A major event. My father was working in the World Trade Center at the time and a few months before, there was a plan to have a party in the offices so we could watch the tall ships and the fireworks from on high.

That was the plan until rumors started floating around about how gangs were going to be roaming the streets mugging the deep influx of tourists. That scared my father enough so that we spent July 4th in the backyard of 13 Riverview Avenue in Lodi, which despite what you may have heard is not the same thing.

My brother Frank had promised to take me to see the fireworks that night. He was at a party with his wife Elaine though and didn’t show up. There were plenty of firecrackers to keep me amused. My brother Brian wound up with me in the back seat of his car while him and his buddy Eddie drove around River Road in Fort Lee that night where I heard the fireworks going off overhead, not actually able to see them due to the tree tops blocking the view.

It wasn’t that bad, I still got back home and met up with my friends. I stole a pack of Marlboro’s from my mother and got caught but was let go when I explained it would be easier to light a firecracker with a cigarette rather than using matches or lighters. Somehow that worked and I walked away with a hard pack of Marlboro’s in my pocket. That’s probably when I started smoking.

Me and my friends whiled away the remaining bicentennial hours blowing up whatever we could. My sister Annemarie worked in a hospital at that time and gave us all warnings about people in the emergency rooms due to playing with fireworks, so we were careful, though a firecracker did go off in my hand, leaving my thumb and index finger numb for a few hours.

My brother Frank tried to make up for his absence the next day and gave me a copy of Abbey Road which is the first Beatles album I ever owned. I forgave him and soon got every much into the Beatles.

This year, it’s been overcast and muggy. Rained a bit today. Hoboken is like a ghost town today. I rode around, wound up by Battery Park. Bill was spending time with his mother, didn’t make it down there. I rode around, the streets crowded with tourists everywhere as well as Statues of Liberty.

The Feelies sounded great, but I couldn’t see them. I wound up outside the park and listened. Brenda was saying thank you after each song, I wonder if her mother asked her to. I was bored and decided to ride back to the Path train, taking it to Exchange Place and riding home from there.

Not much else going on today. Bill’s staying at his mother’s apartment since the fireworks will be going off 100 yards from her bedroom window. Here’s some pics.

The fans