October 21, 2010

Beatles' album - Second in Top Most Shocking Banned Album Covers



Guitar World presents the 20 most shocking banned album covers of all time. An Alice Cooper album cover is placed first, followed by The Beatles' "Yesterday and Today".

For their 1966 album, Yesterday and Today, the Beatles presented themselves as grinning butchers, complete with raw beef and dismembered baby dolls. However, the image was not appropriate to the Fab Four's clean public image. Upon receiving advance copies, radio DJs were outraged and Capitol Records quickly repackaged the record with what was apparently the only image of the band it had available.

You can see below the album covers:






The complete top is here.

October 19, 2010

Then and now: Dion







You can find him on Facebook :)

October 14, 2010

I wonder why...



"I Wonder Why" is a doo-wop song, written by Maxwell Anderson and Ricardo Weeks, and first recorded by Dion and the Belmonts in 1958. The song was used in the film, A Bronx Tale, in the pilot episode of the television series The Sopranos and in John Carpenter's film adaption of Stephen King's "Christine". (Source: Wikipedia.org)

Dion & The Belmonts




The Chiffons

Shout!



"Shout" is a popular and influential popular song, originally recorded by The Isley Brothers. Released in 1959, it was written by the brothers themselves. The song was inducted to the Grammy Hall of Fame in 1999. It ranked #118 on Rolling Stone's 500 Greatest Songs of All Time list. (Source: Wikipedia.org)

The Isley Brothers




The Shangri-Las





The Beatles

October 9, 2010

"Imagine" John Lennon at 70



Yoko Ono declares:

"Now, 99% of the world is taking a stand against wars like Iraq and Afghanistan. John would have done that but he'd have loved the new communication media.

He would have been writing statements and sending them out to the world as a blogger and a tweeter."

Vanity Fair imagined an interview with John Lennon... today. Everything would have been different:
- he would have lived in his dairy farm in Delaware County
- he would have received the reporter "shirtless—nearly naked, in fact, wearing only skimpy white tennis shorts with the top snap undone and a pair of olive-green Wellies"
- he would have been something like this: "slim, with a deep late-summer tan; the longish hair is mostly white and a bit thinned out on top"
- he would have had a young blond assistant taking care of the animals
- he would have been divorced from 1983
- in 2001, after the 9/11 attacks and Harrison being on his deathbed, Lennon and McCartney would have reached a lasting peace :)

More about this interview, here.

He would have been 70



9th of October was his birth day. Not his birthday anymore.






In order to pay John Lennon a tribute, Google decided to celebrate this date :
(using his own self-portrait)



And Youtube did the same:

John Lennon's birth and early childhood



70 years ago, John Lennon was born. Being the son of Julia and Alfred Lennon, he was named after his paternal grandfather, John "Jack" Lennon, and Winston Churchill (as his complete name was John Winston Lennon).

According to some biographers, a German air raid was taking place, and Julia's sister, Mary "Mimi" Smith, used the light cast by the explosions to see her way as she ran through the blacked-out back roads to reach the hospital. Mimi said later, "I knew the moment I saw John in that hospital that I was the one to be his mother, not Julia. Does that sound awful? It isn't, really, because Julia accepted it as something perfectly natural. She used to say, 'You're his real mother. All I did was give birth.'"

Lennon's father, a merchant seaman during World War II, was often away from home and sent regular pay cheques. The cheques stopped when Alfred Lennon went absent without leave in 1943. When he eventually came home in 1944, he offered to look after the family, but his wife (who was pregnant with another man's child) rejected the idea. Under considerable pressure, she handed the care of Lennon over to her sister, Mimi.

In July 1946, Lennon's father visited Mimi and took his son to Blackpool, secretly intending to emigrate to New Zealand with him. Lennon's mother followed them, and, after a heated argument, his father forced the five-year-old to choose between his parents. Lennon chose his father—twice. As his mother walked away, Lennon began to cry and followed her. Lennon then lost contact with his father for 20 years.

"Nowhere boy" is relevant for revealing this period of Lennon's life. You can read more here.

Source: Wikipedia.org

October 4, 2010

Please Mr. Postman



Its origins:



And then:



Gently whispering lyrics (2)



"There's a shimmer in your eyes
Like the feeling of a thousand butterflies"
(Abba - Andante, Andante)