Tag Archives: music

The Beatles: Get Back

Posted on by

“What’s startling about “Get Back” is that as you watch it, drinking in the moment-to-moment reality of what it was like for the Beatles as they toiled away on their second-to-last studio album, the film’s accumulation of quirks and delights and boredom and exhilaration becomes more than fascinating; it becomes addictive. We’re there in the studio, right alongside the Beatles, seeing — living — what they do. There are moments when “Get Back” meanders (at a certain point in Part 3, you may feel like you never want to hear “Don’t Let Me Down” or “Let It Be” again). Yet even the repetition is part of the documentary’s experiential quality. As you soak up the film in its totality, it become moving and momentous. “Get Back” is a long-form portrait of the dissolution of the Beatles and the togetherness of the Beatles.” — Variety review of Peter Jackson’s 8 hour documentary.

If you weren’t a fan I doubt you’d enjoy this. The Beatles exploded in 1962 and flamed out in the late sixties, neatly covering my high school and college years. A big musical influence in my golden years. (Good article on which US radio stations played The Beatles first)

AirPods 3

Posted on by

I don’t remember when I got my first set of headphones. According to Wikipedia, until the mid-1960s, record companies mixed and released most popular music in mono. From mid-1960s until the early 1970s, major recordings were commonly released in both mono and stereo. In the ’60s The Beach Boys, Frank Zappa and The Beatles were among the first big artists to play around with multitrack recording.

Dolby started showing up in recording studios in 1966 and quadraphonic sound was introduced in the early ’70s but always seemed kind of gimmicky to me.

I know I started buying headphones in the early 70s when I went to work at KBOA. Sennheiser, Bose, you name it… I tried them all. And the good ones were expensive (and fragile). I was never an audiophile. WLS on an AM car radio sounded damned good to 17-year-old me. I never had a Sony Walkman but did get an iPod when they showed up. And the tiny earbuds sounded pretty good to me. Hard to believe it was as recent as 2016 when Apple introduced AirPods. I thought their wired earbuds were fine… until I tried the Bluetooth AirPods. And I’ve had a set ever since.

I hadn’t paid much attention to all the hype about the third generation AirPods but when I saw the launch event a couple of weeks ago, I decided to try a pair. Just to see (or hear, in this case).

To my pedestrian ears, stereo music meant base in one ear, treble in the other, and the vocal track somewhere in the middle. The new AirPods are — for me — living up to the hype. Not sure I can describe what I’m hearing. It really does sound like I’m in a big room (recording studio?) with instruments and singers all around me. It’s a strange feeling. Music is such a perceptual thing it’s difficult to describe. Songs I’ve listened to hundreds (thousands?) of times, sound new and fresh.

Apple will give you chapter and verse on how the new AirPods work but the music I’m now hearing (feeling?) seems impossible. Someone described it as witchcraft.

Muscle Shoals Sound Studios

Posted on by

Barb and her sister are in Destin, FL this week and on the way down they stopped in Muscle Shoals, AL for a class reunion. Including a tour of the studio where the Rolling Stones recorded Wild Horses (and Brown Sugar) in December of 1969. The tour included the toilet where Keith Richards reportedly wrote Wild Horses, and an invoice for the recording sessions.


Did Buddy Emmons perform at KBOA?

Posted on by

According to Wikipedia, Buddy Gene Emmons (January 27, 1937 – July 21, 2015) “was an American musician who is widely regarded as the world’s foremost pedal steel guitarist of his day. He was inducted into the Steel Guitar Hall of Fame in 1981. Affectionately known by the nickname “Big E”, Emmons’ primary genre was American country music, but he also performed jazz and Western swing. He recorded with Linda Ronstadt, Gram Parsons, The Everly Brothers, The Carpenters, Roger Miller, Ernest Tubb, John Hartford, Little Jimmy Dickens, Ray Price, Judy Collins, George Strait, John Sebastian, and Ray Charles and was a widely sought session musician in Nashville and Los Angeles.”

According to a newspaper clipping (Calumet, Illinois) sent to me recently by Brandon Rowe, Emmons performed with one (or more?) bands that made regular “appearances” on KBOA during the early 1950’s.

PS: My favorite line from the article: “Nothing really exciting happened in Kennett that I can remember.”

AUDIO: “Side A and B Combo” by Henry Buddy Roy Jr..

Laurel Canyon

Posted on by


I really liked this documentary. Late 60’s, early 70’s was my era, but it was just a very well done film. I learned a lot about the music and the musicians from that time and that place. I was playing a lot of this music on the radio in the early 70’s but had no real appreciation for the artists or the place the music was coming from.