Monday, March 14, 2016

"Yesterday and Today," The Beatles (1966)

27:33.  That's how long the album is.

Story #1:  This was another birthday present; what I really liked at the time was "Hey Jude," but at the time I think my parents thought the song was a little too "hard rock."  

At the time, I had no idea that this was basically an album made up of leftovers from the U.K. versions of the Beatles albums (in this case, Help!, Rubber Soul, Revolver, plus the Day Tripper single).  It all sounded great to me.

Story #2: When I was in the 4th grade, I was part of a group that was allowed to help out in the Kindergarten class.  One day, we were playing 45 records with them on a very lo-fidelity record player, with headphones on - and the record we played was "I Saw Her Standing There," because we loved the scream in the middle of the song.  And then one of the teachers heard us, and that was pretty much the end of that.

Story #3: At the time, our family record player was a Magnavox, really more a piece of furniture than anything else.  And there was only one speaker, so when you had an album like this one that was "stereo enhanced," there were some things that you never heard - like Ringo's vocal on "What Goes On?"  I could never figure out what was up with that.

At the end of the day, this wasn't really an album at all - just an attempt (probably successful) by Capitol Records to rake in a little more cash from Beatlemania.

On the other hand, it was (and is) a great album.  Call it a mix-tape of the Sixties.

1 comment:

Mon-sewer Paul Regret said...

Mix-tape ... good call!