Archive for October, 2009
On Please Please Me
Please Please Me was never my favourite Beatles album. I think that if you checked my jukebox, you’ll probably find that this is the album that has the fewest number of average listens per song. I don’t know why that’s the case. I like most of the songs on the album, and there’s nothing quite like the music on this album to be found on all of the other Beatles albums.
I may be compelled to rectify that right now, however. The remaster is quite excellent and particularly revealing. It’s generally said that Please Please Me is an album that exhibits a brilliant raw side to the Beatles’ music, but it’s something that a rawness took on a new dimension for me in the remaster. The visceral intensity that perhaps set them apart from their peers of that era stings on this record. It’s pretty amazing to find myself going through all this again with a new sense of wonder and an appreciation for the clarity of the sound.
And what clarity it is. Unless you have aluminum foil for ears, the difference should be pretty obvious. It’s not as astounding as I would want to believe, I think, but there’s a definite sense of depth can’t be found in the ‘87 remasters. The drums sound more fleshed out, the separate tracks don’t seem to muddy each other as much and there’s a three-dimensionality to it all. The voices are certainly much clearer. I could hear separate voices where I used to hear just one. The guitars have more definition and the drums don’t sound so harsh. Things just generally have more oomph to them. From the more nicely-balanced I Saw Her Standing There to the crackling vocals of Twist And Shout, it’s pretty clear that the remasters did a lot of good work. Speaking of which, you can even hear John’s voice cracking in Twist And Shout.
I think the mono version definitely sounds better. I don’t like the stereo separations, a complaint that I imagine I will be making a lot, and the mono version just seems to blend the separate tracks together so much better. Sometimes, the drums just sound removed from the other parts in the stereo version, for instance. It just doesn’t seem to come together in stretches.
That said, I think both versions sound excellent, and it’s a great start to what I’m pretty sure will be a lovely collection.
Wow, I should really think of better ways to round of my impressions.
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Pinter
“A writer’s life is a highly vulnerable, almost naked activity. We don’t have to weep about that. The writer makes his choice and is stuck with it. But it is true to say that you are open to all the winds, some of them icy indeed. You are out on your own, out on a limb. You find no shelter, no protection — unless you lie — in which case of course you have constructed your own protection and, it could be argued, become a politician.”
(Harold Pinter, Art, Truth & Politics, 2005)
Wednesday already?
So Many Things
To do! So many obligations, so much homework and so many presentations! It doesn’t help that I’m in a sore need of sleep. I think this is the closest I’ve ever come to experiencing ‘crunch time’ in my university life so far. It’s not exactly horrible, and in a way it’s nice to be stressed once in a while, but I can’t say that I’ll ask for a second helping any time soon.
The three weeks (or so) ahead are going to be a little tricky. I’m sure we’ll pull it off somehow, and even if we don’t it’ll have to sort itself out. And before you know it, it’ll be exam season.
I felt somewhat feverish yesterday. I think it’s probably the lack of sleep. I’ll try not to work too much tonight and hopefully catch a bit of sleep. Tomorrow’s a long day, so I hope I don’t burn out too soon.
Magic And Ronaldo
Now this… I found quite hilarious.
A few weeks backs we reported that a voodoo priest named Pepe had been hired to use his black-magic to injure £80 million Real Madrid star Cristiano Ronaldo, who is now sidelined for a month with an ankle injury, and the crocked forward has now become the centre of a magical war.
A Portuguese wizard, named Fernando Nogueira, had a crack at healing his countryman last week but with Ronaldo still sidelined it seems he failed to dispel the magic of Pepe, who has since responded to Nogueira’s challenge by saying he will cast a spell that will end the World Player of the Year’s career.
But all is not lost for our hero as a group of Peruvian Shamans decided to ride to Ronaldo’s rescue and gathered outside the Spanish Embassy in Lima this week to perform a cleansing ritual, involving a bizarre combination of swords and maracas, to lift the curse.
Goodness knows if any of it worked but following a clinical examination and MRI scan Real Madrid’s medical report revealed that “the minimum estimated [recovery] time is three to four weeks”.
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Local Literature
I was at the Singapore Writers Festival on Saturday and I actually bought a book by a local writer, the first time I’ve done this in what must be eight or nine years. The last one, I believe, was Kit Chan’s I Write A Page. I’ve always wanted to buy Wena Poon’s Lions In Winter, but instead of that I bought her new book The Proper Care Of Foxes the BooksActually station there. Happily got it signed. Thanks, Wena!
It’s been a while since I’ve read any local literature. And while it might seem as if I have some peculiar aversion to local writers because of their uhm local nature, that’s not really the case. Part of it is down to tastes. I’ve just not been particularly drawn to anyone’s work. Which is not saying anything against our local writers, since I don’t read as much Woolf or DeLillo as I probably should. It’s just a matter of preference.
That might be changing. I don’t know. I’ve got this new book, for one, and the newest (or at least, I think it is) Cyril Wong book with the long title and the nice drawings actually quite appeals to me. Maybe things are changing and it’s shifting towards something that suits me better.
The other big reason I don’t read local literature very much is because I think that I’m too weak to avoid getting drawn into someone else’s Singapore. I don’t want to get sucked into thinking, Yes, this is a good way to do a Singapore, and I’ll do it this way too. I don’t think that’s very healthy, and it wouldn’t be very me either.
The shape of the market doesn’t exactly make it look like my type of market either. From what I can tell (which I reckon shouldn’t be trusted), we have a growing poet population, with some sort of tradition and plenty of younger poets showing what they’re made of. I think we have capable playwrights, though admittedly, I am hopelessly impoverished in terms of theatre, especially when it comes to plays by local playwrights. My staple food remains novels and short fiction. Short fiction isn’t so bad. There are some writers practising that form here. But novels… are few and far between. So when I go into a bookstore, there actually isn’t very much that catches my eye on the local writers shelf, much less captures my heart.
But it looks like it’s changing, if very slowly, and I’m glad for that.
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The Beatles Stereo Box I
So the Beatles have landed. I got my set on Wednesday, in a giant cardboard box that made me so happy. Taking out the sticky tape, I gleefully hacked at the CAUTION tape with a pen knife and removed the big black box from the cardboard. It looked great. I was happy. Then I opened it with much joy and happily counted my albums. They were all there. I realised, however, that a corner of my big black box was damaged, which was quite disappointing.
I was soon to find more defects, and my copy of A Hard Day’s Night was not properly pressed, so it couldn’t be played. Not knowing quite what to do with it, I squished it between two heavy books and hoped for the best.
So, first impressions, not too great. (I’ll take some pictures later.)
Still, nothing can quite match the sheer happiness of being reunited with the Fab Four. I tore of the shrink wrap very carefully and marvelled at the package for a bit. Then I proceeded to listen to a few selected tracks. Having heard most of the tracks on The Beatles In Mono, I came into this with some kind of a preconceived idea of what to expect, but I must say that I was quite surprised. The stereo remasters have so far sounded better in a number of tracks.
Case in point, I listened to Money and heard some guitar details that I’d never heard before. Then I listened to some tracks on A Hard Day’s Night (I borrowed my friend’s copy for the time being, but I suppose I’ll have to have it replaced eventually), and it felt as if the stereo was particularly revealing. The voices in If I Fell were much more clearly separated, for instance. And Magical Mystery Tour showed me why sometimes it’s no point sticking to mono. Hello Goodbye certainly sounded more alive to me in stereo than in mono, with a lot more volume (that is, dimensional volume and not loudness volume) to it.
That’s not to say that everything’s great in stereo, of course. I’m pretty sure I’ll complain about the left-right vocal separations when I get to them, and I’m pretty convinced that some songs will be better in mono still (my bet is on Sgt. Pepper’s). For now though, I’m very impressed.
And without comparing the two versions, Abbey Road rocks.
So, in the weeks to come, I think I’ll be going through them and writing some impressions. And they’ll be put up here, for whatever they’re worth. In the meantime, I should get the defective CD replaced…
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