Painting

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The White Abum as a single album

I was thinking about this problem today. If I were to cut The White Album to a single album what would be kept and what would be cast asunder? Without actually consulting the track listing I made a quick list of the songs I'd most like to listen to. Out of a possible 30, this came to a worryingly slim 9. To my surprise it was very Lennon heavy (I always thought I was a Mark Corrigan type character), and it had, perhaps less surprisingly, very little representation of the long ones, strange ones or quiet ones. Because, let's face it, they're are some truly awful tracks on The White Album, Don't Pass Me By and Piggies amongst the named and shamed.

Then there's Revolution 9. This fairly uninteresting track of questionable significance made me consider the make up of this single album altogether. In the time it takes to listen to Revolution 9, you could have listened to I'm So Tired, Everybody's Got Something To Hide Except Me And My Monkey, Why Don't We Do It In The Road? and I Will, with 30 seconds leftover. So would I want to cut down the album according to time or tracks? This led to other considerations - Would I try to represent McCartney and Lennon more or less equally with a token Harrison number ala most other Beatles albums? Would I try to show the contrasting styles and conflicting individual personalities the White Album is famed for?

Looking up other attempts on the internet I came across these from old music nerd magazine MOJO. Some of these MOJO attempts neatly organise the new cut into 'Nice side' and 'Nasty side'. This approach of neatening up a sprawling album didn't seem right. If anything my original route of simply picking the songs I liked the most seemed more appropriate. The very fact of the matter is that it's the inclusion of the self indulgent, the avant garde and the Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da that makes the White album what it is. Any new cut would have to be an unrepresentative selection. So here's my 14 track cut:

Back In The USSR

Dear Prudence

Glass Onion

The Continuing Story of Bungalow Bill

While My Guitar Gently Weeps

Happiness Is a Warm Gun

Yer Blues

Everybody's Got Something to Hide Except Me and My Monkey

Sexy Sadie

Why Don't We Do It In The Road?

Revolution 1

I'm So Tired

Blackbird

Cry Baby Cry

3 observations on making this cut:

- Not only is there obvious crap on the White Album, there's a lot of 'take it or leave it' kind of stuff - I wanted to do a 15 track cut but didn't feel compelled to add any others beyond 14.

- Re-listening to aid my selection didn't really help, it's hard to re-evaluate something you've listened to hundreds of times.

- McCartney does not come out of this well.

Seinfeld and The Beatles

I like this photo.

Now if only I could get The Beatles to mock up a Seinfeld photo. For the sake of simplicity George could be George, leaving Paul to be Jerry, John as Kramer and Ringo as Elaine. Or maybe Yoko Ono could be Elaine and Ringo would be Uncle Leo or someone.

I haven't really thought this through. (In reality this topic is open to mountains of discussion).

I was thinking about making a comparison of the Seinfeld and The Beatles because I have mildly problematic obsessions with both. It turns out (fairly unsurprisingly) that it's been done before.

Here and here a couple of examples I have found.

The first link makes a neat little comparison (in it's first few paragraphs) between the two in terms of their cultural dominance of their respective eras.

The second link makes some cross generational comparisons of sitcoms and music artists which by way of summary goes thusly:

I Love Lucy - Elvis Presley, Seinfeld - The Beatles, The Office (USA) - Queen

Now, first of all, being English I have little to no working knowledge of 'I Love Lucy' but if it is anything like Elvis I imagine it was massively culturally important at the time but contains almost nothing of interest for the modern consumer. I'm sure the author reads it a little differently, but I'll go along with it.

Now there is a line in one Seinfeld episode where Jerry says he's never seen a single episode of 'Lucy' (hence destroying this guy's theory of 'no Seinfeld without I Love Lucy') but then he is a fictional character and I imagine Jerry in real life is very well read sitcom-wise. Perhaps an American viewer would be aware of allusions of 'I Love Lucy' in Seinfeld. But anyway, as far as comparing The Beatles and Seinfeld I agree with him.

But then he says The Office is like Queen. He ranks The Office (USA) his favourite sitcom of all time, so we must assume he holds Queen in equally high esteem. Now I have been known to enjoy the pompous stylings of Queen in the past but to say their better than The Beatles...well for me his theory falls to pieces. I would be prepared to give The Office a chance if he just said 'This is my favourite sitcom, you should check it out', but knowing that he ranks Queen above The Beatles, I can't help feeling his sitcom barometer must be a bit broken. How can I trust his judgement after a something like that?

Besides, he completely ignores Arrested Development. Are they the Radiohead of sitcoms? Perhaps as far as comparisons go, assigning sitcoms their equivalent music group is probably about as wanky as it gets. I'm beginning to think so.

If only I had the patience, skill and inclination to do so, I would now post a crudely put together photo of The Beatles heads superimposed onto the Seinfeld gang just to make up for wasting your time.