Back in the day …

In the past I have joked that I have listened to – or should that be “noticed in any real sense”(?) – very little new music since about 1984 so today Rusters should perhaps prepare themselves to be taken back to the halcyon days of the 1960s and maybe just a little beyond.

Here are a couple of links to articles and subjects that I noted overnight on the websites of the UK press:

THE BEATLES

First out of the traps is a detailed chronological tale of how the Beatles broke up at the end of the 1960s after just eight and a half years together during which they changed the face of popular music forever. From being just another bunch of Scouser scallywags to a collective status as some of the biggest and most influential musical icons that ever lived is a long way to go.

However, as my father once said, perhaps unconsciously channeling Oscar Wilde’s dicta “We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars …“: “If you think about it, it’s harder to reach the top if you’re born already halfway up the ladder and in a relatively comfortable place. If you’re born right at the bottom – from where, if you have all that it takes including the desire, the only way is up and there’s no limit to your ambition because (unlike members of the middle class) you don’t get seduced by a sense of comfortableness on the way”.

Here’s Mark Beaumont on how the Fab Four fell apart, as appears upon the website of – THE INDEPENDENT

BOB DYLAN

I’m not a Dylan fanatic – I don’t have the intellectual capacity – but I respect him as one of the cultural giants of the last hundred years.

A game changer for me was when – as part of his ongoing release of songs and recordings from his voluminous archives – about fifteen years ago I came across the Legacy Records 2004 release of The Bootleg Series Vol. 6: Bob Dylan Live, 1964, Concert at Philharmonic Hall which by complete happenchance had taken place on my thirteenth birthday.

I have to state that, fifty years later, the self-assurance, humility and homespun attitude of the then 23 year old Dylan – and yet his total command of the packed audience as he performed stunning song after song – was utterly spell-binding.

What underscores – and indeed I’m sure enhances – his legend is his apparent lack of concern about what others think of anything he does. He never stops moving, in mind or body, and just ploughs his own furrow.

The latest song he has released Murder Most Foul, taking as its starting point the JFK assassination, has just reached Number 1 in some chart or another and yet was recorded eight or nine years ago – and has been gathering dust ever since, at least until he suddenly released it for no apparent reason. At 17 minutes, it’s his longest song anyone knows of. So far.

Anyway. If you have a decent 45 minute slot in your “lockdown” waking hours today, you might like to browse through another of the much-fabled Rust list of lists.

Here’s music journalist Alexis Petridis offering his take on Dylan’s 50 greatest songs, as features today upon the website of – THE GUARDIAN