Paul Fucking McCartney

 
by Brendan Cavanagh

Over the summer, my friend and I spent countless hours in his basement spinning records, shooting pool and exchanging personal philosophies on each and every iota of life's minutiae. A slight argument arose while discussing which Beatle's voice each of us would prefer to have as our own, if we had the ability to sing. He chose John Lennon, whereas I chose Paul McCartney. It was hard, at that time, to articulate exactly what it was about each voice that we admired, so we made a pact to make each other a mix of the songs we felt best conveyed the particular style we wished to possess: the unique or emotionally evocative way a song, or even just a single line, is sung. The process took a while to initiate, but ultimately we compiled what we felt were adequate mixes, and we'll exchange them upon my return home from school this weekend.

Admittedly, it was an agonizing process. How can one be asked to narrow a plethora of perfect examples of songs to an hour and twelve minutes worth of playtime? My friend made the pointed observation that all of the songs rejected from the definitive CD could be slapped onto another playlist to produce just as good of a mix. But after hours of painstaking, meticulous construction, here are the songs I feel demonstrate the desirable nuances of Paul McCartney's voice, assembled in a fashion I felt flowed well as a CD (I sure hope he doesn't see this before I give it to him):

Paul Fucking McCartney

1) Why Don't We Do It In The Road? (The Beatles, 1968)

2) Medley A. Kansas City B. Hey Hey Hey (Beatles For Sale, 1964)
3) I've Just Seen A Face (Help!, 1965)
4) Magical Mystery Tour (Magical Mystery Tour, 1967)
5) Fixing A Hole (Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, 1967)
6) I've Got A Feeling (Let It Be, 1970)
7) Oh! Darling (Abbey Road, 1969)
8) When I'm Sixty-Four (Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, 1967)
9) Got To Get You Into My Life (Revolver, 1966)
10) You Never Give Me Your Money (Abbey Road, 1969)
11) Get Back (Let It Be, 1970)
12) P.S. I Love You (Please Please Me, 1963)
13) I'm Down (B-side to "Help!", 1965)
14) Lady Madonna (A-side with "The Inner Light", 1968)
15) Michelle (Rubber Soul, 1965)
16) Baby's In Black (Beatles For Sale, 1964)
17) The Fool On The Hill (Magical Mystery Tour, 1967)
18) Helter Skelter (The Beatles, 1968)
19) Free As A Bird (A-side with "Real Love", 1995)
20) Lovely Rita (Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, 1967)
21) Hey Jude (A-side with "Revolution", 1968)
22) I Saw Her Standing There (Please Please Me, 1963)
23) Blackbird (The Beatles, 1968)
24) Golden Slumbers (Abbey Road, 1969)
25) She's Leaving Home (Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, 1967)
26) All Together Now (Yellow Submarine, 1969)

Do you have any differing choices? Or an arguable case for another Beatle's voice? Drop a comment below.

Robert - Autumn Mix

To whom it may concern, primarily Eliot and Lauren:

My autumn mix is coming. Construction has begun, and soon, there will be only one season left.

Love,
Robert

Sketches of an Adequate Blog Post

by Brendan Cavanagh

I have to work ALL DAY today, which is a bummer because I have all these ideas for a post today, and little time to fully divulge any one of them. So I'll assemble here a small collection of the few things that have been on my mind lately:

Playing Piano

I'm bored. Oh look, the piano. Sigh, I guess I'll entertain you with a few ditties. What's that? First I think I'll pretend like I don't really know what I'm doing. Tickle a few keys here and there. Throw in a few sharps. Oh hey, I'm improvising (even though I don't really know how). Now I'm leading these arbitrary sharps and flats into a real song- Hungarian Dances No. 5? Sure. Now they know I know something of considerable merit. I'll throw them a few bones and play it twice as fast. Bask in their applause.

I think I'll just jump right into an impromptu set list. Up next we have Rage Over a Lost Penny by Beethoven. I'll play it really loud like, sound more important than I am. Just like Evgeny Kissin.

What's that? Something more contemporary? Oh all right then, I'll just play The Beatles' Let It  Be. Nah, I think all I'll give you is the opening piano bit and just a couple notes of the first verse (because that's all I know).

Yeah, okay, let's jam a little bit. I'll play the same two chords over and over and over- Bob Dylan's Sittin' On A Barbed Wire Fence.

Let's play Hungarian Dances No. 5 again, see if we can successfully play that cascading waterfall of notes in the middle of the song. Damn it! I can't do it. Try again. Again. Again. Give up. Start over. Give up.

Okay, let's take everyone's mind off my inability to play those notes and impress them with my best song- Pachabel's Canon in D. Yeah. I think I see a tear in my parents' eyes. This song is still impressive after seven years.

Oh, I'm going to attempt to jam some more, even though I know I really can't do it. These black keys sound real good together. I bet everyone thinks I'm playing a real song. Nope!

Fur Elise! Just the good part.

Uh...Hedwig's Theme!

Rage Over A Lost Penny again. Okay, I give up. I'm going to get up like everything that just happened wasn't a big deal.

Mix CDs

I love and hate making mix CDs. I mean I agonize over making them. There was one time when I was trying to make a then-important mix, and I spent several sleep-deprived nights trying to narrow down 150 songs to twenty, ultimately settling on a double CD containing in total about forty songs. Like anyone, I become invigorated by the prospect of constructing a decent playlist of songs that I feel are important to me for someone who is important to me. Except I think I put too much thought and effort into my mixes. Like, I somehow hope that there's an easy way to arrange all these different types of songs together in a fluid fashion, so that the CD will maintain a constant and unbreaking flow. But that's just so damn hard to do. Eventually what ends up happening is the first six songs on my mix will sound incredible when placed one after the other, but I give up attempting to fit the next fifteen songs in an engaging way that I see fit. But I know it still sounds awesome. And then right when I make it, all of a sudden everything on the CD seems so cliche and then I fear that the mix is too strictly temporal in that it lists the songs I'm crazy about at one particular moment in my life. So I'm afraid that in the near future, even I will find my own playlist dated and obsolete. But maybe that's the great part about my mixes- that they catalogue the most important songs to me in one particular chapter of my life and paint a picture of how I'm feeling at that point. Sometimes I think I should just start making mix EPs because they'd be about five songs long and undeniably powerful and groovy.

An Incomplete Poem Inspired By Mada's Latest Post
(from the point of view of John Wilkes Booth's reanimated wax figure at the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Museum, upon seeing the armies of resurrected Lincoln's surrounding him)

My only regret is that I had but one life to live

Four scores of top-hat hordes advance upon my waxen figure
Adhering to the commands of a long-fallen leader
146 years of lying in a tomb culminates in honest revenge
He emancipates his way through courtroom suits

HEY CONOR, LOOK HERE LOOK HERE, CONOR

What's your favorite movie, and why? Mine for a long time was Shaun of the Dead. While it's still one of my favorites, I feel like I'm clutching at it, trying to tell myself it's still my favorite, even though I know I've seen many better movies. I think Annie Hall or something has probably taken over its number one position. But I'm afraid to let that happen. What do I doooooo?