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You Say Goodbye: A tribute to George Martin
The years have come and gone, as have two of the Beatles. They brought us beautiful music, music that will be left behind for years to come. My mother began my lifelong love affair with the Beatles, the most fruitful of my life.
It led to me making a pilgrimage to Liverpool when I lived in England, spending three days on what can only be described as a pilgrimage, after years of having devoured every bit of Beatles literature that I could lay my hands on, that friends sent me, that relatives sent.
Cassette tapes lay around the house, in the cabinet behind the push-in bed in my parents' room. They lay in the car, the car my mother drove me around in every day. Two of my favourite things – listening to the music my mother had playing around the house, and her driving me around. The only two things that could really calm baby me.
The music, those beautiful string arrangements. They appealed to my mother, in her thirties, they appealed to me in the single digits. My mother had listened to them as a child, my uncle had grown up with them. They were loved. They are loved.
Their faces, John, Paul, Ringo, and George. The four lads from Liverpool. We've all read the stories of the Cavern Club. Of Germany, of their debauchery in and out of European borders, and we've enjoyed them.
But before all of that, they were a struggling, albeit immensely talented set of lads whom nobody wanted to sign. Rejected, spurned, like an amorous lover who kissed like a fiery Italian but was tossed by the wayside regardless.
Until George Martin. The Beatles were being managed by the talented and tragic Brian Epstein, who has also been called the Fifth Beatle for his pivotal role in their careers. And there was this trained musician, this civil engineer with movie star looks, who would be their saviour.
But they had been repeatedly rejected, turned down by Decca Records. He didn't think they were 'that great', but loved the Lennon-McCartney sound, as one does.
It was Epstein, the legend says, whose eager nature was the final step in convincing Martin, at Abbey Road Studios, to give the Beatles – who did not yet have a Ringo among their ranks, an audition.
And it was George, George Harrison, who joked around with Mr. Martin and sealed the deal.
He was behind the scenes on some of their biggest, earliest hits. Love Me Do, From Me to You, all of which started that brilliant enduring craze otherwise known as Beatlemania.
The first album I ever heard, strangely, was Yellow Submarine – brilliantly arranged and orchestrated itself, and my mother, whose favourite album is A Hard Day's Night, played that again, and again, and again, and we'd sing along together on the paisley carpet in her bedroom, both of us sitting cross-legged and rewinding the cassette.
Later, when I was older, we got a 3-in-1 CD change player with a radio antenna and cassette deck. The greatest! We'd sit there and change CDs and arrange them on our CD rack.
That album is special and beyond. My mother had a flat tyre one evening as we were driving back after dinner, and we went at all of 10pm to have that flat repaired. I was humming And I Love Her, one of my favourite songs, and my mother, who doesn't sing or play music herself, finished the line for me and we had a good chuckle at it and sang on the way back home. It's a memory even she may not remember, but one I cherish.
The Beatles were famously known for not all being trained musicians – but Martin, a musical prodigy who played piano, oboe, guitar and a number of other instruments – and was properly musically trained – filled that gap for them.
They were like a tapestry – a beautiful tapestry, albeit one with holes in it, holes that needed to be patched, darned, to Come Together. And that thread, that tailor, that magician was named George Martin.
Many who listened, and listen to the Beatles may not know the little things – that it was Martin who had to wheedle McCartney into accepting a string quartet on Yesterday, when Macca wanted only an acoustic rock sound. The result is evident, and when the song hit No.1, maybe Martin felt vindicated.
He arranged their most beautiful work. Penny Lane (the second Beatles song I ever heard) and that lovely little trumpet that I remember dancing to on that same old carpet.
Now, back to A Hard Day's Night. It was one of the albums we had lying around the house, and possibly my mum's favourite one. The film was re-released in Indian movie theatres, and my mother simply HAD to go. I went with her.
I had only ever heard the songs, never actually watched the film. I did. I fell in love, too.
It's one of my favourite limited edition DVDs, one I ended up buying in my late teens many years after the incident, but I've watched the film a million times.
That bit when Ringo goes off by himself, falls in a puddle, down a well? Those funny little bits of music behind him, behind Paul's grandfather? That was all George Martin, who also composed in secret.
Also perhaps my favourite Bond film of all time, as a massive fan of Paul McCartney (obviously) and Roger Moore (whom I still have a crush on!), Live and Let Die, was scored by Martin as well.
He was like a second father figure, said Paul McCartney, in a touching tribute to the man who, only 15 years his senior, had guided and held his hand through a dog-eat-dog world, and truly, it may be said, got their talent to hit the stratosphere (and go to outer space, quite literally).
Every time I pick up my guitar, or play my piano, I think of my love for music that started when I was a toddler. When my fingers glide across ivory or strings, and when that first bar of Here Comes the Sun comes to life, that spirit, that love, that was the Georges at work.
Their mentor in both music and life, Martin outlived half the band he had nurtured and seen grow. Remastered their music, which was truly also his.
The Cute Beatle famously said "If anyone deserved the fifth Beatle tag, it was George (Martin). Martin played that off, saying it was Neil Aspinall (their longtime roadie) who deserved that title, but it was always George.
Help, we need somebody.
Help, not just anybody.
Help, you know we need someone, they cried out.
That someone was George Martin, and now he's left home, with that lovely music in our ears and in our eyes.
Thank you for everything.
P. M., I Love You
It's June the 18th. The birthday of two very special people in my life. One of them my best friend, my soul sister and confidante, and the other my first, and most enduring true love. It was 70 years ago today that the 'Cute One' was born.
Liverpool's the birthplace of three other amazing men who have been instrumental in shaping my life. I've written before of my love affair with The Beatles, of how I love them and why. Of stereo systems and trying to figure out who was whom.
Initially, I couldn't differentiate whose voice was which, but the album covers had Paul on them, but Past Masters Vol. 1 and 2, and The Beatles 1967-1970, two of the first albums we had at home, had pictures, the former in the little booklets that are beneath CD covers. My childhood crushes, as a weird little kid, were Paul McCartney and this amazing guy named Shah Rukh Khan. (Suave, intelligent, ridiculously talented men.. now if only those were real, yes?) My mother often embarrassed me with stories of how I'd blush if I saw photos or video of them. [Which, in hindsight, are probably very, very true.]
Paul never had a particularly easy life, losing his mum very young, at fourteen.[This also strengthened his friendship with his songwriting partner, who lost his own mum at seventeen.]
He met The Quarrymen, fronted by a certain John Winston Lennon, in 1957, and a guy named George Harrison joined the group a year later. The beginnings of something extraordinary were already taking shape, something that would become part of history forevermore. After trying out several names like Johnny and the Moondogs andThe Silver Beetles,The Beatles were born in 1960.
And things would never be the same.
They started off playing at various clubs in Germany, got discovered by the genius Brian Epstein, and Beatlemania swept across the world and took control of it completely. Screaming girls were all over the place, and really, who blames them? I behave exactly the same even when I see them on TV. [I watched the Jubilee Concert live – it was 3 a.m here, I think, and I was screaming my head off, tremendously excited because Paul was due to come on. I sat through the Black Eyed Peas, Cheryl, and host of other people who call themselves musicians but really aren't, just to watch Paul.]
More has been said about the Beatles as a band than you'll ever read in your lifetime, and more than I'll ever be able to summarize succinctly. I thought I'd try to highlight the relationship between John and Paul, so I trawled the internet to assimilate information to cobble together, and couldn't get through it, as I was in tears halfway through reading.
In several interviews with John, years after The Beatles broke up, and just a few years before his death, he spoke very fondly of Paul, saying that they were like brothers, that he thought Paul was 'absolutely wonderful' and a 'brilliant man'. And I don't think a single person in the world thinks otherwise.
Women wanted him, men wanted to be him, and the public at the time didn't seem to like the fact that he was seeing (and would later marry and have a family with) an American divorcee who already had a child.
Linda Eastman was, quite simply, the love of Paul's life. Probably still is. You may think it's presumptuous to say so, but it's apparent to anybody who has heard the songs he wrote for her, or has ever seen pictures of the two together, some of which have been printed out and put up on my corkboard, and have now turned yellow, being there for so long.
You know those times when you're lying around, playing music off your sound system or mp3 player, and you just close your eyes, and in that moment, you can imagine yourself sitting on the floor at Abbey Road studios, just watching these 4 geniuses (genii?) in action? I've always felt like that. Sometimes, when I just lie back and close my eyes, I can hear and see Paul twanging his bass and, in typical Paul fashion, bossing the others around, shaking his head; John, grumbling and staring wistfully; George, quiet, his eyes on his guitar, trying to and Ringo, bobbing about. I can smell the marijuana (no, I swear it's not mine!), feel the fibres in the carpet, and generally just imagine myself as part of that wonderful, wonderful era (musically, at least). Kind of makes it annoying to have to come back to the real world.
Then again, that's just a testament to the fact that their music spans space and time (quite literally, too- NASA launched "Across the Universe" into deep space four years ago).
Some fans have a favourite Beatle, some do not. I belong to the 'do not' category, because I'm in love with each of them in so many different ways. I always had a crush on Paul, which later, (entirely in my head of course), became true love. True love in a gorgeous, chocolate, perfect-exterior, true love that wrote songs that touched and melted a million hearts spontaneously. The Power of Paul.
The cute one broke a ton of hearts when he got married, but millions more shattered when, in 1970, the Beatles (unofficially) ceased to exist. [Officially, they dissolved in 1975.]
Post-Beatles, Paul proved how brilliant he really is, whether as part of a songwriting team or by himself. If you haven't already, I would suggest listening to as much Wings as you can (LOVE them), and as for specific Paul McCartney albums, I highly recommend Ram (Paul and Linda's first album after the Beatles broke up) and Flaming Pie, which I'm biased towards- it's my favourite solo Paul album. On there you will find some serene, mellow, amazing guitar and vocal work that will transport you to the meadows and glens and foggy green hills where Paul probably wrote all this music. If you can't physically travel there, it's the next best thing. Sometimes even better.
Incidentally, in addition to lead and harmony vocals, Paul plays bass [most Beatles songs], acoustic guitar [Michelle, Blackbird], electric guitar [Drive My Car, Helter Skelter], piano and keyboards [Let it Be, The Long and Winding Road].
He couldn't read music, and played everything by ear.
I guess some people just have music in their blood. That and the innate ability to make people happier than they ever thought they could be. People at the ends of the earth, people whose existence they are not even aware of.
Paul's life has rarely seemed particularly rosy. Losing your mum at an early age, losing one of the closest friends you've ever had, then your wife, the love of your life (no, I did not mean for that to rhyme), and going through a terrible divorce from what I can only describe as an evil, money-grubbing leech can't be easy, can it? But somehow, he's managed to keep writing and performing like the damn live wire he's always been, getting every single person to sing along; 8 years old or 80. And being an animal-rights activist. And an amazing dad.
When I find myself in times of trouble, Paul McCartney comes to me. We walk down the Long and Winding Road, and he tells me to Let it Be, to take my broken wings and learn to fly. [I'd go on with the references, but I think you get the picture 😉 ]
Someday, Paul, when I'm in my own little villa in the English countryside with my many, many dogs, I'll still be listening to your breathtaking voice and your lyrics that make me laugh and cry and feel carefree and elated all at the same time. I WILL still need you when I'm 64.
Thanks, Sir Paul, for just being. [For the benefit of everybody out there.] And to the songwriting friendship of James Paul McCartney Jr and John Winston Ono Lennon, the most timeless one of all. In the midst of the shitstorm of musicians that really aren't, ones who need garish clothing and autotune and computers to be noticed, I'm so glad, nay, relieved that Paul's music has endured.
Here's to 70 years of the coolest, most phenomenal existence, and many more to come.
I'll leave you with one of my favourite solo Paul songs as I kiss my Paul poster goodnight.
Mother's Day?
It's Mother's Day in the States, India (and, I'm assuming, in a lot of other countries around the world).
It's also one of the many hundred million Hallmark-manufactured, made-by-conglomerate days celebrated all over the world. In honour of the, um, auspicious occasion, I thought I'd explore why people HAVE children to begin with.
As someone who does not have children, and does not intend to at any point in the distant future, [mostly because I think a child requires a sane, stable parent, neither of which I am] I chose to explore this because I can be objective about it.
I've always wondered why people have kids at all. I came up with a few reasons:
1) It's an accident (married, not married, together, broken up, whatever the status of their relationship may be)
2) They feel like it's a social obligation – this could be many, many things or a permutation or combination of several, like
a) Reaching a certain age
b) Being with their partner for a certain amount of time
c) Being married for a certain amount of time
d) People that won't stop chiming in with their tuppence worth
3) They want something in their image – which is also rather connected to wanting to pass on their genetic material, which is more or less a natural biological drive in humans, primates, and most of the animal kingdom.
Now primates and the rest of the animal kingdom, I can understand. But humans are, believe it or not, equipped with more advanced cognitive facilities, ones that enable them to mentally reason out scientific, logical reasons for wanting to have a child, reasons that go beyond not wrapping it before tapping it, or wanting a little munchkin that looks like them.
Here in our happy human world, we have tests for everything, and I mean EVERYTHING. There are tests for college, high school, even PREschool, to drive, for musical proficiency, intelligence, writing, reading, even ones to test your mental and/or physical resilience. They have gun tests for cops, and even civilians who want to own firearms (in most places) so they don't endanger innocent lives, and they can be traced if they try.
There is, however, no 'test' to see if people are fit to be parents. Now obviously that is a bit of whimsy on my part, seeing as nearly everybody who chooses to have a kid possesses one sort of genitals or the other, and it's not like a third party could control that. Admittedly, that would also be rather big-brother like, and totalitarianism is not something I've ever been even remotely fond of.
Still, with people reproducing like rabbits seemingly in the absence of coherent thought, some sort of regulation would be nice. I don't mean 'breeding' kids with what may seem like 'higher cognitive processes' or something like that. No, I am not a squat, terrifying, anti-Semitic, tyrannical little despot with a toothbrush moustache who massacres innocents.
I do, however, sort of agree with Friedrich Nietzsche's ideal of the Übermensch, an ideal he wrote about in Also Sprach Zarathustra. My view of Der Übermensch, however, is not even remotely racial, but more related to eugenics and culture than anything else.
[Incidentally, those two are related – I read an article in the paper not two days ago that I shall try to link to if I find it.]
Basically, certain cultures affect the genetic makeup of the people that constitute them- the example the article mentioned was that the culture loved milk, so to speak. As they ingested a larger quantity of milk and dairy, their genetic evolution was affected by their cultural evolution, and probably vice-versa. (A quick Google search tells me this is known as the Dual Inheritance Theory, or gene-culture coevolution.)
Eugenics is not really the same, as DIT has to do with natural selection, which is, self-explanatorily, natural, but has similar effects. They are different in that eugenics is a conscious scientific effort to improve the quality of life. So it's selection all right, just not completely natural.
An aside to those of you who find eugenics interesting – I'd suggest you begin with an extremely interesting documentary I saw on the BBC, on HardTalk – Stephen Sackur interviews Sir Mark Walport, a former Head of Division of Medicine at Imperial, and a eugenicist. For anybody in the UK, you can watch this here. For the rest of you, however, if you didn't catch it on the telly, the only way to get access to it is to download it, here.
It's more to do with healthcare-related eugenics, but raises some very pertinent ethical questions that would be relevant either way.
Anyway, back to what I was originally talking about. Children. Like I said, much as I, and millions of others, hate control and interference (and it's there, notwithstanding), I've found myself thinking it would be nice if there were some way to check what kind of people reproduced, and what kind didn't. While this would, ultimately, affect society, I mean it on a more grassroots, basic level – sure, intelligence would be nice, but in my opinion parents should be able to provide the child a home; by a home, I am not referring exclusively to a solid, sturdy roof over their heads, financial security and an education and discipline (if you, however, believe in corporal punishment, I would like to have an angry, angry word with you), but unconditional love (again, and some might disagree, I don't think humans are fully capable of unconditional love towards other human beings, maybe the conditions aren't very visible. That isn't to say I don't love people/ am not loved by people who know me inside out. All the good stuff and all the not-so-good stuff).
With unconditional love should come emotional security, and some sort of shelter or haven. The knowledge that no matter how awful the outside world is, how terrifying and absolutely huge and daunting it may be, how full of monsters, there's still that one place they can take refuge in, the one place they can feel absolutely, completely emotionally secure, and grow up with self-esteem decent enough to help them function and be safe.
In fact, that, to me, takes precedence over most of the other things – except an education, which could help a child absorb all those ideals in SOME form, or, barring that, at least be strong enough mentally and/or intellectually to function in their absence, which might not be the same thing, but can be good enough for human function to proceed normally and be a prosocial member of society. Karl Menninger once said "what's done to children, they will do to society."
So education, while of paramount importance all on its own, is a defense mechanism for society. Much like the oxygen masks you find on commercial airliners.
In the event of a drop in emotional security, your education will drop automatically from ceiling panels. Remain in your seat, reach up firmly and pull on the mask to activate the flow of common sense and intellect. Secure the elastic band around your head, place the mask over your nose and mouth, and breathe normally. Secure your own mask before helping children or other passengers.
See how universal stuff like that is?
That is one of the main reasons I place intellect and education higher up on the scale than emotional welfare – the stronger it is, the better a person's backup mechanism, and the easier it is for them to function in the real outside world, filled with big bad creepies and crawlies, where mum and dad and the nightlight can't save you from the boogeyman.
So do I wish there were some sort of marker or checkpoint to test WHY parents have their children.
While I haven't been one (a parent, not a child, which I still am in many, many ways, and do not ever plan to be one), I firmly believe a child should be brought into an environment where it is wanted, loved, and cared for, and not just with toys, and as they grow up, expensive cars and everything money can buy. A child shouldn't be brought into the world just so you can continue your 'family name' – something that happens in so many societies that believe in trying desparately, no matter how many other children they have, to have a son.
It may seem like a cheesy, corny, overdone one, but the parent:child : : potter:pot (no, not cannabis) analogy is true. A child is an impressionable, tiny, clayey little sponge that soaks up whatever is around it and is shaped by it, too. Whether you think you're displaying them or not, your reasons for having a kid, if they are selfish, will ultimately show up subconsciously. (That isn't me talking, but every psychologist, ever. Attitudes, even if they are not overtly displayed, manifest themselves subconsciously anyway.)
I am a strong, strong advocate of adoption. I'm sure there are biological parents who love and want their children just as much, and I'm aware of the fact that many people (not all of them, as I personally know exceptions to this rule) look to adoption as a last resort, only if normal conception, IVF and surrogacy have all failed, or they do not have access to them.
With adoption, though, I think there's this sort of longing or want to actually take care of a child, rather than just pass on genetic material (proving my point that humans are capable of differentiating between the two), and that actual desire to want a child for the child and not just for oneself, or like a glorified bipedal pet,makes a world of difference.
There may be no 'right' way to bring up a child (barring the obvious: keeping it away from drugs, drink, out of danger, stuff like that), but loving it and just being there certainly is the best way to start.
The desire to take care of something and the ability to love it no matter what, is what makes a parent; not just fully functional gonads and genitals.
For those of you who have ever watched M*A*S*H, I agree with Colonel Potter:
Having babies is fun, but babies grow up into people.
I'd like to end this post with TWO songs instead of my usual one. Both of them by the same man, both beautiful, but both about very, very different perspectives. If you haven't heard them, please, listen to both.
Here Comes the Quiet One
Let me tell you how it will be.
George 'the Quiet One' Harrison is one of those people in the world that means more to me than any real person I've ever known, even myself. He's like family to me, even though I never knew the man personally.
But when I listen to him play and sing and speak, it really feels like I do. I've 'known' George since I was a little baby, so 21 years and counting now. Back then, of course, I had no idea which Beatle was which on the record, so I just enjoyed listening to them rather indifferently.
George songs always sounded 'different', though. They had a very otherworldly feel to them, while still being about the human condition (and sometimes very, very scary indeed).
One of the first Beatles songs I ever heard, one that was on the 1967-1970 album (the first Beatles album I ever owned, also called the Blue Album), was Disc 2, Track 8 – a.k.a Here Comes the Sun. Ever since then, it's always been my cheer-up song, one I played and sang along to when I felt down and out, lonely in a world full of people who hated me [As a victim of bullying, I hated school with a vengeance.]
The tears would always come, but these were tears of happiness, and me realising I was there for me. As was George. As a teen, like all other teens, part of me was supremely, idiotically mushy, played 'Something' all the time in the background whilst dreaming of the endless list of random idiots I'd 'liked' that had never reciprocated, and moped around, waiting for love as it had been described by Mr. Harrison.
Come December 2000, and my mother (the person who began my love affair with four of my husbands) took a 9-year-old me to the multiplex to watch a film with her, a re-release of an old 1960s movie. Of course, I had no idea what it was, and the fact that it was in black-and-white only served to put me off wanting to go, but I ended up going nevertheless.
Back then, I was even smaller than I am now, and the seat barely stayed down (it doesn't go all the way down even now, funnily enough), so mum shoved her (insanely heavy) purse into the gap between a possibly 3-and-a-half-foot tall me (at 21, I'm just over 5 feet tall, so that's very possible) and the seat.
Mum didn't trust me with my own ticket stub then, because I lost stuff at the drop of a hat, and 9-year-olds are generally rather clumsy anyway, so I didn't know until we finally got to our screen at the multiplex that we were going to be watching A Hard Day's Night. I'd heard the song, of course, but had no idea there was a film, and certainly not one that starred the Beatles themselves.
Much to my mother's relief, I stopped grumbling, and began to giggle at Paul's grandfather. (He was a clean old man.) Much to the annoyance of the handful of other people at the screening, however, I sang along with a few songs while my mum shot daggers at me and tried to get me to shut up. I secretly think she wanted to sing along too.
Even though the film, and, to some extent, the band, was the John and Paul show, there were moments, even back then, much before Rubber Soul, Revolver, the White Album and Abbey Road (you could see George's genius shine through, even then.)
The first George scene I remember is when he's being interviewed by a reporter, who asks him 'What do you call that hairstyle you're wearing?'
I have no idea why I found that as funny as I did, but even replaying the scene in my head as I write this, I'm laughing. George-Hair jokes have always been hilarious to me, but one dialogue from that film, funny as it may have seemed then, breaks my heart into tiny little pieces when I think about it now.
"What's this about an annual illness, George?"
— " I get cancer every year."
It's not like anybody had any way to know, but it's heartbreaking nevertheless.
Anyway, obviously only good things happened on set for Georgie; the man met his future wife, Pattie Boyd, there.
The legend of the Beatles and how they came together amazes me every time I read about it (and I've read about it enough times to do an entire doctoral thesis on it).
Though George studied at the same primary school as John Lennon, just a few years below, he met a certain Paul McCartney, one year his senior, at the Liverpool Institute. Lennon asked McCartney to join his skiffle group, the Quarrymen, and McCartney subsequently recruited a certain young boy named George Harrison who could play Raunchy on his guitar. [To anybody who's reading this and hasn't watched Nowhere Boy yet, it's rather a lovely film. Go watch!]
I apologise in advance for using the cliché , but the rest, as they say, is history. And what a very amazing history it was.
Through A Hard Day's Night, Help!, Magical Mystery Tour (the films, I mean, not the albums), you got to see Georgie. And through the albums, you got to know him. His songs started out as fluffy, fun, light tracks, and then they morphed into something else altogether, something incongruous with the fun-but-quiet George that the public saw. (There is one pretty early track however, off Rubber Soul, 1965 – see If I Needed Someone if you haven't already heard it.)
He became not just 'insanely talented guitarist' George, but pensive, moody, brooding and deeply-in-love songwriter George Harrison.
As time passed, the songs got far more intense than they'd ever been, some of them considerably darker. It was during this time that George had been introduced to Pandit Ravi Shankar and began playing the sitar, a skill he first displayed while playing on Norwegian Wood.
If you really want to listen to George on sitar, here is a lovely little track to get you started. A George composition on Revolver (a year after he first met Ravi Shankar), Love You To has a sort of sitar 'solo', if you will. Pretty damn brilliant indeed.
'68, the White Album and Hari Georgeson gave us the musical masterpiece known as While My Guitar Gently Weeps, a terribly heartbreaking, poignant song- with a solo by a certain Mr. Clapton, who would go on to have an affair with, move in with, and marry Ms. Pattie Boyd, in spite of which the two remained close until Harrison's death – they called one another 'husbands-in-law'.
This whole broody song streak sort of continued until Abbey Road, which happens to contain two of my favourite Harrison compositions and favourite songs ever – Something, which, as I have previously mentioned, I consider one of the most romantic songs ever written, and Here Comes the Sun, which made the world a wonderful, beautiful place, full of rainbows, flowers, love and laughter.
George became somewhat of a mystic, and got involved with ISKCON during his visit to India. (As I am not the biggest fan of religion per se, I shall refrain from passing any form of judgement whatsoever.) He did a whole lot of philanthropic work, however.
The world and I saw George evolve, but perhaps he had always been that way – Ringo, in an interview, said that they were just four young boys who went through all this crazy stuff together, and even with the world at their feet and the swankiest facilities at their disposal, all they did was sit in the bathroom and talk to one another.
They were like a weird, loving, dysfunctional family that ended up breaking up in 1970, but probably loved one another to death.
George, in particular, was known to be extremely forgiving – to the point that until he died, his best friend was the same man who had had an affair with and married his wife Pattie.
Clapton would go on to arrange the Concert for George, organised by George's second wife and widow, Olivia (who also saved him from a crazed, knife-wielding attacker), and Dhani, his son, who happens to be a doppelganger of his dad. Paul McCartney once said that with Dhani up on stage, it was as if George stayed young and they all got old.
I suppose that IS what happens when you die young – you stay young and are remembered for all eternity as such, which, in its own way, is rather beautiful, and much what happened to John Lennon as well.
Like every other Beatlemaniac, I can never really have a favourite Beatle (it's seriously impossible), but John and George were always the two I identified with the most, because I saw bits and pieces of myself in them, somehow. [Now if only I had an ounce of their talent, I'd be happy.]
Hari Georgeson, it will always be your voice and music I seek comfort in when all the troubles of the world are upon me, it seems like there's no way out, and all I can see is darkness. Life may go on within you and without you, but you are missed every single day.
To one of the most talented, criminally underrated, beautiful musicians that has ever lived – Happy Birthday, George Harold Harrison.
To conclude, here's a poignant glimpse of the legendary Sir George Martin with Dhani, who not only looks like, but also sounds identical to his dad. (It will not fail to get you emotional.)
"You've got it too. You're just like your father."
Nothing's Gonna Change My World
9th October,1940. A genius was born, in Liverpool.
I wasn't even sure how I should begin this post- how in the world do you write something to a person who died before you were born, but one who's been part of your life ever since you were a little child?
And by a 'part' of my life, I mean most of it. I still remember coming home to empty rooms after school as a little girl, both my parents at work, and I'd do the one thing I'd been asked to avoid – tinker around with the music system. I'd seen my mother press a button, and three CDs would come spinning out, which I found infinitely fascinating.
My first memory was of this boxed set of discs with four cute men in pajamas staring down a balcony, and I decided to investigate.
I wondered why the CDs had apples on them for a minute – then into the player they went.
And there they remain, to this day – the discs, every cassette, every lyric book, even the music system I played it all on.
And the rest, as they say, is history.
Every single room that I've had or lived in, ever since I was a child, I've had a picture, photograph, drawing or poster of John Lennon, Paul McCartney, and other pictures of the Four of them together, being Fab. For three years, all I had was the Blue Album and Yellow Submarine, both of which I wore out in a very, very short span of time, trying to figure out which voice was John, which was Paul, which was George, and which Ringo.
I had every lyric committed to memory in a few years, but I was hungry for more, and a raid of the old cassettes that we had, the ones that were pretty much the primary source of music, even in the early 90s, yielded a compilation of hits.
Pretty much every spare moment I had after school and homework, before homework, during homework — and my favourite – INSTEAD of homework–was spent listening to The Beatles, dancing and prancing around the room, and jumping on the bed as I sang along, or banging out notes on my little mini Casio keyboard.
Then, my tenth birthday happened. The Beatles 1 album had just been released two months earlier, and I'd begged my parents to buy it ever since, but no go.
As I began to open my presents, I saw a thin, hard one on top of the pile, from a friend at school.
I attempted to get the paper off delicately, but the moment I saw a little flash of the bright red cover, I knew what it was. I still remember jumping around, putting it into the CD player, and getting infinitely excited when a song I'd already heard came on. I practically screamed out the words with John, Paul, Ringo and George in my excitement.
Growing older, which has been fun in parts, but not really all that fun, led to Revolver and Rubber Soul entering my life. Money from odd jobs, birthday presents, or just from visiting relatives – it was all stashed away, as I worked towards saving up the price of another Beatles CD. The White Album, Revolver and Rubber Soul slowly came into my life, as did the discovery of Let it Be and the Past Masters volumes in the corners of my own house. I can attest to the fact that they helped me through some of the most difficult years of my life – being bullied, abused and discriminated against at school, and then being physically, verbally and mentally abused at home, and looking to harming myself to deal with all the pain and resentment I felt.
I discovered Lennon Legend: The Very Best of John Lennon at a supermarket, while my mum was doing groceries, and bought it right there and then.
I think I'd already begun my journey discovering John Lennon as a child, but listening to this helped me discover the genius behind the glasses, the man behind the moptop, as it were.
It was amazing to watch the metamorphosis of a person I'd never personally known, who'd lived and died before my time, from a moptopped, adorable teenage heartthrob, to a long-haired, bespectacled, hippie heartthrob (to me, anyway.) The music had begun to evolve long before, as the simple, beautiful love songs became, first beautiful, imaginative, (though drug-fuelled) colourful 'trips', (a process that had already begun during Rubber Soul), as Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band yielded the epic Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds, the subject of which has been much-debated, to the transcendental-meditation-influenced White Album. Their music afterward began to become progressively more a compilation of their solo work, and less of a 'band thing' – it was amazing work, every last bit, but that of four talented entitites playing on an album, not working together.
The Beatles had famously refused to play in front of a segregated audience at the Cow Palace in Daly City, California, in 1965, at a time when revolutionaries like Malcolm X and Martin Luther King, Jr., were spearheading movements against racism, although they had very different methods; Malcolm X believed in black separatism, while the widely known Civil Rights Movement headed by Martin Luther King, Jr, focused on what the Beatles believed in – integration.
Sadly, both Malcom X and Martin Luther King, Jr., would go on to be assassinated within the next 3 years, perhaps a foreshadowing of what, years later, was to happen to Lennon himself.
Beautiful harmonies about love and dancing and the simple, fun, beautiful bits of life, became anti-war anthems, telling people War was Over if they wanted it, if only they would Give Peace a Chance.
Perhaps I'm deifying Lennon too much.
There were several things he did that I found abhorrent, to say the least – the fact that he was, by his own admission, physically violent' "…..I was a hitter. I couldn't express myself and I hit…" , or that he left a wife and 5 year old son for a random artist he met at an art gallery in London (I will be the first to admit I am not a fan of Yoko Ono.).
Part of me understands where he's coming from – the utter frustration of things not going your way, in any aspect of your life, baggage from the past, general pent-up anger that only gets worse, festering, bubbling, coming to a boil, and exploding. I've never been physically violent with others, but I have been, and still am, sometimes, violent with myself – sometimes it seems there is no other way to deal with all that pain and anger but to feel it, physically.
While this does not mean I condone violence, in any form, on any level, I admire that he came to terms with his own failings – here is his statement, in its entirety: ""I used to be cruel to my woman, and physically—any woman. I was a hitter. I couldn't express myself and I hit. I fought men and I hit women. That is why I am always on about peace"- and proceeded to do something about them. I still haven't been able to, not completely.
Goodness knows, in today's world, where everyone is judged by the way they look and dress, immediately stereotyped and compartmentalised, we could use something to the effect of Bagism. Total communication, and only hearing what another says, not what they look like, or how they dress, whether they fit our perception of 'ugly' or 'beautiful' (words that not only matter too much in today's world, but that are no longer subjective) – something I have had to personally suffer through, throughout my childhood, school, college, and continue to do so.
He was also an active feminist, writing the very inflammatorily titled Woman is the Nigger of the World, inspired by James Connolly, who said "the female is the slave of the slave." Eight years later, he wrote the beautiful Woman – "to Yoko, and to all women", describing them as 'the other half of the sky'.
It continues to be one of my favourite songs.
Sadly, 30 years later, we seem to have regressed into treating women as a different species of being altogether, one incapable of making rational decisions, or engaging in ratiocinative thought at all.
Music and lyrics seem to have gone down the proverbial toilet – as of 2011, popular song lyrics include "I'm trying to find the words to describe this girl without being disrespectful, damn she's a sexy b*tch/" ( he tells the woman she is nothing, compared to his neighbourhood whore ?!!?! ) , and other lyrics, even by female 'musicians' (the term is very loosely used nowadays), who seem to think women want nothing but to look like princesses and be 'rescued', or ones that find it amazing when their boyfriends tell them to "sit back down where you belong. In the corner of my bar with your high heels on".. And it's not just the 'older' audiences that are being targeted, but girls as young as 8 and 9 years old. Impressionable, unsure, just beginning to form opinions..of others, and, more importantly, of themselves.
He was, back in the 70s, the first 'househusband' – breaking what had been, and possibly continues to be a major stereotype – the man is the breadwinner, and his primary job is to 'bring home the bacon' – everything else was secondary; all the woman must do is sit at home, take care of the child, and tend to household chores.
While the ideal of women solely tending to children and household chores may be slowly disappearing from most of the world, living in India, I can safely say that except for a certain section of the socio-economically advanced, this ideal still holds true (and certainly, for some of the 'upper class' as well.) Most rural AND urban masses seem to believe in it, no matter how educated they, or their children are.
Although not a soul would find it awkward for a man to work as his wife stays at home to tend to the 'chores' and 'children', a househusband would still be frowned upon in today's society – instead of looking at him as a person who has taken over the duties of tending to the household, society would judge him 'incapable', among other things – I suppose men are victims, too.
A quote by Lennon on the birth of his second son, Sean, warmed my cold heart immensely : "He didn't come out of my belly but, by God, I made his bones, because I've attended to every meal, and to how he sleeps, and to the fact that he swims like a fish."
He had been attempting to get back in touch with his older son, Julian, during his relationship with May Pang, which he called his 'Lost Weekend', and had, for the most part, retired from the public eye, choosing, instead, to focus on his family.
The tragic ending to the entire saga, however, is known to all. He was, tragically, fatally shot, on the 8th of December, 1980, while returning to his own home, by a man who had asked him for an autograph hours earlier- a man who I like to think is part of the group I call the scum of the Earth, a man named Mark David Chapman.
And that day, with no disrespect to Ritchie Valens, Buddy Holly, J.P Richardson, or a certain Mr. Don McLean, is what I consider one of the 'Days the Music Died', and with it, an icon – of music, of peace, love, integration, feminism and so much of what is beautiful in the world.
To a man who changed my life more than a decade after he was gone and continues to change it, every day, who has been a part of it for 20 years and counting, who shall continue to be so till the day I die , and inspires me in every possible way, to one half of the most beautiful songwriting team that shall ever be, to one of my two favourite musicians-and people- in the world, with a certain Paul McCartney, after whom he was my favourite Beatle – to Mr. John Winston Ono Lennon, who once said something that is applicable to anything in life, anything at all.
"When it gets down to having to use violence, then you are playing the system's game. The establishment will irritate you – pull your beard, flick your face, to make you fight.
Because once they've got you violent, then they know how to handle you. The only thing they don't know how to handle is non-violence and humour."
I hope, someday, that the world will, truly, live as one.


text:
if you have a point about safety issues, then please sstate what you would do better.
Show as a better instruction plan, since I think everyone wants safe lessons. And if you think they are not safe enough, teach us, our whole sport will be thankful!
But if you have nothing to offer, this thread will end here.
Every conflict can be solved, let's do it now or there is no conflict.

subset: commoncrawl


text: This best practices guide provides a solution for a SPARC virtualized environment that hosts general computing workloads using the following technologies: Server Platform: Oracle SPARC T4 servers (T4-2 or T4-4); Virtualization Technology: Oracle VM Server for SPARC 2.2 or later; Datacenter Management: Enterprise Manager Ops Center 12c; Network Infrastructure: Sun Network 10GbE Switch 72p; Storage Infrastructure: Sun ZFS Storage 7320 Appliance. The solution provides a scalable, performance implementation which can be effectively used as a foundation for a variety of applications, including standalone datacenters and cloud computing solutions. By following these best practices, you'll be able to produce an easy to manage environment that supports automatic high-availability failover and live migration of guest virtual machines. This guide describes key design factors to consider during a deployment, and leverages best practices that have been developed through years of experience in datacenter and virtualization management.


text:
Oct. 7, 2011
NORTH DARTMOUTH, MA-The University of Massachusetts Dartmouth's women's tennis team was able to get some experience for a couple of their newcomers in a 9-0 victory over host Newbury in a non-conference match at the Pine Manor College Tennis Courts Friday afternoon.
Sophomores Alex Post (Plymouth, MA/Plymouth North HS) and Casey Auman (Springfield, MA/Cathedral HS) each earned their first victories of the season in Friday's match. Post defeated Alex Derderian of the Nighthawks at number three singles, 8-2, while Auman downed Olivia Iafrate at number four singles, 8-0.
Senior Courtney Morey (Mashpee, MA/Mashpee HS) defeated Kristen Conners at number one singles, 8-3, and sophomore Allison Furtado (Fairhaven, MA/Fairhaven HS) downed Jennifer Swafford at number two singles, 8-2. Morey and Furtado combined to defeat Connors and Swafford at number one doubles, 8-0, while freshman Hannah Schulze (Chelmsford, MA/Chelmsford HS) and junior Liz Girczyc (Attleboro, MA/Attleboro HS) downed Derderian and Iafrate at number two doubles, 8-0.
"As the scores indicated, we played extremely well," said UMass Dartmouth Head Coach Ralph Perry. "A couple of our younger players, Alex Post and Casey Auman, served well, moved the ball around consistently, and hit the ball very well. I was disappointed that Newbury did not have a full squad for the match."
The Corsairs improved to 7-2 with the victory, while the Nighthawks dropped to 1-9 with the defeat. UMass Dartmouth will return to action when they visit Salem State next Tuesday.


text:
oh yes, look and weep for i have found the dvd box set: uncut version of the little rascals.
i was working on a neighbors pc when i noticed some dvd's with a bit of dust on them sitting in the corner.
i was like, HEY, is that what i think it is???? and he was like OOOOOO yes.
it's a shame they will never be shown again to the public, i couldn't even find the images for them so i had to scan each of the boxes myself.
here they are in all their glory....


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PLAYA DEL REY, Calif. (MarketWatch) — It is written that "in the spring, a young man's fancy lightly turns to thoughts of love." But we find that springtime may be less about falling in love with stocks and more about doing a bit of spring cleaning that injects some "new merchandise" with fresh potential into investors' portfolios.
Spring cleaning
With a change of seasons, comes a chance to do a little portfolio maintenance. Do you sell in April and go away? Buy and hold? Move into seasonal stocks? Let MarketWatch's experts help you freshen your investments.
• Market ratios that spell trouble
• Balancing your portfolio for spring
• Two financial stocks to sell and two to buy
• 11 stocks to throw out during spring cleaning
• A not-so-pleasant spring for Europe
• Bringing some spring air into your portfolio
• Should you sell in April?
• Clean up with perpetual dividend raisers
• A mutual fund review that doesn't hurt
• There's more to tech than Apple
Bond investors can still find attractive opportunities, says Tad Rivelle, CIO for Fixed Income at investment manager TCW.
Sometimes that means getting rid of old, laggard holdings and recycling that cash into newer, fresher opportunities that are less overplayed and which investors are either unaware or skeptical.
The current rally that began with the New Year has blossomed into a full-fledged trend that has certainly seen the likes of big stocks like Apple, Inc. AAPL, -1.49% eclipse the $600 price level, but underneath the surface lies a whole different world of opportunity.
In fact, in any bull cycle, many of the best-performing leaders are stocks that represent "new merchandise," and the list goes on from stocks like America Online, Inc. AOL, +2.33% and Qualcomm, Inc. QCOM, +0.85% from 1999, Crocs, Inc. CROX, +3.49% and First Solar, Inc. FSLR, +0.86% in 2007, and Lululemon Athletica LULU, -0.77% and Chipotle Mexican Grill CMG, -2.29% which continue today in 2012, all relatively new and unknown stocks at the time they first hit the investment scene.
Today we are finding similar opportunities in names that have been recent IPOs in the past year or less, and some of these are just beginning to emerge from their initial post-IPO consolidations. One of the most exciting areas of the market in 2012 will no doubt prove to be the social-networking space, set to generate an even more high-frequency buzz when Facebook FB, -1.21% goes public in May.
In the meantime, we think professional/career social-networking concern LinkedIn Corp. LNKD may be starting a potential upside price move as it emerges from the consolidation it has been working on since coming public last May. LNKD has had nearly an entire year to wring out all the hot-IPO mania that surrounded the stock back at that time, as the weekly chart of LNKD in Figure 1 shows.
These days more investors seem in a mood to short LNKD than buy it, and we think that from a contrarian perspective, this is a positive for the stock. Despite having nearly a quarter of the float sold short, the LNKD bears have been getting their heads handed to them as the stock flirts with and bounces above the $100 price level for the first time since last year. We like LNKD here with the idea that it should hold $95 support on this latest breakout.
In 2002, smartphones and laptop computers did not come with cameras as standard equipment. Today we know that they are considered quite standard, and one company back then that benefitted from the "build-out" of camera chips becoming standard equipment on smartphones and PCs was Omnivision Technologies OVTI
Today, we see another company, Invensense Inc. INVN, +6.17% a maker of motion-detector/sensor chips for smartphones, tablets, and other devices, as being analogous to OVTI in that it is well-positioned to benefit from the continued "build-out" of motion-detector/sensor technology that makes it standard equipment on smartphones, tablets, and other devices.
Thus INVN can benefit from the secular adoption of motion-detector/sensor technology just as OVTI did from the secular adoption of camera technology in the broad area of consumer technology products and gadgets.
From a technical standpoint, we first alerted our followers at selfishinvesting.com to the initial pocket pivot breakout in INVN back at the very start of January 2012, as we show in Chart 2, the daily chart of INVN. The stock then went on to issue two more pocket pivot buy signals before most recently breaking out of a short four-week consolidation and issuing yet another pocket pivot buy point on March 23. INVN is a prime example of the strong technical action that is characteristic of these outstanding recent IPOs that emerge as a strong leadership component to any bull market move.
While LNKD and INVN are two examples of "new merchandise" in this market as they emerge from recent consolidations, investors should make a point of making themselves aware of the new merchandise that comes into the stock market in the form of recent IPOs. Monitoring sites like MarketWatch.com for news about new IPOs can keep one abreast of potential new opportunities before they come to market, and if they show strong technical characteristics once they do come to market, they may provide fertile ground for what could to a profitable "spring planting" of investment dollars in your portfolio.
Both LNKD and INVN were IPOs within the last year, with INVN coming public as recently as November 2011. Despite the difficult economic environment there have still been a number of young, entrepreneurial, and innovative companies showing up in this stock market, and we tend to think this is a positive development for the markets and the economy, but most of all for investors as this "new merchandise" provides fresh new crops of emerging investment ideas with big profit potential - history proves it, and 2012 is no different in this regard.
Disclosure: We are long INVN and LNKD.
Gil Morales and Dr. Chris Kacher are both principals and managing directors of MoKa Investors LLC and Virtue of Selfish Investing, LLC, cofounders of www.selfishinvesting.com and co-authors of "Trade Like An O'Neil Disciple: How We Made 18,000% in the Stock Market" (Wiley, August, 2010).


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I hear that Argo has won the Academy Award for best picture. I saw the movie on Scott's recommendation and thought it was quite good, but inferior to Lincoln which I also saw on Scott's recommendation.
How Argo compares to other highly-regarded movies of 2012, I cannot say. Absent a strong recommendation by someone I know and trust, I don't attend Hollywood films. But I suspect that Argo clinched its Academy Award not just through its riveting tale of heroism and escape, but also through its left-liberal introduction and conclusion.
Argo is based on the rescue of six State Department employees who had escaped from the American embassy in Iran at the time of the embassy's takeover. As Scott pointed out, the film alters and gilds the true story to enhance the drama of the escape. As importantly, for purposes of pleasing Hollywood, Argo wraps itself in what Scott calls a "canned liberal history of the rise of the Ayatollah at the outset" of the movie and an audio voiceover by President Carter at the end.
The canned liberal history demonizes the Shah of Iran, and by extension the U.S. for supporting him. The Shah was no saint, of course, but the introduction creates the impression that he was a monster of the same order of magnitude as the Ayatollah who came to power in 1979, which is nonsense.
As part of its case against the Shah, the movie notes that his wife bathed in milk while the country suffered from severe poverty. From what several Iranians and my wife who lived in Iran at the time tell me, this was just a rumor of dubious veracity. In any event, as a symbol of egregious opulence, bathing in milk (not champagne, milk) doesn't cut it. This is a "luxury" anyone in the American middle class can afford, if he or she is foolish enough to indulge.
The introduction then blasts the Shah for modernizing Iran in disregard of the country's traditions. But his modernization campaign helped remedy a good deal of the poverty that the filmmakers decry. Better to have a leader whose wife takes milk baths but whose economic policies help create a middle class than a frugal leader whose policies promote stagnation. And better to have either kind of ruler than the kind Iran has suffered under since the fall of the Shah.
But left-liberal Hollywood wants to have it both ways — a Shah who was indifferent to the welfare of his people and who disrespected their traditions. Mohammad Reza Pahlavi was not that Shah.
The hack liberal narrative spills over into the beginning of the action. As the mob is about to storm the U.S. embassy, one U.S. diplomat says "What do you expect, we let the guy torture and deball an entire nation." This statement is ridiculous. The Shah's regime used torture, but not on anything like the scale this statement suggests.
Another diplomat complains that the U.S. admitted the Shah for treatment of his cancer: "So great, we'll take in any punk as long as he's got cancer?" But the Shah was the bulwark of American foreign policy in the region, and a bulwark against the developments we have witnessed in Iran and elsewhere in the region since his fall. The U.S. was right to admit him for medical treatment; it would have been indecent not to.
The film ends with a voiceover by Jimmy Carter, who reminds us that every hostage eventually was released. True, but no thanks to Carter. The hostages were released only after Carter left office (that day, in fact) because America finally had a president the Iranians feared.
Moreover, while no hostages were lost, America did lose 8 servicemen who tried to free them in an ill-conceived rescue attempt that Carter authorized. That rescue attempt, and the fate of the American hostages in general, is beyond the scope of the action in Argo. But if the filmmakers were going to deal with this topic through a postscript that purports to provide a final accounting of the hostage crisis, it should not have "forgotten" about the Americans who died in the humiliating public debacle of Jimmy Carter's failed rescue attempt.
Would Argo have won the Academy Award for best picture if it had just told its story without adding the left-liberal packaging? Maybe. But the filmmakers sealed the deal with that wrapping.