Head Tale

Way back in the early days of my use of the Internet (around 1996-97), I spent *a lot* of time on Usenet (basically, a precursor of today’s message boards and forums.)

I regularly visited a few newsgroups including rec.music.beatles which is where I first came across Alan W. Pollack’s “Notes On” series where he’d do an in-depth analysis of the Beatles’ music on a song-by-song basis.  These essays were great at explaining why the songs (written by “untrained” musicians remember!) had the effects that they did or how they broke music’s “rules” to achieve certain effects or whatever.  In many ways, reading this series was like getting a free tutorial in music theory!

Anyhow, check out some of the pieces in that series then you should also check out “Over 100,000 Words by Saki” which were a series of mini-essays, also posted to rec.music.beatles that were more focused on various trivia and topics around the Beatles, for example his take on Paul McCartney’s perceived and real role within the Beatles.

(Seriously, part of me is seriously considering turning this into a full-time Beatles blog.  There is *so* much material out there to highlight.  Gah – I’ve spent so much time making this into a “random thoughts” blog – why try to give it focus now?) 😉