The amusing good news in the music world is that The Beatles are back on the charts. The re-issued re-mixed "WHITE ALBUM" (with digitized outtakes) has reached the Top Ten. It's not that much of a surprise, considering it's getting close to Christmas and a lot of people buy anything (even Ringo and Yoko albums) for their collections.
It's easy to boast about an mp3/FLAC/wav collection of shit you downloaded off forums and shoutboxes and torrents and will never even listen to. But to PAY for music? To display it on a shelf and respect it? That's rare. At this moment, while assholes are downloading entire discographies of Slade and Whitesnake and begging some stranger to help them complete their Windham Hill and James Last collections, real music fans bought and are savoring the nuances of great music. They are actually listening, carefully, to outtakes on even a lesser Lennon item like "Cry Baby Cry." They're marveling at the sound of "Inner Light" or "Lady Madonna" before the vocals were laid down.
Over at this, the Blog of Less Renown, there's ZERO interest in fucking over musicians, record labels or music sellers by giving away entire discographies. There's ZERO interest in the juvenile, piggie game of "sharing" as long as there's a PAYPAL donation payoff. Quality over quantity. You can chow down on an entire box of Dunkin Donuts till you have diverticulitis up your fat ass, or you can have one beautiful, healthful, fragrant kumquat. And here's that kumquat....
"LET IT BE" from Paul Frees. Paul made a fortune from his incredible talents in voiceovers. He narrated serious movies. He voiced gruff Boris Badenov and Ludwig Von Drake, and ridiculously high-voiced Poppin Fresh, the Pillsbury Doughboy. He began his career as an impressionist and once starred, all by himself, in a radio show in which he did ALL the voices. He dubbed Tony Curtis's female voice for "Some Like it Hot" and added background voices (half an Italian restaurant).
This tidbit was, for a long, long time, a well-kept secret. Although I was very good at picking out Paul's voices (yeah, including John and George on those "Beatles" TV cartoons), I had NO idea about the Doughboy until he told me, or "Josephine" in "Some Like it Hot." Now, it's a bit easy to hear Paul when you watch the movie, but not very, because he was very good at this unusual higher pitch. It probably would've ruined the fun if Tony Curtis had admitted to being voice doubled at the time. But what if he'd been nominated for an Oscar and won?
Toward the end of Tony's life, Paul Frees fans had spilled the beans on the Internet, and he grudgingly gave Paul ONE paragraph (page 194) of "The Making of Some Like It Hot," which came out almost posthumously: "(Director Billy Wilder) thought my Josephine voice had recorded too low; the other characters would have been suspicious of me. So he hired Paul Frees, who was a wonderfully verstaile actor with an amazing variety of voices, and he dubbed all the lines I'd spoken in falsetto. As if that wasn't enough Paul also dubbed a couple of lines for Tito Vuolo, the funeral director. Billy didn't like Tito's voice. It sounded too New York and not enough Chicago, I guess." (PS, it's entirely possible the Frees paragraph and Vuolo trivia was inserted by Tony's co-writer, who needed to pad out the slim book with every quote and fact he could find).
Paul told me he preferred to stay behind the scenes, but as a "hobby," he acted in films. A "pet project" of his was to do an album of stars singing popular songs. He walked into a studio, ad-libbed, goofed around, and it was done very quickly.
Some tracks are inspired (W.C. Fields' "Mama Told Me Not to Come") and even qualify as a classic cover. I was surprised to learn that Jimmy Webb had no idea that Paul recorded "By the Time I Get to Phoenix" as Clark Gable. "No, they don't ask before doing cover versions," he told me, and artists and labels aren't obligated to send the finished result. I thought somebody at MGM might be proud enough to send Jimmy a copy of Paul's album, or that some "rights" organization might dutifully send a tape, documenting the usage. Silly me.
As for "Let It Be," it's easily the most endearingly stupid and un-PC cut on the album. Neither Warner Oland nor Sidney Toler adopted a ridiculous Chinese accent like this, but after you've heard the song thousands of times, "Let it Be" sort of deserves it. (Paul's other tediously beloved song, "Hey Jude" was nicely destroyed by Paul as Peter Lorre!)
As The Beatles proved yet again, and as even Paul Frees can prove, it can be quality, not quantity. It would be nice if a listener isn't an idiot, doesn't have ADD, and understands that creative people should be able to earn money from music and not just companies manufacturing external hard drives. A sample song that inspires somebody to buy...that's still what Capitalism and morality is about. Too bad jerks in armpit countries in Europe, and morons for whom English is a second language, don't understand this, but then again, some of their best beggars ("please, can you give me, in FLAC...what I could get on eBay for almost nothing") are in the UK and USA.
Sit back and spend time listening to music, really listening, not just downloading shit from blog idiots and forum denizens who are sad, lonely, egocentric assholes who need strangers to "like" them. Downloads really can't buy 'em love.
RET IT BE! "Let it Be" listen online, download - no dodgy download site run by a criminal, no password
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