Part 2 of "A History of The Beatles Through Their Music" and New Channel 292 on Sky (FimOn.tv)

What has struck me at week two of the CityLit course about the Beatles is the work rate of 'the boys', it is astonishing how much they did in around 8 years of making recordings and writing music.
If you reflect on the fact that McCartney's 'New' is his first album of new work (ignoring the self penned numbers on Kisses on the Bottom) for around six years at the height of Beatle-mania as well as touring, and making films the Beatles regularly put together two albums a year that's apart from side projects like John's books.
The accomplishments are clear when listening to the music develop, from the work of Paul with the use of Bass chords on All I've Got To Do to the walking bass of  All My Loving to the Carl Perkin's flavoured guitar work that George contributes to the same track.

While playing in Paris in 1964  in the space of around 3 weeks they pretty much wrote the album A Hard Day's Night the first of their albums to be totally self penned - the first side being the soundtrack to their first film.
What was also interesting is how the Beatles drew in outside influences, in artistic terms Bob Dylan was hugely influential and tracks like You've got to hide your love away owe a great deal to his  lyrical influence
Our course leader David Harrison brought to our attention that there had been a cultural phenomenon with some parallels to Beatle-mania in the dedicated following of Franz Liszt in the mid 19th Century.

It was interesting to hear how David Harrison met Paul McCartney at a music store in London's Rathbone Place and Paul was able to fill in some details that David needed for a book he was working on and to hear of another of the course members talking about Paul playing at a George Harrison tribute in Liverpool.

John not so happy

What this course is providing as well as a chance to analyse why I like the music of the Beatles so much  is a space to reflect on the cultural changes that happened at the time of as well as a result of the Beatles and an opportunity to get more pleasure from revisiting the albums and learning more of the scale of the endeavour (as Leonard Cohen might say).
This week's session finished with a troubled looking John playing in the US Shea Stadium - more undoubtedly next week.

What we need -another channel.

New TV Channel 292

On my journey into town I saw (from the Evening Standard) that there's a new TV channel on Sky, not surprising but this one sounds like something I've been expecting for some time in that it uses the profusion of perhaps come to Freesat too (it's not subscription)?
broadband for contribution, it's called FilmOn.tv and it might be a sign of other social-ish channels
Will have thoughts to share when I've seen it!