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Thursday Night Night Music Byte
Last week Ringo Starr released his 15th solo album since the break-up of the Beatles. The album is titled Y Not and it is receiving wonderful reviews. As usual, Ringo surrounds himself with lots of his musical friends on this disc including his brother-in-law Joe Walsh, Dave Stewart and longtime Roundheads member Steve Dudas on guitar, Benmont Tench of Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers on keyboards, Don Was and Mike Bradford on bass. The album also features Starr’s engineer and co-producer Bruce Sugar on keyboards, as well as some special guests like Edgar Winter on horns and alto sax, and Joss Stone, Ben Harper and Richard Marx on vocals, Ann Marie Calhoun on violin and Tina Sugandh – aka Tina The Tabla Girl – on tabla and chanting. Starr’s songwriting collaborators on Y Not also include familiar and new names like Joe Walsh, Dave Stewart. Joss Stone, Glen Ballard, Richard Marx, Van Dyke Parks, Gary Nicholson plus Gary Wright and his former Roundhead band member, Gary Burr.
The most compelling of his pals to contribute to the album however, is Paul McCartney. McCartney contributes bass to the song “Peace Dream” and vocals on “Walk With You”. They sound like a couple of good buddies having fun being together. Please enjoy this video clip of “Walk With You”.
Monday Night Christmas Music Byte
The final entry in our solo Beatles Christmas songs is Ringo Starr. I Wanna Be Santa Claus is a Christmas album and single, issued in 1999. Not only is it Starr’s first long-play holiday release, it is the first by an ex-Beatle, although John Lennon, Paul McCartney and George Harrison had each released a seasonal single in the 1970s.
Recorded throughout 1999 with Starr’s musical partner Mark Hudson and many of his collaborators on 1998’s Vertical Man, I Wanna Be Santa Claus—which is composed of well-known traditional songs and some new originals—was made in several studios in the US and UK, with their families joining in and including two notable celebrity guests, Aerosmith’s Joe Perry and former Eagles member Timothy B. Schmit.
Enjoy Ringo Starr‘s, “I Wanna Be Santa Claus.”
Released in October ahead of the Christmas season, I Wanna Be Santa Claus was not a commercial success, despite its strong reviews. It was deleted shortly thereafter and re-released in 2003 as a discounted collection entitled 20th Century Masters: The Best Of Ringo Starr/The Christmas Collection with the exact same tracklisting. After three albums in a row that failed to reach consumers in a significant way, Mercury Records dropped Starr from their roster.
Wednesday Night Music Byte
Tonight’s video clip is from the Beatles. In 1995 the band released both a video and audio anthology of unreleased material. Additionally however, the three living members, Paul McCartney, George Harrison and Ringo Starr worked in the recording studio for the first time since the band a broke up in 1970 and produced a new Beatles song. Even more impressively, they actually utilized an unreleased demo tape of John Lennon’s and mixed it with their own contributions so as to create a truly new Beatles song with all four members playing thereon.
That was not all, however. The Beatles even released a new music video for the song which is truly amazing to behold. It looks just like the videos they released in 1967 for Strawberry Fields ForeverPenny Lane. It is mesmerizing to watch the melding of video footage of the band members meandering through a fantasy world reflecting their lives and song catalog. See how many clues to their earlier songs you can find in this video and have some fun.
Sunday Night Music Byte
There was some big news for Beatles fans this week. The entire Beatles album catalog (originally released on cd in 1987) has been remastered and re-released. The sound is incredible in that you can hear instruments that were previously inaudible on the older cd’s. To date, none of the Beatles’ music is available on Itunes or any other digital format so cd is the only way to get. Buy them. They are great.
Tonight’s music byte is from Ringo Starr shortly after the Beatles’ break-up. The song is titled, “Early 1970” and is quite autobiographical. Listen closely to the first three sections of lyrics and you will realize that Ringo is describing each of his former bandmates in the order of Paul McCartney, John Lennon and George Harrison. He does a good job of revealing his relationship with each of them in just a few short lines. He ends the song by implying that he would like to play with all of them together again. Unfortunately that never happened.
Please enjoy: