Happy Late Night, Sweet Baby,
I hope your day was good. That was an awesome closeup you posted this morning of the singer from Stitched Up Heart! Crystal clear and colorful and expressive too. That's a shot they should use in a profile or promo. Your roster of bands is very happy with your work, Elizabeth, and this will continue to spread the word about you as it ripples outward. As you help promote the bands with your pix and videos, they help promote you. You are just shy of two years out of school, and look at what you've achieved so far. And the main thing is, you are having a blast doing it. That's what rock n' roll is all about.... :)
This afternoon, I went to see the new Beatles documentary by Ron Howard : "Eight Days A Week : The Touring Years". As the title states, it was all about the years 1963-66, when the group (which had already been playing clubs since 1960) became a hit first in England and then in America in 1964. That's when Beatlemania hit and they became a stadium act by the next year. The film uses a lot of restored live footage from that era - 50 years ago! omg - and Ron Howard and his team have done an incredible job of piecing everything together into a narrative that re-creates the feeling of what it was like for the band, the fans and the world.
I know that The Beatles are not immediate to your generation, but if you ever wonder why people still listen to them and talk about them after half a century, see this film. I came into the world in 1960, the year The Beatles became "The Beatles" (before that they had been called The Quarrymen), and some of my earliest memories are of putting my sisters' Beatle records onto the turntable of a little plastic record player. Their music formed my first impression of rock n' roll, which subsequently became the biggest influence on my life.
I was 3 years 8 months when The Beatles' music was first played in America. My sister Vickie had their first record right after it came out, and what I remember was the energy in the music. Very uptempo, but also like it had an electric charge in it. It was very melodic and very exciting. I never got to see them play live, but in the movie there is a ton of concert footage, and that "high voltage" feeling comes through loud and clear.
I said to Grimsley tonight, "The Beatles were the hardest rock band of all time", and that is for sure in the sense of high energy. It is quite simply incredible. They could have blown any band off the stage. They played to 56,000 at Shea Stadium in New York in 1965 when other bands could hope to pull in 5000 fans max. Rock & Roll was only 9 years old at that point!
There was never anything like Beatlemania and there never will be again because it was a birthing process. Despite Elvis and the great acts of the 1950s, it was The Beatles who - through their advanced songwriting and super tight live playing - gave birth to the long lasting potential of rock music. Before that, it was seen as a fad, and even Elvis had faded out and joined the Army.
The Beatles The film shows exactly what it was like in those early years; The Beatles were the most famous people in the history of show business or really any other business, but in the end it was that fame that caused them to stop touring, as their concerts became increasingly about the fans' idol worship and in fact it became dangerous for them to tour. So, they became a recording group only and the first album they released in this capacity was "Sgt. Pepper", which again is pretty amazing considering everything else that had already happened.
All in all, it was an amazing film to see, mostly because of the restored concert footage but also because of the story it told. Two major events began the generational phenomenon known as the 1960s, and they occurred almost simultaneously : The assassination of President Kennedy was followed just 11 weeks later by the arrival of The Beatles in America and on February 7 1964, Beatlemania began in this country, and worldwide. That started the 1960s, and the rest is history.
Especially the rock n' roll. :)
And it's still going strong more than 50 years later.
That is awesome. /////
See you in the morning, Sweet Baby. I Love You. xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo :):)
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