Wednesday, January 02, 2008

The Beatles, they never die

Just bought and listened to the latest Beatles project: Love. Well, actually, it's George Martin and Giles Martin's project, compiling and remixing the music from a fabulous show by the Cirque du Soleil, which co-founded by the late George Harrison. I must say, the album was a brilliant works by the Martins. The Beatles songs are all masterpiece. So it requires some skills and guts to experiment with the songs. But they did it, brilliantly.

The album begins with the vocal part of 'Because.' The second track starts with the opening chord of 'A Hard Days Night,' followed by Ringo's drum solo from 'The End' to pave the way for 'Get Back,' which is the main song, then ends with a piece from 'Glass Onion.' All the transitions go very smoothly.

In another track when the Martins play 'Drive My Car,' then, while keeping the rhythm part, suddenly the song goes to 'Say the Word' and 'Look What You're Doing,' then goes back to "Beep beep em beep beep, yeah..." part of 'Drive My Car.' Another brilliant part is when 'Strawberry Fields Forever' starts with the Antholgy version of the song. Then, during outro, the suddenly turns to 'Hello Goodbye' -- the "Hella, hey hello-ah" part.

But the most challenging one is, I think, when the Martins play 'Within You Without You' (written and sung by Ravi Shankar-influenced George Harrison) using the rhythm part of the psychedelic 'Tomorrow Never Knows.' Just awesome!

The other tracks seem to be just their original versions. But when we listen carefully, they are not. There's a glimpse of Paul's riff of 'Blackbird' in 'Yesterday.' George Martin also introduced the orchestra part for George's 'Still My Guitar Gently Weeps.'

Ah yes, besides 'Yesterday,' there are two tracks from the dishmop era: 'From Me To You' and 'Help!' And my adrenaline still gets increased when listening to 'Back in the USSR' and 'Revolution.' The shortcoming, if any, is that they don't play with 'Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Heart Club Band' as much as the they did with the other tracks.

I happened to watch a glimpse on Cirque's play on TV. It's a sheer brilliant performance as well. Especially they way they interpret and visualize Ringo's 'Octopus's Garden' and 'Lady Madonna' for a stage performance.

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