Scattershot

Sitting here listening to the Beatles' Magical Mystery Tour, an album that generally gets a shrug from most Beatles fans. Even I'd agree that the record is less than the sum of its parts: considering how many very memorable Beatles tunes and singles are on here, it's strange that the record doesn't really get me going the way so many of their others do.

Lost among the many renowned singles are "Flying" and "Blue Jay Way," two of the moodiest tunes on the record, but tunes that actually help to give the record some good depth. By all accounts, this record was Paul at his most controlling, and in fact he apparently even mapped out the album on some sort of wheel, doling out songs like assignments to George and John.

The question then, is whether these songs stem from Paul's controlling nature during this period, or if the album would have been a little moodier and atmospheric if Paul had stepped back a little. We get some more songs like these on The White Album, but I wonder what a whole "moody" Beatles album would have sounded like, or if that was ever really a possibility.

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On Tom Petty and Heartbreakers' Damn the Torpedoes, I just wigged out. You ever listened to a record and heard some sound that you weren't sure if it was coming from the record or from the outside world? On this record, it's a girl saying "It's just the normal noises in here," right before the song "Even the Losers." This could have easily been one of my next-door neighbors, so I had to put the needle back to be sure it was on the record.

Another song that still gets me, even though I've come to expect it, is Local H's "Bryn-Mawr Stomp" on Here Comes the Zoo, where just for a moment you hear a police siren. I hate driving to that song because it makes me check my rearview mirror every time even though I love the song.

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Either my Duran Duran record just looped on a skip during "Save a Prayer" and then righted itself, or the band did a really good job of approximating it. I'm simply not familiar enough with this album to know.

Nevermind, it's skipping on the next song too, and so far I'm too lazy to get up and correct it. I like listening to records because it forces me to get up and switch sides, but I do get cranky with my records when they make me make an extra trip. Especially when it's Duran Duran.