Well, it does not mean a lot: the album is great, anyhow, even with those two tunes you mention that are rather crap (but all india-inspired harrison stuff sound VERY weak to me). It' being a kind of mix - up may even help. Marcin ----- Original Message ----- From: <alastair@pretentious.co.uk> To: <zorn-list@mailman.xmission.com> Sent: Tuesday, November 19, 2002 7:46 PM Subject: MMM
Someone wrote (sorry, lost the name):
The Beatles wrote many of their albums to take advantage of the medium (Abbey Road, Sgt. Pepper, Magical Mystery Tour).
They didn't write Magical Mystery Tour to take advantage of the LP medium. Firstly, it's the soundtrack to their TV film of 1967, and secondly it originally came out as a six-track "double EP", two seven inch vinyl records in a little gatefold sleeve, with cartoon booklet and lyrics. It only came out as an LP in the US and other foreign territories, where they bunged the original six tracks on one side and recent singles and b sides on the other. No doubt US retailers and radio programmers would have found it difficult to get their heads around something that was neither an LP nor a single.
In later years it came out as an LP in Britain and when it transferred to CD of course they went with the longer option, but don't tell me that "Penny Lane" and "Strawberry Fields Forever" - both recorded BEFORE "Sgt Pepper" - are of a conceptual piece with "I Am The Walrus" and "Your Mother Should Know" because they're not. And it can't be counted as their best LP because it isn't one. Even if you do stretch a point I don't see how anything with "Flying" and "Blue Jay Way" on it could ever be considered for that crown anyway, good though the rest of it is.
Ah, the days when (British) pop artists thought it perfectly right not to put their singles on their albums...how I miss them.
Alastair
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