Post One-Hunnert!; or, Wa Wa Wee Wa!

("One-hunnert" is how, down South, we pronounce "one hundred"; "Wa Wa Wee Wa" is what Borat says when he makes great success.)

But so! This is the one-hundredth post of this blog. Great success! In honor of that milestone, today I'll be writing about The Beatles—specifically the new, idiotically named album Love.

Yes, it's a stupid name for an album. Yes, it seems each holiday season there's a new Beatles something-or-other foisted off upon the music-buying public. Yes, we all know that The Beatles were the Greatest, Most Innovative Band Ever, and Don't F***ing Argue ... but that's all neither here nor there. Simple fact of the matter: great music, truly remarkable. Addendum to the simple fact of the matter: we all know it by heart, and therefore never have that much need to sit down and listen qua listen to one of the group's albums.

That's where Love comes in. Love is a album spanning The Beatles' entire career, remixed and reworked and basically fiddled with by Sir George Martin, original and legendary Beatles producer, and his son Giles Martin, that is the "soundtrack" for the Cirque du Soleil show of the same name (Love). Blah blah boring who gives a s***. Not I!

The album itself, though, is pretty good and fun to listen to, for this reason: the songs do things they're not supposed to! I know by heart the turns, the album order, from one song to the next ... so in listening to Love it's surprising because the songs shift and morph in ways you're not used to, making you pay close attention and really listen to the sounds of each well-worn song.

If anyone picks up Love because of this post, and likes it, I encourage you to go out and buy The Beatles Anthology Vols. 2 or 3, both of which kind of engender the same sort of responses and feelings, hearing totally different versions of familiar songs. (The ocean-floor vibration-sounding "Tomorrow Never Knows" on Vol. 2 is particularly striking.)