Beatles! Beatles everywhere!

I note with a mix of amusement, bemusement, mock-horror, and mirth that at least 33% of current 396 blogs now host Beatles songs! Having just screened Across the Universe (2007) this morning, it is apparently my constitutional duty to post this Eddie Izzard outtake as Mr. Kite.....



I go back and forth on the film. Every generation can and should rediscover the Beatles, and if this film does the trick then I'm all for it. Lord knows when I was in college, there were any number of house versions of Fab Four tunes (check the 1991 Candy Flip cover of "Strawberry Fields," below...the song Shawn's blogged quiz says most fits my personality type--go figure), and that was a way to reconnect after playing (out) the catalogue in earlier years....

More than anything else I got frustrated with the 1:1 correlations thrown out there one after the other, demanding I think them clever. Yes, it's dear Prudence, and yes she came in through the bathroom window. JoJo is here, as is Sexy Sadie, Jude, Lucy, and even lovely Rita (albeit a contortionist, no longer a meter maid). Sadie = Janis, JoJo = Jimi, Jude = John. The Hair sequence is here, the Abbey Road roof gig is here, and on and on. And that's what makes the Izzard sequence a relative breath of fresh air for me--controlled chaos.

As far as Beatles updates / mashups / you-pick-'ems go, on the whole I'd still give the nod to the George Martin Love (2006) project's fusion of "Tomorrow Never Knows" and "Within You, Without You" (neither of which appeared in Universe). Mind you, I have no stake in the video--but the audio mash-up is spot-on brilliant:



Now with the Beatles edging out Gary Numan in the blog charts (at an inexplicably close 3-2 margin) let's see if other folks chime in?

As a PS, here are the aforementioned Flippers, doing their best Happy Mondays vs Paul Oakenfold impression. THIS, kids, is the kind of stuff your professors were clubbing to in college. Scary, no?



See also: Danielle Dax, "Tomorrow Never Knows"; The Dream Academy, "Love." And for a different flavor, track down Sonic Youth's blistering cover of "Within You Without You"