“a kind of fantasy morality play about the grossness and warmth and stupidity of the audience”.

The beatles themselves wanted no part in creating another disastrous cinematic offense. The idea of being involved with this lame new project sounded even less appealing to them than their music does to a normal human being. Unfortunately for all of us, United Artists still had the Fab ones firmly by their pink submarines, and ultimately they had little choice but to step aside and allow another brightly coloured turd to be dropped into the septic tank of beatlemania.

The resulting film was an aimless plot revolving around music written to torture children while assaulting you with spastic, gaudy animation. It has since captured the hearts and minds(?) of deluded fans across the globe…what a surprise.

Due to the bewildering success of the beatles Rock Band game, beatlemart has decided to up the ante again. No longer satisfied with merely repackaging and re-releasing the same albums and DVDs three to four times a year while merchandising their likeness on everything from bath toys to geriatric diapers, they’ve decided to not only dig up and re-release this abysmal celluloid black hole but to remake it as a capture animation Disney movie.

The fans are up in arms; disgusted and appalled that anyone would dare to mess with this masterpiece. They are sure to voice their complaints by lining up overnight for tickets, which will be viciously torn in half…by the ticket taker. The stubs will be violently… sealed in plastic and stored haphazardly beside collectibles which hold the lowest place of honour in their MopTop shrines, the Ringo Starr toilet brush and the McCartney radium based wart remover.

1000 years ago today, the Beatles roamed the earth.

This video is not meant to be a joke, but a warning. The beatle-blind masses have already begun re-writing history to deify not only the music and lives of the Fab Four, but every fuzzy dinky drizzle of banality as well. Each doodle and every shopping list ever jotted down by a Moptop is in the process of being bronzed, framed or sold on the black market to mongoloid billionaires and helpless, brainwashed addicts.

Click here to watch the horror unfold: A History Channel Documentary from the Future: Beatles 3000

Enjoy!
Thanks to our friend Bobby for the link.

A beatle tribute cruise is preparing to set sail. The week long nautical nightmare leaves from Ft. Lauderdale Florida in March, sails the western Caribbean, visiting Belize, Costa Maya and Cozumel. This could have been a beautiful trip, but for some reason they’ve decided to turn this pleasure cruise into a floating insane asylum. We fear for the sanity of any pirates foolhardy enough to board this craft in search of booty, the best they could hope for is a handful of novelty can openers and a sharp blade to remove their ears before madness sets in.

If you’re wondering how anybody could be masochistic enough to not only to subject themselves to a bizarre and degrading form of torture, but also to pay $1200 per person (plus $297 for tickets to the special beatle events), you must not be familiar with the average beatle fan. Highlights of the ‘beatle cruise’ include some very impressive specials guests: three beatle photographers, two beatle authors, a beatle painter, a guy who does something called ‘beatle brunch’ and a tribute band.

We could go on to further discuss the atrocities which will no doubt begin moments after the vessel enters international waters, but instead we’d like to leave you with an actual quote from the official Beatles Tribute Cruise website. These words say more than a thousand pictures. Remember, this is meant to encourage you to go on the cruise, not to make your eyeballs bleed or your brain shudder.

Do you want to know a secret? Your mother should know you won’t see me because I’ll get back to follow the sun after I’m back in the USSR because Doctor Robert’s fixing a hole where the rain gets in. So hold me tight. With a little help from my friends I’ll call your name because I want to tell you this boy should have known better if I fell for Penny Lane on a magical mystery tour. Thank you girl, I hope we can work it out when I’m 64.
Your friend,
I am..
The Walrus
P.S. I Love You.

If this doesn’t convince you to make reservations today don’t put away that credit card, there’s also a Rick Springfield cruise and an Elvis Cruise. Hopefully there’s also be a Heaven’s Gate cruise in the works for all those who can’t get tickets in time.

For more info:

http://www.beatlestributecruise.com/index.html

http://www.tbnweekly.com/editorial/local_entertainment/concerts/content_articles/122209_leconcert-03.txt

Seasons Greetings Friends,

The holiday season is once again just around the corner, and in view of these tough economic times we’ve decided to do our part to help save Christmas. Forget about taking out a line of credit to buy $8 Hallmark cards for your family and friends. Show them you care and give them something they really want and need this year. That’s right, impress all the guys down at the soup kitchen! Breathe life into the senseless existence of your pals in the unemployment line! Be the man every woman loves and the woman every man wants to be!

This can only mean its time for SMB’s overwhelming popular Free beatles Christmas Cards extravaganza. Voted Best Free Anti-beatle Christmas Cards of 2008 (by us). Your Dog will thank you for it! Finger Lickin’ Good! Plop Plop Fizz Fizz! 100% satisfaction guaranteed or double your money back.

To download printer-friendly, full sized versions of these incredible cards, just right-click and save this handy file: Free Beatles Christmas Cards 2009
Right Click and ‘Save As’

These cards are formatted to print out at the traditional 5×7 size. Print it on a sheet of paper and cut, or for a professional look get some Blank Greeting Cards and Envelopes and go to town.

For More Free Beatles Christmas Cards:

Free Beatles Christmas Cards 2008
Free Beatles Christmas Cards 2007

In 1967 The beatles released Sgt Peppers Lonely Hearts Club Band. It was instantly hailed as a musical milestone. We have no choice but to agree. Just as the Edsel was a milestone for cars, Betamax was a milestone for home video, Enron was a milestone for corporate investment and E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial was a milestone for video games, so was Sgt Peppers a milestone for music. Unfortunately for us, the beatles didn’t have the foresight to crush and bury this disaster in a New Mexico landfill like the creators of ET did with their abomination.

In previous articles we’ve discussed how the worlds first concept album wasn’t the first, or even a concept album. We’ve discussed it in historical Context in the article My Beatle get me Blues. Due to a recent wave of spontaneous beatleagoguery, in part by it’s release as a downloadable album for Rock Band, we’ve decided to revisit this classic album.

As noted by the few lucid critics of the past 40 years unhampered by nostalgia or burnt out on LSD:

Sgt. Pepper’s was a McCartney album; a pop confection, full of cute noises and neo-music-hall pop, recorded while the drug-addled Lennon was lost in a half-conscious haze.

It’s continuing popularity and notoriety amongst fans seems to be based on the assumption even though it’s just as poppy, it didn’t have any hit singles, yet was still their best selling album. This means it’s deeper and less sugary than the rest of albums in their catalogue, so it must be also the best. This album is also where the ‘Paul is Dead’ rumors began, a great incentive for people like us to take interest.

It would be interesting to find out if it’s even possible for fans to hear the music anymore; the album is so buried in myth and blinded by hype that it’s completely impossible to listen to these songs as what they are – a collection of songs, as opposed to earth shattering, life altering flecks of incomparable brilliance.

For example: during the stirring introduction of ‘Lovely Rita’ do fans close their eyes and let the powerful lyrics wash over and transported them to another dimension where meter maids are all named Rita?
Do they:

hip, hop, a hippie to the hippi-dee hip hip a hop, a you don’t stop the rockin’ till the bang man n-the-boogie up jumped the boogie to the rhythm of the boogity beat?

Or do their minds start vomiting out inane facts like:

Recorded at Studio Two, Abbey Road, February 23 & 24, and March 7 & 21, 1967. The album version is mixed from take 11. A percussive, kazooey effect was official EMI toilet paper blown through a comb, and Ringo shouts, “You’d better believe it” or “They’ll never believe it” in the very final moments of the song, although it’s also been suggested that the voice is John’s …(We ain’t making this up, folks).

John Lennon himself was quoted as saying the album was “a load of crap.” We usually tend to agree with Lennon, although in this case the words ‘festering turd’ also spring to mind.

Paraphrasing Ourselves:

The FF spent over six months in a state of the art recording studio, overdubbing and mixing a lavish production orchestrated and arranged by George Martin, engineered by studio wizard Geoff Emerick, and crammed full of the best session musician’s (including a 40 piece orchestra) money could buy. It cost an astronomical $25,000 in 1967, (roughly $100,000 USD today). During this time a great number of groundbreaking techniques, studio tricks, and recording innovations used on the sessions. A lot of elaborate instrumentations and kooky sound effects were used.

In the end, a couple of tunes were slightly longer than the average pop song. They had an interesting collage of ditties based lyrically on leaky roofs, articles in the newspaper, circus posters, meter maids, corn flake commercials, one either about drugs or a drawing by a child, and one about spirituality. Musically, they combined influences from 30’s music, skiffle, rock and carnivals. In other words, they took advantage of the tools at their disposal to cobble together a collection of half-baked ideas with the help of anybody they could hire.

Sgt Peppers is essentially a shiny, well produced turd. It may appear to be a fully functional crap, but when you clear away the diamond crusted corn nuggets you’ll find the truth of the poop is in the tasting. To paraphrase Gertrude Stein: Turd is a Turd is a Turd is a Turd.

It’s sad to see a once proud nation driven into the ground at the hands of a deranged leader.

The Prime Minister of Canada Stephen Harper last year cut $45 million in arts funding. His freakish appearance at Ottawa’s National Arts Centre has given horrified Canadians a preview of what the country has to look forward to as a result.

Earlier this year the staunch conservative momentarily spread a message of hope amongst anti-beatites around the world when he denounced ‘the culture of the beatles,’ blaming them for the disintegration of our morals, and helping to create all of the drug addicts in the world. Unfortunately, this incendiary propaganda was merely a ruse intended to disguise his paranoid prohibitionist party and their ‘death to the demon marijuana’ platform.

It’s obvious the all-pervasive fingers of beatlemart slithered tightly around his neck one dark evening, and whispered words of wisdom into his cowering ear. Weeks after declaring war on the most addictive and hateful of all vile drugs (weed?), he’s now gone after music, good taste and common sense by singing a song about…getting high(?).

*warning – don’t watch!*

“Stephen Harper is singing a song about an act, passing a joint, that would under C-15 qualify him for a 6 month Mandatory Minimum prison sentence for ‘trafficking’ marijuana” said Jacob Hunter of the Beyond Prohibition Foundation, “This Conservative government wants to throw people in jail for an act as simple as passing a joint, yet has no problem sending it’s leader out to sing about it; the hypocrisy of this government is astounding”

Read the full story “Hypocrite Stephen Harper Sings About Getting High” at Cannibis Culture.

Suck My Beatles would like to thank Stephen Robb of the BBC for not only risking his reputation and career, but everything he holds dear by daring to give a voice to the usurpers of beatlemart and the unrequited masses. To all those who have suffered alone in the void,  hoping against hope for a sign that there were others like you, raise your glasses and thank Mr. Robb for igniting a match to help illuminate this fart in the darkness.

The re-release of the entire Beatles album catalogue has unleashed another wave of veneration for the 60s pop band. But could there really be anyone who actively dislikes their music?

James Bond apparently hated The Beatles.

In Goldfinger, he advises Jill Masterson that “drinking Dom Perignon ‘53 above the temperature of 38 degrees” is “as bad as listening to The Beatles without earmuffs”.

The Bond girl’s own verdict on the Fab Four, unfortunately, is not recorded before her untimely demise on the inside of a coating of gold paint.

That was 1964, when 007 may have felt threatened by that year’s global success of The Beatles’ first movie, A Hard Day’s Night.

Beatles for Sale – the new Rock Band game could net $40m for the Beatles

Two years into their recording career and with Beatlemania raging on both sides of the Atlantic though, Bond was going characteristically violently against the prevailing mood. Forty-five years later, four decades after the Fab Four parted ways, his remark would be considered even more extraordinary, almost sacrilegious.

The devotional, feverish excitement over this week’s release of re-mastered versions of all 13 UK Beatles albums highlights the band’s unique, enduring appeal.

The first 50,000 box sets of mono versions of the discs, priced at £170, have already sold out, according to record company EMI.

Saturation media coverage to mark the release of the albums, of which an estimated billion copies already reside in record collections worldwide, has been led by the BBC’s “Beatles Week” series of programmes.

The Beatles seem to occupy a uniquely unassailable position in popular culture – everybody loves them. Don’t they?

What year did Paul McCartney write Silly Love Songs? 1963, 1964, 1965, 1966, 1967… I Hate the Beatles website

Not Robert Elms. The author and broadcaster is one of a tiny minority who seem willing to stick their heads above the parapet and rubbish this most sacred of British institutions.

“They did a few things that lots of people liked,” says Elms. “Everybody can like them, from grandma singing along to When I’m Sixty-Four to the little girl singing Yellow Submarine.”

But he adds: “I just think they are either childlike and simple or rather leaden and pompous – one or the other all the time.”

Theirs is a sanitised and anaemic version of American blues-inspired rock and roll, he complains.

“For me they turned something that was once sexy and raw and had roots, into something that was totally soulless, playground sing-along music.”

It’s the sort of talk which risks a midnight knock on the door from Britain’s popular culture thought police.

Guaranteed a place on every Beatles fan’s dartboard – Robert Elms

While he concedes that they did write some good songs, he can list rather more of what he calls The Beatles’ “crimes against music” – Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da, Maxwell’s Silver Hammer, Octopus’s Garden.

Elms will not play The Beatles on his BBC London daily radio show, and says feedback from listeners suggests “there is a perhaps relatively small but vociferous group of people” who share his opinion of the band.

In an article for the Glasgow paper The Herald some years ago, author and music critic David Keenan set out to find musicians who shared his dislike of The Beatles – and could find no-one.

“It is a canon that you cannot question,” he says. “Most people actually think you are just doing it for effect, putting on a front, playing the devil’s advocate.”

That this is the usual response is confirmed by Elms, who insists: “I do mean it; it’s not made up.”

Yoko lovers

However, occasionally mocking the supposed greatest band of all time can be “quite fun” as well, he admits.

David Keenan’s favourite Beatle? Yoko Ono

“I think everything that is over-inflated deserves a pin-prick in it occasionally,” Elms says. “How can they be above criticism? That’s ludicrous.”

Nor are the band any more sacred to Keenan, who says: “There is something so incredibly prissy about their music.”

He adds: “I am in such a minority that my favourite Beatle is Yoko Ono; without Yoko’s influence I don’t think there would be any Beatles music I could listen to.”

The avant-garde artist’s influence in the latter stages of The Beatles’ career inspired John Lennon, and in turn Paul McCartney, to new extremes of sonic adventure, he argues.

However, it is the slick pop of the band’s early years that is to blame for the tameness of most UK guitar music today, he insists.

“The Beatles are the absolute curse of modern indie music,” Keenan says.

“Anyone who says they are influenced by The Beatles, alarm bells start to go off; it means they are going to be completely ordinary. It’s about writing this perfectly-crafted music, the classic song – in inverted commas. It’s not about being adventurous.”

Branded a moron

Keenan’s search for likeminded dissenters finally found success, inevitably, on the internet.

‘Phoney Beatlemania’ – Comrade Strummer before entering re-education

The scattered online outposts of anti-Beatles sentiment include Suckmybeatles.com – tag-line: “Let it be …over.”

Sean, who runs the site, says fans’ reactions range from “disbelief” to considering him “downright offensive”.

“At first I’m accused of not knowing their material – usually while it’s being played behind them in Muzak form,” he says. “After I’ve proved that I’m familiar with the music, and that I can spout just as much useless trivia, I’m branded a moron who doesn’t understand music and a dangerous lunatic who should be avoided.”

“Q: What year did Paul McCartney write Silly Love Songs? A: 1963, 1964, 1965, 1966…” is typical of the witty tone of the I Hate The Beatles! Why don’t you? web page.

But the hate mail these sites apparently attract suggests many Beatles fans fail to see the funny side of having their great heroes abused.

A rare fan

Suckmybeatles.com’s Sean, of Toronto, Canada, even refuses to give his full name, owing, he says, to past death threats.

“I’ve been told the Beatles are all about ‘peace’ and ‘love’ (gimme a break, they’re just a rock and roll band) and in the next sentence [they] threaten me with death,” explains the home page of the site, Help! The Beatles Suck.

Cuddly mop tops with acute pop sensibilities… or insipid pop imperialists

Elms confirms: “On the internet, I can find some people who will hate me to the ends of the Earth because I don’t like their favourite pop group.”

Daily Telegraph music critic Neil McCormick, who calls The Beatles’ work “the most extraordinary musical journey in pop history”, is among those fans sceptical of an opposing view.

“It is a position people adopt because of the universal high regard for them,” he says. “Popular music was in its infancy – with the talents compressed into that group they pulled it in every possible direction.”

The resulting musical diversity to be found between 1962’s Love Me Do and 1970’s The Long and Winding Road includes something for everybody to enjoy, McCormick argues.

“There is a lifetime of music in The Beatles.”

He adds: “If you like popular music of the modern day, to say that you don’t like The Beatles is kind of absurd.

“It is the fount of popular culture.”

Click here to view the article on BBC

Rubber Sole

After months of outrage, panic, and disillusionment we’ve finally managed to track down and relink the missing videos and sound clips on the world renown article ‘Reason #7005 – Flabby Soul.’ We hope this will bring some measure of comfort to our adoring public.

Please visit, and enjoy responsibly:
Reason #7005 Flabby Soul

Sometime last year an unknown ‘the beatles’ cover band descended upon a small town in southern Ontario, Canada. The horrific events were captured by the local news station, but seconds before the devastation could be broadcast, the station was demolished, survivors were burned to death.

All taped evidence was quickly disposed of by beatlemart. The town of Liverpool, Ontario, does not even exist on maps anymore. This is one of the worst cases of beaticide on record, yet until now it has gone unnoticed.

Somehow this tape has survived and managed reach us. Please view responsibly, and remember our fallen comrades.

Without any further ado:

Komm, Gib Mir Deine Hand!

by Danny Gregory

London calling, now don’t look at us,
All that phoney Beatlemania has bitten the dust.
London calling, see we ain’t got no swing,
‘Cept for the ring of that truncheon thing…

This will be an admittedly biased and flawed meditation. I know that Patti for one will disagree with me right off the bat but here goes:
I fucking hate the Beatles. I have for many years.
I don’t think I did when I first heard them (while chewing Fruit Strip gum on the rug and doing a wooden jigsaw, circa 1964. The song:”I wanna hold your hand”) or, obviously, when I bought my first and only Beatles recording (circa 1972, upon getting my first cassette player. After listening to the enclosed demo tape‘s electronic rendition of Für Elise a few hundred times, I saved up a huge amount of money and bought my first tape: Abbey Road. I can still hear Octopus’ Garden warbling and warping as the batteries wore down).
When did the loathing begin?
I know it was fully set when my stepfather, Mike, said to me, “There are two types of families: those that like the Beatles and those that like the Rolling Stones. We like the Stones, who do you like?” Characteristically pathological as the question was, I had no problem already agreeing that at fourteen, I was on the Stones’ team.
Maybe I sensed fairly early on that The Beatles just simply weren’t cool or genuine or truly rock ‘n roll.
It was due partly to the lads themselves: The matching moptops. The uniforms. The glibness. The saccharine movies. The lack of anger or outrage – all irony and tongue-in-cheekery.
There were their PR contrivances like ‘bigger than Jesus’ or ‘Paul is dead’ or ‘Give Peace a chance’. And the whole Indian Maharishi thing, while interesting in a multicultural, sampling-new-fruit kind of way, was immediately cultified and iconized. Once the Beatles branded enlightenment, it was unlikely that anyone would ever genuinely be able to reach it again and India became awash with hippies and their smelly backpacks.
And how quickly the Fab 4 become tediously bourgeois with MBEs and celebrity wives. Sir Paul — two mincing steps from Elton John, maybe three from Barry Manilow (incidentally, he started painting in his 40s and then had a retrospective and monograph published. The paintings are crap but judge for yourself). John – granted the ‘coolest’ and ‘edgiest’ of the four — filthy rich on Central Park West, gets blown away by a fan and is immediately deified. (And who remembers Brian Jones?) George dies a middle-aged death. Ringo becomes the Gap/Visa/Doritos/Charles Schwab/Pizza Hut Stuffed Crust Pizza Spokesman, a craven grotesque.

He’s as blind as he can be,
Just sees what he wants to see,
Nowhere Man can you see me at all?

But the true reason I hate the Beatles isn’t the Beatles. It’s the context of the Beatles.
It’s not the music, it’s how and where I hear the music. It’s the deeply ingrained commercialization of everything they made, the re-re-re-re-release of their hits to great acclaim and hype and jingling cash registers.
It’s Beatlemania. It’s Musak. It’s the Queen. It’s the painted Rolls Royce. It’s Yoko. It’s Linda. It’s the whole idea of Classic Rock (which I always associate with middle-aged men in tinted glasses and those skimpy beards).
It’s the fact that I can easily imagine George W., Laura, Condy and Rummy debating their favorite Beatles song. I can imagine fucking Cheney listening to the Beatles. Can you picture any of them listening to the Stones? (Maybe). But the Pistols? The Clash? The Specials? Skynrd? The Kings of Leon?
Alright, whether you agree with this demented, poorly reasoned rant, I hope you get a larger point:
Art and context are really hard to separate.
Mona Lisa shower curtains. Van Gogh Sunflower beach towels. Ed Hopper mousepads. Picasso coffee mugs. Beethoven’s V doorbells. Outkast cel phone ring tones. They distort what we think of the originals and make it impossible to ever look at it properly again. Even if we are standing in the Louvre, in front of the Giaconda herself, we can’t really see the painting (and I’m not talking about the glare of camera flashes bouncing off her Plexiglas shield). It’s too loaded with baggage. Almost everything in Culture is embalmed in commercialization, intellectualization, exploitation, and post-modern regurgitation.
So we collect rare reissues, B-sides, obscure early works, yearning for authenticity, hoping to see or hear clearly for the first time, to hear the Beatles not as they sound in those grainy, endlessly retreaded clips of the Shea stadium concert or the Sullivan show, but as they might have sounded if you were actually standing there in a cellar in Liverpool or Hamburg in the summer of ‘60.
The more we are given to see, the less we can see. The barrage of advertising, television, web pages, and shop windows, force us more and more to retreat into our skulls, peering through a thick grimy window of associations. Today is yesterday. JF Kerry is JF Kennedy. Bush Jr. is Bush Sr. Britney is Madonna is Marilyn. I say hello, you say goodbye. Nothing is what it is.
The trick is to decontextualize, to see reality for what it actually is, divorced from distorting associations. And what a trick that is. I need to shake my head, slap myself in the face, run my skull under a cold fauce, and be here now.
The more I draw, the more I realize this lesson.
The more I realize this lesson, the more I need to draw.

______

To learn more about Danny Gregory
visit his site, or better yet take the money you were going to use to pay for the first installment of the complete re-re-re-masterered re-re-re-re-re-released box set #15, and buy one of his books instead.