READING IS FUCKINMENTAL / Jason Matthew Smith

REVOLUTION CALLING

A guide to really understanding the Beatles.

Periodically, I throw out a plug for Ian MacDonald’s Revolution in the Head: The Beatles’ Records and the Sixties (Chicago Review Press, third edition, 2007). Even if you’re not a dyed-in-the-polyester Beatles fan, the book is still worth an examination. MacDonald breaks down the Beatles’ catalog, delving into the background of each tune and where it fits into the decade that gave us crappy-but-good-TV, guiltless sex and sexless guilt, and a shitload of good music. Plenty of semi-useless trivia (i.e. John Lennon wrote a Bob Dylan parody called “Stuck Inside of Lexicon With the Roget’s Thesaurus Blues Again.” And the line “I am the Eggman” in “I Am the Walrus” was allegedly inspired by a friend of Lennon’s who had a thing for cracking eggs on the bodies of women he boinked. Yeah. Throw those little gems into a quasi-interesting conversation and see what happens.) This book totally changed my understanding of the Fab Four. I can’t count how many times I’ve scrambled for it after hearing a snippet from, say, “Lady Madonna” on the local FM “oldies” station. Which brings up something else for another time: The term “oldies” has got to go. “Super hits of the sixties and seventies!” What a crock of warmed-over wombat semen. Jesus.     

Jason Matthew Smith is a Texan who never developed an accent, thanks to a steady diet of television reruns during his formative years. He now lives in Utah, where everyone thinks he sounds just like John Astin, the original Gomez Addams.