modern life is streamin'

Twitter seemed to be at a loose end yesterday when it had all the tweets about Paul McCartney headlining Glastonbury. The Shiny-shiny babblers saying bad things.

I don't get it.

There's a load of music that wouldn't have been made without The Beatles. We've seen the film, "Yesterday" and some of the other landmarks that were missing because "no Beatles" automatically deletes various other downstream cultural references.

I expect Paul has an eye on a Beatles 2.0 reboot.

Then there's that resurfaced Terry O'Neill interview from 2016 where he talks about photographing the Stones carrying their stuff to a practice at the Donmar Warehouse.

Terry alluded to there being less 'real music scene' shots in recent years. Similarly with the artwork. I noticed the Instagrammers have been busy shallowly re-imagining some well known albums.

Paul McCartney and Peter Blake designed the concept for Sgt Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band subsequently filmed by Micheal Cooper's assistant Nigel Hartnup. The gang's all there in the alternative take, which was a full on performance.

Jann Haworth, Mohammed (Robert Fraser’s driver), Peter Blake, Andy Boulton (junior assistant), Trevor Sutton (assistant), Nigel Hartnup (leaning on the drum), Mme Tussauds worker, Michael Cooper, Mal Evans.
Someone else doing a 21st Century take on it somehow shoots wide of the mark. They can't even position the band brand correctly. The Beales? Bea-Les? They must really resent them.

There's an irony in the same publishers showing a piece about branding.


It's the same with Nirvana's vacuously reimagined album cover.

It somehow misses the point, doesn't it? Shoving an iPhone into the deconstructed picture? Is that all you've got? A few more album remix attempts are similarly flawed. The fragmented lego banana of the famous Velvet Underground cover is a particular disaster - Yeah, I get it, Factory. Maybe derisory?

Perhaps Blur's album shoot nailed it?

Although, come to think of it, Blur went for an alternative 126mph cover. That was a Nigel, too. Sir Nigel Gresley.

Like Lyra, I think one needs to stay aware of the parallel.