Good Times, Bad Times

Joined the Beatles night on TV. For the first time the whole story appeared to me; about how the early drummer of the group, Pete Best, was fired. By reasons more than slightly out of justice; because of some snobbishness by the record company. This happened over forty years ago and still seems remarkable. The group really had played together in Hamburg as a club band, in duty almost every night. When they came back to England it was a piece of cake to play for an hour on stage, they had been used to play up to 6-7 hours. Anyway, it was not easy to get a recording contract with a big company, when it happened, they formed the playground.

Yesterday…, during the evening I also saw the movie; “A Hard Day´s Night” again. It´s really not the most fantastic movie made, light British mad humour in black&white, but gives push to the culture of the happy 1960ties. As a kid and new member of this country, I saw the film for the first time in the Palladium movie theatre here in Halmstad. All the girls screamed, all the time, in the front of the screen…, from the first opening seconds. It was strange. John Lennon did not even talk the accent we learned in school.

Many years later, when I got more oversight of the situation, I found that a lot of the Beatles music really had afroamerican elements or influences, more than earlier really observed. I would say that, many tunes were for example “adjustable for funk”, which even many coverbands probably found out during the years. Tunes like “She´s a woman”, “I feel fine”, “You can´t do that”…..you find more. It´s not only about the three chord boogie and blues roots and screamin, it´s also about rhythm,…. polyrhythmic structures.

That, the afroamerican connections were strong; was likely confirmed by the programme; “John Lennon´s jukebox”. It contained mostly black American music. He told about his early favourites for example in the radiointerview presented in the programme. Like all others, even the Beatles picked up ideas and inspiration from other artists. That happens all the time.

Now,.....
I´m very proud to present a report directly from Africa,
nicely Michele from Kenya by mail gave me a little list,
of her favourite African artistes;

Abakethwa

Yvonne Chaka Chaka

Mary Atieno

.....