Paul Levinson's Blog: Levinson at Large, page 213

Binge Listening to the Beatles Channel on Sirius/XM

So, I realized I've been binge-listening to the Beatles Channel on Sirius/XM Radio since it went on the air in my car in May.

Listening to a lot of radio - whether all-news or rock 'n' roll or whatever is nothing new, and goes back to the origins of modern radio (during the advent of television) in the 1950s, and even before when radio was the only mass electronic medium in town.  But listening to one group, for minutes to hours, almost day after day, is something new, and bears some resemblances to binge-watching a television series.

Indeed, in McLuhan's terms, I'd say binge-listening to a single band is a "flip" of binge-watching a TV series.   The radio binge-listening involves both an older kind of medium than television (radio indeed is TV's direct predecessor), and entails something very new.  (See McLuhan in an Age of Social Media for more on McLuhan's notion of the "flip".)

What's most new about binge-listening to a single band on the radio, day after day, month after month, is that you're listening (in the case of the Beatles) to some 60 years of music.  The Beatles were together as a band for little more than a decade, but their members continue to produce new music to this very day, in the case of Paul McCartney.

In contrast, no single television dramatic series has lasted anywhere nearly that long.  Dr. Who goes back to the 1960s, as does Star Trek, and though there are connections between those original series and their successors, the change in actors puts them not in the same league as the Beatles Channel, where you can hear Paul McCartney in the Quarrymen in 1957 and Paul McCartney singing in 2017.

The Beatles are, of course, unique in their transformation of our culture, so a radio station devoted to another band or artist could not possibly have this kind of impact.  (The significance and reach of the Beatles should be obvious, but if you'd like a passionate and well-reasoned and researched explanation in text for why, I'd recommend Rob Sheffield's Dreaming the Beatles.)

McLuhan thought that acoustic media had a preeminence in human communication that visual media could never match.  It's gratifying to hear that insight proven right again in the case of the Beatles Channel.




Paul Levinson's books ... Paul Levinson's music

Twin Peaks: The Return 1.12: No Song - Slim Hope of Deliverance

A slightly subdued Twin Peaks: The Return 1.12 last night, with no song at the end.  I mean, there was a three-piece band on the stage at the end, as the credits eventually rolled, and they were playing something, but it wasn't a song.  It could have been the beginning of a song which never actually started (uh oh).  It could have been accompaniment to something.  But I don't think it was a song.  I don't think it was an instrumental - certainly no "Green Onions" or "Flying".

There were some nice touches in the episode, most involving loud-spoken hard-of-hearing Gordon, who was trying to consummate something with what passes for a hot chick for someone his age.  But Albert had some important interrupting business for Gordon.

That included a little explanation of Blue Rose, its connection to Project Blue Book, and the toll it's taken on its elite team, especially Dale Cooper (whom we saw almost nothing of in this episode, also much like the song). And it also included the induction of Tammy into the team.   (I wonder, if Cooper ever recovers his mind, if he and Tammy might get together?)

So is it all of this quiet before the storm?   On Twin Peaks, everything is always quiet and always storm, so it's hard to say.  Anyhow, here's the song I was hoping to hear at the end of this episode - McCartney's "Hope of Deliverance".



See also Twin Peaks: The Return 1.1-2: Superluminal Sans Cherry Pie ... 1.3-4: Coffee and Cole ... 1.5: The Mod Squad Meets Big Love in the Diner ... 1.6: Red Door and Childish Scribbles ... 1.7: Lost and Not Lost ... 1.8: Atom Bomb and Mr. Homn ... 1.9: "I Don't See No Hidden Buttons" ... 1.10: "No Stars" ... 1.11: Double Cherry Pie and Viva Las Vegas
FREE on Amazon Prime

Available on Prime
Paul Levinson's books ... Paul Levinson's music

Game of Thrones 7.3: Alliances

A conversation for the ages between Jon and Daenerys on Game of Thrones 7.3 tonight, with each not giving an inch, dignified and persuasive, and in the end, Daenerys agreeing more or less to help in the fight against the dead in the North.

Daenerys is not doing well in her other fight, against the Lanisters in red.  Jaime faked out the Unsullied, had them attack a place where the bulk of the Lanister army was not, and in the process sent Olenna Tyrell to her just desert, too - just insofar as she horribly murdered Jaime's son Joffrey, who more than deserved to die, though not from Jaime's point of view - at least, not completely.

In this episode, every word in every conversation, every second, counts - much more so than in previous seasons.   So it was also powerful to see Bran come home after all of these years, and it was good to see Mormont saved - especially good because the agent of the save was Sam.

A few more words about that.  There was something truly mythical about that saving, in the sense that Lord of the Rings and King Arthur and the Knights of the Roundtable are the stuff of myth.  Not only that, but as I mentioned in a previous review, something Asimovian too, with Sam toiling in the Game of Thrones of equivalent of the Library of Trantor.

So what will Mormont now do with his second life?  No doubt something crucial on behalf of his beloved Daenerys.  And to return to the beginning of this reflection, she'll certainly need it.   Though her dragons and their fire are no doubt the best weapon against the frozen hordes of the North, they're not invincible, not even against Lannister cunning and preparation.

Let the battles ensue and escalate.

See also Game of Thrones 7.1: Library Redux ... Game of Thrones 7.2: Vikings and Strategies
And see also Game of Thrones 6.1: Where Are the Dragons ... Game of Thrones 6.2: The Waking ... 
And see also Game of Thrones 5.1: Unsetting the Table ... Game of Thrones 5.8: The Power of Frigid Death ... Game of Thrones 5.9: Dragon in Action; Sickening Scene with Stannis ... Game of Thrones Season 5 Finale: Punishment

And see also Games of Thrones Season 4 Premiere: Salient Points ... Game of Thrones 4.2: Whodunnit? ... Game of Thrones 4.3: Who Will Save Tyrion ...Game of Thrones 4.4: Glimpse of the Ultimate Battle ... Game of Thrones 4.6: Tyrion on Trial ... Game of Thrones 4.8: Beetles and Battle ...Game of Thrones 4.9: The Fight for Castle Black ... Games of Thrones Season 4 Finale: Woven Threads

And see also  Game of Thrones Season 3 Premiere ... Game of Thrones 3.3: The Heart of Jaime Lannister ... Game of Thrones 3.6: Extraordinary Cinematography ...Game of Thrones 3.7: Heroic Jaime ...  Game of Thrones 3.9: A Critique 
And see also Game of Thrones Back in Play for Season 2 ... Game of Thrones 2.2: Cersei vs. Tyrion

And see also A Game of Thrones: My 1996 Review of the First Novel ... Game of Thrones Begins Greatly on HBO ... Game of Thrones 1.2: Prince, Wolf, Bastard, Dwarf ... Games of Thrones 1.3: Genuine Demons ... Game of Thrones 1.4: Broken Things  ... Game of Thrones 1.5: Ned Under Seige ... Game of Thrones 1.6: Molten Ever After ... Games of Thrones 1.7: Swiveling Pieces ... Game of Thrones 1.8: Star Wars of the Realms ... Game of Thrones 1.9: Is Ned Really Dead? ... Game of Thrones 1.10 Meets True Blood

And here's a Spanish article in Semana, the leading news magazine in Colombia, in which I'm quoted about explicit sex on television, including on Game of Thrones.

And see "'Game of Thrones': Why the Buzz is So Big" article in The Christian Science Monitor, 8 April 2014, with my quotes.

Also: CNN article, "How 'Game of Thrones' Is Like America," with quote from me



"I was here, in Carthage, three months from now ..."
Paul Levinson's books ... Paul Levinson's music

Review of Rob Sheffield's Dreaming The Beatles 12 of X: Sgt. Pepper

Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band likely figures in a lot more of Rob Sheffield's feast of Dreaming the Beatles - I'm up to page 171 of the 322-page book - but having just read three chapters on Pepper (about the Strawberry Fields/Penny Lane prelude, the album cover, and the actual recording and its place in history), this seemed like a good time to offer a few remarks.

First, I think I already may have mentioned in an earlier review that I wasn't thrilled with Sgt. Pepper the first time I  heard it -  I thought it went off the deep end and was no Rubber Soul or Revolver - but soon came to change my mind, and love it as indeed no Rubber Soul or Revolver, but in some ways even better.  I wrote a little essay about this in the 1980s entitled "Sgt. Pepper and the Presumption of Genius," the gist of which is when you encounter something that you don't especially like by geniuses whose earlier work you love, you should give the new work the presumption of genius and (in the case of music) listen to it some more, and maybe you'll discover that you were wrong the first and second or however many times.  (That essay was published in my Electronic Chronicles in 1992 - I keep saying I'll put up a Kindle edition in the next few months - I think that's a more likely true statement than it was before.)

Second, Sheffield acknowledges that the reason he does not hold Pepper in quite the same high regard as he does Rubber Soul and Revolver is because he heard the album for x number of years in "watered-down" stereo, not the mono in which it was originally released, and in which I of course first heard it when it was released in June 1967.  In fact, I never much cared for stereo, one reason why Ed Fox and I released our Twice Upon a Rhyme in 1972 in mono (the other reason is that we got all of our studio time free, but it wasn't that much time, and we only had enough time for a mono mix).

But the circumstances under which a creative work was first heard, and how those circumstances influence and even determine the listener's perception, is a crucial, often overlooked factor in popular culture.  In my previous review, I indicated how my hearing Revolver in its American release, with three great songs removed, short-changed my appreciation of the album.  And the "first-love syndrome" I also discussed in a previous review also figures into this process.

I'll conclude this reflection with a rare factual disagreement I have with Sheffield, who, contrasting Oscar Wilde and Lenny Bruce as Beatles inspirations or templates, says that unlike Wilde, Lenny Bruce produced no memorable lines that we still quote.  As evidence to the contrary, I'd offer Lenny Bruce's observation that "If Jesus had been killed twenty years ago, Catholic school children would be wearing little electric chairs around their necks instead of crosses".

Ok, back to life and music and I'll be back soon with another review.

See also Review of Rob Sheffield's Dreaming the Beatles 1 of X: The Love Affair ... 2 of X: The Heroine with a Thousand Faces ... 3 of X: Dear Beatles ... 4 of X: Paradox George ... 5 of X: The Power of Yeah ... 6 of X: The Case for Ringo ... 7 of X: Anatomy of a Ride ... 8 of X: Rubber Soul on July 4 ... 9 of X: Covers ... 10 of X: I. A. Richards ... 11 of X: Underrated Revolver Paul Levinson's books ... Paul Levinson's music

Review of Rob Sheffield's Dreaming The Beatles 11 of X: Underrated Revolver

Rob Sheffield's chapter on Revolver is one the best, perhaps the best, chapter I've read so far in his stellar Dreaming the Beatles.  It's chock full of Sheffield's handy use of lines from Beatles songs to make his points, and lots more, but what rings out for me is its convincing argument that Revolver may be the greatest Beatles' album.

I said in a review of an earlier chapter that Rubber Soul and Sgt. Pepper have always been tied for me as the Beatles best album, with Revolver a tad below.   Sheffield has shown why I was wrong:  I was basing my assessment on the American version of the album - "butchered" as Sheffield aptly puts it - because it omitted three songs that were on the British version.

And three of those three songs - "And Your Bird Can Sing," "Dr. Robert," and "I'm Only Sleeping," all by John Lennon - happen to be among my all-time favorite Beatles recordings.  As just one example, I just love the national health line in Dr. Robert, and its rhyme with see yourself, and that's just one of many lines in all three songs, which also have melodies and harmonies and arrangements that are so memorable they've been part of my DNA since I first heard and loved them in the 1960s.

So, yeah, I was lazy, I should have done a modicum of research before I downgraded Revolver, but like the Jerry Orbach character in Dirty Dancing, I admit it when I wrong, or whatever exactly it was that he said.   So Sheffield's book, in addition to its other delights and benefits, has now forever educated me and changed decades of impressions in my head.

I should also mention that I'm crazy about "Rain" and almost as much about "Paperback Writer," which also come from this same period of Beatles extraordinary work.  I'll be driving later, listening to the Beatles channel on Sirius/XM radio, hoping I hear at least one of those five deeply wonderful songs.


Paul Levinson's books ... Paul Levinson's music

Somewhere Between 1.2: Fate

A strong second episode of Somewhere Between tonight, which answers some questions and sets out some ground rules for this story.

First, Nico saved Laura from drowning and both went back in time - though we don't yet know how or even completely why.  Laura's reason is to save her daughter. Nico's is to save his brother from the death of death row.  The two are connected in that the governor's decision to carry out Nico's brother's punishment was ultimately triggered by the horror of Laura's daughter's death - but we don't yet know the deeper connections of these two stories, which there no doubt are.

The prime ground rule is one we've come across in many a time-travel story, including my own.  The past is tough to change.  History is recalcitrant, is the way I like to put it - the universe puts up whatever obstacles it can on behalf of the original history, if we can call it that (but, who knows, perhaps that itself is a changed history, a sequence of events brought about by some time traveler). So Laura's daughter gets an allergic attack on the plane, which obliges her to go back home to California (where she'll be killed in the original timeline) rather than safety in Hawaii.  And some neighbor helpful to the universe brings back the red shoes which Laura was trying to throw out - so they wouldn't be discovered along with her little daughter's body.

Nico and Laura also do their best to the stop the serial killer in one of his earlier killings, in one of the best sequences of the episode.  They come close, but fate and the universe prevail.

All of this means that we'll be in for some good times in this limited series, and I'll be back after the universe shows it has in store for us after the next episode of Somewhere Between next week.

See also: Somewhere Between: Frequency meets Awake

Paul Levinson's books ... Paul Levinson's music

Review of Rob Sheffield's Dreaming The Beatles 10 of X: I. A. Richards

The most interesting aspect (and there were many) of Rob Sheffield's chapter on the Beatles and LSD is his Dreaming the Beatles - brilliant, I'd say, to any state of mind - was his discussion at the end of whether "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds" was a John Lennon anthem to LSD.

The story that it isn't is better than well known:  John's son Julian came home with a picture of Lucy, a girl at school, with a sky and diamonds, and told his father that he had drawn a picture of Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds.  Or something like that.

And then there's the story, not quite as well known,  about Peter Yarrow and his "Puff the Magic Dragon" (actually based on a poem by Leonard Lipton).  Yarrow (and Lipton) have always insisted the lyric was as much about pot as the "Star Spangled Banner" and its bombs bursting in air was about some psychedelic drug around at the time of our War of 1812.  Even though it seemed obvious to just about everyone else that "puff" and "paper" and "dragon" aka "draggin'" were about grass.

I had already encountered I. A. Richards - a British literary critic, not a rock star - years before. Nearly a century ago - in the 1920s, to be more precise - Richards propounded a series of things that the literary critic, or anyone wanting to understand a literary work, should avoid. Among the most important was what Richards termed the "intentional fallacy" - it doesn't matter what the creator of the work may have intended, what counts is what the reader objectively gets from the work.

From that, it's a relatively small move to the position that it doesn't matter what the creator of the work says the work is about - or, to use a modern parlance, that the creator of a work is an unreliable guide to what the work may be about.

When I first encountered Richards in the 1970s, I could immediately see his injunctions could apply to creative work in any medium - the Beatles and Peter, Paul, and Mary lyrics, and, much later, to the ending of The Sopranos.   So, with that in mind, it was especially fun to read Sheffield's account of LSD and "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds".

Other strong parts of this chapter were the competition between the Beatles and Dylan, and McCartney's confidence that the Beatles had surpassed Dylan's understanding of them by the time they were doing Revolver (the subject of the next chapter).

It's of course possible that Sheffield might say that this wasn't one of the strongest parts of this chapter - but I'll place my confidence in Richards.

And I'll be back with more soon - maybe tomorrow, though you never know.

Paul Levinson's books ... Paul Levinson's music

Somewhere Between: Frequency meets Awake

Somewhere Between debuted on ABC tonight.  It has possibilities, including exploration of time travel, always one of my favorite kinds of narrative.

The set-up is Laura Price, whose eight-year daughter is killed by a serial killer she's pursuing as a broadcast journalist.   Laura's understandably more than distraught, and seeks to drown herself off-shore.  But instead she comes to and finds herself back in time, about a week before her daughter was murdered.

So Somewhere Between has some immediate similarities with Frequency (movie and TV series), though at this point it's much less scientific or or even pseudo-scientific.  And it also bears some resemblance to Awake, and its story of a police detective living in two parallel realities, because unlike Frequency and its ham radio, Somewhere Between has no mechanism to explain the time travel.

At least, not yet.  The one thing we know is that Laura's trip back in time happened when she tried to take her own life, at the same time as Nico - a former cop - is being thrown in the same or very nearby water, bound, i.e., in an attempt by some people to kill him.  And just to up that ante even more, Nico's brother is at that very moment being administered a lethal injection in a long delayed capital punishment.

So Laura's jump back in time is in some way connected to or occasioned by two other attempts to take human life at that very moment - attempts made on the lives of two brothers.  Laura, by the way, is played by Paula Patton, who was excellent in Deja Vu, the 2006 time travel movie which I consider among the top five in the genre (I'm taking the Back to the Future trilogy as one movie in that counting).

That's more than enough for me to watch the second episode of Somewhere Between in its regular time tomorrow night, when I'll report back with another review.





Paul Levinson's books ... Paul Levinson's music

Somewhere Between: Meets Frequency and Awake

Somewhere Between debuted on ABC tonight.  It has possibilities, including exploration of time travel, always one of my favorite kinds of narrative.

The set-up is Laura Price, whose eight-year daughter is killed by a serial killer she's pursuing as a broadcast journalist.   Laura's understandably more than distraught, and seeks to drown herself off-shore.  But instead she comes to and finds herself back in time, about a week before he daughter was murdered.

So Somewhere Between has some immediate similarities with Frequency (movie and TV series), though at this point it's much less scientific or or even pseudo-scientific.  And it also bears some resemblance to Awake, and its story of a police detective living in two parallel realities, because unlike Frequency and its ham radio, Somewhere Between has no mechanism to explain the time travel.

At least, not yet.  The one thing we know is that Laura's trip back in time happened when she tried to take her own life, at the same time as Nico - a former cop - is being thrown in the same or very nearby water, bound, i.e., in an attempt by some people to kill him.  And just to up that ante even more, Nico's brother is at that very moment being administered a lethal injection in a long delayed capital punishment.

So Laura's jump back in time is in some way connected to or occasioned by two other attempts to take human life at that very moment - attempts made on the lives of two brothers.  Laura, by the way, is played by Paula Patton, who was excellent in Deja Vu, the 2006 time travel movie which I consider among the top five in the genre (I'm taking the Back to the Future trilogy as one movie in that counting).

That's more than enough for me to watch the second episode of Somewhere Between in its regular time tomorrow night, when I'll report back with another review.





Paul Levinson's books ... Paul Levinson's music

Twin Peaks: The Return 1.11: Double Cherry Pie and Viva Las Vegas

Well, Agent Cooper finally got a piece of cherry pie in Twin Peaks: The Return 1.11 last night - in fact, two slices! - as well as his life being spared by Jim Belushi's character and his dream.  But, alas, even this double cherry pie is not enough to rouse Cooper out of his stupor.  He needs to "wake up!" as that little man from the other dimension told him now some number of episodes ago.

Because there's a lot happening.   Cole was nearly sucked up into an alternate dimension wormhole in the sky or whatever that was.   I was glad to see he emerged unscathed, his too-loud voice intact.  For some reason, I really like that loud voice.   I'm not sure what it's supposed to mean or lampoon - maybe the hard of hearing, which is not nice - but for some reason it strikes me as especially funny.

The scene with Truman and his deputy was also interesting.  Like the FBI, they seem to be beginning to close in on the truth of what is happening here.  But their progress is so slow it's unclear if they'll make it by the end of this season.

The music, like the cherry pie, was doubly good in this episode.  First, I've always really liked Shawn Colvin's rendition of "Viva Las Vegas" (I'm listening to the long version right now.)  I just wish they'd played a little more of it.  Second, was that Burt Bacharach at the piano at the very end? Tough to tell and probably not - I'm sure someone reading this will let me know - but it was fun to see even someone looking like Burt on the screen last night.

And I'll be back here with another short review after the next episode next week.

See also Twin Peaks: The Return 1.1-2: Superluminal Sans Cherry Pie ... 1.3-4: Coffee and Cole ... 1.5: The Mod Squad Meets Big Love in the Diner ... 1.6: Red Door and Childish Scribbles ... 1.7: Lost and Not Lost ... 1.8: Atom Bomb and Mr. Homn ... 1.9: "I Don't See No Hidden Buttons" ... 1.10: "No Stars"


FREE on Amazon Prime

Available on Prime
Paul Levinson's books ... Paul Levinson's music