SGT PEPPER RERUNS
New York Times Today column, 4 June
“The Beatles posing in front of the celebrities was a way of them saying, in their arrogant yet completely charming manner, ‘We know we’re the most famous people in the world right now, and we also know that we will be joining this parade, that this is not going to last, and that we will be in the back of this line someday,’ ” he said.
NPR’s On Point, 31 March
Sacha Pfeiffer interview, with the redoubtable Rob Sheffield (Dreaming the Beatles: The Love Story of One Band and the Whole World)
Cognoscenti, 1 June
Sgt. Pepper At 50: What The Beatles Can Teach Us About Trump
If you could cue up a soundtrack to the 1960s, it might well be the Beatles’ “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band,” that psychedelic landmark that scoffs at its own reputation. Released 50 years ago at the dawn of the 1967 “Summer of Love,” this album gave shape and color to a complicated era now vilified as a detour into empty platitudes and shallow moralizing… (more)
The Summit of Creativity: A Celebration of the Fiftieth Anniversary of The Beatles’ Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band
Keynote lecture: “Rethinking Sgt. Pepper”
Aaron Krerowicz’s blog entry
CHART MATTERS
FROM THE COLLECTION: SONGS OF THE SUMMER
The Billboard Hot 100 has been around since 1958. What can we learn from it?
“Here we go with the Top 40 hits of the nation this week on American Top 40, the best-selling and most-played songs from the Atlantic to the Pacific, from Canada to Mexico.”
That’s how Casey Kasem opened his countdown radio show, American Top 40, in 1970. Kasem, who covered the top 40 for nearly as many years, reading one-liners and dedications in between hits, never impressed anybody as a scholar or music historian. But his show popularized the idea of Billboard’s Hot 100 Chart, framing how we heard pop’s stories… (more)