Mad Men is a hell of a show.  When it first premiered, I was intrigued because I loved the Sopranos, and knew that Matthew Weiner, one of that shows head writers, was behind its creation.  At first I wasn’t hooked.  I thought many of the characters were overly stylized and inauthentic.  I also thought much of the first season’s hook was portraying the chauvinistic and racist world that world that was very much in full swing in the early 1960s.  So, after a few episodes, I stayed away from Mad Men, casually sympathizing with those who thought the show to be an over-hyped and empty experience.  The show drew me back though after the conclusion of season 2.  I had caught a few more episodes, and was reluctantly entertained.  When I made an effort to follow up on several of the episodes’ smokey cliffhangers, the reluctance was gone, and I was hooked.  This past week, in gearing up for the season 5 conclusion, I found myself looking back at season 1 with fresh eyes, re-watching classic moments from other moments of the show, like how the characters react to the Kennedy assassination, and all around just soaking in the smugly rewarding atmosphere that indulging in this show offers.  Season 5 ended last night, and I am a bit sad because it was my favorite season by far.  At last, in the midst of season 5, and to apparent great expense, the Beatles were heard on the show.  Hearing “Tomorrow Never Knows,” from Revolver, finally filled a great cultural void that existed only due to the near impossibility of getting all the Beatle heirs to agree to allow a real Beatle master tape to be played on television.  It was immensely satisfying as a Beatle fan to hear the group that could not be avoided in the real 60s, to finally find a place in the fictional Mad Men 60s.  Then there was the inevitable LSD episode, also executed brilliantly, capturing an unsensationalized and mature look at that curious drug’s power, a welcome change of pace from the countless overblown depictions of the drug and its effects across the span of pop culture history.  Those highlights aside, the season was full of the same witty writing, stunning dramatics, and impeccable set and prop design which are the show’s hallmarks.  Season 5 ended like many Mad Men episodes do, with a montage of our favorite characters in their most private and isolated moments, all set to “You Only Live Twice,” by Nancy Sinatra.  Nancy had some spellbinding hits throughout the 60s, really capturing the more “swinging” side of the 60s through her cinematic cool anthems.  This song, known mainly as a James Bond theme song, finds new life spilling over the secret worlds of our favorite group of spiritually desolated protagonists.  I’ve got the song below, but I do want to close by saying that if you’ve had reservations about Mad Men, drop them.  Start with season 2 and either work yourself forward or backwards.  Like I said, its a hell of a show.

I was wandering around New York City feeling depressed as hell last week when “Rats” by the Kinks popped on my iPod.  It was the kind of song just randomly on my music player without my knowledge, and without me ever hearing it before.  It immediately altered my mood from depressed and sad, to something rocking, vicious, and righteous.  In this digital world where our music collections have outgrown our capacity to possibly hear it all, its a beautiful feeling when a song strikes you like a bolt from the blue.  “Rats” was written by Ray’s overshadowed brother Dave, the lead guitarist of the Kinks, and its just an awesome paranoid rocker about being lost in a city and being bitten by human vermin.  The song has some destructive non-corny power chords, and a driving forceful melody of power.  It’s become one of my favorite new Kinks songs, and it gets my pick of rocking song of the month, a category I just invented.  There is no proper music video of the song, so I’ll just post the youtube still….I’ve gotten heavily into video editing, so perhaps I’ll make my own video for this overlooked gem soon…Look out for it.

Well, I’m back in America, the land I love, and the city that made me, New York.  After 48 hours of near continuous travel by boat, car, and plane, I’ve made it home to Brooklyn.  Over the last five months I’ve been to Seoul, Kuala Lumpur, Sydney, Bangkok, and Railay Beach in southern Thailand.  For someone who has never left the USA before, and never really planned to, it was an eye opening experience.  I found people in the Australasia region to be both extremely warm and friendly, and positive to Americans especially because they love Barrack Obama.  Thanks Mr. President for making Americans cool again overseas.  I’ve also arrived just in time for the American Spring, which will lead right into summer, giving me 3 summers in a row, suck it winter.  I’ve only been in New York for 24 hours, but I’m already looking for a new apartment, been invited to a musical, and eaten the most delicious NYC bagel I’ve ever had.  To celebrate even further, I’m posting John Lennon’s performance of “New York City,” from his fabled Madison Square Concert live performance.  I’ve already linked to performances of “Come Together,”  “Mother,” and “Cold Turkey,” from the same concert, so it doesn’t hurt to keep globbing on more of the same Lennony goodness.  Anyway, it’s good to be back, and it’s good to be home, and I look forward to resuming my daily activities of providing you with the best rock and roll music in the world.

One year ago, as a birthday present to myself, I launched williesimpson.com to a total of 12 viewers, 99% of those viewers being myself, and even I wasn’t impressed.  Yes, the start was slow, but over the course of the year, after presenting a top 100 list of my favorite youtube videos, being nominated for CBS’s best NYC blogger, and updating you fine folks from all over the world with my own homemade music, I’d like to say that the site has really gained its wings, all with practically zero publicity.  Over the past year, I’ve had close to 140,000 page views, from every state in America, and practically every country in the world.  It’s astounding, and a fantastic motivator to keep going.  The site, if you’ve noticed, has been on a bit of a hiatus the last two weeks as I transition for the last leg of my international journey.  For those not aware, I have been spending time in the beautiful Sydney, Australia the last 5 months.  I’m going to spend the next month in Thailand, and will have very limited internet access.  The site will kick into full gear again around late March, when I return to New York City, so stay tuned.  Lastly, I couldn’t have an update without some music, and I couldn’t celebrate an anniversary without the Beatles.  So here is some cobbled together fake live performance of “Birthday,” the Beatles White Album thriller for you all to enjoy.  Again, thanks a lot to everyone, I couldn’t do it without you.

On August 15th, 1965, the Beatles arrived in New York City, to play a massive sold out show at Shea Stadium, the former home of the New York Mets.  The concert was a big deal for many reasons.  First off, it was the largest rock concert to date, setting the stage for Woodstock, Altamont, and all the mega stadium rock tours that would follow.  At the time, it was the highest grossing live event in the history of show business, raking in 304,000 dollars from 55,000 plus crazed fans.  Lastly, it was the apex of the “Beatlemania” phenomenon.  The Beatles were live, in New York City, playing to the largest live audience then imaginable, a live audience frenzied beyond comprehension.  Girls were fainting, screaming, rushing the field, and peeing themselves.  Police Officers were deafened by the noise, and outside the screaming girls, everyone else was stunned into hysterics by the absurdity of the event.  The Beatles, loaded up with fresh 100 watt Vox amplifiers, couldn’t hear themselves or each other, and the concert itself was broadcast to the crowd over the tinny Shea Stadium PA system.  The Beatles did the best they could to just plug away and hope they were playing together.  They did somehow manage to pull off a coherent performance, considering the circumstances, bashing through their most raucous rockers in the middle of a sustained chaos.  The videos capturing the event have been highly edited and bootlegged over the years.  The Beatles manager Brian Epstein, in concert with Ed Sullivan’s production team, filmed a documentary of the event that has never seen an official release, outside of a TV broadcast in 1967. The documentary itself was overdubbed with vocal retakes on some songs, some more jarringly out of place then others.  The entire concert, in documentary form, does exist on youtube, but its incomplete and the quality isn’t great. What I have below is first a rare HD look at the part of the documentary showing the Beatles getting ready for the show, selected scenes from the Beatles Anthology, and documentary footage I found stitched together as concisely as possible. While edited and incomplete, they represent the best image and sound quality of the show available on youtube.  It’s still a lot of fun, and I’m waiting for the day to get my hands on the final HD remaster of the show in full.  Until then, enjoy one of the greatest events in the history of live musical performance…

“Tell Me Why,” is the greatest black girl group doo-wop song ever.  John wrote it in Paris or New York, presumably influenced by his relationship with his then wife Cynthia, well, at least according to Paul McCartney.  John Lennon was a genius at creating the kind of propulsive and driving rock and roll that was also deliriously joyous.  “Tell Me Why” is like a massive bag of delicious candy in this regard, an unstoppable sugary confection of love, sadness, and exuberance.  The video below is from the “A Hard Day’s Night,” film, an excellent vehicle for the song.  Also, I noticed, YouTube started adding a 3D effect to some of its videos, and this one has it.  I couldn’t get it to work right, but maybe you can, in which case, the Beatles 3 pronged vocal attack will beam right out of your screen and into your face…pretty awesome, no?

When the Beatles appeared on the Ed Sullivan show on a Sunday night in February of 1964, 73 million Americans tuned in.  Originally Ed offered the Beatles Manager Brian Epstein a top dollar billing for a single show, but Brian turned it down and negotiated a 3 consecutive Sunday appearance for practically no payment.  The exposure the Beatles received on those 3 Sundays ended up being worth billions in future revenue; one of Brian’s more savvy deals.   When the Beatles took the stage that winter night, they dominated the top 10 of American pop charts, breaking records before the public could even see them.  Beatlemania was surging, and their nationally televised performance turned the phenomenon nuclear.  In this clip, you get to see John, Paul, George, and Ringo give one of the most iconic and singular performances in the history of music.  They look incredibly young and cool, giving one of their better live performances of their career, if not the best, considering what was on the line.  Even though they were just rocking a small live TV audience of screaming girls, you can tell they know that countless millions of eyeballs are on them.  They’re never actually sweating, but John and Paul are clearly the most nervous.  Paul’s nervousness comes out in the small quiver in his voice and with exaggerated stage movements like extra head wobbling.  John looks confident, but stiff in his defiant pose.  You can tell he feels a bit naked and alone up there too, being positioned prominently on the stage, with George joining Paul on the backing vocals.  George for that matter comes off incredibly, pulling off complicated and flawless solos in “Till There Was You,”  and “I Saw Her Standing There” in particular.  He also looks fantastic standing in the middle anchoring Paul and John.  The real star is Ringo.  Every time the camera glides on him, he shows a natural full range of emotions scaling from goofy enthusiasm , jokey smiles and grins, all highlighted by his dramatic and awesome drumming.  Ringo was always the best and most natural guy in the group when it came to charming the cameras, a skill that he is criminally overlooked for in figuring the group’s colossal success.  When the Beatles finally finish, they still seem nervous, sensing that their perfect performance is just the start of a whole new wave of outrageous reality heading their way.  Anyone, if you’ve never seen this, give it a watch, and soak in all the mad greatness.  Enjoy.

If you’ve read this site enough, you know that I like making declarations, so here is a strong one.  “All Those Years Ago,” is required listening for Beatles fans and one of the best George Harrison songs ever.  It was written by George Harrison as a song for Ringo Starr to sing, but Ringo thought the vocal melody was too high for him.  So, it went to the scrap heap.  Then John Lennon was murdered on the streets of New York City, stunning the world.  I’m sure right away, Beatles fans the world over expected a musical tribute of some sort from Paul, George, and Ringo.  Rumors of a reunion must have been strong, despite the concept being horribly illogical with John’s passing.  On a certain level, the pressure must have been high on these guys to do something, which was of course, cruelly unfair.  If your best friend died, would anyone expect you to make a commercial pop song?  A song that would be judged by music critics?  Well, the guys did respond, they are artists after all.  Paul made “Here, Today,” a touching ballad.  George took his stalled Ringo project, changed the lyrics, and made it a John Lennon tribute.  In many ways, it would be the closet thing people got to a Beatles reunion until the “Anthology” in the mid 9os.  Ringo was on drums, George was singing lead, Paul was on bass and sang backup with his wife Linda.  Famed Beatle producer George Martin contributed to the track’s production along with Geoff Emerick, the famous Beatle studio engineer.  The song is a nostalgic wonder, mixing elements of Chuck Berry guitar riffage, Bob Dylan lyricism, and sweet Beatle vocal backing magic, all classic marks of George’s songwriting.  The lyrics tell the story of George’s love for John, and his agreement with John’s life philosophies.  It also includes attacks on John’s critics, my personal favorite part.  It accomplishes a lot of ideas both musically and lyrically, but leaves you wanting more.  That’s probably the point because the biggest crime in John’s death, outside the destruction of his family, was how this was a man taken too soon.  John was nowhere near finished as an artist and as a leader of peace loving people around the world.  George knew that more then anyone, and created a song that I, and many others, can’t help but replay over and over.  Enjoy.

Making a television show is difficult, especially one like Saturday Night Live where all the content is written and produced a week in advance before live airing.  From the looks of this video, making an SNL is a long an tedious process.  Here, they are just making a promo spot, and even though this video is edited to 9 minutes, it probably took well over an hour.  It’s fantastic to watch though.  First you have Eddie Vedder, appearing in April of 1994, a few days after Kurt Cobain killed himself.  Eddie and Pearl Jam did a nice little tribute to Kurt as you can see in the picture above with the “K” on Eddie’s chest.  That’s just a bit of rock and roll history, but in this clip you get to see a nervous and very young Adam Sandler yuck it up with Eddie, whom Adam is clearly enamored with.  You also get to see the oddly detached Emilio Estevez, famous brother of Charlie Sheen, and son of Martin Sheen, interact with these other two icons of film and music.  At one point Eddie asks Emilio, how’s it been this week, to which Emilio replies, “I believe everything’s been good, just fine.”  It was awkward, and Emilio looks like he’d rather be anywhere else then with some long haired grunge rocker and with the jittery nutbar Adam Sandler.  This video is fascinating and revealing, and an awesome time capsule of one of SNL’s golden eras.  Check it out!

A movie I always loved was Quiz Show, the 1994 film directed by acting legend Robert Redford.  The movie is about the infamous practice of game show rigging that went on in the 1950s, especially at NBC with their hit show “Twenty One.”  Proclaiming to audiences that the questions to the answers were kept in a secure bank vault, the reality was that the contestants were outright told the answers before the broadcast, and were also told when to take a dive when the audience grew tired seeing them win.  It was a stunning fraud perpetrated to keep rating high and sell the sponsor’s products, in this case Geritol, a “tired blood” supplement.  The movie focused on Columbia University teacher Charles Van Doren, a handsome, well bred, and well spoken intellectual, and Herbert Stempel, an unemployed everyman from Queens who was asked to take a dive.  Stempel went along with the fraud because he was promised a future on television which he never received.  Incensed by NBC kicking him out the door, Stempel blew the whistle on the whole charade, eventually getting the attention of federal prosecutors in Washington DC who helped blow the lid off the thing.  The movie is great because its a rich and sumptuous look at the glamorous side of late 50s New York City, precipitating the look and feel of shows like “Mad Men” and “Pan Am.”  What I have below is the actual episode of the show that the movie was based on, so you can see for yourself where reality differs from the movie.  The most striking thing about watching the actual Van Doren/Stempel contest is what amazing acting these guys did in the phoniest of situations.  They were just regular guys with no entertainment backgrounds asked to put on a show in front of 50 million people.  It’s truly remarkable.  I’m also including the trailer for Quiz Show just to entice you to watch in case you haven’t seen it.