Podcasts about jean jacques perrey

Board Boys are back with two giant spreadsheets and a set of small blocks in the Anarchy, from Garphill Games and designer Bobby Hill. If you like Hadrian's Wall, you'll probably love this one. 0:00 Intro, E.V.A - Jean Jacques Perrey 18:00 Apiary 21:30 Gentle Rain 24:30 Corps of Discovery: A Game Set in the World of Manifest Destiny 29:00 Karvi 32:00 Forest Shuffle 35:00 Old Salt 38:15 The Anarchy: Overview 41:00 Firestarter: The Prodigy 42:00 The Anarchy: Review 1:12:30 The Anarchy: Verdict 1:27:00 Board Boys Bump: Obsession 1:31:30 Thank You, Patrons 1:32:30 Praise You - Fatboy Slim

Board Boys are back in Ancient Egypt yet again for Men-Nefer, which is a board game and not a celebrity couple c. 2002. Speaking of 2002, prepare for a lot of millennial talk in this episode. 0:00 Intro, E.V.A. - Jean Jacques Perrey 19:30 YRO 23:00 Skara Brae 25:45 Jubako 30:00 Kronologic: Paris 1920 33:30 Calimala 37:00 Men-Nefer: Overview 41:00 Young Folks- Peter, Bjorn, & John 43:00 Men-Nefer: Review 1:09:00 Men-Nefer: Verdict 1:16:30 Board Boys Bump: El Grande 1:21:00 Thank You, Patrons 1:22:00 Burning - The Whitest Boy Alive

Episode 168 Chapter 28, Moog Analog Synthesizers, Part 1. Works Recommended from my book, Electronic and Experimental Music  Welcome to the Archive of Electronic Music. This is Thom Holmes. This podcast is produced as a companion to my book, Electronic and Experimental Music, published by Routledge. Each of these episodes corresponds to a chapter in the text and an associated list of recommended works, also called Listen in the text. They provide listening examples of vintage electronic works featured in the text. The works themselves can be enjoyed without the book and I hope that they stand as a chronological survey of important works in the history of electronic music. Be sure to tune-in to other episodes of the podcast where we explore a wide range of electronic music in many styles and genres, all drawn from my archive of vintage recordings. There is a complete playlist for this episode on the website for the podcast. Let's get started with the listening guide to Chapter 28, Moog Analog Synthesizers, Part 1 from my book Electronic and Experimental music.   Playlist: EARLY MOOG RECORDINGS (BEFORE 1970)   Time Track Time Start Introduction –Thom Holmes 01:32 00:00 1.     Emil Richards and the New Sound Element, “Sapphire (September)” from Stones (1967). Paul Beaver played Moog and Clavinet on this album by jazz-pop mallet player Richards, who also contributed some synthesizer sounds. 02:21 01:44 2.     Mort Garson, “Scorpio” (1967) from Zodiac Cosmic Sounds (1967). Mort Garson and Paul Beaver. Incorporated Moog sounds among it menagerie of instruments. Garson went on to produce many solo Moog projects. 02:53 04:04 3.     Hal Blaine, “Kaleidoscope (March)” from Psychedelic Percussion(1967). Hal Blaine and Paul Beaver. Beaver provided Moog and other electronic treatments for this jazzy percussion album by drummer Blaine. 02:20 06:58 4.     The Electric Flag, “Flash, Bam, Pow” from The Trip soundtrack (1967). Rock group The Electric Flag. Moog by Paul Beaver. 01:27 09:18 5.     The Byrds, “Space Odyssey” (1968) from The Notorious Byrd Brothers (1968).  Produced by Gary Usher who was acknowledged for having included the Moog on this rock album, with tracks such as, “Goin' Back” (played by Paul Beaver), “Natural Harmony,” and unreleased track “Moog Raga.” 03:47 10:48 6.     The Monkees, “Daily Nightly” from Pisces, Aquarius, Capricorn, and Jones Ltd. (1967). Moog effects provided by Micky Dolenz of the Monkees and Paul Beaver. 02:29 14:40 7.     Jean Jacques Perrey and Gershon Kingsley, “The Savers,” a single taken from Kaleidoscopic Vibrations (1967). The first Moog album by this duo known for their electro-pop songs. 01:48 17:08 8.     Wendy Carlos, “Chorale Prelude "Wachet Auf" from Switched-On Bach (1968). The most celebrated Moog album of all time and still the gold standard for Moog Modular performances. 03:34 18:54 9.     Mike Melvoin, “Born to be Wild” from The Plastic Cow Goes Moooooog (1969). Moog programming by Paul Beaver and Bernie Krause. 03:03 22:28 10.   Sagittarius, “Lend Me a Smile” from The Blue Marble (1969). This was a studio group headed by Gary Usher, producer of The Byrds, who used the Moog extensively on this rock album. 03:09 25:30 11.   The Zeet Band, “Moogie Woogie” from the album Moogie Woogie(1969). Electronic boogie and blues by an ensemble including Paul Beaver, Erwin Helfer, Mark Naftalin, “Fastfingers” Finkelstein, and Norman Dayron. 02:43 28:40   Additional opening, closing, and other incidental music by Thom Holmes. My Books/eBooks: Electronic and Experimental Music, sixth edition, Routledge 2020. Also, Sound Art: Concepts and Practices, first edition, Routledge 2022. See my companion blog that I write for the Bob Moog Foundation. For a transcript, please see my blog, Noise and Notations. Original music by Thom Holmes can be found on iTunes and Bandcamp.

Board Boys blast off into outer space with a bunch of tourists on board in Galactic Cruise, a game about assembling recreational spacecraft and visiting chilled out planets with them. 0:00 Intro, E.V.A. - Jean Jacques Perrey 16:00 The Taverns of Tiefenthal 22:50 Duck & Cover 24:30 Sardegna 27:00 Iwari 29:30 Automania 31:45 Endeavor: Deep Sea 43:45 Galactic Cruise: Overview 47:00 Space Cowboy - Jonzun Crew 48:00 Galactic Cruise: Review 1:22:45 Galactic Cruise: Verdict 1:29:00 Board Boys Bump: Kutna Hora 1:34:00 Thank You, Patrons 1:34:30 Fantastic Voyage - Lakeside

Board Boys are back with another span for ya, man, in Finspan from Stonemaier Games, a game about free range fish raising all the way down to the nightmare zone. 0:00 Intro, E.V.A. - Jean Jacques Perrey 18:00 Lowlands 20:30 Black Forest 26:00 Azul Duel 28:15 R-ECO+ 32:00 Potions of Azerland 35:45 Rebel Princesses 43:30 Finspan: Overview 46:15 Looking for Atlantis - Prefab Sprout 48:00 Finspan: Review 1:11:30 Finspan: Verdict 1:18:00 Board Boys Bump: Wyrmspan 1:26:00 Thank You, Patrons 1:27:00 Ocean Rain - Echo & The Bunnymen 

Board Boys are playing yet another game about windmills (turbines I guess) on this episode, Pampero from Julian Pombo. Uruguay has all this wind evidently, each player will be trying to exploit that. The winner is the player who can harness the most wimpy, clean wind energy and become the king of hippies. 0:00 Intro, E.V.A. - Jean Jacques Perrey 8:30 Sundae Split 11:15 Isle of Cats: Duel 15:00 Little Alchemists again: Cam explains soup better than anyone ever, ever 20:30 Ito 22:00 Fellowship of the Ring: Trick-taking Game 25:45 Pampero: Overview 28:45 The Windmills of your Mind - Dusty Springfield 32:15 Pampero: Review 1:01:00 Pampero: Verdict 1:08:00 Board Boys Bump: Voidfall 1:14:30 Thank You, Patrons 1:15:00 Against the Wind - Bog Seger & The Silver Bullet Band

On this episode, we our feature review is SETI: Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence from Czech Games Edition and new designer Tomáš Holek.  Also we dive into Cam's dreams and what they could mean, Cam accidentally orders our food delivery to the wrong house.  We also talk about Little Alchemists also by CGE!  Other games include, Mandalorian Adventures, Rebirth, Zenith, Dead Cells, and Sky Team.  We also look back at Djinn for our bump or dump!   0:00 Intro, E.V.A. - Jean Jacques Perrey 12:30 The Mandalorian: Adventures 15:45 Rebirth 21:00 Zenith 25:15 Dead Cells: The Rogue-Lite Board Game 18:30 Sky Team 36:45 Little Alchemists 43:00 SETI: Overview 47:00 No Doubt About It - Hot Chocolate 48:15 SETI: Review 1:20:30 SETI: Verdict 1:28:00 Board Boys Bump: Djinn 1:33:30 Thank You, Patrons 1:34:15 Here Come the Martian Martians - Jonathan Richman & The Modern Lovers

Board Boys are back for an arbitrarily new season in Resafa (aka Refasa) from Delicious Games. Who will stack the most stuff on his camel? Find out after our long 2024 board gaming recap, where we talk top 5 games, BGA awards, surprises, and all the games we played last season. 0:00 Intro, E.V.A. - Jean Jacques Perrey 4:45 2024 Review 47:00 Resafa: Overview 49:15 A Horse with no Name - America 50:30 Resafa: Review 1:17:15 Resafa: Verdict 1:21:45 Board Boys Bump: Evacuation 1:27:45 Thank You, Patrons 1:30:30 Rock the Casbah - The Clash

Board Boys are ready to shrink heads in Unconscious Mind, a game about defreuding people experiencing bad dreams until you have all their money and they are in love with their moms.  0:00 Intro, E.V.A. - Jean Jacques Perrey 16:00 Monkey Palace 20:15 Tales of Arthurian Knights 29:15 Clank! Expeditions: Temple of the Ape Lords 34:00 Dinosaur Island: Rawr and Write/ Draftosaurs Aerial Show and Marina expansions 41:00 Unconscious Mind: Overview 44:00 The Ballad of Sigmund Freud - The Chad Mitchell Trio 46:00 Unconscious Mind: Review 1:16:30 Unconscious Mind: Verdict 1:21:00 Board Boys Bump: Federation 1:25:15 Thank You, Patrons 1:26:15 Talking In Your Sleep - The Romantics

Board Boys are back to get all the cheese in Fromage, a game about making all the cheese by Ben Rosset and Michael O'Malley.  0:00 Intro, E.V.A. - Jean Jacques Perrey  8:00 Pirates of Maracaibo: Commanders 14:00 Welcome to the Moon 22:45 Planta Nubo 29:30 Hamster Roll 31:15 Harmonies 35:00 Fromage: Overview 40:00 MMM Cheese - Freddy 4X 41:00 Fromage: Review 1:08:00 Fromage: Verdict 1:14:00 Board Boys Bump: Rats of Wistar 1:20:00 Thank You, Patrons 1:20:30 This Will Be Our Year - The Zombies

L'Inaudible a 19 ans : Le Volume 1 Pink Floyd Project : Flashmob Jon Mattox Covers : Bohemian Rhapsody classique Basket Case façon Beatles Marimbros : Star Wars Maryanne Muglia Sons zarbi : L'homme orchestre Flûte à bec contrebasse Les baudruches du MozART Group Jacob Collier fait pleuvoir L'ondioline : Just can't get enough Demo par Georges Jenny Ondioline track Jean-Jacques Perrey & son ondioline Trucs en vrac : Billie Jean on the storm Queen Bossa-Nova Marcelo Kimura : Blackbird Romain Vuillemin sur la Chaîne Guitare 500 notes Poly Tempo Pendulum Wave Poly Tempo Phasing explained Steve Reich : Piano Phase La +BCdM : Amy Winehouse : Valerie Live at the BBC Acoustic live par The Zutons - Teddy Swims - Joseph Solomon - AnnenMayKantereit & Nataly Findlay Jean Yanne : J'aime pas l'rock La Playlist de la +BCdM : sur le Tube à Walter sur Spotify (merci John Cytron) sur Deezer (merci MaO de Paris) sur Amazon Music (merci Hellxions) et sur Apple Music (merci Yawourt) Vote pour la Plus Belle Chanson du Monde Le son mystère (40'37) : Todo Casi Bien : Elvis without music Mario Wienerroither avec : Cirbafe Aude Winny Taniguchi Pincho Causmic Beast merci à : Stéphane Didier Pierre Journel Pop goes the WZA Podcasts & liens cités : La Chaîne Guitare Tumyxo saison 2 : récit au jour le jour Walter sur BlueSky Walter sur Mastodon Walter sur Instagram Les 100 +BCdM Le générique de fin est signé Cousbou

Board Boys boooooost down some tracks and pick up some cards in Explorers of Navoria, a game by Meng Chunlin. Also in this episode we talk with local designers GLiB games about their awesome new game, The Best Medicine.  0:00 Intro, E.V.A. - Jean Jacques Perrey 13:30 The Best Medicine w GLiB Games 29:30 Middle Ages 31:30 Only Murders in the Building: The Game 37:00 Explorers of Navoria: Overview 40:30 Ms. Jackson - Outkast 41:30 Explorers of Navoria: Review 1:04:00 Explorers of Navoria: Verdict 1:10:00 Board Boys Bump: Nucleum 1:17:15 Thank You, Patrons 1:18:00 Children Go Where I Send Thee - The Roches

Episode 137 Merry Moog 2024 Electronic Music for the Holidays Performed on the Moog and other Synthesizers   Playlist Time Track Time Start Introduction –Thom Holmes 04:34 00:00 1.     Hans Wurman, “Overture Miniature” from Electric Nutcracker (1976 Ovation). This Austrian composer made several remarkable, classically influenced Moog Modular albums from 1969 to 1976. This was one of his last big Moog projects and is difficult to find. 2:54 02:54 04:32 2.     Hans Wurman, “Danse De La Fee-Dragee ( Sugar Plum Fairy)” from Electric Nutcracker (1976 Ovation). Moog Modular synthesizer, Hans Wurman. 1:33 01:33 07:24 3.     Hans Wurman, “Danse Des Mirlitons (Flutes)” from Electric Nutcracker (1976 Ovation). Moog Modular synthesizer, Hans Wurman. 2:14 02:14 08:56 4.     Emerson, Lake & Palmer, “Nutrocker” from Nutrocker / The Great Gates Of Kiev (1972 Cotillion). Arranged by, Emerson, Lake & Palmer. Written by Kim Fowley. 03:48 11:08 5.     Sounds Of Broadcasting 2, “Night Of The Kings” from Sounds Of Broadcasting #6088 (1975? William B. Tanner Company, Inc.). Broadcast library track produced for the holidays. Produced using a Moog Modular Synthesizer. 01:01 14:56 6.     Jean Jacques Perrey and Sy Mann, “Jingle Bells” from Switched on Santa (1970 Pickwick). USA. Moog Modular Synthesizer. 01:44 15:56 7.     Jean Jacques Perrey and Sy Mann, “Christmas Bells” from Switched on Santa (1970 Pickwick). USA. Moog Modular Synthesizer. 01:52 17:40 8.     Douglas Leedy, “The Coventry Carol” from A Very Merry Electric Christmas to You (1970 Capitol). USA. Moog Modular Synthesizer and Buchla Synthesizer. 04:46 19:30 9.     Joseph Byrd, “Christmas in the Morning” from A Christmas Yet to Come (1975 Takoma). USA. ARP 2600 Synthesizer with an Oberheim Expander Module. 01:34 24:16 10.   Armen Ra, “O Come All Ye Faithful” from Theremin Christmas (2018 Sungod). USA. Moog Etherwave Pro Theremin. 04:43 25:50 11.   Beck, “The Little Drum Machine Boy” from Just Say Noël (1996 Geffen). USA. Roland TR-808 Rhythm Composer. 07:02 30:32 12.   Alan Horsey, “We Wish You a Merry Christmas” from Switched-On Christmas (1985 Snowflake Records). Italian album with electric organ by Alan Horsey. This is reminiscent of Hooked on Classics as the entire album seems to be woven together by a drum machine beat. This is played on organ. Seems a little late for disco. 03:10 37:30 13.   Denny Hinman, “Christmas in July” from Plays The Yamaha Electone E-70 (1980 Yamaha). Denny Hinman plays the Yamaha Electone E-70. A release by Yamaha. 01:45 40:36 14.   Miharu Koshi, “Belle Tristesse” (妙なる悲しみ)from We Wish You A Merry Christmas (1984 Yen). Japan. A compilation of specially recorded Christmas-themed songs from various artists on the Yen Records label. Written by, synth-pop with vocals by Miharu Koshi. Miharu Koshi is a keyboardist and singer with a long-standing collaborative association with YMO-founder Haruomi Hosono. 03:43 42:20 15.   Taeko Onuki, Inori (Prayer) from We Wish You A Merry Christmas (1984 Yen). Japan. A compilation of specially recorded Christmas-themed songs from various artists on the Yen Records label. Japanese synth-pop with vocals by Onuki. Maybe Ryuichi Sakamoto on keyboards. 03:44 46:02 16.   Frank Collett, “Jesu Joy of Man's Desiring (1970 Privately Made Release). USA. This is a special addition to the Merry Moog podcast. I found what is likely a one-of-a-disc private pressing by Frank Collett using the Moog Modular Synthesizer. This 45 RPM disc was recorded at Finetone Recording Studio in New York City and is inscribed with the hand-written message, “To John & Loretta: Merry XMAS. Composed and arranged by Frank Collett” This appears to be disc made of metal with a vinyl coating. One side includes his rendition of Bach's “Jesu Joy of Man's Desiring” plus a short tune called “Little Joey” (see below). The flip side contains the same recording of “Little Joey.” Dated December 22, 1970. Clearly made using a Moog Modular Synthesizer. Collett (1941-2016) was a noted session pianist and sometimes led and recorded with his own trio. He was raised in New York. In 1968 he was accompanist to Sarah Vaughan. The following year he moved to Las Vegas, Nevada.  He became the house pianist, with the orchestra in the main showroom of the International Hotel (which became the Las Vegas Hilton).  It was during this period that he made this recording in NY.  01:57 49:44 17.   Frank Collett, “Little Joey” (1970 Privately Made Release). Frank Collett using the Moog Modular Synthesizer. From a 45 RPM disc recorded at Finetone Recording Studio in New York City (see above). Dated December 22, 1970. Clearly made using a Moog Modular Synthesizer. Collett (1941-2016) was a noted session pianist and sometimes led and recorded with his own trio. Moog Modular Synthesiser, Frank Collett. Whose Moog Synthesizer did he use to make this recording? I can only speculate and guess that he made the recording at the studio of Gerson Kingsley in New York. 01:56 51:40 18.   Romantic Synthesizer, “Oh Tannenbaum” from Christmas Memories (1983 Dureco Benelux). French-Dutch album. Arranged, produced, synthesizers by Gerto Heupink, Robert Pot. 02:53 53:34 19.   Keiko Ohta (Ota), “Here Comes Santa Claus” from Electone X'Mas Present (1975 Canyon). Yamaha Electone GX-707 (GX-1), arranged by Keiko Ohta. Ohta was a female Electone star from Japan. The GX-1 was an early polyphonic synthesizer and a new branch of the Yamaha Electone family tree. 02:43 56:24 20.   Keiko Ohta (Ota), “Blue Christmas” from Electone X'Mas Present (1975 Canyon). Yamaha Electone GX-707 (GX-1), arranged by Keiko Ohta. Japan. Yes, the song originally made famous by Elvis Presley. Ohta was a female Electone star from Japan. The GX-1 was an early polyphonic synthesizer and a new branch of the Yamaha Electone family tree. 04:11 59:06 21.   Paul Haig, “Scottish Christmas” from Chantons Noël - Ghosts Of Christmas Past (1981 Les Disques Du Crépuscule). From a compilation album of Christmas-related tunes. Scottish songwriter, musician and singer. 02:46 01:03:16 22.   Les Cousins Dangereux, “What Child Is This” from Gotta Groove Records 2012 (2012 Gotta Groove Records). Holiday album with various artists. Les Cousins Dangereux is Mr. Tim Thornton. 01:59 01:06:00 23.   Joy Electric, “Angels We Have Heard on High” from The Magic Of Christmas (2003 Tooth & Nail Records). Joy Electric is Ronnie Martin from Ohio. American synthesizer-pop musician. Among his many releases is this crafty Christmas album. 01:48 01:07:58 24.   Koichi Oki, “Jingle Bells” from The Man From Yukiguni (1975 TIM/RS). Japan. Koichi Oki's Christmas album performed solely by his Yamaha Electone E-3. “Yukiguni” means snowland. Oki was a hugely popular Electone artist in Japan. 01:50 01:09:46 25.   Koichi Oki, “Winter Wonderland” from The Man From Yukiguni (1975 TIM/RS). Japan. Koichi Oki's Christmas album performed solely by his Yamaha Electone E-3. “Yukiguni” means snowland. Oki was a hugely popular Electone artist in Japan. 02:18 01:11:34 26.   Edhels, “Oriental Christmas” from Oriental Christmas (1985 Cabana Music). Recorded in France. Drums, Percussion, Keyboards, Jacky Rosati; Guitar, Jean Louis Suzzoni; Guitar, Bass, Keyboards, Composed by, Marc Ceccotti; Keyboards, Noël Damon. I was sent this as a promotional album back in 1985 with a kind little note from the artists. Sorry it took me so long to put the Christmas-related track in my podcast. This is great example of synth-pop from France in the 1980s. 04:22 01:13:52 27.   Bob Wehrman, John Bezjian and Dusty Wakeman, “Joy to the World” from Christmas Becomes Electric (1984 Tropical Records). Produced in L.A., a collection of pre-fab synthesizer classics. Not the same record of the same title as Douglas Leedy. 02:40 01:18:12 28.   Bob Wehrman, John Bezjian and Dusty Wakeman, “Ring Christmas Bells” from Christmas Becomes Electric (1984 Tropical Records). Produced in L.A., a collection of pre-fab synthesizer classics. Not the same record of the same title as Douglas Leedy. 01:46 01:20:50 29.   Romantic Synthesizer, “So This is Christmas” from Christmas Memories (1983 Dureco Benelux). French-Dutch album. Arranged, produced, synthesizers by Gerto Heupink, Robert Pot. We don't often hear an instrumental rendition of this Lennon and Ono X-mas tune. 03:22 01:22:34 30.   Swinging Buildings, “Praying For A Cheaper Christmas” from Chantons Noël - Ghosts Of Christmas Past (1981 Les Disques Du Crépuscule). From a compilation album of Christmas-related tunes. This group was once rumored to be New Order in disguise. But no, they were in fact The Bowling Balls in disguise. 03:07 01:25:54 31.   Bernie Krause, Philip Aaberg, “Feliz Navidad” from A Wild Christmas (1994 Etherean Music ). This delightful cassette is from Bernie Krause, known for his Moog explorations with Paul Beaver back in the day. All animal and ambient sounds recorded on location worldwide by Bernie Krause with the exception of the fish (courtesy of U.S. Navy). Animal samples, Bernie Krause and Phil Aaberg. Arrangements, new materials, all keyboards (Kurzweil 2000/Emulator III) Phil Aaberg. Percussion on Feliz Navidad performed by Ben Leinbach. 5:37 05:37 01:28:58 32.   The Original Cast: R2-D2, Anthony Daniels As C-3PO, “R2D2 We Wish You A Merry Christmas” from Christmas In The Stars: Star Wars Christmas Album (1980 RSO). Vocals, Arthur Boller, Donald Oriolo, Jr., Dori Greenberg, Ivy Alexenburg, Jake Yeston, Jessica Taylor, Marney Alexenburg, Ricky Haayen, Roddy McBrien, Russell Poses, Scot Randell, Stacy Greenberg; Keyboards, Derek Smith, Harold Wheeler, Pat Rebillot; Sound Effects (R2D2), Ben Burtt. The whole Star Wars crew seems to have a part in this holiday album. I wanted to highlight a track featuring the melodious electronic beeping of R2D2. 03:33 01:34:34 Opening background music: Sounds Of Broadcasting 1, “Christmas Logos” from Sounds Of Broadcasting #6088 (1975? William B. Tanner Company, Inc.). Broadcast library track produced for the holidays. Produced using a Moog Modular Synthesizer. Notice how the melody imitates a familiar tune without ever hitting the same notes. A copyright thing. Another name of this track might as well be, “It's Beginning to Sound A Lot Like Christmas.” Jean Jacques Perrey and Sy Mann, “Tijuana Christmas” from Switched on Santa (1970 Pickwick). USA. Moog Modular Synthesizer. Don Voegeli, “Chanukah” from Holiday & Seasonal Music (1977 EMI). USA. Produced at the Electrosonic Studio of the University of Wisconsin-Extension.   Opening and closing sequences voiced by Anne Benkovitz. Visual design by Anne Benkovitz. Additional opening, closing, and other incidental music by Thom Holmes. See my companion blog that I write for the Bob Moog Foundation. For additional notes, please see my blog, Noise and Notations. Original music by Thom Holmes can be found on iTunes and Bandcamp.  

Board Boys bounce into Des Moines' own Capital City Gaming Con (formerly Cardboard Caucus) to rip a ton of games, especially the creepy and scary Inferno, a "soul management" game very loosely about Dante's travels in heck. Also in this episode, Rob has a discussion with Jaime Brown, designer of Amoebunnies for a chat about the upcoming Kickstarter.  0:00 Intro, E.V.A. - Jean Jacques Perrey 4:00 Lord of the Rings: Duel for Middle Earth 9:00 Wizards & Co. 10:30 Amoebunnies with Jaime Brown 26:00 Altered 29:15 Kavango 32:15 Inferno: Overview 37:00 I'm on Fire - Bruce Springsteen 38:30 Inferno: Review 1:03:00 Inferno: Verdict 1:09:15 Board Boys Bump: Carnival Zombie 1:13:15 Thank You, Patrons 1:14:00 Through the Fire: Chaka Khan

Board Boys are back to cave paint underneath the English Channel in Doggerland, a game about sending a bunch of your friends out of their warm huts to try to gank a mammoth in the middle of winter. 0:00 Intro, E.V.A. - Jean Jacques Perrey 6:15 Inferno 12:00 Weirdwood Manor 19:00 Doggerland: Overview 23:00 Snoopafella - Snoop Doggy Dogg 24:30 Doggerland: Review 55:00 Doggerland: Verdict 58:00 Board Boys Bump: Blitzkreig!, Dogfight, Caesar!, and BOOoop. 1:05:15 Thank You, Patrons 1:05:30 Vapors - Snoop Doggy Dogg

Board Boys bounce back from the First Tulip Financial Crisis in Windmill Valley from Board and Dice, a game about spinning the water wheel as hard as you can to until you have more black tulips than even the Smiths would think is cool   0:00 Intro, E.V.A. - Jean Jacques Perrey 6:00 Mycelia 12:30 18 Holes 20:45 Creature Caravan 27:45 Stonespine Architects 31:30 Reef Project 36:00 Windmill Valley: Overview 39:00 The Wind - Cat Stevens 40:00 Windmill Valley: Review 1:09:15 Windmill Valley: Verdict 1:15:30 Board Boys Bump: Thunder Road: Vendetta 1:23:45 Thank You, Patrons 1:25:00 Summer Breeze - Isley Brothers

Board Boys are back, baby, to play Evenfall from new dev Stefano de Silva as well as chat with pal David Kuntz about this year's Capital City Gaming Con (formerly Cardboard Caucus) coming up Oct 11-13 0:00 Intro, E.V.A. - Jean Jacques Perrey  12:00 Capital City Gaming Con Preview w/David Kuntz 23:30 Ziggurat  26:45 Arcs 29:45 Cats and Quilts of Calico 36:45 Bomb Busters 40:15 Evenfall: Overview 44:15 Bring Me To Life - Evanescence (karaoke from Bob and Bev) 45:15 Evenfall: Review 1:13:00 Evenfall: Verdict 1:19:30 Board Boys Bump: The Wolves 1:26:15 Ain't No Stoppin' Us Now - DJ Steve Walsh  

Board Boys rock out as hard as humanly possible for a dork hobby podcast with Rock Hard: 1977, a sick game about becoming a rockstar by designer/rock legend Jackie Fox. Also in this episode, a long lookback on Barcelona, plus naming all the Beastie Boys and their DJ. Cam's Rock Hard: 1977 playlist: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/1DpICN2f9sqhbVQ4VNISKP?si=8bb2e0dcbdd6425a 0:00 - Intro: E.V.A. - Jean Jacques Perrey 2:00 - Music Chat 19:00 - CDSK 21:25 - Lifeboats: Planks of Carneades 25:10 - Harvest 29:25 - Cities 31:30 - Jorvik 34:30 - Bomb Busters 38:35 - Rock Hard 1977 - Intro 43:10 - Interlude: Cherry Bomb - The Runaways 44:50 - Rock Hard 1977 - Initial Thoughts 48:00 - Rock Hard 1977 - Pros 1:01:30 - Rock Hard 1977 - Prawns 1:07:30 - Rock Hard 1977 - Cons 1:18:50 - Rock Hard 1977 - Final Thoughts 1:28:15 - Bump or Dump - Barcelona 1:38:15 - Wrap up and Patron Thanks 1:39:45 - Outro: Success - Iggy Pop

Nuestro poeta, Mario Obrero, ha decidido que "Lo que toca" hoy es hablar del poemario Así fala Penélope. Unha antoloxía de xénero (Ed. Chan da Pólvora) de Marta Dacosta. Después, en "El consulado" de Aitor Caminero, hablamos del Carlismo y conversamos con el historiador Daniel Aquillué, profesor de la Universidad Isabel I en Burgos, autor del libro España con honra. Una historia del XIX español (La Esfera de Los Libros). Y finalizamos con "Las mil y una músicas" y "La playlist de Maika Makovski", que esta semana nos descubre algunas perlas bizarras: Also Sprach Zarathustra (Portsmouth Sinfonia), Tout petit la planète (Plastic Bertrand), No hay novedad, señora baronesa (Carlota Bilbao), Gossipo Perpetuo (Jean-Jacques Perrey), Constipation Blues (Screamin'Jay Hawkins) y Automatic Lover (Dee D. Jackson).Escuchar audio

Esta semana nos descubre algunas perlas bizarras: Also Sprach Zarathustra (Portsmouth Sinfonia), Tout petit la planète (Plastic Bertrand), No hay novedad, señora baronesa (Carlota Bilbao), Gossipo Perpetuo (Jean-Jacques Perrey), Constipation Blues (Screamin'Jay Hawkins) y Automatic Lover (Dee D. Jackson).Escuchar audio

Board Boys are back and polite enough to listen to Cam talk for large chunks of the episode about some of his favorite books of the Bible in conjunction with a play of Ezra and Nehemiah, a game about rebuilding the temple, teaching the Torah, and making the walls around the city kino l33t again.  0:00 Intro, E.V.A. - Jean Jacques Perrey 5:30 Faraway 9:00 Hegemony 13:15 Emerge 16:15 Everdell Farshore 21:15 Ezra and Nehemiah: Overview 27:30 Rivers of Babylon - The Melodians 28:45 Ezra and Nehemiah: Review 57:00 Ezra and Nehemiah: Verdict 1:02:45 Board Boys Bump: Challengers! 1:07:00 Thank You, Patrons 1:09:15 Israelites - Desmond Dekker

Board Boys get goofy with some big brain alien superpowers in Annunaki, a Looch joint (w/Danilo Sabia). 0:00 Intro, E.V.A. - Jean Jacques Perrey 12:45 An Age Contrived 16:45 Patzcuaro 21:00 Fromage 27:30 Anarchy Pancakes 31:45 Kabuto Sumo: Total Mayhem 36:00 Next Station: Paris 41:15 Anunnaki: Overview 45:15 Rapture - Blondie 46:45 Anunnaki: Review 1:17:45 Anunnaki: Verdict 1:26:45 Board Boys Bump: Darwin's Journey 1:33:00 Thank You, Patrons 1:33:30 Attack of the Name Game - Stacey Lattisaw  

0:00 Intro, E.V.A. - Jean Jacques Perrey 13:15 Salton Sea 16:30 Glass Road 19:15 Draft & Write Records 25:15 Matches 27:30 Slings 29:00 Skyrise 35:45 Honeydew Farmer ver 1.6 38:15 El Grande: Overview 41:45 Magazine 60 - Don Quichotte 42:45 El Grande: Review 1:09:00 El Grande: Verdict 1:20:15 Board Boys Bump: Atiwa 1:26:30 Thank You, Patrons 1:27:30 "Weird Al" Yankovic - Taco Grande

Board Boys are back for another one, this time playing 2019's (ancient history) Trismegistus: The Ultimate Formula, technically a T game, from Daniele Tascini and Frederico Pierlorenzi. Who can make straw into gold first? Not Cam, he missed this episode. 0:00 Intro, E.V.A. - Jean Jacques Perrey 5:00 Dark Ages: Holy Roman Empire 9:30 Gloomhaven: Buttons and Bugs 12:30 Daybreak 15:45 Fliptown 19:00 Balatro 21:30 Trismegistus: Overview 25:15 You Can Do Magic - America 26:15 Trismegistus: Review 50:00 Trismegistus: Verdict 59:45 Board Boys Bump: Marrakesh 1:08:00 Thank You, Patrons 1:09:45 Sister Golden Hair - America

www.camprefresh.com  Board Boys are back to make birds out of dragons in Wyrmspan from Stonemaier Games. Also in this episode, Joe Roth of the Dealt Hand shares his thoughts on the game and talks about upcoming (late April '24) Camp Refresh, a sleepaway camp/gaming retreat in the Des Moines area- check out his segment for a coupon code! 0:00 Intro, E.V.A. - Jean Jacques Perrey 10:30 Trellis 11:45 Knight 19:00 Amalfi: Renaissance  26:30 Dune Imperium (the app) 35:45 Turing Machine 40:15 Wyrmspan: Overview 43:00 The Dragon - Biz Markie 44:15 Wyrmspan: Review 1:09:00 Camp Refresh Preview with Joe from the Dealt Hand 1:31:45 Wyrmspan: Verdict 1:42:45 Board Boys Bump: Revive 1:49:30 Thank You, Patrons 1:50:00 Time out of Mind - Steely Dan

On this episode of the podcast we dig into Ticket To Ride Legacy: Legends of the West from Days of Wonder.  We give a high level overview and then after some warnings dive right into spoiler territory.  Check the timestamps for this episode for specifics.  Also in this episode we talk about Legacy Games in general.  Cam suprises us with a return of Beef Watch (TM).     TimeStamps 0:00 - Words of apology from Board Boy Rob :30 - Intro, E.V.A. - Jean Jacques Perrey 3:30 - Legacy Game Talk 11:50 - MLEM Space Agency 18:15 - Karvi 22:00 - Neuroriders 25:30 - 7 Wonders Architects: Medals Expansion 26:35 - Star Wars - Unlimited CCG 30:00 - Mercurial 32:45 - Splendor Duel 35:15 - Return of the Beef Watch 40:30 - Ticket to Ride Legacy Intro (Spoiler Free) 42:26 - Sheena East - Morning Train 44:05 - Ticket to Ride Legacy Initial Thoughts (Spoiler Free) 48:00 - Ticket to Ride Legacy Game Conversation (Spoiler Free) 1:00:00 - Ticket to Ride Legacy Final Thoughts (Spoiler Free) 1:07:45 - Ticket to Ride Legacy SPOILERS! 1:33:35 - Bump or Dump - Deal With The Devil  1:39:08 - Outro, Patreon, Discord, Website Info 1:40:08 - Roger Miller - King of the Road

Mr Tony Marsico is in this week with a new book called King of Andalusia  Tonight the first of our Lounge Specials and this week we kick off with Eartha Kitt, a look at the World Of Swank gig guide, a deep thought and Lounge Life Magazine     www.cocktailnation.net     Jean-Jacques Perrey & Dana Countryman-The Spy from Outer Space Kenny Sasaki-Naughty Martini Kings-Bags Groove Mr Moai and the TikiHeads-Rongo Rongo Tiki Delights-Yakushima Serenade  Lords Of Atlantis- Sands of Mauritania Jean-Michel Bernard-K&R Awkward Dinner Gaea Schell-El Picacho Hypnotiques-Mai Tais In The Morning Tiki Joes Ocean-Polynesian Hayride Voodoo 5-Like Young Sarah Mckenzie -Girl From Ipanema The Swongos - Curious Tourist - 04 Broken Glass Beach

Board Boys cork the bottle and get on the no no train to no no ville in Djinn, by Benjamin Schwer. Also in this episode, TV talk, more BGA reviews, and Cam beats Rob on a movie quote, chew on that, Rob. 0:00 Intro, E.V.A. - Jean Jacques Perrey 3:15: Game Show Review Minute with Rob and Cam 16:00 Ten More BGA mini reviews 26:30 20 Strong 32:00 The Search for the Lost Species 33:45 Unlock!: Extraordinary Adventures 36:30 My Island 42:45 Djinn: Overview 47:30 We Genie - Shaquille O'Neal and Wade Robson 48:30 Djinn: Review 1:12:15 Djinn: Verdict 1:23:30 Board Boys Bump: Bonfire 1:29:15 Thank You, Patrons 1:31:00 I Wish - Skee-Lo

Board Boys are back to kick of season 14, probably time to stop counting, with Evacuation, the new Suchy joint from Delicious games. Also in this episode: Cam's BGA advent speed review and Super Board Boys Bump: Season 13 lookback 0:00 Intro, E.V.A. - Jean Jacques Perrey 6:00 Cam's Spectacular BGA Advent Calendar Microreview 17:45 Pokemon Splendor 21:30 Gloomhaven: Jaws of the Lion 25:30 Evacuation: Overview 28:30 We Gotta Get out of This Place - The Animals 29:30 Evacuation: Review 1:05:00 Evacuation: Verdict 1:17:30 Board Boys Bump: Season 13 Lookback 1:33:15 Thank You, Patrons 1:34:00 Leaving on a Jet Plane - John Denver and Cass Elliot

Board Boys are back (minus Cam so skip to next), baby, to play Federation from Eagle-Gryphon Games. Also in this episode, Jake, Tim, and Rob talk their top games of 2023.  0:00 Intro, E.V.A. - Jean Jacques Perrey 2:45 Pies 4:00 Amsterdam 5:45 Santa's Workshop 8:45 Tricky Dicks (This is a game about pictures of Richard Nixon) 10:15 Without Fail 13:00 Flip Town 16:15 Federation: Overview 19:00 Anus of Uranus - Klaatu 20:15 Federation: Review 45:30 Federation: Verdict 49:30 Board Boys Bump Special - Year in Review 1:13:00 Thank You, Patrons 1:13:45 Calling Occupants of Interplanetary Craft (The Recognized Anthem of World Contact Day) - The Carpenters (but written by Klaatu)

Episode 171 looks at "Hey Jude", the White Album, and the career of the Beatles from August 1967 through November 1968. Click the full post to read liner notes, links to more information, and a transcript of the episode. Patreon backers also have a fifty-seven-minute bonus episode available, on "I Love You" by People!. Tilt Araiza has assisted invaluably by doing a first-pass edit, and will hopefully be doing so from now on. Check out Tilt's irregular podcasts at http://www.podnose.com/jaffa-cakes-for-proust and http://sitcomclub.com/ Errata Not really an error, but at one point I refer to Ornette Coleman as a saxophonist. While he was, he plays trumpet on the track that is excerpted after that. Resources No Mixcloud this week due to the number of songs by the Beatles. I have read literally dozens of books on the Beatles, and used bits of information from many of them. All my Beatles episodes refer to: The Complete Beatles Chronicle by Mark Lewisohn, All The Songs: The Stories Behind Every Beatles Release by Jean-Michel Guesdon, And The Band Begins To Play: The Definitive Guide To The Songs of The Beatles by Steve Lambley, The Beatles By Ear by Kevin Moore, Revolution in the Head by Ian MacDonald, and The Beatles Anthology. For this episode, I also referred to Last Interview by David Sheff, a longform interview with John Lennon and Yoko Ono from shortly before Lennon's death; Many Years From Now by Barry Miles, an authorised biography of Paul McCartney; and Here, There, and Everywhere: My Life Recording the Music of the Beatles by Geoff Emerick and Howard Massey. This time I also used Steve Turner's The Beatles: The Stories Behind the Songs 1967-1970. I referred to Philip Norman's biographies of John Lennon, George Harrison, and Paul McCartney, to Graeme Thomson's biography of George Harrison, Take a Sad Song by James Campion, Yoko Ono: An Artful Life by Donald Brackett, Those Were the Days 2.0 by Stephan Granados, and Sound Pictures by Kenneth Womack. Sadly the only way to get the single mix of “Hey Jude” is on this ludicrously-expensive out-of-print box set, but a remixed stereo mix is easily available on the new reissue of the 1967-70 compilation. The original mixes of the White Album are also, shockingly, out of print, but this 2018 remix is available for the moment. Patreon This podcast is brought to you by the generosity of my backers on Patreon. Why not join them? Transcript Before I start, a quick note -- this episode deals, among other topics, with child abandonment, spousal neglect, suicide attempts, miscarriage, rape accusations, and heroin addiction. If any of those topics are likely to upset you, you might want to check the transcript rather than listening to this episode. It also, for once, contains a short excerpt of an expletive, but given that that expletive in that context has been regularly played on daytime radio without complaint for over fifty years, I suspect it can be excused. The use of mantra meditation is something that exists across religions, and which appears to have been independently invented multiple times, in multiple cultures. In the Western culture to which most of my listeners belong, it is now best known as an aspect of what is known as "mindfulness", a secularised version of Buddhism which aims to provide adherents with the benefits of the teachings of the Buddha but without the cosmology to which they are attached. But it turns up in almost every religious tradition I know of in one form or another. The idea of mantra meditation is a very simple one, and one that even has some basis in science. There is a mathematical principle in neurology and information science called the free energy principle which says our brains are wired to try to minimise how surprised we are --  our brain is constantly making predictions about the world, and then looking at the results from our senses to see if they match. If they do, that's great, and the brain will happily move on to its next prediction. If they don't, the brain has to update its model of the world to match the new information, make new predictions, and see if those new predictions are a better match. Every person has a different mental model of the world, and none of them match reality, but every brain tries to get as close as possible. This updating of the model to match the new information is called "thinking", and it uses up energy, and our bodies and brains have evolved to conserve energy as much as possible. This means that for many people, most of the time, thinking is unpleasant, and indeed much of the time that people have spent thinking, they've been thinking about how to stop themselves having to do it at all, and when they have managed to stop thinking, however briefly, they've experienced great bliss. Many more or less effective technologies have been created to bring about a more minimal-energy state, including alcohol, heroin, and barbituates, but many of these have unwanted side-effects, such as death, which people also tend to want to avoid, and so people have often turned to another technology. It turns out that for many people, they can avoid thinking by simply thinking about something that is utterly predictable. If they minimise the amount of sensory input, and concentrate on something that they can predict exactly, eventually they can turn off their mind, relax, and float downstream, without dying. One easy way to do this is to close your eyes, so you can't see anything, make your breath as regular as possible, and then concentrate on a sound that repeats over and over.  If you repeat a single phrase or word a few hundred times, that regular repetition eventually causes your mind to stop having to keep track of the world, and experience a peace that is, by all accounts, unlike any other experience. What word or phrase that is can depend very much on the tradition. In Transcendental Meditation, each person has their own individual phrase. In the Catholicism in which George Harrison and Paul McCartney were raised, popular phrases for this are "Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner" or "Hail, Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with you; blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb, Jesus. Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners now and at the hour of our death. Amen." In some branches of Buddhism, a popular mantra is "_NAMU MYŌHŌ RENGE KYŌ_". In the Hinduism to which George Harrison later converted, you can use "Hare Krishna Hare Krishna, Krishna Krishna Hare Hare, Hare Rama Hare Rama, Rama Rama Hare Hare", "Om Namo Bhagavate Vāsudevāya" or "Om Gam Ganapataye Namaha". Those last two start with the syllable "Om", and indeed some people prefer to just use that syllable, repeating a single syllable over and over again until they reach a state of transcendence. [Excerpt: The Beatles, "Hey Jude" ("na na na na na na na")] We don't know much about how the Beatles first discovered Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, except that it was thanks to Pattie Boyd, George Harrison's then-wife. Unfortunately, her memory of how she first became involved in the Maharishi's Spiritual Regeneration Movement, as described in her autobiography, doesn't fully line up with other known facts. She talks about reading about the Maharishi in the paper with her friend Marie-Lise while George was away on tour, but she also places the date that this happened in February 1967, several months after the Beatles had stopped touring forever. We'll be seeing a lot more of these timing discrepancies as this story progresses, and people's memories increasingly don't match the events that happened to them. Either way, it's clear that Pattie became involved in the Spiritual Regeneration Movement a good length of time before her husband did. She got him to go along with her to one of the Maharishi's lectures, after she had already been converted to the practice of Transcendental Meditation, and they brought along John, Paul, and their partners (Ringo's wife Maureen had just given birth, so they didn't come). As we heard back in episode one hundred and fifty, that lecture was impressive enough that the group, plus their wives and girlfriends (with the exception of Maureen Starkey) and Mick Jagger and Marianne Faithfull, all went on a meditation retreat with the Maharishi at a holiday camp in Bangor, and it was there that they learned that Brian Epstein had been found dead. The death of the man who had guided the group's career could not have come at a worse time for the band's stability.  The group had only recorded one song in the preceding two months -- Paul's "Your Mother Should Know" -- and had basically been running on fumes since completing recording of Sgt Pepper many months earlier. John's drug intake had increased to the point that he was barely functional -- although with the enthusiasm of the newly converted he had decided to swear off LSD at the Maharishi's urging -- and his marriage was falling apart. Similarly, Paul McCartney's relationship with Jane Asher was in a bad state, though both men were trying to repair their damaged relationships, while both George and Ringo were having doubts about the band that had made them famous. In George's case, he was feeling marginalised by John and Paul, his songs ignored or paid cursory attention, and there was less for him to do on the records as the group moved away from making guitar-based rock and roll music into the stranger areas of psychedelia. And Ringo, whose main memory of the recording of Sgt Pepper was of learning to play chess while the others went through the extensive overdubs that characterised that album, was starting to feel like his playing was deteriorating, and that as the only non-writer in the band he was on the outside to an extent. On top of that, the group were in the middle of a major plan to restructure their business. As part of their contract renegotiations with EMI at the beginning of 1967, it had been agreed that they would receive two million pounds -- roughly fifteen million pounds in today's money -- in unpaid royalties as a lump sum. If that had been paid to them as individuals, or through the company they owned, the Beatles Ltd, they would have had to pay the full top rate of tax on it, which as George had complained the previous year was over ninety-five percent. (In fact, he'd been slightly exaggerating the generosity of the UK tax system to the rich, as at that point the top rate of income tax was somewhere around ninety-seven and a half percent). But happily for them, a couple of years earlier the UK had restructured its tax laws and introduced a corporation tax, which meant that the profits of corporations were no longer taxed at the same high rate as income. So a new company had been set up, The Beatles & Co, and all the group's non-songwriting income was paid into the company. Each Beatle owned five percent of the company, and the other eighty percent was owned by a new partnership, a corporation that was soon renamed Apple Corps -- a name inspired by a painting that McCartney had liked by the artist Rene Magritte. In the early stages of Apple, it was very entangled with Nems, the company that was owned by Brian and Clive Epstein, and which was in the process of being sold to Robert Stigwood, though that sale fell through after Brian's death. The first part of Apple, Apple Publishing, had been set up in the summer of 1967, and was run by Terry Doran, a friend of Epstein's who ran a motor dealership -- most of the Apple divisions would be run by friends of the group rather than by people with experience in the industries in question. As Apple was set up during the point that Stigwood was getting involved with NEMS, Apple Publishing's initial offices were in the same building with, and shared staff with, two publishing companies that Stigwood owned, Dratleaf Music, who published Cream's songs, and Abigail Music, the Bee Gees' publishers. And indeed the first two songs published by Apple were copyrights that were gifted to the company by Stigwood -- "Listen to the Sky", a B-side by an obscure band called Sands: [Excerpt: Sands, "Listen to the Sky"] And "Outside Woman Blues", an arrangement by Eric Clapton of an old blues song by Blind Joe Reynolds, which Cream had copyrighted separately and released on Disraeli Gears: [Excerpt: Cream, "Outside Woman Blues"] But Apple soon started signing outside songwriters -- once Mike Berry, a member of Apple Publishing's staff, had sat McCartney down and explained to him what music publishing actually was, something he had never actually understood even though he'd been a songwriter for five years. Those songwriters, given that this was 1967, were often also performers, and as Apple Records had not yet been set up, Apple would try to arrange recording contracts for them with other labels. They started with a group called Focal Point, who got signed by badgering Paul McCartney to listen to their songs until he gave them Doran's phone number to shut them up: [Excerpt: Focal Point, "Sycamore Sid"] But the big early hope for Apple Publishing was a songwriter called George Alexander. Alexander's birth name had been Alexander Young, and he was the brother of George Young, who was a member of the Australian beat group The Easybeats, who'd had a hit with "Friday on My Mind": [Excerpt: The Easybeats, "Friday on My Mind"] His younger brothers Malcolm and Angus would go on to have a few hits themselves, but AC/DC wouldn't be formed for another five years. Terry Doran thought that Alexander should be a member of a band, because bands were more popular than solo artists at the time, and so he was placed with three former members of Tony Rivers and the Castaways, a Beach Boys soundalike group that had had some minor success. John Lennon suggested that the group be named Grapefruit, after a book he was reading by a conceptual artist of his acquaintance named Yoko Ono, and as Doran was making arrangements with Terry Melcher for a reciprocal publishing deal by which Melcher's American company would publish Apple songs in the US while Apple published songs from Melcher's company in the UK, it made sense for Melcher to also produce Grapefruit's first single, "Dear Delilah": [Excerpt: Grapefruit, "Dear Delilah"] That made number twenty-one in the UK when it came out in early 1968, on the back of publicity about Grapefruit's connection with the Beatles, but future singles by the band were much less successful, and like several other acts involved with Apple, they found that they were more hampered by the Beatles connection than helped. A few other people were signed to Apple Publishing early on, of whom the most notable was Jackie Lomax. Lomax had been a member of a minor Merseybeat group, the Undertakers, and after they had split up, he'd been signed by Brian Epstein with a new group, the Lomax Alliance, who had released one single, "Try as You May": [Excerpt: The Lomax Alliance, "Try As You May"] After Epstein's death, Lomax had plans to join another band, being formed by another Merseybeat musician, Chris Curtis, the former drummer of the Searchers. But after going to the Beatles to talk with them about them helping the new group financially, Lomax was persuaded by John Lennon to go solo instead. He may later have regretted that decision, as by early 1968 the people that Curtis had recruited for his new band had ditched him and were making a name for themselves as Deep Purple. Lomax recorded one solo single with funding from Stigwood, a cover version of a song by an obscure singer-songwriter, Jake Holmes, "Genuine Imitation Life": [Excerpt: Jackie Lomax, "Genuine Imitation Life"] But he was also signed to Apple Publishing as a songwriter. The Beatles had only just started laying out plans for Apple when Epstein died, and other than the publishing company one of the few things they'd agreed on was that they were going to have a film company, which was to be run by Denis O'Dell, who had been an associate producer on A Hard Day's Night and on How I Won The War, the Richard Lester film Lennon had recently starred in. A few days after Epstein's death, they had a meeting, in which they agreed that the band needed to move forward quickly if they were going to recover from Epstein's death. They had originally been planning on going to India with the Maharishi to study meditation, but they decided to put that off until the new year, and to press forward with a film project Paul had been talking about, to be titled Magical Mystery Tour. And so, on the fifth of September 1967, they went back into the recording studio and started work on a song of John's that was earmarked for the film, "I am the Walrus": [Excerpt: The Beatles, "I am the Walrus"] Magical Mystery Tour, the film, has a mixed reputation which we will talk about shortly, but one defence that Paul McCartney has always made of it is that it's the only place where you can see the Beatles performing "I am the Walrus". While the song was eventually relegated to a B-side, it's possibly the finest B-side of the Beatles' career, and one of the best tracks the group ever made. As with many of Lennon's songs from this period, the song was a collage of many different elements pulled from his environment and surroundings, and turned into something that was rather more than the sum of its parts. For its musical inspiration, Lennon pulled from, of all things, a police siren going past his house. (For those who are unfamiliar with what old British police sirens sounded like, as opposed to the ones in use for most of my lifetime or in other countries, here's a recording of one): [Excerpt: British police siren ca 1968] That inspired Lennon to write a snatch of lyric to go with the sound of the siren, starting "Mister city policeman sitting pretty". He had two other song fragments, one about sitting in the garden, and one about sitting on a cornflake, and he told Hunter Davies, who was doing interviews for his authorised biography of the group, “I don't know how it will all end up. Perhaps they'll turn out to be different parts of the same song.” But the final element that made these three disparate sections into a song was a letter that came from Stephen Bayley, a pupil at Lennon's old school Quarry Bank, who told him that the teachers at the school -- who Lennon always thought of as having suppressed his creativity -- were now analysing Beatles lyrics in their lessons. Lennon decided to come up with some nonsense that they couldn't analyse -- though as nonsensical as the finished song is, there's an underlying anger to a lot of it that possibly comes from Lennon thinking of his school experiences. And so Lennon asked his old schoolfriend Pete Shotton to remind him of a disgusting playground chant that kids used to sing in schools in the North West of England (and which they still sang with very minor variations at my own school decades later -- childhood folklore has a remarkably long life). That rhyme went: Yellow matter custard, green snot pie All mixed up with a dead dog's eye Slap it on a butty, nice and thick, And drink it down with a cup of cold sick Lennon combined some parts of this with half-remembered fragments of Lewis Carrol's The Walrus and the Carpenter, and with some punning references to things that were going on in his own life and those of his friends -- though it's difficult to know exactly which of the stories attached to some of the more incomprehensible bits of the lyrics are accurate. The story that the line "I am the eggman" is about a sexual proclivity of Eric Burdon of the Animals seems plausible, while the contention by some that the phrase "semolina pilchard" is a reference to Sgt Pilcher, the corrupt policeman who had arrested three of the Rolling Stones, and would later arrest Lennon, on drugs charges, seems less likely. The track is a masterpiece of production, but the release of the basic take on Anthology 2 in 1996 showed that the underlying performance, before George Martin worked his magic with the overdubs, is still a remarkable piece of work: [Excerpt: The Beatles, "I am the Walrus (Anthology 2 version)"] But Martin's arrangement and production turned the track from a merely very good track into a masterpiece. The string arrangement, very much in the same mould as that for "Strawberry Fields Forever" but giving a very different effect with its harsh cello glissandi, is the kind of thing one expects from Martin, but there's also the chanting of the Mike Sammes Singers, who were more normally booked for sessions like Englebert Humperdinck's "The Last Waltz": [Excerpt: Engelbert Humperdinck, "The Last Waltz"] But here were instead asked to imitate the sound of the strings, make grunting noises, and generally go very far out of their normal comfort zone: [Excerpt: The Beatles, "I am the Walrus"] But the most fascinating piece of production in the entire track is an idea that seems to have been inspired by people like John Cage -- a live feed of a radio being tuned was played into the mono mix from about the halfway point, and whatever was on the radio at the time was captured: [Excerpt: The Beatles, "I am the Walrus"] This is also why for many decades it was impossible to have a true stereo mix of the track -- the radio part was mixed directly into the mono mix, and it wasn't until the 1990s that someone thought to track down a copy of the original radio broadcasts and recreate the process. In one of those bits of synchronicity that happen more often than you would think when you're creating aleatory art, and which are why that kind of process can be so appealing, one bit of dialogue from the broadcast of King Lear that was on the radio as the mixing was happening was *perfectly* timed: [Excerpt: The Beatles, "I am the Walrus"] After completing work on the basic track for "I am the Walrus", the group worked on two more songs for the film, George's "Blue Jay Way" and a group-composed twelve-bar blues instrumental called "Flying", before starting production. Magical Mystery Tour, as an idea, was inspired in equal parts by Ken Kesey's Merry Pranksters, the collective of people we talked about in the episode on the Grateful Dead who travelled across the US extolling the virtues of psychedelic drugs, and by mystery tours, a British working-class tradition that has rather fallen out of fashion in the intervening decades. A mystery tour would generally be put on by a coach-hire company, and would be a day trip to an unannounced location -- though the location would in fact be very predictable, and would be a seaside town within a couple of hours' drive of its starting point. In the case of the ones the Beatles remembered from their own childhoods, this would be to a coastal town in Lancashire or Wales, like Blackpool, Rhyl, or Prestatyn. A coachload of people would pay to be driven to this random location, get very drunk and have a singsong on the bus, and spend a day wherever they were taken. McCartney's plan was simple -- they would gather a group of passengers and replicate this experience over the course of several days, and film whatever went on, but intersperse that with more planned out sketches and musical numbers. For this reason, along with the Beatles and their associates, the cast included some actors found through Spotlight and some of the group's favourite performers, like the comedian Nat Jackley (whose comedy sequence directed by John was cut from the final film) and the surrealist poet/singer/comedian Ivor Cutler: [Excerpt: Ivor Cutler, "I'm Going in a Field"] The film also featured an appearance by a new band who would go on to have great success over the next year, the Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band. They had recorded their first single in Abbey Road at the same time as the Beatles were recording Revolver, but rather than being progressive psychedelic rock, it had been a remake of a 1920s novelty song: [Excerpt: The Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band, "My Brother Makes the Noises For the Talkies"] Their performance in Magical Mystery Tour was very different though -- they played a fifties rock pastiche written by band leaders Vivian Stanshall and Neil Innes while a stripper took off her clothes. While several other musical sequences were recorded for the film, including one by the band Traffic and one by Cutler, other than the Beatles tracks only the Bonzos' song made it into the finished film: [Excerpt: The Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band, "Death Cab for Cutie"] That song, thirty years later, would give its name to a prominent American alternative rock band. Incidentally the same night that Magical Mystery Tour was first broadcast was also the night that the Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band first appeared on a TV show, Do Not Adjust Your Set, which featured three future members of the Monty Python troupe -- Eric Idle, Michael Palin, and Terry Jones. Over the years the careers of the Bonzos, the Pythons, and the Beatles would become increasingly intertwined, with George Harrison in particular striking up strong friendships and working relationships with Bonzos Neil Innes and "Legs" Larry Smith. The filming of Magical Mystery Tour went about as well as one might expect from a film made by four directors, none of whom had any previous filmmaking experience, and none of whom had any business knowledge. The Beatles were used to just turning up and having things magically done for them by other people, and had no real idea of the infrastructure challenges that making a film, even a low-budget one, actually presents, and ended up causing a great deal of stress to almost everyone involved. The completed film was shown on TV on Boxing Day 1967 to general confusion and bemusement. It didn't help that it was originally broadcast in black and white, and so for example the scene showing shifting landscapes (outtake footage from Stanley Kubrick's Dr. Strangelove, tinted various psychedelic colours) over the "Flying" music, just looked like grey fuzz. But also, it just wasn't what people were expecting from a Beatles film. This was a ramshackle, plotless, thing more inspired by Andy Warhol's underground films than by the kind of thing the group had previously appeared in, and it was being presented as Christmas entertainment for all the family. And to be honest, it's not even a particularly good example of underground filmmaking -- though it looks like a masterpiece when placed next to something like the Bee Gees' similar effort, Cucumber Castle. But there are enough interesting sequences in there for the project not to be a complete failure -- and the deleted scenes on the DVD release, including the performances by Cutler and Traffic, and the fact that the film was edited down from ten hours to fifty-two minutes, makes one wonder if there's a better film that could be constructed from the original footage. Either way, the reaction to the film was so bad that McCartney actually appeared on David Frost's TV show the next day to defend it and, essentially, apologise. While they were editing the film, the group were also continuing to work in the studio, including on two new McCartney songs, "The Fool on the Hill", which was included in Magical Mystery Tour, and "Hello Goodbye", which wasn't included on the film's soundtrack but was released as the next single, with "I Am the Walrus" as the B-side: [Excerpt: The Beatles, "Hello Goodbye"] Incidentally, in the UK the soundtrack to Magical Mystery Tour was released as a double-EP rather than as an album (in the US, the group's recent singles and B-sides were added to turn it into a full-length album, which is how it's now generally available). "I Am the Walrus" was on the double-EP as well as being on the single's B-side, and the double-EP got to number two on the singles charts, meaning "I am the Walrus" was on the records at number one and number two at the same time. Before it became obvious that the film, if not the soundtrack, was a disaster, the group held a launch party on the twenty-first of December, 1967. The band members went along in fancy dress, as did many of the cast and crew -- the Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band performed at the party. Mike Love and Bruce Johnston of the Beach Boys also turned up at the party, and apparently at one point jammed with the Bonzos, and according to some, but not all, reports, a couple of the Beatles joined in as well. Love and Johnston had both just met the Maharishi for the first time a couple of days earlier, and Love had been as impressed as the Beatles were, and it may have been at this party that the group mentioned to Love that they would soon be going on a retreat in India with the guru -- a retreat that was normally meant for training TM instructors, but this time seemed to be more about getting celebrities involved. Love would also end up going with them. That party was also the first time that Cynthia Lennon had an inkling that John might not be as faithful to her as she previously supposed. John had always "joked" about being attracted to George Harrison's wife, Patti, but this time he got a little more blatant about his attraction than he ever had previously, to the point that he made Cynthia cry, and Cynthia's friend, the pop star Lulu, decided to give Lennon a very public dressing-down for his cruelty to his wife, a dressing-down that must have been a sight to behold, as Lennon was dressed as a Teddy boy while Lulu was in a Shirley Temple costume. It's a sign of how bad the Lennons' marriage was at this point that this was the second time in a two-month period where Cynthia had ended up crying because of John at a film launch party and been comforted by a female pop star. In October, Cilla Black had held a party to celebrate the belated release of John's film How I Won the War, and during the party Georgie Fame had come up to Black and said, confused, "Cynthia Lennon is hiding in your wardrobe". Black went and had a look, and Cynthia explained to her “I'm waiting to see how long it is before John misses me and comes looking for me.” Black's response had been “You'd better face it, kid—he's never gonna come.” Also at the Magical Mystery Tour party was Lennon's father, now known as Freddie Lennon, and his new nineteen-year-old fiancee. While Hunter Davis had been researching the Beatles' biography, he'd come across some evidence that the version of Freddie's attitude towards John that his mother's side of the family had always told him -- that Freddie had been a cruel and uncaring husband who had not actually wanted to be around his son -- might not be the whole of the truth, and that the mother who he had thought of as saintly might also have had some part to play in their marriage breaking down and Freddie not seeing his son for twenty years. The two had made some tentative attempts at reconciliation, and indeed Freddie would even come and live with John for a while, though within a couple of years the younger Lennon's heart would fully harden against his father again. Of course, the things that John always resented his father for were pretty much exactly the kind of things that Lennon himself was about to do. It was around this time as well that Derek Taylor gave the Beatles copies of the debut album by a young singer/songwriter named Harry Nilsson. Nilsson will be getting his own episode down the line, but not for a couple of years at my current rates, so it's worth bringing that up here, because that album became a favourite of all the Beatles, and would have a huge influence on their songwriting for the next couple of years, and because one song on the album, "1941", must have resonated particularly deeply with Lennon right at this moment -- an autobiographical song by Nilsson about how his father had left him and his mother when he was a small boy, and about his own fear that, as his first marriage broke down, he was repeating the pattern with his stepson Scott: [Excerpt: Nilsson, "1941"] The other major event of December 1967, rather overshadowed by the Magical Mystery Tour disaster the next day, was that on Christmas Day Paul McCartney and Jane Asher announced their engagement. A few days later, George Harrison flew to India. After John and Paul had had their outside film projects -- John starring in How I Won The War and Paul doing the soundtrack for The Family Way -- the other two Beatles more or less simultaneously did their own side project films, and again one acted while the other did a soundtrack. Both of these projects were in the rather odd subgenre of psychedelic shambolic comedy film that sprang up in the mid sixties, a subgenre that produced a lot of fascinating films, though rather fewer good ones. Indeed, both of them were in the subsubgenre of shambolic psychedelic *sex* comedies. In Ringo's case, he had a small role in the film Candy, which was based on the novel we mentioned in the last episode, co-written by Terry Southern, which was in itself a loose modern rewriting of Voltaire's Candide. Unfortunately, like such other classics of this subgenre as Anthony Newley's Can Heironymus Merkin Ever Forget Mercy Humppe and Find True Happiness?, Candy has dated *extremely* badly, and unless you find repeated scenes of sexual assault and rape, ethnic stereotypes, and jokes about deformity and disfigurement to be an absolute laugh riot, it's not a film that's worth seeking out, and Starr's part in it is not a major one. Harrison's film was of the same basic genre -- a film called Wonderwall about a mad scientist who discovers a way to see through the walls of his apartment, and gets to see a photographer taking sexy photographs of a young woman named Penny Lane, played by Jane Birkin: [Excerpt: Some Wonderwall film dialogue ripped from the Blu-Ray] Wonderwall would, of course, later inspire the title of a song by Oasis, and that's what the film is now best known for, but it's a less-unwatchable film than Candy, and while still problematic it's less so. Which is something. Harrison had been the Beatle with least involvement in Magical Mystery Tour -- McCartney had been the de facto director, Starr had been the lead character and the only one with much in the way of any acting to do, and Lennon had written the film's standout scene and its best song, and had done a little voiceover narration. Harrison, by contrast, barely has anything to do in the film apart from the one song he contributed, "Blue Jay Way", and he said of the project “I had no idea what was happening and maybe I didn't pay enough attention because my problem, basically, was that I was in another world, I didn't really belong; I was just an appendage.” He'd expressed his discomfort to his friend Joe Massot, who was about to make his first feature film. Massot had got to know Harrison during the making of his previous film, Reflections on Love, a mostly-silent short which had starred Harrison's sister-in-law Jenny Boyd, and which had been photographed by Robert Freeman, who had been the photographer for the Beatles' album covers from With the Beatles through Rubber Soul, and who had taken most of the photos that Klaus Voorman incorporated into the cover of Revolver (and whose professional association with the Beatles seemed to come to an end around the same time he discovered that Lennon had been having an affair with his wife). Massot asked Harrison to write the music for the film, and told Harrison he would have complete free rein to make whatever music he wanted, so long as it fit the timing of the film, and so Harrison decided to create a mixture of Western rock music and the Indian music he loved. Harrison started recording the music at the tail end of 1967, with sessions with several London-based Indian musicians and John Barham, an orchestrator who had worked with Ravi Shankar on Shankar's collaborations with Western musicians, including the Alice in Wonderland soundtrack we talked about in the "All You Need is Love" episode. For the Western music, he used the Remo Four, a Merseybeat group who had been on the scene even before the Beatles, and which contained a couple of classmates of Paul McCartney, but who had mostly acted as backing musicians for other artists. They'd backed Johnny Sandon, the former singer with the Searchers, on a couple of singles, before becoming the backing band for Tommy Quickly, a NEMS artist who was unsuccessful despite starting his career with a Lennon/McCartney song, "Tip of My Tongue": [Excerpt: Tommy Quickly, "Tip of My Tongue"] The Remo Four would later, after a lineup change, become Ashton, Gardner and Dyke, who would become one-hit wonders in the seventies, and during the Wonderwall sessions they recorded a song that went unreleased at the time, and which would later go on to be rerecorded by Ashton, Gardner, and Dyke. "In the First Place" also features Harrison on backing vocals and possibly guitar, and was not submitted for the film because Harrison didn't believe that Massot wanted any vocal tracks, but the recording was later discovered and used in a revised director's cut of the film in the nineties: [Excerpt: The Remo Four, "In the First Place"] But for the most part the Remo Four were performing instrumentals written by Harrison. They weren't the only Western musicians performing on the sessions though -- Peter Tork of the Monkees dropped by these sessions and recorded several short banjo solos, which were used in the film soundtrack but not in the soundtrack album (presumably because Tork was contracted to another label): [Excerpt: Peter Tork, "Wonderwall banjo solo"] Another musician who was under contract to another label was Eric Clapton, who at the time was playing with The Cream, and who vaguely knew Harrison and so joined in for the track "Ski-ing", playing lead guitar under the cunning, impenetrable, pseudonym "Eddie Clayton", with Harrison on sitar, Starr on drums, and session guitarist Big Jim Sullivan on bass: [Excerpt: George Harrison, "Ski-ing"] But the bulk of the album was recorded in EMI's studios in the city that is now known as Mumbai but at the time was called Bombay. The studio facilities in India had up to that point only had a mono tape recorder, and Bhaskar Menon, one of the top executives at EMI's Indian division and later the head of EMI music worldwide, personally brought the first stereo tape recorder to the studio to aid in Harrison's recording. The music was all composed by Harrison and performed by the Indian musicians, and while Harrison was composing in an Indian mode, the musicians were apparently fascinated by how Western it sounded to them: [Excerpt: George Harrison, "Microbes"] While he was there, Harrison also got the instrumentalists to record another instrumental track, which wasn't to be used for the film: [Excerpt: George Harrison, "The Inner Light (instrumental)"] That track would, instead, become part of what was to be Harrison's first composition to make a side of a Beatles single. After John and George had appeared on the David Frost show talking about the Maharishi, in September 1967, George had met a lecturer in Sanskrit named Juan Mascaró, who wrote to Harrison enclosing a book he'd compiled of translations of religious texts, telling him he'd admired "Within You Without You" and thought it would be interesting if Harrison set something from the Tao Te Ching to music. He suggested a text that, in his translation, read: "Without going out of my door I can know all things on Earth Without looking out of my window I can know the ways of heaven For the farther one travels, the less one knows The sage, therefore Arrives without travelling Sees all without looking Does all without doing" Harrison took that text almost verbatim, though he created a second verse by repeating the first few lines with "you" replacing "I" -- concerned that listeners might think he was just talking about himself, and wouldn't realise it was a more general statement -- and he removed the "the sage, therefore" and turned the last few lines into imperative commands rather than declarative statements: [Excerpt: The Beatles, "The Inner Light"] The song has come in for some criticism over the years as being a little Orientalist, because in critics' eyes it combines Chinese philosophy with Indian music, as if all these things are equally "Eastern" and so all the same really. On the other hand there's a good argument that an English songwriter taking a piece of writing written in Chinese and translated into English by a Spanish man and setting it to music inspired by Indian musical modes is a wonderful example of cultural cross-pollination. As someone who's neither Chinese nor Indian I wouldn't want to take a stance on it, but clearly the other Beatles were impressed by it -- they put it out as the B-side to their next single, even though the only Beatles on it are Harrison and McCartney, with the latter adding a small amount of harmony vocal: [Excerpt: The Beatles, "The Inner Light"] And it wasn't because the group were out of material. They were planning on going to Rishikesh to study with the Maharishi, and wanted to get a single out for release while they were away, and so in one week they completed the vocal overdubs on "The Inner Light" and recorded three other songs, two by John and one by Paul. All three of the group's songwriters brought in songs that were among their best. John's first contribution was a song whose lyrics he later described as possibly the best he ever wrote, "Across the Universe". He said the lyrics were “purely inspirational and were given to me as boom! I don't own it, you know; it came through like that … Such an extraordinary meter and I can never repeat it! It's not a matter of craftsmanship, it wrote itself. It drove me out of bed. I didn't want to write it … It's like being possessed, like a psychic or a medium.” But while Lennon liked the song, he was never happy with the recording of it. They tried all sorts of things to get the sound he heard in his head, including bringing in some fans who were hanging around outside to sing backing vocals. He said of the track "I was singing out of tune and instead of getting a decent choir, we got fans from outside, Apple Scruffs or whatever you call them. They came in and were singing all off-key. Nobody was interested in doing the tune originally.” [Excerpt: The Beatles, "Across the Universe"] The "jai guru deva" chorus there is the first reference to the teachings of the Maharishi in one of the Beatles' records -- Guru Dev was the Maharishi's teacher, and the phrase "Jai guru dev" is a Sanskrit one which I've seen variously translated as "victory to the great teacher", and "hail to the greatness within you". Lennon would say shortly before his death “The Beatles didn't make a good record out of it. I think subconsciously sometimes we – I say ‘we' though I think Paul did it more than the rest of us – Paul would sort of subconsciously try and destroy a great song … Usually we'd spend hours doing little detailed cleaning-ups of Paul's songs, when it came to mine, especially if it was a great song like ‘Strawberry Fields' or ‘Across The Universe', somehow this atmosphere of looseness and casualness and experimentation would creep in … It was a _lousy_ track of a great song and I was so disappointed by it …The guitars are out of tune and I'm singing out of tune because I'm psychologically destroyed and nobody's supporting me or helping me with it, and the song was never done properly.” Of course, this is only Lennon's perception, and it's one that the other participants would disagree with. George Martin, in particular, was always rather hurt by the implication that Lennon's songs had less attention paid to them, and he would always say that the problem was that Lennon in the studio would always say "yes, that's great", and only later complain that it hadn't been what he wanted. No doubt McCartney did put in more effort on his own songs than on Lennon's -- everyone has a bias towards their own work, and McCartney's only human -- but personally I suspect that a lot of the problem comes down to the two men having very different personalities. McCartney had very strong ideas about his own work and would drive the others insane with his nitpicky attention to detail. Lennon had similarly strong ideas, but didn't have the attention span to put the time and effort in to force his vision on others, and didn't have the technical knowledge to express his ideas in words they'd understand. He expected Martin and the other Beatles to work miracles, and they did -- but not the miracles he would have worked. That track was, rather than being chosen for the next single, given to Spike Milligan, who happened to be visiting the studio and was putting together an album for the environmental charity the World Wildlife Fund. The album was titled "No One's Gonna Change Our World": [Excerpt: The Beatles, "Across the Universe"] That track is historic in another way -- it would be the last time that George Harrison would play sitar on a Beatles record, and it effectively marks the end of the period of psychedelia and Indian influence that had started with "Norwegian Wood" three years earlier, and which many fans consider their most creative period. Indeed, shortly after the recording, Harrison would give up the sitar altogether and stop playing it. He loved sitar music as much as he ever had, and he still thought that Indian classical music spoke to him in ways he couldn't express, and he continued to be friends with Ravi Shankar for the rest of his life, and would only become more interested in Indian religious thought. But as he spent time with Shankar he realised he would never be as good on the sitar as he hoped. He said later "I thought, 'Well, maybe I'm better off being a pop singer-guitar-player-songwriter – whatever-I'm-supposed-to-be' because I've seen a thousand sitar-players in India who are twice as better as I'll ever be. And only one of them Ravi thought was going to be a good player." We don't have a precise date for when it happened -- I suspect it was in June 1968, so a few months after the "Across the Universe" recording -- but Shankar told Harrison that rather than try to become a master of a music that he hadn't encountered until his twenties, perhaps he should be making the music that was his own background. And as Harrison put it "I realised that was riding my bike down a street in Liverpool and hearing 'Heartbreak Hotel' coming out of someone's house.": [Excerpt: Elvis Presley, "Heartbreak Hotel"] In early 1968 a lot of people seemed to be thinking along the same lines, as if Christmas 1967 had been the flick of a switch and instead of whimsy and ornamentation, the thing to do was to make music that was influenced by early rock and roll. In the US the Band and Bob Dylan were making music that was consciously shorn of all studio experimentation, while in the UK there was a revival of fifties rock and roll. In April 1968 both "Peggy Sue" and "Rock Around the Clock" reentered the top forty in the UK, and the Who were regularly including "Summertime Blues" in their sets. Fifties nostalgia, which would make occasional comebacks for at least the next forty years, was in its first height, and so it's not surprising that Paul McCartney's song, "Lady Madonna", which became the A-side of the next single, has more than a little of the fifties about it. Of course, the track isn't *completely* fifties in its origins -- one of the inspirations for the track seems to have been the Rolling Stones' then-recent hit "Let's Spend The Night Together": [Excerpt: The Rolling Stones, "Let's Spend the Night Together"] But the main source for the song's music -- and for the sound of the finished record -- seems to have been Johnny Parker's piano part on Humphrey Lyttleton's "Bad Penny Blues", a hit single engineered by Joe Meek in the fifties: [Excerpt: Humphrey Lyttleton, "Bad Penny Blues"] That song seems to have been on the group's mind for a while, as a working title for "With a Little Help From My Friends" had at one point been "Bad Finger Blues" -- a title that would later give the name to a band on Apple. McCartney took Parker's piano part as his inspiration, and as he later put it “‘Lady Madonna' was me sitting down at the piano trying to write a bluesy boogie-woogie thing. I got my left hand doing an arpeggio thing with the chord, an ascending boogie-woogie left hand, then a descending right hand. I always liked that, the  juxtaposition of a line going down meeting a line going up." [Excerpt: The Beatles, "Lady Madonna"] That idea, incidentally, is an interesting reversal of what McCartney had done on "Hello, Goodbye", where the bass line goes down while the guitar moves up -- the two lines moving away from each other: [Excerpt: The Beatles, "Hello Goodbye"] Though that isn't to say there's no descending bass in "Lady Madonna" -- the bridge has a wonderful sequence where the bass just *keeps* *descending*: [Excerpt: The Beatles, "Lady Madonna"] Lyrically, McCartney was inspired by a photo in National Geographic of a woman in Malaysia, captioned “Mountain Madonna: with one child at her breast and another laughing into her face, sees her quality of life threatened.” But as he put it “The people I was brought up amongst were often Catholic; there are lots of Catholics in Liverpool because of the Irish connection and they are often religious. When they have a baby I think they see a big connection between themselves and the Virgin Mary with her baby. So the original concept was the Virgin Mary but it quickly became symbolic of every woman; the Madonna image but as applied to ordinary working class woman. It's really a tribute to the mother figure, it's a tribute to women.” Musically though, the song was more a tribute to the fifties -- while the inspiration had been a skiffle hit by Humphrey Lyttleton, as soon as McCartney started playing it he'd thought of Fats Domino, and the lyric reflects that to an extent -- just as Domino's "Blue Monday" details the days of the week for a weary working man who only gets to enjoy himself on Saturday night, "Lady Madonna"'s lyrics similarly look at the work a mother has to do every day -- though as McCartney later noted  "I was writing the words out to learn it for an American TV show and I realised I missed out Saturday ... So I figured it must have been a real night out." The vocal was very much McCartney doing a Domino impression -- something that wasn't lost on Fats, who cut his own version of the track later that year: [Excerpt: Fats Domino, "Lady Madonna"] The group were so productive at this point, right before the journey to India, that they actually cut another song *while they were making a video for "Lady Madonna"*. They were booked into Abbey Road to film themselves performing the song so it could be played on Top of the Pops while they were away, but instead they decided to use the time to cut a new song -- John had a partially-written song, "Hey Bullfrog", which was roughly the same tempo as "Lady Madonna", so they could finish that up and then re-edit the footage to match the record. The song was quickly finished and became "Hey Bulldog": [Excerpt: The Beatles, "Hey Bulldog"] One of Lennon's best songs from this period, "Hey Bulldog" was oddly chosen only to go on the soundtrack of Yellow Submarine. Either the band didn't think much of it because it had come so easily, or it was just assigned to the film because they were planning on being away for several months and didn't have any other projects they were working on. The extent of the group's contribution to the film was minimal – they were not very hands-on, and the film, which was mostly done as an attempt to provide a third feature film for their United Artists contract without them having to do any work, was made by the team that had done the Beatles cartoon on American TV. There's some evidence that they had a small amount of input in the early story stages, but in general they saw the cartoon as an irrelevance to them -- the only things they contributed were the four songs "All Together Now", "It's All Too Much", "Hey Bulldog" and "Only a Northern Song", and a brief filmed appearance for the very end of the film, recorded in January: [Excerpt: Yellow Submarine film end] McCartney also took part in yet another session in early February 1968, one produced by Peter Asher, his fiancee's brother, and former singer with Peter and Gordon. Asher had given up on being a pop star and was trying to get into the business side of music, and he was starting out as a producer, producing a single by Paul Jones, the former lead singer of Manfred Mann. The A-side of the single, "And the Sun Will Shine", was written by the Bee Gees, the band that Robert Stigwood was managing: [Excerpt: Paul Jones, "And the Sun Will Shine"] While the B-side was an original by Jones, "The Dog Presides": [Excerpt: Paul Jones, "The Dog Presides"] Those tracks featured two former members of the Yardbirds, Jeff Beck and Paul Samwell-Smith, on guitar and bass, and Nicky Hopkins on piano. Asher asked McCartney to play drums on both sides of the single, saying later "I always thought he was a great, underrated drummer." McCartney was impressed by Asher's production, and asked him to get involved with the new Apple Records label that would be set up when the group returned from India. Asher eventually became head of A&R for the label. And even before "Lady Madonna" was mixed, the Beatles were off to India. Mal Evans, their roadie, went ahead with all their luggage on the fourteenth of February, so he could sort out transport for them on the other end, and then John and George followed on the fifteenth, with their wives Pattie and Cynthia and Pattie's sister Jenny (John and Cynthia's son Julian had been left with his grandmother while they went -- normally Cynthia wouldn't abandon Julian for an extended period of time, but she saw the trip as a way to repair their strained marriage). Paul and Ringo followed four days later, with Ringo's wife Maureen and Paul's fiancee Jane Asher. The retreat in Rishikesh was to become something of a celebrity affair. Along with the Beatles came their friend the singer-songwriter Donovan, and Donovan's friend and songwriting partner, whose name I'm not going to say here because it's a slur for Romani people, but will be known to any Donovan fans. Donovan at this point was also going through changes. Like the Beatles, he was largely turning away from drug use and towards meditation, and had recently written his hit single "There is a Mountain" based around a saying from Zen Buddhism: [Excerpt: Donovan, "There is a Mountain"] That was from his double-album A Gift From a Flower to a Garden, which had come out in December 1967. But also like John and Paul he was in the middle of the breakdown of a long-term relationship, and while he would remain with his then-partner until 1970, and even have another child with her, he was secretly in love with another woman. In fact he was secretly in love with two other women. One of them, Brian Jones' ex-girlfriend Linda, had moved to LA, become the partner of the singer Gram Parsons, and had appeared in the documentary You Are What You Eat with the Band and Tiny Tim. She had fallen out of touch with Donovan, though she would later become his wife. Incidentally, she had a son to Brian Jones who had been abandoned by his rock-star father -- the son's name is Julian. The other woman with whom Donovan was in love was Jenny Boyd, the sister of George Harrison's wife Pattie.  Jenny at the time was in a relationship with Alexis Mardas, a TV repairman and huckster who presented himself as an electronics genius to the Beatles, who nicknamed him Magic Alex, and so she was unavailable, but Donovan had written a song about her, released as a single just before they all went to Rishikesh: [Excerpt: Donovan, "Jennifer Juniper"] Donovan considered himself and George Harrison to be on similar spiritual paths and called Harrison his "spirit-brother", though Donovan was more interested in Buddhism, which Harrison considered a corruption of the more ancient Hinduism, and Harrison encouraged Donovan to read Autobiography of a Yogi. It's perhaps worth noting that Donovan's father had a different take on the subject though, saying "You're not going to study meditation in India, son, you're following that wee lassie Jenny" Donovan and his friend weren't the only other celebrities to come to Rishikesh. The actor Mia Farrow, who had just been through a painful divorce from Frank Sinatra, and had just made Rosemary's Baby, a horror film directed by Roman Polanski with exteriors shot at the Dakota building in New York, arrived with her sister Prudence. Also on the trip was Paul Horn, a jazz saxophonist who had played with many of the greats of jazz, not least of them Duke Ellington, whose Sweet Thursday Horn had played alto sax on: [Excerpt: Duke Ellington, "Zweet Zursday"] Horn was another musician who had been inspired to investigate Indian spirituality and music simultaneously, and the previous year he had recorded an album, "In India," of adaptations of ragas, with Ravi Shankar and Alauddin Khan: [Excerpt: Paul Horn, "Raga Vibhas"] Horn would go on to become one of the pioneers of what would later be termed "New Age" music, combining jazz with music from various non-Western traditions. Horn had also worked as a session musician, and one of the tracks he'd played on was "I Know There's an Answer" from the Beach Boys' Pet Sounds album: [Excerpt: The Beach Boys, "I Know There's an Answer"] Mike Love, who co-wrote that track and is one of the lead singers on it, was also in Rishikesh. While as we'll see not all of the celebrities on the trip would remain practitioners of Transcendental Meditation, Love would be profoundly affected by the trip, and remains a vocal proponent of TM to this day. Indeed, his whole band at the time were heavily into TM. While Love was in India, the other Beach Boys were working on the Friends album without him -- Love only appears on four tracks on that album -- and one of the tracks they recorded in his absence was titled "Transcendental Meditation": [Excerpt: The Beach Boys, "Transcendental Meditation"] But the trip would affect Love's songwriting, as it would affect all of the musicians there. One of the few songs on the Friends album on which Love appears is "Anna Lee, the Healer", a song which is lyrically inspired by the trip in the most literal sense, as it's about a masseuse Love met in Rishikesh: [Excerpt: The Beach Boys, "Anna Lee, the Healer"] The musicians in the group all influenced and inspired each other as is likely to happen in such circumstances. Sometimes, it would be a matter of trivial joking, as when the Beatles decided to perform an off-the-cuff song about Guru Dev, and did it in the Beach Boys style: [Excerpt: The Beatles, "Spiritual Regeneration"] And that turned partway through into a celebration of Love for his birthday: [Excerpt: The Beatles, "Spiritual Regeneration"] Decades later, Love would return the favour, writing a song about Harrison and their time together in Rishikesh. Like Donovan, Love seems to have considered Harrison his "spiritual brother", and he titled the song "Pisces Brothers": [Excerpt: Mike Love, "Pisces Brothers"] The musicians on the trip were also often making suggestions to each other about songs that would become famous for them. The musicians had all brought acoustic guitars, apart obviously from Ringo, who got a set of tabla drums when George ordered some Indian instruments to be delivered. George got a sitar, as at this point he hadn't quite given up on the instrument, and he gave Donovan a tamboura. Donovan started playing a melody on the tamboura, which is normally a drone instrument, inspired by the Scottish folk music he had grown up with, and that became his "Hurdy-Gurdy Man": [Excerpt: Donovan, "Hurdy Gurdy Man"] Harrison actually helped him with the song, writing a final verse inspired by the Maharishi's teachings, but in the studio Donovan's producer Mickie Most told him to cut the verse because the song was overlong, which apparently annoyed Harrison. Donovan includes that verse in his live performances of the song though -- usually while doing a fairly terrible impersonation of Harrison: [Excerpt: Donovan, "Hurdy Gurdy Man (live)"] And similarly, while McCartney was working on a song pastiching Chuck Berry and the Beach Boys, but singing about the USSR rather than the USA, Love suggested to him that for a middle-eight he might want to sing about the girls in the various Soviet regions: [Excerpt: The Beatles, "Back in the USSR"] As all the guitarists on the retreat only had acoustic instruments, they were very keen to improve their acoustic playing, and they turned to Donovan, who unlike the rest of them was primarily an acoustic player, and one from a folk background. Donovan taught them the rudiments of Travis picking, the guitar style we talked about way back in the episodes on the Everly Brothers, as well as some of the tunings that had been introduced to British folk music by Davey Graham, giving them a basic grounding in the principles of English folk-baroque guitar, a style that had developed over the previous few years. Donovan has said in his autobiography that Lennon picked the technique up quickly (and that Harrison had already learned Travis picking from Chet Atkins records) but that McCartney didn't have the application to learn the style, though he picked up bits. That seems very unlike anything else I've read anywhere about Lennon and McCartney -- no-one has ever accused Lennon of having a surfeit of application -- and reading Donovan's book he seems to dislike McCartney and like Lennon and Harrison, so possibly that enters into it. But also, it may just be that Lennon was more receptive to Donovan's style at the time. According to McCartney, even before going to Rishikesh Lennon had been in a vaguely folk-music and country mode, and the small number of tapes he'd brought with him to Rishikesh included Buddy Holly, Dylan, and the progressive folk band The Incredible String Band, whose music would be a big influence on both Lennon and McCartney for the next year: [Excerpt: The Incredible String Band, "First Girl I Loved"] According to McCartney Lennon also brought "a tape the singer Jake Thackray had done for him... He was one of the people we bumped into at Abbey Road. John liked his stuff, which he'd heard on television. Lots of wordplay and very suggestive, so very much up John's alley. I was fascinated by his unusual guitar style. John did ‘Happiness Is A Warm Gun' as a Jake Thackray thing at one point, as I recall.” Thackray was a British chansonnier, who sang sweetly poignant but also often filthy songs about Yorkshire life, and his humour in particular will have appealed to Lennon. There's a story of Lennon meeting Thackray in Abbey Road and singing the whole of Thackray's song "The Statues", about two drunk men fighting a male statue to defend the honour of a female statue, to him: [Excerpt: Jake Thackray, "The Statues"] Given this was the music that Lennon was listening to, it's unsurprising that he was more receptive to Donovan's lessons, and the new guitar style he learned allowed him to expand his songwriting, at precisely the same time he was largely clean of drugs for the first time in several years, and he started writing some of the best songs he would ever write, often using these new styles: [Excerpt: The Beatles, "Julia"] That song is about Lennon's dead mother -- the first time he ever addressed her directly in a song, though  it would be far from the last -- but it's also about someone else. That phrase "Ocean child" is a direct translation of the Japanese name "Yoko". We've talked about Yoko Ono a bit in recent episodes, and even briefly in a previous Beatles episode, but it's here that she really enters the story of the Beatles. Unfortunately, exactly *how* her relationship with John Lennon, which was to become one of the great legendary love stories in rock and roll history, actually started is the subject of some debate. Both of them were married when they first got together, and there have also been suggestions that Ono was more interested in McCartney than in Lennon at first -- suggestions which everyone involved has denied, and those denials have the ring of truth about them, but if that was the case it would also explain some of Lennon's more perplexing behaviour over the next year. By all accounts there was a certain amount of finessing of the story th

Episode 112 Merry Moog 2023 Holiday Music Performed on the Moog and other Synthesizers Playlist   Sounds Of Broadcasting 1, “Christmas Logos” from Sounds Of Broadcasting #6088 (1975? William B. Tanner Company, Inc.). Broadcast library track produced for the holidays. Produced using a Moog Modular Synthesizer. Hans Wurman, “Overture Miniature” from Electric Nutcracker (1976 Ovation). This Austrian composer made several remarkable, classically influenced Moog Modular albums from 1969 to 1976. This was one of his last big Moog projects and is difficult to find. 2:54 Hans Wurman, “Danse De La Fee-Dragee ( Sugar Plum Fairy)” from Electric Nutcracker (1976 Ovation). Moog Modular synthesizer, Hans Wurman. 1:33 Hans Wurman, “Danse Des Mirlitons (Flutes)” from Electric Nutcracker (1976 Ovation). Moog Modular synthesizer, Hans Wurman. 2:14 Emerson, Lake & Palmer, “Nutrocker” from Nutrocker / The Great Gates Of Kiev (1972 Cotillion). Arranged by, Emerson, Lake & Palmer. Written by Kim Fowley. Emerson, Lake & Palmer, “Troika” from I Believe In Father Christmas (1995 Rhino Records). Arranged by, Emerson, Lake & Palmer. Moog and effects by Keith Emerson. Sounds Of Broadcasting 2, “Night Of The Kings” from Sounds Of Broadcasting #6088 (1975? William B. Tanner Company, Inc.). Broadcast library track produced for the holidays. Produced using a Moog Modular Synthesizer. Jean Jacques Perrey and Sy Mann, “Jingle Bells” from Switched on Santa (1970 Pickwick). USA. Moog Modular Synthesizer. Jean Jacques Perrey and Sy Mann, “Christmas Bells” from Switched on Santa (1970 Pickwick). USA. Moog Modular Synthesizer. Douglas Leedy, “The Coventry Carol” from A Very Merry Electric Christmas to You (1970 Capitol). USA. Moog Modular Synthesizer and Buchla Synthesizer. Joseph Byrd, “Christmas in the Morning” from A Christmas Yet to Come (1975 Takoma). USA. ARP 2600 Synthesizer with an Oberheim Expander Module. Armen Ra, “O Come All Ye Faithful” from Theremin Christmas (2018 Sungod). USA. Moog Etherwave Pro Theremin. Sounds Of Broadcasting 3, “Electronic Tinsel” from Sounds Of Broadcasting #6088 (1975? William B. Tanner Company, Inc.). Broadcast library track produced for the holidays. Produced using a Moog Modular Synthesizer. Beck, “The Little Drum Machine Boy” from Just Say Noël (1996 Geffen). USA. Roland TR-808 Rhythm Composer. Taeko Onuki, Inori (Prayer) from We Wish You A Merry Christmas (1984 Yen). A compilation of specially recorded Christmas-themed songs from various artists on the Yen Records label. Japanese synth-pop with vocals by Onuki. Maybe Ryuichi Sakamoto on keyboards. Unknown artist, “God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen” from Electronic Computer Christmas Music (1990 Silver Bells Music). As the name suggests, this was a label dedication mostly to producing broadcast music for the holidays. They also release several albums of nature sounds. The studio musicians go unnamed. John Baker, “Christmas Commercial” from BBC Radiophonic Music (1968 BBC Radio Enterprises). A short piece used for broadcasting that was created by tape manipulation of the sounds of a mechanical cash register. It was part of collection of short works by BBC Radiophonic composers. “This record has been produced with the intention of entertaining rather than informing: the items chosen do not necessarily represent a survey of the music created at the BBC Radiophonic Workshop. The Workshop at the BBC Music Studios in Maida Vale, London, is equipped with tape recording machines and other electronic equipment for generating and manipulating sound. The composition and realization of this music and sound is done by a small number of specialized creative staff.” Christmas Baubles, “Orch” from Christmas Baubles And Their Strange Sounds (2002 Lo Recordings). Christmas Baubles was a Russian trio comprised of Alexander Zaitsev, Gennady Pleshkov, and Ilya Baramiya, who produced and performed this track. Sounds Of Broadcasting 4, “Cutesy Christmas Logos” from Sounds Of Broadcasting #6088 (1975? William B. Tanner Company, Inc.). Broadcast library track produced for the holidays. Produced using a Moog Modular Synthesizer. Michael Nyman, “Cream or Christmas” from Chantons Noël - Ghosts Of Christmas Past (1981 Les Disques Du Crépuscule). From a compilation album of Christmas-related tunes. From Nyman's minimalist era before he became famous for soundtracks. Cabaret Voltaire, “Invocation” from Eight Crepuscule Tracks (1987 Interior Music). This track was originally included on the holiday album Chantons Noël - Ghosts Of Christmas Past (1981 Les Disques Du Crépuscule), which suggested to me that it should be in this holiday podcast. Any excuse for a CV track. Paul Haig, “Scottish Christmas” from Chantons Noël - Ghosts Of Christmas Past (1981 Les Disques Du Crépuscule). From a compilation album of Christmas-related tunes. Scottish songwriter, musician and singer. Les Cousins Dangereux, “What Child Is This” from Gotta Groove Records 2012 (2012 Gotta Groove Records). Holiday album with various artists. Les Cousins Dangereux is Mr. Tim Thornton. Joy Electric, “Angels We Have Heard on High” from The Magic Of Christmas (2003 Tooth & Nail Records). Joy Electric is Ronnie Martin from Ohio. American synthesizer-pop musician. Among his many releases is this crafty Christmas album. Sounds Of Broadcasting 5, “Christmas Moog Choir” from Sounds Of Broadcasting #6088 (1975? William B. Tanner Company, Inc.). Broadcast library track produced for the holidays. Produced using a Moog Modular Synthesizer. Edhels, “Oriental Christmas” from Oriental Christmas (1985 Cabana Music). Recorded in France. Drums, Percussion, Keyboards, Jacky Rosati; Guitar, Jean Louis Suzzoni; Guitar, Bass, Keyboards, Composed by, Marc Ceccotti; Keyboards, Noël Damon. I was sent this as a promotional album back in 1985 with a kind little note from the artists. Sorry it took me so long to put the Christmas-related track in my podcast. This is great example of synth-pop from France in the 1980s. Pac-Man, “Snowflakes And Frozen Lakes” from Pac-Man Christmas Album (1982 Kid Stuff Records). Produced, Written by, Dana Walden, Patrick McBride. “A collection of Pac-Man's favorite Christmas songs.” Need I say more? Swinging Buildings, “Praying For A Cheaper Christmas” from Chantons Noël - Ghosts Of Christmas Past (1981 Les Disques Du Crépuscule). From a compilation album of Christmas-related tunes. This group was once rumored to be New Order in disguise. But no, they were in fact The Bowling Balls in disguise. Old Man Gloom, “Valhalla and Christmas Eve Parts I and II from Christmas (2004 Tortuga Recordings). Ambient/Noise band formed in New Mexico by guitarist/vocalist Aaron Turner and drummer Santos Montano. Guitar, Drum Programming, Drums, captured and organized sound, Kurt Ballou; Performed by Aaron Turner, Caleb Scofield, Luke Scarola, Nate Newton, Santos Montano. Sounds Of Broadcasting 6, “The Joyous Moment” from Sounds Of Broadcasting #6088 (1975? William B. Tanner Company, Inc.). Broadcast library track produced for the holidays. Produced using a Moog Modular Synthesizer. Bernie Krause, Philip Aaberg, “Feliz Navidad” from A Wild Christmas (1994 Etherean Music ). This delightful cassette is from Bernie Krause, known for his Moog explorations with Paul Beaver back in the day. All animal and ambient sounds recorded on location worldwide by Bernie Krause with the exception of the fish (courtesy of U.S. Navy). Animal samples, Bernie Krause and Phil Aaberg. Arrangements, new materials, all keyboards (Kurzweil 2000/Emulator III) Phil Aaberg. Percussion on Feliz Navidad performed by Ben Leinbach. 5:37 John & Yoko and The Plastic Ono Band With The Harlem Community Choir (remixed by Thom Holmes in 2001), “Happy Christmas (War is Over)” (1971 Apple Records). I had a CD player that was in disrepair and decided to “perform” this remix using it. I ended up calling this the Lennon and Ono Sliding Moment remix. Opening background music: Jean Jacques Perrey and Sy Mann, “Tijuana Christmas” from Switched on Santa (1970 Pickwick). USA. Moog Modular Synthesizer. Don Voegeli, “Chanukah” from Holiday & Seasonal Music (1977 EMI). USA. Produced at the Electrosonic Studio of the University of Wisconsin-Extension. Joy Electric, “Let it Snow” from The Magic Of Christmas (2003 Tooth & Nail Records). Joy Electric is Ronnie Martin from Ohio. American synthesizer-pop musician. Christmas Baubles, “Noisy Organ” from Christmas Baubles And Their Strange Sounds (2002 Lo Recordings). Christmas Baubles was a Russian trio comprised of Alexander Zaitsev, Gennady Pleshkov, and Ilya Baramiya, who produced and performed this track.     Opening and closing sequences voiced by Anne Benkovitz. Additional opening, closing, and other incidental music by Thom Holmes. See my companion blog that I write for the Bob Moog Foundation. For additional notes, please see my blog, Noise and Notations.  

Boo-ard Boys are back just in time for Halloween with the bone chilling, spine tingling, water contaminating Carnival Zombie, a game about six best friends zombie battling their way through Venice in an attempt to escape the wrath of an undead lagoon monster. Beware the order of operations! 0:00 Intro, E.V.A. - Jean Jacques Perrey 5:30 City of Horror 13:15 That Time You Killed Me 16:30 Sky Team 20:30 Timeline Twist 23:15 Witchstone expansion 25:45 Wind the Film! 32:15 Indiana Jones: Cryptic - A Puzzles & Pathways Adventure 38:45 Carnival Zombie: Overview 41:15 The Great Pumpkin Waltz - Vince Guaraldi 42:45 Carnival Zombie: Review 1:15:00 Carnival Zombie: Verdict 1:22:30 Board Boys Bump: Flamecraft 1:30:45 Thank You, Patrons 1:32:45 Zombie - Fela Kuti

Board Boy Rob is back with special guest Joe!  We hammer through all the  2 player games Blitzkrieg!, Ceasar!, and Dogfight! from PSC and Floodgate Games plus we get a little on the spooky side with BOOoop from Smirk and Dagger Games.  Also in this episode we talk about the upcoming Spooktacular holiday, Point Salad and we get even scarier with a little Orthodontic work.  Thanks for joining us for another episode and we hope you like boardgames! 0:00 - Intro, E.V.A. - Jean Jacques Perrey 2:35 - Intro to BB Joe 6:00 - Halloween  9:30 - Point City  14:05 - Scout and Orthodontics 16:30 - My Fathers Work 17:45 - App Based Games 20:05 - Barrage Nile Affair Expansion 24:30 - Blitzkrieg! 24:30 36:36 - Caesar! - 36:36 51:47 - Dogfight!   1:01:52 - PSC ! Final Thoughts 1:05:50 - BOOoop 1:14:15 - Bump or Dump - Twilight Inscription  1:18:30 - Wrap Up 1:20:00 - Bill Withers - Just the Two of Us

Board Boys are back for another Rob's-coworker-Jack-guested, high octane, high voltage thriller as we take a look at Thunder Road: Vendetta from Restoration Games. Also in this episode- Finance Blurb with Cam (from Pyramid Ponzi Advisory Group), Rob rates a game twice, and several more minutes of Kazoo that Tune than anybody ever wanted. 0:00 Intro, E.V.A. - Jean Jacques Perrey 2:30 Business Name/Shady Annuity Cam 6:00 Taylor Swift 4 Hour Performance/Dream Concert 13:15 Fit to Print 18:00 Blacksmiths of Steinheimer 22:45 CULTivate 26:00 Thunder Road: Overview 30:00 Vehicle - Ides of March 31:00 Thunder Road: Review 53:30 Thunder Road: Verdict 1:05:30 Board Boys Bump: My Father's Work 1:11:00 Thank You, Patrons 1:11:15 Kazoo That Tune: Vendetta 1:24:45 I Don't Want to Miss a Thing - Aerosmith  

This week Gary Wells brings us the great Perry Mason in Words With Wellsy and plenty of new Lounge and Exotica to make your week along with a deep thought and our stuff segment, this time on the origin of the marathon.   www.cocktailnation.net       Jean-Jacques Perrey & Dana Countryman-The Spy From Outer Space Kenny Sasaki-Naughty Spy Fi- Perry Mason Hypnotiques-Mai Tais  In The Morning Mustard Allegro- Blue Agave Juice The Swongos -  Broken Glass Beach Martini Kings- Marianne Herbie Mann- Theme From Malamondo Sergio Mendes-So Many Stars  Rose Sinclair- Canadian Sunset Mark Riddle- Toro Nagashi  Combustible Edison-Theme From The Tiki Wonder Hour Tiki Delights- Casa Verde Samba 09 Mr Moai and Tikiheads- Shaken and Stirred Gaea Schell- Perplexity  

Den Daddies are back by which I mean to say Board Boys are back, here to alpha wolf dom out all the little soy boy baby dawgs in THE WOLVES, a game about growling and howling at your enemies to DOM THEM OUT. Who will snarl the meanest and win the wolf trophy? 0:00 Intro, E.V.A. - Jean Jacques Perrey 5:30 Lords of Waterdeep 8:15 Cretaceous Rails Kickstarter preview and mini review with Alex from Spielcraft Games Kickstarter Link - https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/spielcraftgames/cretaceous-rails?ref=73dnqp&token=427fe60d - early peek at the KS page 24:00 After Us 31:30 Zoo Vadis, Ra revisited 36:00 Wild Tiled West 41:00 Baldur's Gate 3 commentary 47:00 Thanks Antofadude from Lil Wreckers Workshop 50:00 The Wolves: Overview 53:00 I am a Wolf, You are the Moon - Craig Wedren 54:30 The Wolves: Review 1:19:45 The Wolves: Verdict 1:24:15 Board Boys Bump: Carnegie 1:28:45 Thank You, Patrons 1:29:45 Dancing in the Moonlight - Thin Lizzy (The completely different song of the same name by King Harvest is worth listening to as well if you're reading this)      

0:00 Intro, E.V.A. - Jean Jacques Perrey 5:45 Deep Dive 9:30 The Wolves 12:00 Moon River 16:15 Ra 20:00 Zoo Vadis 24:30 Rome in a Day 27:00 Forest Shuffle 32:15 Barcelona: Overview 36:00 We're From Barcelona - I'm From Barcelona 37:30 Barcelona: Review 1:08:30 Barcelona: Verdict 1:15:15 Board Boys Bump: Hansa Teutonica 1:20:00 Thank You, Patrons 1:23:00 Cantares (Caminante, No Hay Camino) - Joan Manuel Serrat (de Barcelona)

Board Boy Bill is back in the saddle for a repeat appearance in Sabika, a game about balancing the lightning bolt with the infinity sign. Also, car fires, PP Rain, Chilling With My Pepsi Like Sheesh, Bowser's Back Door, and many other one episode catchphrases.  0:00 Intro, E.V.A. - Jean Jacques Perrey 2:30 Cam's Top 2 Car Fires 11:15 Anomaly 15:30 The Logo Game 17:00 Frosthaven 25:30 Whistle Mountain 30:00 Burgle Bros 38:30 Sabika: Overview 43:45 I've Been Hurt - Bill Deal and the Rhondels 45:30 A Beaument with Mo: Unmatched 52:45 Sabika: Review 1:21:45 Sabika: Verdict 1:28:15 Board Boys Bump: Bitoku 1:33:15 Thank You, Patrons 1:34:30 The Ronettes - Be My Baby

Board Boys are back with a brand new season (for catalogue purposes) and playing the sequel to Scythe, Expeditions (Stonemaier Games). Also in this Episode, Board Boy Bill joins us for the first half of a Board Boy Bill double feature, Cam gets the podcast canceled again if anyone was listening, and Rob stands in his truth for the first time ever. (This is the first episode in about six months where there isn't 30 minutes of King's Dilemma and restaurant talk) 0:00 Intro, E.V.A. - Jean Jacques Perrey 2:30 Cam's peanut-brained question about the theme 4:30 For Sale 9:45 The K Man Audits: Cam's Top 5 Luciani Games 15:30 Joan of Arc (Orleans roll and write) 18:30 Hadrian's Wall 23:30 QE 27:45 Expeditions: Overview 32:15 Ice Flow - The Mighty Boosh 33:45 Expeditions: Review 1:11:15 Expeditions: Verdict 1:23:15 Board Boys Bump: Agricola 1:29:00 Thank You, Patrons 1:30:00 Digging for Gold - Sally Oldfield  

Welcome to the Challenge Family in Challengers!, a game of building a sick deck of zany athletes and seeing how it fares against your opponents when none of you have any control over the order in which cards are played. Also in this episode, Spiel des Jahres contenders 2023 and a little bit of talk about GWT: Rails to the North 2nd Ed. 0:00 Intro, E.V.A. - Jean Jacques Perrey 2:00 Capture the Flag and other camp games 6:30 The King's Dilemma  14:30 Dealmaking ettiquete 19:30 Oranienburger Kanal 24:30 Cascadia 29:45 Awkward Guests 33:34 Challengers!: Overview 37:30 Wrestling promo taunting Razor Ramone and Ric Flair - Ultimate Warrior and "Macho Man" Randy Savage  38:30 Challengers!: Review 59:00 Challengers!: Verdict 1:08:30 Spiel des Jahres 2023 nominees 1:24:00 Board Boys Bump: Great Western Trail 2nd Edtion + mini review Rails to the North 1:38:30 Thank You, Patrons 1:39:15 Challenge Song - I have no idea how to really credit this- Apparently it's the theme song for Half Challenge Barcelona  2013?

Time to go sailing, Christopher Cross style, in Darwin's Journey, a game that I think should have been named "Galapoly" - who will publish information on species and fossils and stuff the best, Board Boys, Darwin, or the handsome sailor, Esteban? Find out today on another episode of the world's first board game podcast except it's about flying. 0:00 Intro, E.V.A. - Jean Jacques Perrey 1:45 Standing In My Truth (the probably one time only segment): Airplane seating 17:30 Board Game discussion begins 17:45 Bamboo 19:45 Akropolis (again) 22:15 Silo (Rob talks about TV) 27:00 Darwin's Journey: Overview 29:00 Galapagos - Slawa Przybylska 30:30 Darwin's Journey: Review 1:16:15 Darwin's Journey: Verdict 1:22:00 Top 5 Luciani games 1:27:30 Board Boys Bump: Perseverance 1:32:00 Thank You, Patrons 1:32:45 Sailing- Christopher Cross

Board Boys cover seeds with crud and grow beautiful, life giving flora in Earth, a tasty lil jam by from Maxime Tardif. Also, Rob thinks Jane Lynch was on 3rd Rock from the Sun and Cam talks about his youth as a server and bartender for way too long. 0:00 Intro, E.V.A. - Jean Jacques Perrey 1:45 Who was on 3rd Rock from the Sun? 3:00 Many, many thoughts on waiting tables 11:30 Awkward Guests 14:15 Middle Earth Quest 16:00 Star Wars: Rivals 19:45 Akropolis 26:00 Distilled 33:00 Pirates of Maracaibo 47:00 Earth: Overview 50:15 Symphony for a Spider Plant - Mort Garson - Mother Earth's Plantasia (warm earth music for plants... and the people who love them) 51:30 Earth: Review 1:24:45 Earth: Verdict 1:34:00 Board Boys Bump: The Battle of Five Armies 1:38:30 Thank You, Patrons 1:41:00 Power Flower - Stevie Wonder - Journey Through the Secret Life of Plants

Board Boys kill the bad guys in Beast, baby, the brand new first release from Studio Midhall. Is it Rob's new fave hidden movement game? That would be crazy because he LOVES hidden movement games. 0:00 Intro, E.V.A. - Jean Jacques Perrey 4:00 Kabuto Sumo 14:00 Cat in the Box 23:45 Cryptid 29:00 Luxor 34:00 Karuba 38:30 Beast: Overview 41:15 I Will Follow Him - Little Peggy March 42:15 Beast: Review 1:18:30 Beast: Verdict 1:26:45 Board Boys Bump: Wonderlands War 1:31:30 Thank You, Patrons 1:32:15 Hunter - Bjork 1:36:15 ???

Board Boys are back in business, baby, and playing Stefan Feld's new joint from Queen Games, Marrakesh. Is it the best game out there that has a Stefan Feld first player marker (and postcard and challenge coin)?  0:00 Intro, E.V.A. - Jean Jacques Perrey 3:30 Shifting Stones 5:00 Escape the Dark Sector 9:00 Amsterdam 11:00 East India Companies 17:15 Nidavellir 21:15 Dice Manor 24:00 Marrakesh: Overview 31:00 Marrakesh Express - Crosby, Stills, and Nash 32:00 Marrakesh: Review 1:08:30 Marrakesh: Verdict 1:16:15 Top 5 Felds 1:18:30 Board Boys Bump: Ark Nova 1:23:45 Thank You, Patrons 1:24:45 Aicha - Khaled (Khaled is from Algeria, not Morocco, but they're neighbors and both speak French please lay off)

Board Boys are out the bunker 5000 years later for Revive (Aporta Games), a game about building a utopian society out of the rubble of ancient times by having fun with your super cool player board. 0:00  Intro, E.V.A. - Jean-Jacques Perrey 4:30 Stack'n Stuff: A Patchwork Game 5:45 Motor City 7:45 Consumption: Food and Choices 9:00 Bot Factory 12:30 Slim Goodbody, Richard Simmons 15:00 A Beaument with Mo- The Adventurers: The Temple of Chac, Dungeons & Dragons: Onslaught, Beau's Lego guys 23:30 Steam Up: A Feast of Dim Sum 28:00 Brass: Birmingham (again) 29:30 Sidereal Confluence: Bifurcation 36:00 Revive: Overview 39:30 Everytime - Boy Pablo (Norway) 41:00 Revive: Review 1:26:45 Revive: Verdict 1:36:00 Board Boys Bump: Dinogenics 1:42:15 Thank You, Patrons 1:44:30 Rocky Trail - Kings of Convenience (Norway)

Board Boys are back in full force to play Deal With the Devil, a new jam from Czech Games Edition about secret dealing, hosing the peasants, and avoiding inquisition. 0:00 Intro, E.V.A. - Jean-Jacques Perrey 6:00 Monumental Consequence 11:30 Fun Facts 15:30 Millennium Blades 23:30 Decorum 25:45 Disney's Gargoyles Awakening 28:45 Brass: Birmingham 39:45 Deal With the Devil: Overview 43:00 Christine's Tune - The Flying Burrito Brothers 44:00 Deal With the Devil: Review 1:24:45 Deal With the Devil: Verdict 1:33:45 Board Boys Bump: Golem 1:40:15 Thank You, Patrons 1:41:00 Friend of the Devil - The Grateful Dead  

Board Boys are back, alright, to play Oak, a worker placement game about druids trying to see who can scramble to the top of a huge oak the most reverently, and the third game in a row on this podcast to feature TREES. I guess next time we're going to have to play Atiwa or something chock full of more big trees. Music: E.V.A. - Jean Jacques Perrey, Tie a Yellow Ribbon - organist Mike Reed, Brujeria - El Gran Combo de Puerto Rico

Board Boys are back again for Bonfire with the Trees and Creatures expansion, a Stefan Feld joint. Also in this episode, a Beaument with Mo, Rob is obsessed with Marvel Snap, and Cam underestimates the backbone of the gaming world. Music: E.V.A. - Jean Jacques Perrey, Fire - Ohio Players, Keep the Fire - Kenny Loggins

Somebody that we used to know, Wally de Backer, Belgian-born Australian multi-instrumentalist, self-admitted “tinkerer,” and singer-songwriter (aka GOTYE), digs unusual instruments – like the rare French electronic musical instrument, the ondioline (invented in 1941.) He'll perform tunes from the 1960's ondioline repertoire, created by the late Jean-Jacques Perrey, the instrument's first and only virtuoso.