FBO: 'Celebrating Global Warming & the Beatles (III)'

This is the third installment of a three- or four-part series of the FBO ‘celebrating global warming’ by listening to the Beatles and Wings...

--> FOUR QUESTIONS

1) If you could have one Paul McCartney Beatles song, what would it be?
FBO believes many of Paul McCartney's songs are way overrated -- eg 'Let it Be' -- but enjoys several. If we at FBO HQ could have one, we'd go with 'Back in the USSR' -- about as subversive of a song that banged Paul ever dared. Borrowing (slightly dated already at the time) Beach Boys melodies -- and a Chuck Berry title ('Back in the USA') -- Paul puts it inexplicably in the Soviet bloc.

2) If you could have one Wings song, what would it be?
Guns'n'Roses already ruined 'Live and Let Die' -- not the best anyway -- and taking 'Band in the Run' would leave little Wings with very little. So FBO Admin goes, less damaging, with 'With a Little Luck.' In the FBO version, it'd be shortened to about three-and-a-half minutes, but keep the sissy synth all over it.

3) If you could have one John Lennon Beatles song, what would it be?
Here decisions are tougher. Many of the classics -- 'A Day in the Life,' 'In My Life,' even 'Come Together' -- are too firmly stuck in Beatlesness to be culled. Altruistically, FBO plucks the less-assuming 'I'm So Tired' from the so-called 'White Album.' It's 2:05 and goes from soft verses to explosive chorus in a Pixies-like flash.

4) If you could have one John Lennon solo song, what would it be?
'Mother' is the best -- a skeletal version of a song, with piano chords atop steady drums by Ringo and a little bass, is perfect for John's melodic 'I-I-I-I's and primal therapy that ends it (I might argue it's better than any Beatles song). But there's no way the song could be taken from him. Similarly songs like 'Cold Turkey' is too personal (he introduces the eight-minute version live: 'this song is about pain' and ends with minutes of screaming). Hokey, rousing 'Freeda People' -- from 'Mind Games' -- is tempting, but we'll go with 'Nobody Told Me There'd Be Days Like These, Strange Days Indeed, Most Peculiar Mama' -- it's not that good, and considering it didn't come out till after his death, taking it won't dent his solo career.



FBO Admin
Mobile/Semi-Permanent HQ -- Brooklyn, NY