The BigLig Thinks

I don´t carry no pistol
I don´t wear a false mustache
And you´ll never see me carrying
Around a little black bag.

Yes, Edwin Starr's "Double-Oh-Soul" is the soundtrack to this post. I came across it, as well as many astonishing tracks, by discovering that John Lennon was the worlds first iPod owner. OK, technically not an iPod. It was a Kloster-Brandes Diplomatic portable jukebox. He bought it in 1965, loaded it with forty vinyl singles and took it on tour.

You can buy a CD that is close to what he filled it with, although I've had a lot of fun trying to replicate it in an Spotify playlist.

Ah, though, my relationship with the Beatles is a tricky one. You see, I am a firm believer in the Kirk/Picard theory of art. You either like Kirk better, or Picard better, and there is no-one IN THE WORLD who likes them equally. I am a Kirk man, and will be to my dying days: you might say "Graham, would you prefer to come to my dinner party where I've invited William Shatner, or my party where I've invited Patrick Stewart@, and of course I'd chose to come to the one with Sir Patrick, (after first checking that there were no third parties on offer with James Doohan or Wil Wheaton, of course) but I still remain a Kirk man, not a Picard man.

But this is where I went wrong. I am, and always have been (steady!) a Roy Orbison fan. The sort of fan who has actually listened to Laminar Flow all the way through, for goodness sake. (It's not as bad as you think, you know.) Now, given that as a premise, the obvious conclusion is that in the Elvis/Beatles pairing, I'd be a Elvis fan. Obvious.

And I spent years assuming this must be true until I finally got around to actually listening to both of them, when, to my chagrin, I discovered that I am a Beatles fan. What are the odds?

Even better, it fits in with my "second/third album with creative control" theory, which is that the second album where a pop artist gains creative control is the real masterpiece, not the third one that everyone else thinks is a masterpiece. I mean, the Dreaming is better than Hounds of Love, and Revolver is better than Sargeant Pepper.

(It suddenly occurs to me that this theory implies that Listen Without Prejudice is better than Older. I think I'd better think it out again...)

P.S. The typo in this post's title is, of course, a call out to that great American writer, Mr. Bob Burden. Yes, you'll have to read his entire back catalog to get the reference, but you'll be a better human being for it, so it is allowed.