Come Together

One of countless 'underground' Beatles tracks (typically on the B side of the agile or the final track of the side of the albums) that too-cool-for-school listeners don't seem to have heard when they dismiss the Beatles as 'merely' a very good pop band. Did the genuinely and studiedly cool and groundbreaking (and at times quite poppy albeit with an edge one a Pale Blue Eyes=Dear Prudence sort of way) Velvet Underground make anything even in 1967 that was more 'underground' than 'Walrus' and 'Strawberry Fields' in that iconoclastic year or 'Rain' and 'Tomorrow Never Knows' the year before or even 'Ticket To Ride' (which was an 'A' side number one single AS WELL) the year before that? And I'm not even going to mention 'Revolution 9' (or 'The Inner Light') in '1968. Just because 'Come Together' is lifted into rock heaven by McCartney's stunning and intricate bass part doesn't make it any 'underground' 'progressive' or 'experimental.' It (and all these others mentioned) just rocks its way into the ear of everyman and woman as well as the dilettantes.
Lyrically, 'Come Together' is daringly new - and I would even use the F word (feminism) in the traditionally macho sex-objectifying world ofrocknroll.

On the subject of which, Lennon's lifelong weakness for naughty boy sexual innuendo in his lyrics - from 'Please Please Me' through 'I'll Get You ( In The End)' and 'A Hard Day's Night' to 'Come Together' (where it, is it were, grows up and comes out with it) was possibly at work in the original title of the track that dominated Side 2 of 'Abbey Road' which was originally known as 'The Big One'. Rather beautifully, these innuendos are never single entendres as they tend to be with Stones lyrics but contribute an earthing giggle out of the side of a heavenly kiss in the total effect of a Beatles record. It would be perverse and reductive to insist on them but it is funny in a boyish sort of way, part of their subversiveness and refusal quite to be squeaky clean National Treasures. (like getting stoned in the Buckingham Palace toilets before receiving their MBSEs).

Here all that grows up into a very Sixties celebration of a consummation in which the love object is no longer separate and 'other' as in a conventional pop song but merges with the love subject in a revolutionary union. Our take was never likely to challenge the glorious perfection of the original but its author would hopefully approve this male/ female fusion/ revolutionary love anthem, sung, played and recorded after co-cooking/imbibing our Covid Christmas dinner, on 25 Dec 2020.
On the subject of which, Lennon's lifelong weakness for naughty boy sexual innuendo in his lyrics - from 'Please Please Me' through 'I'll Get You ( In The End)' and 'A Hard Day's Night' to 'Come Together' (where it, is it were, grows up and comes out with it) was possibly at work in the original title of the track that dominated Side 2 of 'Abbey Road' which was originally known as 'The Big One'. Rather beautifully, these innuendos are never single entendres as they tend to be with Stones lyrics but contribute an earthing giggle out of the side of a heavenly kiss in the total effect of a Beatles record. It would be perverse and reductive to insist on them but it is funny in a boyish sort of way, part of their subversiveness and refusal quite to be squeaky clean National Treasures. (like getting stoned in the Buckingham Palace toilets before receiving their MBSEs).
Here all that grows up into a very Sixties celebration of a consummation in which the love object is no longer separate and 'other' as in a conventional pop song but merges with the love subject in a revolutionary union. Our take was never likely to challenge the glorious perfection of the original but its author would hopefully approve this male/ female fusion/ revolutionary love anthem, sung, played and recorded after co-cooking/imbibing our Covid Christmas dinner, on 25 Dec 2020.  
lyrics
Here come old flat top
He come grooving up slowly
He got joo joo eyeball
He one holy roller
He got hair down to his knee
Got to be a joker he just do what he please
He wear no shoe shine
He got toe jam football
He got monkey finger
He shoot Coca-Cola
He say I know you, you know me
One thing I can tell you is you got to be free
Come together, right now, over me
He bag production
He got walrus gumboot
He got Ono sideboard
He one spinal cracker
He got feet down below his knee
Hold you in his armchair you can feel his disease
Come together, right now, over me
He roller coaster
He got early warning
He got muddy water
He one mojo filter
He say, "one and one and one is three"
Got to be good looking 'cause he's so hard to see
Come together, right now, over me
Oh
Come together, yeah
Come together, yeah
Come together, yeah
Come together, yeah
Come together, yeah
Come together, yeah
Come together, yeah
Oh
Come together, yeah
Come together, yeah
credits
from It Was 60 Years Ago Today, track released January 1, 2021 

Lennon/McCartney

license

It All Comes Out In The Wash by Bardonthewire ( solo album released)

Press Release

This is my arty arty solo album - poems set to Norfolk soundscapes,  including an epic musical account of the 1819 Thunderstorm in Sedgeford (performed in Sedgeford on its bicentenary last July); some vistas of Norfolk autumn; a Greek Choral Ode; comic songs; some elegies; my long delayed Welsh Rock Symphony (all four moments and a coda!!!!)  and a charmingly set Sedgeford Christmas poem and a charmingly set satirical one. 

By the end, we're a long way from the Wash in my Welsh/West country boyhood but by then it should be clear 'Wash' is a metaphor as well.

This digital album is available online only on this link - https://bardonthewire.bandcamp.com/album/it-all-comes-out-in-the-wash-album

Sleevenotes below.

Very congenial listening at this time of the year (autumn into winter/Christmas) I've let myself go wherever the words took me, boldly going into soundscapes and scores and whatever else is needed to bring the poems alive for the listener as an audio experience. Lots of experimental sound poem things including the finally realised ambition of a full blown rock symphony (tracks 13-16).

The title is fairly geographical for the first 'side' (tracks 1-11, though beginning to wander across Norfolk from the Wash by the end) celebrating and enjoying the country of Norfolk where I've lived for the past 40 years but broadens after that to include all the stuff pumping out from deeper levels of memory and experience. And in general to indicate the wash of an artist's palate, splashing about all over the shop. 

Cover pic by Bhas Allan 

a prayer for john lennon (d. dec 8 1980)

https://bardonthewire.bandcamp.com/track/a-prayer-for-john-lennon-d-dec-8-1980

i am not

sure that god

speaks

more in the silence

or the age's

talentless violence

but in earshot

of atlantic fury

you fell

silent,

new york exploding

unholy smoke

in your heart

and for a bad moment

dear john

i am lost again.

dec 8 1980