What a brilliant album! “Drive My Car,” “Norwegian Wood,” and “In My Life” to name a few.

I will cavil and say “Rubber Soul” was the Beatles absorbing Bob Dylan and some Soul, not yet blazing their own trails of “Revolver” and “Sgt. Pepper’s.”

For those who prefer the Beatles-Beach Boys competition, here’s Bob Dylan’s hilarious send-up of “Norwegian Wood” on “Blonde on Blonde”:
____________________________________________

I stood there and hummed
I tapped on her drum and asked her how come
And she buttoned her boot
And straightened her suit
Then she said, “Don’t get cute”
So I forced my hands in my pockets
And felt with my thumbs
And gallantly handed her
My very last piece of gum

–Bob Dylan “4th Time Around”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YSkBF7URH98

When I was young, popular music was just background music to me. The only music device I had was an AM clock radio. I didn’t know or follow pop music much. I knew all the words to all the songs, and I had a nice singing voice and could do a nice rendition of “if You Could Read My Mind” for example but if you asked me who sang it, I would have a hard time coming up with Gordon Lightfoot.

That changed when I moved abruptly to Seattle before my senior year of HS. I had gotten a hold of this Akai reel-to-reel tape deck. The same model that was later used in “Apocalypse Now” for the “Ride of the Valkyries” scene. Most of the tapes were classical. First time I heard “Lay Lady Lay” though. I asked for an amp for Christmas, but I got a nice Kenwood amp and turn table and three albums. Must have been my sib’s input. One of the three was “Rubber Soul”.

Flash forward to Halloween 1982. The spacecraft had flown I went to a Halloween Party…

We danced. We danced again three more times. It didn’t matter what the music was, we danced slow, in each other’s arms, her face aglow, and her eyes sparkling.

The first song was “Eleanore Rigby.”

He opens by describing how Obama started his “fundamental transformation” of America into division and repulsion,and post-trump, put his fingers inside his puppet Biden until today.

“One could say that the MAGA movement is the Tea Party supercharged. The latter was pushback against Obama’s early years in office, with a large portion of the country seeing what “fundamental transformation” really means—pitting poor against rich, black against white, women against men, children against parents—and saying these are not the ideals upon which our country was founded nor for which it fought.”

The result is “The Fundamental Unraveling of America” we see today.

“Whenever Democrats and the Far Left talk about Trump supporters, they always sneer when saying the name ‘MAGA.’ In other words, they never say the words to which the letters refer. Why not? They do not want people to hear that those opposing their leftist views want to ‘make America great again.’

“If you love this country, why would you not want to see it great, now and in the future? And the opposite is also true. If you do not love this country, wouldn’t you naturally want to change it in a whole other direction, thus the need to manufacture a transformation?”

So, I say my current T-shirt reads “[Democrat logo] HATE America FIRST!”

CONFRONT THE BASTARDS WITH THE UGLY TRUTH.
https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2024/04/the_fundamental_unraveling_of_america.html

Make them embrace the suck — and own it, out loud!

A New Weapon Of War: Killer Underwater Drones – H I Sutton

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P-RxyBIBebA

Coming to the Red Sea – from the Houtis, thanks to Iran

E.g., by now perhaps almost everything done or said about the Bay of Pigs, the Cuban missile crisis, even the JFK assassination should be made public. In contrast, much but maybe not yet all about the 9/11 reactions/ responses might be made public (hiding or exposing the decisions around letting Saudi residents to leave, etc.) while still hiding (perhaps) selected military responses or communications with other Muslim countries. More recent events still retain controls for maybe another 20 or 40 years? Is there a time span after which it should all become public?

I suspect most of us would like more info made public sooner, perhaps not fully recognizing how some info is more sensitive than other content. Intelligence sources and whistle blowers still deserve protections, for example.

Frankly, I argue for Rubber Soul, as it’s the one that set off the “battle” between The Beatles’ and The Beach Boys, which culminated in more advanced sounds from both. The later albums are inarguably more sophisticated, but RS led the way to that sophistication.

FWIW, from experience, if you’re anywhere north of Chicago, your best bet is either Madison WI or Milwaukee,WI (latter preferred), over O’Hare. If O’Hare is more than a half-hour drive from where you are (which is almost anywhere), you’re better off going to the other two — it’ll take you a lot less time to get in, out, and around the place, even with a longer drive.

Can’t speak for south and west. But probably other airports are easier to get in, out, and around, I’d bet. O’Hare is flat out a total nightmare.

“Especially curious about Huxley’s take on the album.
Telemachus:
“I still hold out for ‘Sgt. Pepper’s’ as the Beatles album which was the rock equivalent of the first moon landing. Historic. …”

Historic. Indeed. The annunciation of prog rock, as well as the pop culture christening of the Power of Production (along with Glenn Gould), as Peter Jackson’s recent documentary proves.

But. In terms of longevity by paradigm, I think “Abbey Road” defined the lasting path through the 1990s, as seen by the Gallagher brother’s Oasis and Karl Wallinger’s World Party. Delightful echoes of Abbey Road…

Channeling John in this video music clip of “Wonderwall”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6hzrDeceEKc
MTV backstory
https://www.mtv.com/news/ol81nx/oasis-bigger-than-the-beatles

Ditto “Put The Message in a Box” music video, pure Beatles celebration!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=udCaa-Ju3dk
As is the entire album “Goodbye Jumbo” (1980)
(Reading the posted comments, I read that Wallinger died lat month, only 67yo. How sad. I never got to see him live, and now I never will.)

Which raises a subsequent question: Where in the 2000s did it peter out?

I thought the earlier “Rubber Soul” was the seachange.