"Paul Levinson's It's Real Life is a page-turning exploration into that multiverse known as rock and roll. But it is much more than a marvelous adventure narrated by a master storyteller...it is also an exquisite meditation on the very nature of alternate history." -- Jack Dann, The Fiction Writer's Guide to Alternate History

Tuesday, March 2, 2021

Josh Turner Guitar Covers "And Your Bird Can Sing"

 

And here's Josh Turner Guitar (that's his performance name) and two guys doing a pretty good cover of The Beatles' "And Your Bird Can Sing".  I first became aware of Turner via his cover of The Beach Boys "Sloop John B" -- not as letter-perfect as The Fendertones, but also pretty good.

Several points about this song and this video:

1. Although John Lennon famously didn't like this song,* and neither does Peter Asher (he wondered why it did so well in one of his listener-selected Top 100 Beatles countdowns in 2017 on Sirius XM Radio), I always agreed with Rob Sheffield that "it's one of his best songs ever".   (I sent Asher an email explaining why I thought the song was so good, and he replied "Very cool!")

*He also didn't like "It's Only Love," another one of his very best songs.

2. In addition to being "so scathing and yet also so empathetic and friendly," as Sheffield says, it's also "packed with tiny musical triumphs".  Sheffield mentions the "girl-group hand-claps that sneak into the song for the middle guitar break".  One of my all-time favorite "tiny musical triumphs" in any song is the minor-to-major chord change in "And Your Bird" on the word "awoken" (1min13sec to 1min14sec in this video) -- just a perfect acoustic coming to life of that word.

3. In the Turner video, I have no idea if this was deliberately staged, but the background works just right: the guy in the red hat kicking a ball and then the little dog on a leash pulling the blonde and brunette birds in masks.  A time-stamp tableau of our age.

Ok - here's Josh Turner Guitar and a different crew doing "Sloop John B" on a bus at the end of 2018





And my reviews of Rob Sheffield's masterful Dreaming the Beatles begin here.

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