I haven’t been updating this blog the last few days because of flu… So here’s a cartoon.
It’s been 50 years since the first Beatles album was released. So let’s have a look back for a minute, and consider this.
Below are 100 songs written by the Beatles between late 1962 and late 1969. That’s right — the Beatles recorded their entire collection within seven years, in the time most bands these days produce 2 or maybe 3 albums. Moreover, they went from “She loves you, yeah yeah yeah” to “I read the news today, oh boy” in a period of a little over three years, dragging the rest of pop music behind.
So here’s the challenge: Can you name any other group that comes anywhere close to this record? Here, look at this list of their 100 best-known songs. See how many of these songs you know.
1962
Love Me Do
1963
Please Please Me
I Saw Her Standing There
Do You Want to Know a Secret?
From Me To You
She Loves You
It Won’t Be Long
All My Loving
I Want To Hold Your Hand
This Boy
1964
Can’t Buy Me Love
You Can’t Do That
A Hard Day’s Night
I Should Have Known Better
If I Fell
And I Love Her
I’ll Cry Instead
Any Time at All
Things We Said Today
I Feel Fine
She’s a Woman
Eight Days a Week
I’ll Follow the Sun
No Reply
Baby’s in Black
1965
Ticket to Ride
Help!
Yes It Is
You’ve Got to Hide Your Love Away
I’ve Just Seen a Face
Yesterday
Drive My Car
Norwegian Wood (This Bird Has Flown)
You Won’t See Me
Nowhere Man
Michelle
Girl
In My Life
Day Tripper
We Can Work It Out
1966
Paperback Writer
Rain
Taxman
Eleanor Rigby
Here, There, and Everywhere
Yellow Submarine
She Said She Said
Good Day Sunshine
And Your Bird Can Sing
Got to Get You Into My Life
Tomorrow Never Knows
Penny Lane
Strawberry Fields Forever
1967
Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band
With a Little Help From My Friends
Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds
Getting Better
When I’m Sixty Four
Lovely Rita
A Day in the Life
All You Need is Love
Baby You’re a Rich Man
Hello Goodbye
I Am The Walrus
Magical Mystery Tour
The Fool on the Hill
1968
Lady Madonna
Across the Universe
All Together Now
Hey Bulldog
Hey Jude
Revolution
Back in the USSR
Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da
While My Guitar Gently Weeps
Happiness is a Warm Gun
Martha My Dear
Blackbird
Rocky Raccoon
Birthday
Mother Nature’s Son
Helter Skelter
1969
Get Back
Don’t Let Me Down
Two of Us
Let It Be
I’ve Got a Feeling
The Long and Winding Road
The Ballad of John and Yoko
Old Brown Shoe
Come Together
Something
Maxwell’s Silver Hammer
Oh! Darling
Octopus’ Garden
Here Comes the Sun
She Came in Through the Bathroom Window
Golden Slumbers
Carry That Weight
The End
EDIT: Ten years after posting this, I included it in my book “The Beatles on the Charts” — and no one has been able to challenge it! 🙂
They warned us. If you legalize marijuana, it’s going to destroy civilization. Criminals will run rampant, and, as we all know, marijuana leads to harder drugs, just like how milk leads to alcohol.
And now we actually have some place where we can see the results.
In Colorado, since the legalization, many changes have happened.
The state has saved millions of dollars by not arresting, prosecuting, and jailing marijuana users.
The state has earned millions of dollars in registration costs, fees, and taxes on marijuana.
They’ve also earned millions in tourism. Everybody loves a “bud and breakfast.”
They warned us, they most certainly did.
They were absolutely wrong, but they did warn us.
One of the biggest insults politicians give is when they say they represent “real” America. Usually they say this while standing in front of a farm somewhere while a video plays showing rural Americans shopping, going to church, and watching an eagle fly by in slow motion.
They then will claim that real America loves traditional marriage and unfettered access to guns, wants to protect the rights of the unborn, and hates government involvement in health care.
And that’s just plain insulting.
The majority of Americans live in cities and suburbs, not rural farmlands. The majority supports gay marriage, thinks limits on gun ownership is a good thing, agrees with abortion rights, and actually likes the provisions of medicare, medicaid and yes, Obamacare.
It’s bad enough to claim to represent the majority when you clearly do not. But to also claim that you are “real America” — that you’re true and everyone else therefore does not support our country — well, we should all be insulted by that, even those these politicians are trying to claim as their own.
I feel patriotic when I walk down a street in Manhattan and am surrounded by people of all races, backgrounds, cultures and sexual orientation living together in relative peace. That to me is more of what America means than any bucolic rural scene. But both are “real” America, and anyone who tries to claim that it doesn’t include all of us just doesn’t understand what it means to be an American.
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