Revolver-the Beatles

 

Revolver-The Beatles

A record store opened up in Bell across from Veteran’s Park on Gage sometime in the early 70s, and they had something that I’d never seen before-a used record section. I was probably about 10, and the idea that someone would sell their records was unheard of to me. Who would buy a record and then sell it? After saving up your allowance, or working some deal with your parents, much careful consideration, and then the act of picking up a record and taking it to the hip record counter person and facing their knowing look of either approval or disdain, who would then take the record home, play it and decide it wasn’t for them and take it back?

I didn’t know that person.

I looked through the bins with a bunch of records that I had never heard of and would never buy until I came across a copy of the Beatles’ Revolver. 10 year old me knew two of the songs, Yellow Submarine and Eleanor Rigby. I was still pretty early in my musical experience, and to that point, I thought Yellow Submarine was only on the Yellow Submarine movie soundtrack. I didn’t know the other songs, but for whatever reason, I paid the person, a young, bra-less vaguely dirty hippy looking woman at the counter, and went home to put the record on my parents’ Zenith console stereo (which I still have in the garage), and was amazed by George Harrison’s count off to Taxman. It’s a count that I still use in my head when I dive into a cold pool.

The transition from Taxman to Eleanor Rigby is jarring, a tribute to George Martin’s string arrangement and the stylistic variety of Beatles music. Other songs still pop into my subconscious when I don’t expect it, like the line from She Said She Said-“I know what it’s like to be dead/I know what it is to be sad/and it making me feel like I’ve never been born.”

“Turn off your mind relax and float down stream,” from Tomorrow Never Knows accompanies me when I’m suffering from bouts of insomnia. McCartney’s pop songs are good, but Lennon’s drug influenced songs are the ones that stick. A Jam Cover of And Your Bird Can Sing brought the original back into my consciousness in the 90’s, when I purchased the first CD version.

Fancy terms like “Bb Mixolydian” are thrown around in scholarly reviews, but the important thing is that this is still a pop record. The longest song on the album, I’m Only Sleeping, clocks in at 3:02, and all 14 songs take only 35 minutes. As a reference, the Ramones classic third album, Rocket to Russia also has 14 songs and takes 31:46, making Revolver a shade over three minutes longer. The Beatles brought a variety of influences to the record, but by keeping it short and the songs being built around familiar structures, the record remains accessible. The depth of the music has kept it close to the top of my record rotation for over 50 years, and as I play it this afternoon (2009 remaster, which sounds a zillion times better than my original, 90's version), it still surprises. 

For the very serious Beatles fans, here's where you can get the super deluxe 2022 version.

Yard Sale/Joe Cardella

Benji and the Cone

Since the pandemic, my dog Benji and I walk the mile and a half to the beach every Saturday, and often stop at yard sales on the way. He is my yard sale consultant, and so far has picked up tiki mugs from Harvey’s of Lake Tahoe, a Craftsman Scroll Saw, and assorted books among other things. Today he’s wearing the cone due to a procedure on his ear yesterday, and I thought it best to stay away from the sand that he likes to roll around in. Instead of the Starbucks at the end of Seaward that we normally frequent on a Saturday morning, we headed to Simones by the hospital.

I’ve written about Simones (though this is the new one) before, and should update that post. They’re still good.

We walked the long way back home to try to get close to the 6 miles we normally do on a Saturday morning, and happened by a yard sale in a part of Midtown that we don’t normally walk through.

There were interesting things, like some vintage tools and bottles that I thought looked cool but had no use for, as well as some art work that again, looked interesting, but I don’t really have a place for. I did find some ceramic insulators for $2 a piece, to go with my collection that I use as yard decorations. I picked out two.

There was a couple and an older man running the yard sale. She was trying to get a Margaritaville Blender to work and seemed disappointed that all it did was crush ice. The older man said the parrots had left the trees, and her husband (I think) was talking to me about various items they had for sale.

An Original

I saw this mixed media painting, and he said that I could have it, that he didn’t think anyone else would want it. I wasn’t sure that I wanted it either, but it will fit in with the tiki bar I someday wish to have, so I accepted.

He said that the artist, Joe, lived behind his house on the next street, and that Joe had made it on an idle afternoon in Florida, when his friends were off doing something that he didn’t want to do. Joe had passed a few years before, throat cancer the guy said, and they had become friends over the fence, especially after his wife would make soup that Joe could eat. I asked if the artist’s name was on it, and he said yes pointing to where it was on the front of the work, J. Cardella.

Home now, I looked up Joe Cardella (follow the link to learn what I learned) not expecting to find anything, and after the brief internet search, I’m now quite proud of the piece that I’ve acquired. It’ll still go in the tiki bar that I don’t have, but now I have a story to go with it. Apparently well known in the Ventura and national art scene, I now have an original, though minor, museum worthy piece.