160. Beat Farmers: Tales of the New West
161. Staying Out Late With Beat Rodeo
162. Beatles: Talk Down Under
163. Birth of the Beatles
164. Beatles: Beatlemania!
165. Beatles: Long Tall Sally
166. Beatles: A Hard Day's Night (UK)
167. Beatles for Sale (UK)
168. Beatles: Help! (UK)
169. Beatles' Greatest
170. Beatles: Rubber Soul (US)
171. Beatles: Yesterday and Today
172. Beatles: Revolver (US)
173. Beatles: Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band
174. The Beatles
175. Beatles: Abbey Road
176. Beatles: Hey Jude
177. Beatles: Let It Be
Mixworthy: At last: after 150+ albums, I finally get to say my piece on the Beat
Farmers...If the Beach Boys are worth six songs, the Beatles get 10. And that'll
be the ceiling; Neil Young will get 10 too..."Eight Days a Week" and "Every Little
Thing," #167; "I Need You," "Ticket to Ride," and "Tell Me What You See," #168;
"I've Just Seen a Face" and "Norwegian Wood," #170; "She Said She Said," #172;
"Long, Long, Long," #174; and "Rain," #176. I don't have Yellow Submarine, else
"It's All Too Much" would bump "She Said She Said." For album, Help!; my second
choice would be either Beatles for Sale or The White Album.
Three years ago, I organized a school-wide Beatles assembly where I teach. I was so
completely immersed in everything to do with the Beatles for the weeks leading up to
the assembly--music and quizzes on the morning announcements, a display case, post-
ers, rehearsing four students to reenact the Sullivan performance--that I've been a
little Beatled-out ever since. (The assembly was amazing: being in a gym filled with
400 kids clapping along to the "Ticket to Ride" sequence from Help!, roaring with
laughter, was as good as teaching ever gets.) But that doesn't mean I'm tired of my
favourite Beatles music in the way that, as I said below, I can get tired of the
Beach Boys or the Rolling Stones. Obviously there are specific songs I'd be content
to never hear again--"Day Tripper," "Come Together," and "Drive My Car" would head
the list--but I think I can honestly say I never get tired of the Beatles; there's
never a time where I won't hear something like "Ticket to Ride" or "Eight Days a
Week" and just be floored by its brilliance. I have a theory that in the whole his-
tory of the universe--the whole thing, from ground zero till today--the Beatles have
brought more happiness into the world than any other four people who ever lived.
Religion? No chance. Christ, Allah, the Buddah, whatever--however much happiness and
comfort you want to attribute to any religious figure, real or imagined, there's a
lot of misery and guilt and destructive zealotry on the other side of the ledger.
With the Beatles, there's no downside--there's just thousands upon thousands upon
millions of people who have also heard a certain song at a certain moment and had
everything else just fall away as complete and utter happiness takes over...The Beat
Farmers belong to a group of default punchlines I keep handy in case of emergency.
I've got Right Said Fred from the early '90s, Wishbone Ash for the early '70s, Doc-
tor & the Medics and the Beat Farmers for the mid-80s. Whatever the joke, insert
the applicable name and you can't go wrong:
1. Why did the chicken cross the road?
Wishbone Ash.
2. How many lawyers does it take to screw in a light bulb?
The Beat Farmers.
See?
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178. Sidney Bechet: The Blue Bechet
179. Be Bop Deluxe: Modern Music
180. Jeff Beck: Truth/Beck-Ola
181. Celi Bee: "Fly Me on the Wings of Love" 12-inch
182. Celi Bee: Blow My Mind
183. Best of Bee Gees
184. Bee Gees: Main Course
185. Saturday Night Fever
186. Bee Gees: Spirits Having Flown
187. Captain Beefheart: The Spotlight Kid
188. Captain Beefheart and the Magic Band: Doc at the Radar Station
189. The Bix Beiderbecke Story: Vol. 1 - Bix and His Gang
190. The Bix Beiderbecke Story: Vol. 2 - Bix and Tram
191. Harry Belafonte: Belafonte
192. Harry Belafonte: Calypso
193. Harry Belafonte: Jump Up Calypso
Mixworthy: "Shapes of Things" #180 (not as good as the Yardbirds' original, but
excellent anyway); "Night Fever," #185. I've also put Jeff Beck's "I Ain't Super-
stitious" on a double-CD of music from Scorsese films I recently compiled; I like
it in the context of the film (Casino), otherwise it's nothing I ever took much
notice of.
The Beck double and Be-Bop Deluxe date back to high school, meaning they're among
the first hundred or so albums I ever bought. I bet I haven't put on Modern Music
in 25 years. What do I remember of it? "Modern music, on the raaayyydiiiooo...",
and that's about it. I'm not sure how it survived the time I sold a couple dozen
mullethead albums to Randy, a guy I used to work with at Sunrise Records in Toronto;
Modern Music has Randy written all over it. I've written before about how I now re-
gret this transaction. There was a moderately hard-to-find Canadian album included
in the deal, Moxy, but much more important than that, I handed over a small, really
personal corner of my record-collecting autobiography. I'm having a hard time remem-
bering what else I parted company with, but a few titles come to mind (I'm checking
each one as I type to make sure it's indeed M.I.A.): the CSNY best-of So Far, Gor-
don Lightfoot's Sundown, Don McLean's American Pie, a Renaissance double-live (!)--a
mix of '70s singer-songwriters, metal, and art-rock, all of it bought when I was in
grades 10-13. Most of what I've just listed is ho-hum ordinary, but the Renaissance
LP gives a better idea of some of the horror-show dreck that was in there--basical-
ly, I was just embarrassed at the time to own some of these records. (This as I was
avidly buying Die Kreuzen and Scratch Acid and all the other Renaissances of their
day.) So dumb. I probably got about 40 dollars for the lot. I'm amazed it never
occurred to me that somewhere along the way I might be really glad that that small
corner of the story was still there on the shelf, good for a laugh if nothing else,
maybe even important in some hard-to-describe way.
____________________________________________________________________________
194. Archie Bell & the Drells: Tighten Up
195. Archie Bell & the Drells: There's Gonna Be a Showdown
196. William Bell: The Soul of a Bell
197. Bells: Fly, Little White Dove, Fly
198. Regina Belle: All By Myself
199. Louie Bellson and His Jazz Orchestra
200. Just Jesse Belvin
201. Tony Bennett: Tony's Greatest Hits
202. Tony Bennett: More Tony's Greatest Hits
203. Brook Benton: Looking Back
204. Brook Benton: Golden Hits
205. Polly Bergen: Bergen Sings Morgan
206. Irving Berlin: A Hundred Years
Mixworthy: "Tighten Up" #194; "Go for What You Know," #195; "Love Look Away," #202;
"It's Just a Matter of Time," #204; "What'll I Do" (Judy Holliday), #206. I'm a
little iffy on the Bennett and Holliday tracks, but I remember them as being quite
good. Having said that, the MTV-sponsored veneration of Tony Bennett throughout the
1990s was one of the most absurd phenomenons I've ever witnessed. He's a good singer
with a few good songs. All of a sudden, for no seemingly discernable reason other
than that he was a refugee from another time and place who still happened to be
around, he spent a few years being greeted at pop-star award shows like he was
Andre 3000 or something. Bizarre.
There are maybe a dozen records in my collection that fall into the Polly Bergen
category: old original-issue LPs that I bought solely because they were cheap and
virtually brand new. The Bergen record is from 1957, on the maroon Columbia label,
a mono issue that the Goldmine Record Album Price Guide lists for $30.00 in near-
mint condition. Such alleged value is meaningless to me. As I've indicated already,
I haven't sold a single album since the great Randy Debacle of 1986; price-guide
listings (like baseball-card listings) are theoretical anyway, since in reality
you'd be lucky to get $2.50 from one of Polly Bergen's grandchildren for the album.
Such records are not investments--what I love about them is how good they look when
you take them out of the sleeve and inspect them under the light. My attraction has
all the considered sophistication of Homer Simpson: "Mmmmmmmnnnnnnn...shiny."
____________________________________________________________________________
207. Chuck Berry: After School Session
208. Chuck Berry: St. Louis to Liverpool
209. Chuck Berry's Golden Decade
210. Chuck Berry's Golden Decade Vol. 2
211. Chuck Berry's Golden Decade Vol. 3
212. Chuck Berry: Motorvatin'
213. Mike Berry: Rock's in My Head
214. Richard Berry and the Dreamers: Rock 'n' Roll Hits of the 50's
215. Big Black: Songs About Fucking
216. Big Brother & the Holding Company
217. Big Brother & the Holding Company: Cheap Thrills
218. Big Brother & the Holding Company: Joseph's Coat
219. Big Country: The Crossing
220. Big Stick
Mixworthy: "Too Much Monkey Business" and "Brown Eyed Handsome Man," #207; "No Par-
ticular Place to Go" and "The Promised Land," #208; "Almost Grown" and "Johnny B.
Goode," #209; "Come On," #210; "Next Time," "The Big Break," and "Pretty Brown
Eyes," #214; "Down on Me," #216; "Combination of the Two" and "Piece of My Heart,"
#217; "I Look Like Shit," #220.
Twenty years ago, I would have listed as many songs by Chuck Berry as by anyone--I
wrote a script for a university film class centered around a cross-country search
for a copy of St. Louis to Liverpool. I really only listen to him once a year now,
when I play "Come On" for my students on his birthday, but glancing at the albums,
it's not difficult to remember which songs I love the most. Whatever your cut-off
point for the inner circle of founding fathers—-Elvis, Berry, Little Richard, and
Lewis, with Fats Domino, Holly, and Bo Diddley optional—-he's the guy for me...
#214's one of my half-dozen autographed albums. Berry played the Brunswick House
in Toronto (a really awful frathouse blues bar like the one Steve Buscemi is morti-
fied by in Ghost World) in 1987. I had done a phone interview a few days earlier,
on my shortlist of favourite interviews, and he signed the album before the show:
"To Phil: The Nerve of the Nerve Always, Richard Berry." I don’t think Richard was
on Nerve’s mailing list, so I'm guessing that something along the lines of "Uh,
what was the name of that publication again?" was uttered at some point prior to
signing.
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221. Barney Bigard - Albert Nicholas
222. Biz Markie: Goin' Off
223. Bizarros/Rubber City Rebels: From Akron
224. The Very Best of Cilla Black
225. Black Flag: Jealous Again
226. Black Flag: Damaged
227. Black Flag: My War
228. Black Flag: Slip It In
229. Black Merda
230. Black Uhuru: Black Sounds of Freedom
231. Black Uhuru: Sinsemilla
232. Blackouts: Men in Motion
233. Art Blakey Quintet: A Night at Birdland Volume 2
234. Art Blakey and the Jazz Messengers: Kyoto
235. Art Blakey Quartet: A Jazz Message
Mixworthy: "Kidnaped" (Rubber City Rebels, sic), #223; "Jealous Again" and "White
Minority," #225; "Rise Above" and "TV Party," #226. I was originally going to say
not to get in a panic, "White Minority"'s not what you think it is (cf. "White
Riot"), but I just checked some online lyrics and, what do you know, maybe it is.
Whatever--as I often find myself saying these days, it is what it is.
I can't say for sure, but I have a feeling that My War and Slip It In played a small
part in redirecting my interest from hardcore and pigfuck in the mid-80s to a redis-
covery of pop music. One of many factors, but a factor. I really liked both title
songs at the time. My reaction to the sub-Iron Butterfly yowling that made up the
rest of each album: "This is so unbelievably stupid."