Eight Days A Week
When I was in Las Vegas last month, I really wanted to catch Love, the new Cirque De Soleil show done in collaboration with The Beatles. But since my inspiration for the trip was to see The Pogues (which had already set me back sixty-some bucks), my budget simply didn't have room for another show, especially one with $100 tickets. Fortunately, next Tuesday the Beatles will release the soundtrack to the show. Produced by George Martin and his son Giles, the Love CD features 26 new remixes and mashups, assembled from bits of 130 different Beatles songs. So while I wasn't able to see the show, I'll still be able to hear it.
Right now, you can preview four tracks from the album in their entirety on the Beatles website. "Strawberry Fields Forever" sounds remarkably similar to the Anthology 2 version until the end, when bits of several other songs make appearances during the outro. "Octopus' Garden" starts out with Ringo singing over the orchestral intro of "Good Night" before going into a more familiar version of the song. "Lady Madonna" get the remix treatment, with the riff from "Hey Bulldog" inserted as the middle break. The final sneak preview is a gorgeous "Eleanor Rigby"-ish acoustic take of "While My Guitar Gently Weeps," augmented by a new string arrangement done by Martin.
To celebrate the release of the first "new" Beatles material in ten years, for the next week I'll be featuring a different Beatles cover every day. Starting things off is Robyn Hitchcock's acoustic (and seemingly unrehearsed) take on a Sgt. Pepper's classic. It was released on the 1992 promo CD Live Death.
Robyn Hitchcock - "A Day In The Life" (mp3)
