Pepper musings.

[Adam Blake]

Funny all this "Sgt Pepper" stuff going on. For us religious devotees (we all know who we are) it's strange. "Pepper" has never been my favourite, but hearing it like this - repeatedly, with it's shiny brand-new coat on - it sounds more and more...relevant. Like we need to hear it. Oh I know, I'll be accused of absurd romanticism but getting by "With A Little Help From My Friends" has never seemed so important as it does now. The optimism of it. "When I'm 64" - which I've always thought was just McCartney fluff... But it's important what happens to us when we're 64 and the picture the song paints is attractive and hopeful. And it's "Getting Better". It's getting better all the time (it can't get no worse). Yes. Isn't that what we want? To fix the holes?

Then there's the music itself. The new mix makes the record sound modern. All the records that have come since June 1967, so many records that were inspired by the way these songs were played: the note choices, the timbres, the way the voices attack the melodies. The Beatles really were that good. And they were right too. The music rings true. It's nice, sometimes, to be reminded. Faith needs the odd miracle.

[john poole]

Attractive and hopeful? - scrimping and saving, digging the weeds, losing your hair, renting a cottage only if it wasn't too dear .... it always sounded something of a mixed vision to me, but then I could never imagine ever living to be sixty four - or in fact a band that had been together for twenty years - that would have been since 1947, before I was born ...

I've not heard the remix yet but I've been reading very polarised reports on it - people seem to really love it or really hate it - I still have to decide if I would be content with only owning half of the newly liberated outtakes before deciding which version I want to buy. But I'm planning to listen tonight to my original UK mono copy purchased fifty years ago this afternoon I think - it was definitely a Thursday, and I was not expecting the LP to be available until the next day, although my attention was drawn earlier this week to the fact that wikipedia does seem to suggest the album was rush released a week previously ...