The Beatles - Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band
|
List Price: Our Price: $10.99 You Save: $7.99 (42%) Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours Buy Used: from $7.70 (click here) Category: Music CD See more new music releases 
|
|---|
Buy this Music CD at online store in your country
Canadian Music Store
Canadian Music Store
Free Music Notes for Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band
Free Music Review: Really the album everyone remembers?
Hit: 2 Stars
In 2003, Rolling Stone declared "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band" the best album ever made. "...Sgt. Pepper formally ushered in an unforgettable season of hope, upheaval and achievement: the late 1960s and, in particular, 1967's Summer of Love. In its iridescent instrumentation, lyric fantasias and eye-popping packaging, Sgt. Pepper defined the opulent revolutionary optimism of psychedelia and instantly spread the gospel of love, acid, Eastern spirituality and electric guitars around the globe."
You know, that's a nice sentiment, but when you actually stop and listen to the songs, it's really a paeaen of conservativism.
notice:
-the very concept and first song (an old time Salvation Army type band Paul's grandparents might've listened to with glee)
-"She's Leaving Home," a sad song about a runaway told from the abandoned parents' perspective -- are we actually sympathizing with parents whose kids are ony their way to San Francisco?
-When I'm sixty four, a terribly cute song about fidelity and suburban middle class life (whatever happened to Free Love?)
-Lovely Rita, a pop song about having a crush on a law enforcement officer - of all people!
-Good Morning Good Morning, which could be the theme song of a kids' 7AM cartoon show.
then there are other songs on the album, like "Fixing a Hole," and "Getting Better," which certainly aren't revolutionary, and just aren't that good.
And Within Without You, while it may add the Eastern Spirituality aspect of hippiedom to the album, is far from George Harrison's best sitar song.
In the end, I think the critics who praise this album so lavishly are really lost in nostalgia. Sgt. Pepper has come to represent something it really isn't, an era, a feeling, a certain way of thinking and living and making music.
Still, I think the Beatles made the songs that represented the Summer of Love and hippiedom/psychedlia. They are just scattered across several albums. Let's pull them together, and call it, for lack of a better title,
Sgt. Pepper Remixed
1. Sgt. Pepper
2. With a Little Help from My Friends
we'll keep the first two songs, because they establish the whole band-being-another-band scheme, and there was something about hippiedom that said you could be someone totally different than who you'd always been.
3. Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds
aren't we being revolutionary? We haven't changed the first three songs. Maybe this is what the critics listen to, and then start writing and stop listening. But what would the Summer of Love be without Lysergic acid diethylamide?
4. Instead of Getting Better, Across the Universe
I've always thought this is the song that's supposed to come after Lucy.
5. Instead of Fixing a Hole, I am the Walrus
Don't fix the hole, Paul, pass through it, like John did.
6. Instead of She's Leaving Home, Yellow Submarine
Stop mourning the runaway, and let's have some fun imagining a cool place we could live, with lots of other people.
7. Being for the Benefit of Mr. Kite
this gets to stay, being such a wonderfully trippy mix of Victorian circus and pyschedelia.
8. Instead of Within Without You, Love You To
This is George's best sitar song. Hands down.
9.Instead of When I'm Sixty-Four, Strawberry Fields Forever
SFF almost made the album, and is the natural counterpart to 64, as they are both nostaglic reflections on Liverpool. That was Paul's, this is John's.
10. Instead of Lovely Rita, Revolution
ditch the cop, and bring on the revolution.
11. Instead of Good Morning Good Morning, All You Need is Love
was there ever a more optimistic song? And if you like that cacophany of barnyard animals at the end of "Good Morning," All You Need" has a simliar mess at the end.
12. Sgt. Pepper reprise
see #1's reason.
13. A Day in the Life
OK, this may be the best song to end an album ever. And it is the right mood - the sendup of everyday, 9 to 5 life, the paranoia (was it Paul in the car?), the way one thing dissolves into another... it's pretty much perfect.
Now, that just might be the best album (n)ever made.
Free Music Review: On a scale of 1 to 5, this is a 6...or a 7...or maybe a 67 :)
Hit: 5 Stars
What more can be said about THE GREATEST ALBUM IN MUSIC HISTORY???...no if's, and's. or but's about it! For those who feel this album is dated, perhaps you should throw away your watches! I'm sure John, Paul, George & Ringo would agree with Chicago when they asked 'Does anybody really know what time it is?...Does anybody really care???' For those who feel this album is too sugary, what is wrong with putting a little sweetness in this all too sour world? I know I would much rather be taken this land of musical fantasy than being constantly bombarded with reality any day of the week! Make my place STRAWBERRY FIELDS FOREVER (too bad that wasn't added to this CD!...along with Penny Lane!) Maybe next time this album's detractors should really listen to it...or perhaps I should say...tune in and turn on! Think about it...if this album is indeed so bad, then why is it still being talked about and celebrated even 40 years later? How many records live for 40 years??? What can you do but tip your hat, and I do indeed tip mine, proudly revealing my greying top, to GREATEST ROCK N ROLL BAND IN HISTORY for this masterpiece!Free Music Review: The Best
Hit: 5 Stars
Oh, it may run a dead heat with Blonde on Blonde, but if albums/CDs were individual pieces of art, Christie's would start the bidding for this one somewhere well up in the millions. I hadn't listened to it all in one sitting for years, but bought it last weekend to have a permanent CD copy and I've been playing it ever since. It's impossible to choose a favorite; each song is distinct, striking, funny or moving and when it's all over after the final chord of A Day in the Life, that diversity coalesces in the mind to a perfect whole. Songs whose quality had sort of slipped from my mind through the years include She's Leaving Home and the larky Good Morning, Good Morning.
Sgt. Pepper, that old codger, taught the band very well indeed.
Free Music Review: If I was "cool," I would give it three stars
Hit: 5 Stars
and show everybody how well I rebel against the establishment....sorry though, been done already. This is a great album, the greatest - really. Free Music Review: Oldie but goodie
Hit: 5 Stars
What can I say about Sgt. Pepper? When I lost my turn table, I had to replace my albums. For a baby boomer this was a must have.