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‘Let It Be’ a ‘Golden Anniversary’

I was 10 years old when a fairly stoned looking Paul McCartney dominated the screen of our practically new (rented) Philips colour TV as he knocked out ‘Let it Be’ in a pre-recorded ‘Video’ for Top of The Pops.

Don’t get me wrong, at such a tender age, I had no idea the ‘nice’ member of the Beatles was all but out of it – just thought his eyes looked huge – but was simply completely taken by the song, the performance and how cool ‘Macca’ looked – while also being totally unaware of why I instinctively loved John’s unwashed, long haired, corporation glassed, emaciated heroin induced appearance, George’s nonchalance displaying distance and easy disinterest and Ringo’s workmanlike determined ‘happy’ drum technique played through an unfocused sad stare.

I was already aware of the Beatles – who wasn’t back in the 60’s and 70’s – but this was the first time I’d seen them in colour, live and un-sanitised. And I found myself experiencing the new emotion of being entirely infatuated - for the first time I can remember anyway.

The last album the band released as a band was ‘Let It Be’ and that was 50 years ago this year and it took me no time at all to embrace it when I eventually could afford to buy it – I was 14 by then – but a long time to get a handle on its significance as a piece of work and a major footnote in musical history.

I put the album on loop on the laptop yesterday and read lots of on-line reviews, opinion and comment from lots of people far more authoritative than me on the significance of the album - the raging psychology contained within its personnel, construction and tracks - its definition of a time and place - how it personified the end of an era of peace and love - the return to the beginning to hail the end - and ‘What Happened Next’.

Most of this written word palled rapidly as Paul warbled about ‘Two of Us’ riding nowhere leading to John, in rock and roll simplicity, asking me, for reasons best known to him, to ‘Dig a Pony’ before being still consternated and perplexed with his hugely melodic ‘Across the Universe’ dirge until George makes it all about others with ‘I Me Mine’.

I was further asked by Mister Lennon to ‘Dig it’ before being advised by Mister McCartney to ‘Let it Be’ only for the ultra cynical John to remind - all of all the band and all of all the listeners – of the roots of this four piece combo with his off the cuff rendition of ‘Maggie Mae’

Paul then became somewhat dramatic with ‘I’ve Got a Feeling’ before John found a live raucous voice in ‘One after 909’.

Phil Spector comes close to ruining Paul’s performance on ‘The Long and Winding Road’ but it’s too good a song to be murdered by over production and of course I sang along sentimentally over the ridiculous string section.

George found room to give fair warning to his future output with ‘For You Blue’ before JoJo makes his laudable entrance to take me to a replay with ‘Get Back’

It is by no means the Beatles best album – Sergeant Pepper / Revolver / Rubber Soul / White Album vie for that title in that order – but for this aging lover of great tunes and a deep sense of musical history it has a happy place to live for as long as I do.

-o-

A SNAPSHOT OF FACTS (For those who don’t remember or never knew about a band that broke up 50 years ago)

NUMBER OF SINGLES SOLD: 1.6+ BILLION

NUMBER OF ALBUMS SOLD: 700+ MILLION

NUMBER OF WEEKS AT NUMBER 1 WORLDWIDE: 3506+: (Estimated from 73 Sovereign States out of 196 worldwide)

NUMBER OF TIMES ‘YESTERDAY’ HAS BEEN COVERED BY OTHER ARTISTS: 3169+: (That’s just one song – no count has been published for the number of times Beatles songs have been covered)

A Deplorable Basket Case

An old fat impotent vain man sits on a throne of iron pyrite squeezing a 231 year old antique in his small hands - becoming more and more puzzled as to the level of resistance being displayed by this not so fragile thing he knows little or nothing about.

He is a vulgar man who has grown from a spoiled brat of a child whose white Anglo Saxon racist father compensated for early signs of learning difficulties by self-educating the boy in a feral curriculum of narcissism, lying and the art of the steal – the vulgarity revealed itself as a natural trait by the age of three before becoming all consuming in his sixteenth year.

He is a violently dishonest man with little or no physical courage and a diabolical fear of his own mortality despite his over developed loaded God complex. There is little redeeming in who he was and what he has become. He is truly an outstanding example of the awful.

His mother taught him that in order to succeed money would not be enough. His mother was very aware his ability with money was on a par with the IQ of a gatepost. She coached him to prey on the weak, target the stupid, greedy, cowardly, grow in stature as a well protected bully and become immune to criticism in any form. He was her Oedipus and she was his best teacher.

The Republican Party of  2016 was the perfect victim for all his mother and father had taught him.

-o-

Those who make up the Republican Party today are, at best, despicable - I include them all, there are no innocents here. The 73,000,000+ American ‘Adults’ who voted for Donald Trump in this year’s general election lack any true morality clause in their trusty survivalist manual – I include them all, there are no innocents here.

Trump, as designated leader of the Grand Old Party, when not being held up and used by Machiavellian types is barely capable of standing upright within the slime of his own family – all of whom are whores to the great god vanity, (they check their teeth and manes like we would buying horses), and wear such prostitution as a badge of honour while following blindly in their patriarch’s footsteps like the good little lemmings they are.

Imbecilic would be a compliment to Trump’s powers of coherent considered thought. Morality has avoided him his whole life and therefore not a factor in anything he does - the people, who follow him, in any guise whatsoever, are knowingly absent when the roll of humanity is called.

‘Honesty’ and ‘Truth’ are still to be found defined in the book by Noah Webster ….. but then again …. so is ‘Deplorable’.

The United States of America is not a tin pot banana republic – so why is it behaving like one? Let’s stop excusing greed and dishonesty and tell the truth about Trump and his millions of sycophantic minions who have chosen stupidity over progress.

They are simply just bad people who have been fostered in a country that has become indoctrinated by the facile and puerile to a point of mind numbing terror. The US needs to stop heralding its many successes as a mask for its greatest failure - grow up and take responsibility for what’s actually happening.

GOOD EVENING AMERICA

Welcome to Jeopardy – the first category is ‘Psychology’:  

ANSWER: A personality trait centred on manipulativeness, callousness and indifference to morality

QUESTION: What is Machiavellianism?

-o-

In the 1960’s psychologists Richard Christie and Florence Geis developed a personality test to evaluate a level of morality within humans.

The test was inspired by the ideas and ideals of Niccolo Machiavelli - who is wrongly remembered for the inclusion in his political novel ‘The Prince’ of the phrase; ‘The Ends Justifies the Means’ – the actual sympathy can be attributed fifteen hundred years earlier to Ovid in his ‘Heroides’ which is; ‘Exitus acta probat’ or ‘The Outcome Justifies the Deeds’ (for those not fluent in the auld Latin).

The personality test comprises twenty statements which those taking it are asked to select from the following options as to their actual - as opposed to the moral - position:

Disagree

Slightly Disagree

Neutral

Agree

Slightly Agree

I took the test, answered honestly and scored 63 out of a hundred with the only explanation to my result being; ‘higher scores indicate more machiavellianism’ – leaving me unsure whether to be disturbed or not. 

I took the test again and attempted to apply answers I felt Donald Trump would give – based on my very second hand knowledge of the man and how he has dealt with similar questions in the past.

He scored a stout 96 in this exercise.

Anyway ........

Below are the statements and a link to the test – it’s not as simple as it looks if one is being entirely honest.

-o-

1.      P T Barnum the great impresario and circus owner of the early 20th Century made the famous statement: ‘There’s a sucker born every minute’

2.      Most people who get ahead in the world lead clean moral lives

3.      It’s hard to get ahead in the world without cutting corners here and there

4.      Generally speaking most people won’t work hard unless forced to do so

5.      Most people are good and kind

6.      Anyone who completely trusts anyone else is asking for trouble

7.      All in all, it is better to be humble and honest than to be important and dishonest.

8.      There is no excuse for lying to someone else

9.      It is possible to be good in all respects

10.  One should take action only when sure it is morally right

11.  The biggest difference between most criminals and other people is that criminals are stupid enough to get caught

12.  The best way to handle people is to tell them what they want to hear

13.  Most people are brave

14.  Never tell anyone the real reason you did something unless it is useful to do so

15.  People suffering from incurable diseases should have the choice of being put painlessly to death

16.  It is wise to flatter important people

17.  Most people forget more easily the death of their parents than the loss of their property

18.  Honesty is the best policy in all cases

19.  It is safe to assume that all people have a vicious streak and it will come out when they are given a chance

20.  When you ask someone to do something for you, it is best to give the reason for wanting it rather than giving reasons which carry more weight

-o-

There you have it - take the test yourself if you want with this link: TEST – BTW: I gave the current President the benefit of the doubt on statement 17.

-o-

And finally on this episode of Jeopardy we return to the category of ‘Psychology’:

ANSWER: Narcissism, Psychopathy and Machiavellianism

QUESTION: What are the Dark Triad Traits?

A Word to the Wise (9 Nov 20)

‘Ferrier Pollocks’ was a well known trading company in Dublin 

‘Ringsend’ is an area of Dublin

‘Dollymount’ is a long wide beach in Dublin

-o-

My brother Ken is oft liable to fall into a rapturous ramble when extolling the virtues of  James Joyce’s short stories and will not be shy in quoting the; ‘….. snow falling on the grave of Michael Fury …..’ passage from ; ‘The Dead’ to prompt his rhetorical question as to whether there was a better example in  English of prose becoming poetry.

Ah……. well ……

-o-

I distinctly remember reading ’Borstal Boy’ by Brendan Behan when I was about fourteen. It would be fair to say the impact of this City Centre Dubliner’s working class, loudmouth, unsympathetic, strangely stylized writing caused me to see things somewhat less ascetically in so many ways.

Behan became famous in the mid-1950’s and most of the 1960’s for being a leading light in what was  referred to as the ‘Kitchen Sink School’ – a harsh, without sentiment expression of working class life if you like.

I suppose this would explain why he was vigorously courted by learned colligate and media sorts who seemed to feel this Irish rebel could be forgiven on-air drunken behavior, spontaneous warbling of anti-English songs - into any microphone available - and parochial vulgarisms that were somewhat patronizingly considered ‘colorful’ to the ears of the abashed. 

At a literary symposium in the early 1960’s, hosted by tenured types from some of the Ivy league colleges in the U S, the subject of discussion and dissection was; ‘A Relationship between Prose and Poetry’.

Brendan was invited and showed up relatively sober and remained unusually quiet for the most part until a professor of note brought him into the conversation by asking whether it was possible for a non-classically educated writer, such as Behan, to actually tell the difference between poetry and prose when penning his stories?

Our Brendan took a moment to digest the question before nodding his head and replying in a flat Dublin monotone;

There was a young man from Ringsend

Who worked for Ferrier Pollocks

He was cycling one evening on Dollymount Strand

When the water came up to his ankles

The Dublin writer paused for a moment and took in the quizzical faces of the assembled before tilting his head and continuing;

‘Now that, my friends, is what I, for one, would consider prose’

Behan once again used the power of pause for dramatic effect before bringing it all home;

The Secret Life Of Micheál Martin, Taoiseach

Coming out of the latest Netflix escape fest the other night, the TV defaulted to late night RTÉ … Aine Lawlor interviewing Taoiseach Micheál Martin. Reverse, reverse, Siri! … Alexa! … ! Come on, now, can’t keep avoiding all the real stuff that’s happening beyond Monster: The Sinn Féin Story, or Ireland’s Soundest Family …  Lawlor and Mr T were talking about the housing crisis, the fuel and…

Tune-In to Eco Eye on RTÉ One at 7:00 pm on Tuesday, February 6, 2018

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