Junior Parker - Tomorrow Never Knows

While driving around, a cover of "Tomorrow Never Knows" came on the radio. Not only had I never heard a cover of "Tomorrow Never Knows" before, the very idea that one might exist had never occurred to me - covering TNK just seemed like an impossibility.

To my surprise at learning that such a cover exists, was soon added the surprise that the radio station would play a second one... and then a third.

Three covers of the same song in a row? They were evidently doing some "Olympic" thing where they played "Bronze" then "Silver" then "Gold." The first two were not great, but "Gold" was gold.

The cover worth listening to is by Junior Parker, it's from 1971 and has only 15K views on youtube.

 

This cover reminds me a bit of "Flying" another Beatles song (another Beatles song that I wouldn't expect anyone to cover) so it all comes full circle.

A Better Now and Then Video

 

Much, MUCH better.

That AI program is very impressive. The "Free as a Bird" and "Real Love" tracks had the exact same problem with Lennon's voice quality, I wonder if they'll revisit those. Doesn't sound like it but seems like they should.

New Beatles Single to be Released November 2

 Travel back with me to the mid-nineties. The (remaining) Beatles announced that they would release 3 double albums of outtakes and demos/unreleased songs. In addition to that, each double album would contain one "new Beatles" song - using vocals from John Lennon's private collection of unreleased songs, the other 3 Beatles would go into the studio together and make them into proper tracks.

The first Anthology had the new song "Free as a Bird." The second Anthology had "Real Love." And then the third Anthology didn't have a song.

Word on the street, back then, was that George Harrison was unhappy with the quality of the entire project and nixed it so as to stop the bleeding.

But now 27 years after the release of Anthology 3 (which was 26 years after their last album) the third song "Now and Then" will be released November 2.

Nothing to do with the fact that George has died, the clarified (or revised) history is that George wasn't unhappy with the quality of the songs but with the quality of the production. That is, the band was using old, low-quality tapes from Lennon and there was no technology to separate the original recording into tracks or get rid of hissing or noise. Now that AI is available that can clean these things up, the track can be properly engineered and released.  

Beatles - Junk

The unreleased Beatles song "Junk", also known as "Jubilee"...

Beatles 3000

In the year 3000, archeologists look back at the Beatles:

Beatles 3000 - watch more funny videos

Ringo v. Questlove

For those of you who didn't watch Ringo Starr on Late Night with Jimmy Fallon, it was pretty entertaining but nothing particularly historic. That is, except for one clip that didn't air because it took place after the end credits rolled and The Roots were preforming the Late Night theme ("Here I Come").

[Removed Broken Video Link]

Questlove later described it as "historic".