Buy yourselves a present for my birthday.
If you’re in the UK and you follow this link —
Or you’re in the US and you follow this link —
Naked City – Criterion Collection
— and buy something, anything at all, preferably something you want, I get a tiny percentage. I’m curious to see if this will eventually add up to an actual recognisable sum of money, ever. The actual titles linked to are just suggestions, but if you haven’t had the pleasure, I highly recommend them.
Thanks for all the birthday wishes! It seems Facebook is still a better disseminator of this kind of info than Twitter, and it was rather cheering to see a bunch of anniversary greetings when I got up. It’s quite disconcerting to awaken and find oneself forty-two — rather Gregor Samsa-esque. So this helped.
Bought myself Bert I Gordon’s THE MAGIC SWORD for a present, to continue my See Reptilicus and Die mission of madness, and received from assorted friends and relatives —
Fellini! A lovely book of the maestro’s cartoons.
The Audacity of Hype, Armando Iannucci’s comic columns, collected.
Popeye Vol 4 (well, it’s been ordered).
Not a birthday present as such but still very welcome, Chuck Zigman’s magisterial two-volume biography of Jean Gabin, which he presented to me as an altogether-too-generous repayment for helping him out with a couple of stray facts. It’s a fantastically impressive doorstop of a thing, brimming with Gallic manliness.
Plus four of the newly remastered Beatles albums, which I’ve been wallowing in all day. John Lennon’s lazy nasal drawl ought to make him sound like Dean Martin with a sinus problem, but the analogy doesn’t seem to hold. Abbey Road and The Beatles (AKA The White Album) chart strange places of the mind where I like to wander, but the sheer song-after-song brilliance of Rubber Soul and Revolver wow me as ever they did, and the sky grows deeper and darker with evening in a mood of languorous contentment.
shadowplay 
October 10, 2009 at 7:30 pm
This is a lovley little song:
October 10, 2009 at 7:32 pm
That Gabin bio sounds like a treat. Finally a non-Anglophone superstar given the treatment he deserves.
The Beatles still seem to be as popular as ever(though I prefer the Rolling Stones and The Kinks), REVOLVER is my favourite album as well. TAXMAN, ELEANOR RIGBY(the violins was inspired by Herrmann’s work on Truffaut’s FAHRENHEIT 451) and TOMORROW NEVER KNOWS are great, great tracks.
October 10, 2009 at 7:35 pm
And from me…
October 10, 2009 at 7:51 pm
You’re on Facebook? Well, if I knew that…oh who am I kidding. I can barely rouse myself to chat to old schoolmates and more recent friends on FB. They can barely rouse themselves to respond, too. Most don’t at all. One I gave photos of herself that I took over 25 years ago hasn’t replied for months, another I gave a stack of DVDs to, when I met her face to face she told me she hadn’t even watched one. Facebook, a place to meet people who don’t remember you and never cared you were still alive.
Oh, yeah. Happy birthday. (you can tell what I think of the whole celebration – I get irritated when people even remind me it’s my birthday. even with a present).
October 10, 2009 at 8:10 pm
Happy Birthday David!!!
Thanks for showing He Who Get’s Slapped this week and for constantly imparting your crazy film knowledge on us.
But hmmm what do you buy the man who has everything?!
October 10, 2009 at 8:16 pm
October 10, 2009 at 10:32 pm
Here’s My Birthday Gift To You (and Fiona too)
October 10, 2009 at 10:37 pm
Which is of course a musicla remake of THIS:
October 10, 2009 at 10:39 pm
Happy Birthday, David.
Looking forward to the sound seminar Monday, catch you then! :]
Ollie
P.S. Is this the end of Bobo?
October 10, 2009 at 10:40 pm
Just to clarify, alex — nobody has to buy me anything, but if you follow the links and then buy yourself something on Amazon, I get a percentage of their profits!
Ollie, it’s not me doing this sound seminar, but I hope to see you on Tuesday.
October 11, 2009 at 2:06 am
Happy Birthday!!!..All the best!!
Popeye vol4!!!!!! Hot Dog!!
My favorite Beatles song as a little boy was on the flip side of the She Loves You 45rpm..seemed by overlooked in the following years.
October 11, 2009 at 2:56 am
I was nine years old when the Beatles broke here in the States, in 1964. There’s this consensus, via rather simplistic pop psychology, that the Fab Four helped rescue us from our anguish following Kennedy’s death, perked our spirits if you will. But you know what? I buy it. You had to’ve been there. My cousin Arlene, in her teens with her horn-rimmed glasses, was a hard-core Beatle-maniac. I spent the summer of 1964 living with my grandmother in southern Ohio, and it was heaven. Aurora models of all the Universal Monsters, Sean Connery as James Bond, bubble gum cards, and biscuits and gravy every morning ( my grandmother ran a boarding house for laborers who would return home to their families on weekends). My mother said when I returned home the end of that summer I didn’t walk out the car, I waddled. I was the oldest of seven, so it didn’t take long before I’d burned off that fat. But it was a great time, a perfect time, to be nine years old.
October 11, 2009 at 6:18 am
I was nine years old when the Beatles broke up. I’ve been known to say to people that claim what a tragedy that was, that I was more disappointed at Booker T. and the MGs breaking up that same year.
October 11, 2009 at 7:36 am
Happy Birthday, David! I saw The Beatles in Manila. A great show in spite of all the turmoil. At the time I was a much bigger Searchers and DC5 fan.
I’m buying the Ken Russell BBC box in honour of your birthday.
October 11, 2009 at 8:44 am
My conservative parents,who were listening to Andy Williams and johnny Mathis at the time,brought the first Beatles records into our home when we lived in New Jersey in ’64.my Dad got autograph 45’s of the Dave Clark Five when they came thru the same year in New York..I remember how my Teenage baby sitter would marvel over the new sound of the british wave and show me and my brother all the new dance moves..I was more into my Aroura monster models and Chiller Theatre!..and checking litle girls behind the bush..
October 11, 2009 at 10:38 am
There was something positive about the record company being so conservative — even as the Beatles were going through the roof in the UK, they held back on releasing the stuff in the States. So while in Britain they were successful from the 2nd single, and then gradually got better and better (from a pretty good starting point, discounting Love Me Do, which is fairly bland), in the US they arrived almost fully-developed, in an absolute explosion. Must’ve been quite something.
October 11, 2009 at 10:39 am
Oh, and thanks for all the songs!
October 11, 2009 at 4:59 pm
Happy Belated Birthday DAvid !
October 11, 2009 at 5:24 pm
Beatles, British Invasion, Monster Models, Garage Bands, Schwinn Stingray bikes, Munsters, Batman, The Avengers opening title sequence, Secret Agent Man end credit music (Which is the open title music in the UK version)….it was seismic. That is, until I saw Otis Redding backed by Booker T. and the Barkeys in MONTEREY POP.
October 11, 2009 at 6:38 pm
I’ll always be more Stones than Beatles, and more Stooges than either. However, in the attempt to get into the spirit of the thing, here’s a link to a compilation of soul covers of Beatles songs – including my favourite ever Beatles cover, Count Basie doing Come Together as a slinky, sinister soundtrack.
http://tinyurl.com/dcbirthdaybeatles
Happy birthday, David!
October 11, 2009 at 8:14 pm
eww..Me Mum won’t let me listen to the Stones,she likes the Bea’tuls tho..We moved to Australia late in ’64 and it seems like The Rolling Stones were a band that parents often drew a line at..Blaring from my transistor radio were the beatles,the easy beats,the Supremes..but the thing that was fad of the day was Folk!..It was all over the place and it made me sick!..tho I confess to still liking The Seekers
October 11, 2009 at 10:44 pm
Paul Duane,
I can heartily appreciate your endorsement of the Stooges. I just found out they’re practicing with James Williamson, the guitarist on RAW POWER (he just took an early retirement from Sony), to my mind the most magnificently ferocious album of all time. They’ll be playing two dates next May in the UK, tickets have already gone on sale. Williamson says he can still play those licks, and if true, then this will be a concert TO DIE FOR. By the way Christopher, I enjoyed the clips of the Seekers, especially Georgy Girl. It’s all good.
October 12, 2009 at 12:10 am
one of the reasons i love Dinah Shore..never under estimate the seductiveness of those old dames!
October 12, 2009 at 12:10 am
Thanks for those soul covers, will check them out. I recall Ray Charles butchering Eleanor Rigby’s anti-religious lyric, am sure these will be better.
I missed out on all this stuff when it was new, having been a teen in the eighties, which I STILL hold was a wretched time to be young.
October 12, 2009 at 3:12 am
Guns for nipples, wow, I kinda like it.
October 12, 2009 at 11:09 am
Her bullets always find their mark.
October 13, 2009 at 1:31 am
You were a teen in the ’80s? Good thing you didn’t live in the US – many teens I knew in the ’80s turned out to be birthers and Bushites. It must have been all that New Romantic and Hair Band influence. Nothing good came from that.
October 14, 2009 at 2:06 am
Nice 38s that Joan has.
Happy Birthday!