Cultural Artefacts

When the break-up of the Beatles was still a recent thing the beastly, avaricious record company moguls put out two compilation albums respectively covering the periods 1962-1966 and 1967-1970. They are seared into the minds of those of a certain age as the Blue Album and the Red Album. They are brilliant and still the most effective primers for anybody who needs to be persuaded that the Beatles are important - incredibly bloody important.

 

So anyway I was saying - incredibly bloody important. And I would venture that it is the band's later catalogue that today attracts the most attention - the difference between the two periods perhaps best summed up the track counts and running times of these two albums. The Red Album clocks up twenty-six tracks and a running time of just one hour and two minutes; the Blue, twenty-eight tracks clocking in at one hour and thirty-nine minutes. Well what I rediscovered today is that early Beatles should not be disdained. I played the Red Album as the background track to some research on Antony and Cleopatra, of which play a little more anon. The Red Album? Well, compilation albums are not generally important cultural artefacts - these are. Has pop ever been done better?

As for Antony and Cleopatra - well obviously another significant cultural artefact. Arguably dear old Shakespeare's best (depending on my mood and the quality of the production), a play that is, to steal from another favourite cultural artefact (answers on a virtual postcard), polymorphously perverse. 

So after a slow start (the early stages of a new chapter of research are always a tad woeful) today has been a good day. In addition to the artefacts already referred to, you will, dear reader, be on tenterhooks about the theme for this year's Overgraduate Advent Calendar. I'm excited so goodness only knows how you're feeling. More to follow as December approaches. No teasers. You'll have to wait.