Club Troppo

This entry was posted on Friday, January 30th, 2009 at 12:06 PM and filed under Films and TV, Music. Follow comments here with the RSS 2.0 feed. Post a comment or leave a trackback.

11 Responses to “The Colbert McCartney Report”

1. D W Griffiths said:

   This is how you need to do a Colbert interview: totally straight-faced. I can only assume that they edited out most of the bits where Paul was cacking himself laughing.

   Posted on 01-Feb-09 at 10:13 am | Permalink
2. Nicholas Gruen said:

   It also shows that he’s an intelligent, cultivated guy despite the popular image of him as someone who pumps out the lollipop music.

   One of these days I’d like to do a post on Lennon/McCartney and Keating/Hawke.

   In each case the ‘cool one’ was the dud. The daggy one was the guy who ended up getting a lot more runs on the board. It emerged recently, without any prompting from the guy himself, that McCartney was the guy who took the Beatles towards the avant-garde, not Lennon. McCartney wrote at least as many good songs as Lennon, probably more, though they were best as a duo. Just like the other two.

   It was when Hawke was in charge that the big economic shifts took place. Keating was brilliant as Treasurer but flailed around as PM, and many of the nasty things that occured under Howard had their beginnings in Keating’s reign. Things like

   * The routine application of propaganda names to every damn thing the Government did – the economic stimulus that the Hawke Govt did around Sept 1990 was called “Economic Statement 22nd Sept 1990 (or whenever the date was). Keating’s first statement was called “One Nation”.
   * Government funded propaganda – remember the ad campaign for “Working Nation”
   * Locking up Assylum Seekers
   * The culture wars and the use and abuse of history for political purposes.

   Posted on 01-Feb-09 at 11:53 am | Permalink
3. Chris Lloyd said:

   Colbert’s voice is actually better than Paul’s now. Which is pretty sad. And Nick. Where do you get off calling John “a dud”?! He came up with Imagine and Jealous Guy post-Beatles which are better than anything Paul wrote by himself.

   Posted on 03-Feb-09 at 10:40 am | Permalink
4. FDB said:

   Better than Yesterday?

   Posted on 03-Feb-09 at 11:54 am | Permalink
5. Nicholas Gruen said:

   Chris,

   I withdraw ‘dud’. Keating was a dud (As PM). Lennon was a wanker of monumental proportions, but wrote some good songs.

   Posted on 03-Feb-09 at 1:49 pm | Permalink
6. Nabakov said:

   Colbert was right about Paul having a great rock screaming voice (when he did).

   But Steve did blow a final question.

   “So Sir Paul, do you remember yesterday?”

   “I do.”

   “So why don’t you write a song about it? I hear nostalgia is making a comeback. Again.”

   …

   “It also shows that hes an intelligent, cultivated guy despite the popular image of him as someone who pumps out the lollipop music.”

   By most accounts, it was Paul delving into more of the counter-culture action in late sixties London than John – who apparently spent a lot of his time then on a sofa in a Surrey stockbroker mansion watching TV.

   However I reckon John wrote more memorable post-Beatles songs than Paul.

   “Cold beatle…got me on the run”

   Posted on 03-Feb-09 at 9:44 pm | Permalink
7. Nabakov said:

   And the words to “Working Class Hero” are as a chilling yet lyrical piece of English nihilism (in every sense) as anything by Larkin, Housman or Pinter at their most pissed off.

   Posted on 03-Feb-09 at 9:53 pm | Permalink
8. Nicholas Gruen said:

   Yes, I guess John wrote better post-Beatles songs than Paul – there’s a good handful of pretty good songs, but some are mawkish (Woman), I don’t think any are as great as some of his best Beatles songs. And Paul has some pretty nice post-Beatles songs, like Calico Skies and Just Another Day, though I wonder if he wrote that latter one when he was actually within Beatledom, as it came out fairly soon after the breakup. I had a tape of London Town which had lots of nice songs on it though I don’t suppose anything great.

   Posted on 03-Feb-09 at 9:56 pm | Permalink
9. Nabakov said:

   Two of most interesting immediately post-Beatle songs were John and Paul’s song duel – “How Do You Sleep” vs “Let Me Roll It”.

   By the way Nick, forgot to thank you for that innovation speech. Bits of it are about to get ground up and sprinkled here and there in certain quarters.

   Hope to see you Friday night.

   Posted on 03-Feb-09 at 10:01 pm | Permalink
10. Nabakov said:

    “Hope to see you Friday night.”

    And I forgot to add that you’d be one of few on the night to appreciate the deep undercover subtext I’ll sneaking in about electricity monopolies.

    Posted on 03-Feb-09 at 10:19 pm | Permalink
11. Tony said:

    Magneto and Titanium Man is better than anything Lennon did after The Beatles.

    Coming Up is not.

    Posted on 05-Feb-09 at 1:42 pm | Permalink

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