No Wonder It's So Prestigious...

Crates from every port.

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I was enjoying the wackiness of the beautiful possibility podcast/blog; I didn't buy into the truly wild & sweeping claims she made about mclennon healing the world or whatever but I liked the mythopoetic themes and the sort of structured insanity of it. I also admired that she's insistent on doing serious mclennon research under her own name etc (although her wider theories are likely to put casual readers off, not to mention problems of confirmation bias in her approach etc).

With all that said, I've been totally put off by some recent episodes' parasocial insistence that paul is a little scared uwu baby that must be encouraged (by her?) to "tell his story", and indeed that he may be listening to the pod for just that purpose??

A chronic case of Too Much Fanfic brain, I fear.

With The Chants (in all, comprised of Joe Ankrah, Eddie Ankrah, Edmund Amoo, Nat Smeda, and Alan Harding) and Little Richard, backstage at the Tower Ballroom in New Brighton on October 12, 1962. Photos by Les Chadwick.

“[Joe Ankrah noted] ‘It was bad enough that the modern moods [racism] never gave a black group a chance, but if not for Paul and his friends, we would have never stayed together… In fact, I think that meeting the Beatles changed the direction of my life.’ Ankrah also makes it clear that, in a sea of intolerance, Paul and the Beatles stood out, and stood up for him and his bandmates. ‘They were very cool guys, and meeting them gave us a look at real opportunity.’ […] [T]he Beatles, surrounded by postwar racial and religious bigotry, went against the grain and gave a black group a break, even was they were pursuing their own dream. […] ‘Could I have imagined a future like that? Who could? But, looking back, I knew they had something special, and a level of compassion that was truly unusual for a band on the move.’ - Joe Ankrah [of The Chants], Beatles friend whose band was pushed through racial barriers by the boys” - When They Were Boys by Larry Kane “They went ‘apeshit’ when we started to sing. I can still see George and John racing up to the stage with their mouths stuffed with hot dogs or whatever. The invitation to make our Cavern debut was given as soon as we finished ‘A Thousand Stars’ for them. They insisted we perform that very night. Everything happened completely spontaneously from that point. The Beatles themselves offered to back us when we told them we’d never worked with a band before. We then rehearsed four songs with them and then we ran home to tell all and sundry that we had ‘made it’!” When Brian Epstein arrived at the Cavern that night he refused to allow the Beatles to back us, but they collectively persuaded him to change his mind – and when he heard us he invited us to appear on many subsequent appearances with them.” - Eddie Amoo, Mersey Beat via TriumphPC “When the Beatles became big they were great about us. They went round telling everyone we were great, and when they were on Juke Box Jury, they played our record ‘I Could Write A Book’ and the Beatles raved about it and voted us a hit!” - Alan Harding, Record Mirror, June 25, 1966

worst thing that can happen to a girl is her friend gets a boyfriend

White Feathers

My Amazon review for White Feathers, a super new WWI-set novel dealing with (among other things) the practice of shaming non-combatant men into joining up by encouraging the women in their lives to present them with a white feather, symbolising their supposed cowardice. I really enjoyed this novel - as I say in the review, it's that rare beast, a 'literary page-turner'.

It can be hard for historical novels to strike the balance between inhabiting the period in which they're written and fully engaging a broad range of modern readers. White Feathers pulls this off with a vibrancy and a lightness of touch that are all the more striking when you realise that this is a debut novel.

Hollering at this description of Magic Alex at some pre-Apple planning meeting. John's weird little boyfriend, plotting away.

(Source: Magical mystery tours : my life with the Beatles by Tony Bramwell)

#notavessel

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paul's most relatable characteristic (to me) is being a complete weirdo and obsessively secretive about it

an important part of any feud is ruining your enemy’s whimsical schemes