Beatles For Sale, Help!, Rubber Soul by The Beatles (EMI/1964-65) - Indulging a mid-summer whim for phase 2 Beatles music. They were so damned sharp — the songs, the performances, the production — sharp and crisp, yeah. What are my phases of Beatle-volution? Phase 1: from the beginning to the Hard Day’s Night album. Phase 2: Beatles For Sale to Rubber Soul. Phase 3: Revolver to the Yellow Submarine soundtrack album. Phase 4: White Album to the end (and yes, I know White Album was released before Yellow Submarine).

The National Film Board of Canada has a whole load of animated shorts posted for free online viewing (uses embedded Flash player). Lots of other goodies on the site as well.

(spotted via Cartoon Brew)

Pink Floyd founder, Syd Barrett has died at age 60. Strange that it was just recently that I’ve listened to all of the Syd albums in my collection. I even added one of the Syd biographies to my books-to-git list. WFMU has a post with an odd assortment of links, and Sharpeworld is linking to the 1967 short film Tonite Lets All Make Love In London, featuring the Floyd.

I first discovered Syd when I was around 14, picking up the not-exactly authorized Pink Floyd album, Masters Of Rock. It was an import release on some sort of Dutch arm of a strange combination of EMI and Columbia, with cover art swiped from the group portrait inside the gatefold of Meddle… with the guys’ sequence shuffled and Syd’s head swapped in over David Gilmour’s — light source from the wrong side and everything. The tracks were all Syd-era Floyd, and I instantly recognized that this Pink Floyd was infinitely cooler than the Dark Side Pink Floyd. It’s been trouble ever since.

Chordbook.com is a web widget guitar chord compendium, working two ways. Input the chord name to see how to play it or input the chord fingering to see what it’s called. My wacky chords tend to bring up the “unable to find chord name” error message. Also on site are a scale tutor (I disagree with some of their fingerings), a tuning reference, a ‘cafe’ with loops for ‘jamming’ and a message board for the kiddies. (Flash, javascript and cookies req.)

(spotted via Fretboard Journal Blog)

The optimum episode order of cult TV series, The Prisoner, is an eternal debate. Here’s my own version:

1. Arrival
2. Free For All
3. Dance of the Dead
4. The Girl Who Was Death
5. Checkmate
6. The Chimes of Big Ben
7. The General
8. A, B, and C
9. Many Happy Returns
10. The Schizoid Man
11. It’s Your Funeral
12. Do Not Forsake Me Oh My Darling
13. A Change Of Mind
14. Living In Harmony
15. Hammer Into Anvil
16. Once Upon a Time
17. Fall Out

Portishead by Portishead (Go! Beat/1997) - The same modus operandi as on Dummy — just sharper, tighter and scarier. Music from an alternate universe where The Avengers tv series grew darker rather than sillier.

From The Velvets To The Voidoids: A Pre-Punk History For a Post-Punk World by Clinton Heylin (1993) - A pretty good counterpart to the post-punk coverage of Rip It Up, this covers the early US roots of punk from the 1960s to the 70s: The Velvet Undergound, The MC5, The Stooges, the NYC and Cleveland scenes and more, winding up as the CBGBs bands have their variously nasty late 70s collisions with the US commercial mainstream. On the debit side, the writing is a bit stiff and sometimes oddly judgemental in tone. And there doesn’t seem to have been any firsthand interviewing in the research process. But it does bundle up a lot of ‘early days’ info on a lot of bands.

Dummy by Portishead (Go! Discs/1994) - Well, what else would you follow up a John Barry spree with? An irresistable combination of triphop beatery and film noir dread melodics.

The EMI Years 1957-1964 by John Barry (Scamp/1996) - A set of three (separate) discs documenting John Barry’s early years, when he more or less used the pop marketplace and his John Barry 7 combo as a music lab to prepare for a film soundtrack career. From tuxedo rockabilly to twangy guitar instrumentals to string section + rock combo hybrids to early soundtrack work, there’s a lot of cool stuff here. Much of the cool involving Vic Flick, the consumate twangy guitarist… yes, he’s the guy who played that iconic 007 riff.