This has been a musical day indeed. In the morning I went to see a medic who absolutely requires a musical backdrop of 1970s oldies in order to perform an anamnesis. Once in a while she will burst into song as she prods and probes you, professing her joy about Don McLean, Manfred Man ... and your general health. Don't get me wrong: I really like her. "Wo man singt, da lass Dich ruhig nieder", etc., etc.
But the musicality had begun even earlier, thanks to my regular bout of Radio Rockland between Ingelheim and Finthen, which today culminated in an unexpected exposure to The Beatles's "Strawberry Fields." Now, that's not exactly a song you hear a lot on the radio these days (but then again for some reason Radio Rockland also plays "#9 Dream" on a regular basis, so I've given up being surprised a while ago).
Uncannily, I remember every single bloody line of the song. "Strawberry Fields", that is. Why is it that I can recite in full this silly little dope-drenched ditty and not, say, Marvell's "To His Coy Mistress"?
Be that as it may, as I was karaokeing along in the early morning sunshine, I realised that probably my favourite song by The Beatles is the following:
At school I once gave a presentation on "Strawberry Fields" and "I am the Walrus." For some reason, my teacher was extremely chuffed by my analysis.
I'm still waiting for a comparative study of late Beatles "video" footage and early Monty Python. There are distinctly Pythonesque moments in the "I am the Walrus" clip (such as the collage of elderly biddies in sepia that marks the song's break and the Cleesian Hitler type towards the end) and foreshadowings of the style of HandMade Films - the production company formed by George Harrison (bless 'im) and Denis O'Brian in 1979 responsible, among other things, for Life of Brian.
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