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Day Three Hundred Forty Nine (Year Two)

Oh, today has been a decidedly fun hodgepodge of musical awesomeness.

We've got a 6 song Stones sampler in the current run of in-store plays, and this fact alone started a conversation between myself and one of the managers about the always fun Beatles vs. Stones discussion.  He (and I) both prefer the Fab Four over the Stones, but still.  I believe his opening statement was something to the effect of "Y'know, on the whole, there are about 6 Rolling Stones songs that I really like, and this disc doesn't have all of them on it."  We both agreed that the Stones are more of an acquired taste than The Beatles are, which led us to a discussion of their musical brilliance, and that led me to proclaim "oh, have you seen the coolest Beatles thing ever made?"

The coolest Beatles thing ever made, for those of you that haven't spent the last two years obsessively following my postings, is this:

http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/beatles-the-beatles/1101794317?ean=9780793518326

Yep, it's the COMPLETE scores.  And when it says COMPLETE, it means COMPLETE.  Like, every guitar solo, every lyric, every handclap kind of complete.  It's a truly amazing work.  And it essentially provides, for someone crazy enough to do it (maybe me, someday), a complete primer on how to recreate all of the amazing things they did from 1962-70.

Another thought that occurred to me today: it would be great fun to go through the book, and trace the evolution of their songwriting based on the order in which their singles were released, and subsequently, the order in which the albums were released.  Imagine everything that one could learn about constructing popular music from such a study.

And speaking of constructing popular songs, apparently there is a Youtube video of a guy who works at a guitar store in Chicago that has gone viral without my knowledge.  In it, he plays 100 guitar riffs that trace the history of rock & roll in one fell (12 minute) swoop.  I watched it.  It's incredible.

Anyway, they hyped the video in a story on NPR.com today, which is how I found out about it.  Here's the link.  Check it out.

http://www.npr.org/blogs/allsongs/2012/07/08/156393911/the-shredder-behind-100-guitar-licks-speaks

I've got other stuff to talk about tonight, but somehow this seems perfect for today.  I'll hit the rest of it tomorrow.

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