The Lonely Goatherd Blog And before him shall be gathered all nations: and he shall separate them one from another, as a shepherd divideth his sheep from the goats - Matthew 25:32
Up to the minute notes on the current state of free thinking and free living: Kentucky moonshine - original analysis and reporting from MoreThings, and all round pop culture museum of sight and sound - photo galleries, mp3 and video downloads.
Al Barger and MoreThings - getting people's goats since 1998.
Live free or die!
----
I wouldn't want to ask people to just give me money cause they like my website, but do please take a quick look at Barger's Boutique. You might find yourself a little something-something for 2 or 3 bucks that you just can't resist! Any of the round images you find around MoreThings will get you to an Amazon page to buy my stuff and help ol' Al keep the lights on.
Links
To explicitly state the obvious, these external links go to interesting and provocative websites, but they speak for themselves. I don't necessarily agree with anything they say - especially that no-goodnik Richard Marcus.
*************
All original content on MoreThings.com copyright 2008 Albert Barger or the respective authors
April 19, 2007
Worst Beatles Covers Ever OK, I've got enough of the Comic Book Shop Guy in me to appreciate ranking worst things. The Music Choice tv channel did a viewer's poll for the worst ever Beatles covers.
The winner was William Shatner's version of "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds". Now this may be the most infamous Beatle cover, but it is far from the worst. Actually, his dramatic reading is fairly amusing (at least halfway on purpose- I think), particularly as he's reading the line "look for the girl with her head in the clouds and she's GONE!!!"
PM Dawn seems to be getting undeserved disrespect here. What's so awful about their "Norweigan Wood"?
The Candy Flip version of "Strawberry Fields Forever" especially doesn't deserve to be on a worst list. It's actually a pretty good straight cover. The singer won't make me forget John Lennon, but still.
I've got a couple of crappy suggestions to add to the pile in their place. For something of their own instigation, you might count the Tiny Tim version of "Nowhere Man" they embedded as part of their 1968 fan club Christmas record. Then again, that was intended to be a joke, so that doesn't really count.
One almost worth hearing for it's wrongness comes from Xaviera Hollander, the "happy hooker." She wasn't a singer, but that didn't stop her from trying to cash in on her infamy with a really cheesy breathy soft core lesbian porno version of "Michelle."
For someone who was a serious world class singer, Bing Crosby really stunk up "Hey Jude". He even made it the title song for an album Hey Jude/Hey Bing. He crooned the tuned so blithely that there was no telling from his performance that he recognized that Jude was sad. This has to rate as one of the very worst Beatles covers ever from a real singer.
In the range of unbelievably, all-time jaw-droppingly bad though- the true WORST EVER BEATLES COVER, you really must see the video of Kylie Minogue from the Ono sponsored 1991 Lennon - A Tribute live concert video. She did a really incredibly glib dance version of "Help" with the cheesiest gay black dancers she could find doing this campy choreography. Oh yeah, and one of them did a little rap to top it off. It's almost worth the price of the video just for this, especially sandwiched directly between bits of U2 and Roy Orbison singing the same song. [There are other much better performances that make this actually an exceptionally good video, notably including an exceptional Cyndi Lauper take on "Working Class Hero."]