THE MUSIC AND PRESTON BLACK The Beatles, Acoustic Submarine

Some people think the idea of a soul in literature is a bit passé. A critique partner told me that. Thankfully, I disregarded her advice and wrote a novel about a guy who has to fight for control of his own soul. Don't we all have to fight for control of our soul from time-to-time?

I think soul is what moves Earth's 4.5 billion tiny little sparks through the universe. Soul gave us "Shall I compare thee to a summer's day..." and "If there's a bustle in your hedgerow....' Soul is why we distillers wait seven years for good bourbon.

Maybe soul, or a soul, is one of those things you don't notice until it's gone. That's kind of what happens to Preston Black in my novel. One day he wakes up, and life as he knows it is gone forever. His means of making music are taken from him by external forces. Without his old routine he's forced to make a change to pursue his passion or lose it.

Who better to guide Preston toward his grail than John Lennon, a man who seemed to spend the last ten years of his life searching for his own soul. Only recently have I started to see early John Lennon and late John Lennon as two totally separate entities. India is probably where the split began. John hooked up with Yoko just after returning to England. She was in the studio with him for most of The White Album sessions. Prior to Yoko he'd never had to choose. The Beatles were his soul.

During their time in Rishikesh with the Maharishi, The Beatles worked on thirty songs. Some were completed in India, some, like "Mean Mr. Mustard" and "Something" remained unfinished until the sessions for Abbey Road in 1969. Some, like "What's the New Mary Jane?" never appeared on any official releases. "Child of Nature" was reworked by Lennon as "Jealous Guy" and included on the album Imagine.

Most of what remained showed up on The Beatles, a.k.a. The White Album. (A month from now a purist is going to leave the comment, 'Um, there's no such album as The White Album. Did you mean...') In order of appearance, the India songs on The White Album are: Back in the U.S.S.R., Dear Prudence, Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da, Wild Honey Pie, The Continuing Story of Bungalow Bill, I'm So Tired, Blackbird, Rocky Raccoon, Why Don't We Do It in the Road?, I Will, Julia, Yer Blues, Mother Nature's Son, Everybody's Got Something to Hide Except Me and My Monkey, Sexy Sadie, Revolution, and Cry Baby Cry. Demos of these songs recorded at George Harrison's estate just after everybody returned from England, and show up on a bootleg called the Esher Demos or the Esher Tapes. The White Album songs on this bootleg come from those sessions.

To me, the songs from India represent the last drop of life The Beatles were able to squeeze out of their collective soul.

Download Acoustic Submarine.

Here's the recording info from Sugarmegs:

The Beatles - Acoustic Submarine
Teddy Bear Records

Liberated Bootleg

Original silver discs>EAC(secure)>SHN(mkw)

Disc 1:
Do You Want to Know a Secret
And I Love Her
I'm a Loser
Help
Yesterday
Yes It Is
Norwegian Wood
I'm Looking Through You
We Can Work It Out
I'm Only Sleeping
Yellow Submarine
A Day in the Life
The Fool on the Hill
Christmas Time is Here Again
The Happy Rishikesh Song
Jubilee
Child of Nature
Goodbye
Everyone Had a Hard Year
What's the New May Jane

Disc 2:
Heather
Back in the USSR
Dear Prudence
Ob-La-Di Ob-La-Da
While My Guitar Gently Weeps
Blackbird
Rocky Raccoon
Julia
Mother Nature's Son
Hey Jude
Because
I Lost My Little Girl
Teddy Boy
Mama, You've Been on My Mind
For You Blue
Two of Us
Across the Universe
I Me Mine
Maggie Mae

Heidi Ruby Miller: PATHS TO PUBLICATION: Preston Black (Songwriter)

Heidi Ruby Miller's PATHS TO PUBLICATION has a pretty interesting guest today.

Heidi Ruby Miller: PATHS TO PUBLICATION: Preston Black (Songwriter): "So, here's where I'm supposed to talk about how I got my record deal and all that, right? Well, then that means I got to go back to that sh.

Twitterly Promiscuous Week 3(ish)

So, you all know the deal by now. I followfollowfollow then use JustUnfollow to weed out the bad seeds after a week or so of not following back. At this point (because of JustUnfollow) it's difficult to determine how many people I've followed in the last 3 weeks. But, I do know how many people are following me. And as of 2:51 on Wednesday, March 30, 2011, that number is...908.

Is it working? Being aggressive has been more effective than not, obviously. I see some people surfing onto my blog from Twitter, and some even leave via Amazon. So we'll call it inconclusive and keep trying.

THE DEVIL AND PRESTON BLACK on AmericanStandardTelecaster.com

I thought it was a pretty cool place to see the book pop up. Thanks for the tag, Ron.

AmericanStandardTelecaster.com

THE MUSIC AND PRESTON BLACK Rubycide!

So, this is going to be a little thing where I talk about the music from the world of THE DEVIL AND PRESTON BLACK. You could call it a series, but that would imply a regularity that I won't guarantee and a sense of professionalism that I may be incapable of. So let's just say a new THE MUSIC AND PRESTON BLACK will pop into your Twitter feed and onto your Facebook wall every now and then. It'll be like a tick, you may not even notice it then BAM! you got yourself some Lyme Disease.

And when these posts do pop up, I suggest you grab those earbuds and jam them deep into your favorite earholes because I ain't putting forth any crap here. This is all going to 100% rocket-fueled noise from as close to the source as possible (soundboards, soundboard matrices, FM broadcasts, etc.) so your brain doesn't lose a single note.

Here's how this will work. At the top of the post I'll talk about the band and the song, maybe the venue or circumstances surrounding the show or recording, if any.

Then I'll give you a link, just like this so you can listen along. Like Picture Pages with Bill Cosby back in the day.

Yonder Mountain String Band

The song is Ruby>Follow Me Down to the Riverside>Ruby (Know to Kinfolk as a RUBYSIDE or RUBYCIDE)

YMSB is a Colorado-based bluegrass band known for their live shows. Four phenomenal musicians cover a variety of material from traditional Stanley Brothers tunes to modern stuff like The Misfits' TWENTY EYES, Pink Floyd's DOGS, Talking Heads' GIRLFRIEND IS BETTER. They also pick songs from an extensive repertoire of originals. But for somebody unfamiliar with the band I think the covers are the gateway drug.

RUBYCIDE is a blend of a cover and an original, sharing a common thread--extra points if you can guess what that thread is. I chose this version because it's fairly self contained. The > in the description above indicates a segue from one song into the next. Jeff Austin's voice can be a little hard to take at times, but when he's on, like he his here, it fits the tune like maple syrup fits a pancake. What I really like though, and what elevates this song into 'epic' territory is the way the minor key drone of the banjo in the space between verses drives the song deeper and deeper, so when the body hits the water you knew all along it was coming. The frantic pace of the staccato mandolin and call and response of '...follow me down (to the riverside) follow me down (to the bubblin'bubblin') follow me down...' is Joey Ramone for 1939.

RUBY is an old Osborne Brothers tune that's about as Appalachian as yew pines and coal mines. Of course, somebody dies. (Or has just died.) The song's so dirty you want to wash your hands when it's over.

Ruby? Ruby? Honey are you mad at your man?

I sit here in the shade I shovel with the spade,
I'm diggin' in the ground's cold mine.
Oh Ruby Ruby honey are you mad at your man?

I've done all I can do to tag along with you,
Still you're not satisfied.
Oh Ruby Ruby honey are you mad at your man?

If you don't believe I'm right just call on me tonight,
I'll take you to my shady so cold.
Oh Ruby Ruby honey are you mad at your man?

Some pretty heavy stuff from a guy who plays an instrument with only five strings, right? Just wait. Yonder tacks RUBY onto their own FOLLOW ME DOWN TO THE RIVERSIDE.

...said I will take you by your hand,
lead yo' ass down to the banks of the sand.
I'll ask you one more time,
hey, sweet honey lover are you gonna be mine?
If the answer is no, well sorry honey, down, down, down, you must go...

Rivers and dead bodies. That's how I like my tragedies.

Listen to or download the whole show here. Highlights for me include the originals NOT FAR AWAY (There's a deep, dark hole in the mountain, where the devil sleeps all the time...) and ANOTHER DAY, an Adam Aijala number that shows the band's lighter side, a pair of story songs-SOMETIMES I'VE WON and DAWN'S EARLY LIGHT and the TROUBLED MIND>TWENTY EYES>TROUBLED MIND triptych.

Yonder Mountain String Band
July 26, 2007
THURSDAY AT THE SQUARE, Lafayette Square, Buffalo, NY

Source: audio-technica 4041's > Segue Dogstar Silver XLR > Edirol UA-5 [Oade P-mod] > Creative Nomad JB3 [44.1]
Lineage: JB3 [usb] > PC > CDWAV > FLAC (520 MB)
Taped by: Seth Nochajski & Keith Januszak
Transferred by: Seth Nochajski

Setlist:

Death Trip,
Not Far Away
Another Day
Little Rabbit
2 Hits And The Joint Turned Brown
Sometimes I've Won
Dawn's Early Light
East Nashville Easter
Troubled Mind > 20 Eyes > Troubled Mind
Idaho
Catch A Criminal,
Cuckoo's Nest
Ruby > Follow Me Down To The Riverside > Ruby

Encore:
Damned If The Right One Didn't Go Wrong
Half Moon Rising

Photo by Jason Jack Miller, Yonder Mountain String Band, State Theater, Falls Church, Virginia, October 22, 2005.