Sometimes it's not a good thing to get sick and miss work.

Ringo Starr appeared with The Beatles at Liverpool’s Cavern Club 55 years ago this month, when their regular drummer, Pete Best, was taken ill. The Beatles, especially Paul McCartney, liked Ringo’s playing and circled back to Ringo six months later to persuade him to replace Pete on drums.

As stated in previous posts, the events surrounding Pete’s firing—in August of 1962—are STILL riddled in mystery. After all, Pete was the most popular Beatle with the female fans and a critical piece of the Beatles’ “Wall of Sound."

But as theorized here, there seemed to be several forces at work. One was McCartney’s constant attempts to unseat Pete Best, either because of McCartney’s jealousy at Best’s popularity with the “birds” or because McCartney thought Pete's drumming was weak (an opinion not universally shared by Liverpool musicians at the time).

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This was the title of a recent Boston Globe opinion piece by Renée Graham referring to what a Trump Presidency could contribute to the common good: “riling up musicians to voice their political opposition in song.”

It echoes my observation in recent posts that incompetent and duplicitous leadership in the White House is awakening spontaneous resistance in the rock & roll community that hasn't been heard in nearly a half century.

That began last week as a unified boycott of President Trump’s inaugural events and parties by the nation's premier musical talent. (The acts who did perform at those events lacked serious artistic cred and did themselves no favors publicity-wise.) The best rock and pop artists have always had good BS detectors and have been among the first to sniff out deceit in political leadership. (One could argue that rock & roll’s finest hour—at least as a cultural force—was during the reign of Richard Nixon.)

But you might ask, “Why would the centers of political (or commercial or financial) power be concerned about what some pop singers wail about?”

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My favorite band in the galaxy—as most readers know—is Walk Off The Earth, an alt-rock band from Burlington, Ontario.

Below is a moving performance I just came across of WOTE singing “O Canada” at the World Hockey Finals last year. (It should not shock anyone that many Americans have been thinking fondly of Canada in recent weeks.)

This short clip captures the musical magic of the band. I often post WOTE's own videos to illustrate their madcap creativity, but this more solemn rendition of the Canadian anthem demonstrates the vocal mastery (understated but poignant) of their three lead singers—Sarah Blackwood, Ryan Marshall, and Gianni Luminati. They do their country proud here.

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Allan Williams, the Beatles’ first manager (aka “the man who discovered the Beatles"), passed on last week.

In August 1960, Williams booked the young Liverpool band for a three-month residency in Hamburg, Germany, where they transformed themselves from a raggedy dance band into a tight concert act, which put them on the map in Liverpool as a top draw. As a result, we can safely say: no Allan Williams, no Beatles.

By the following spring the band dropped Williams in a contract dispute and eight months later picked up the more urbane Brian Epstein to manage them. In truth, there would be no Beatles without either Williams or Epstein. One kept them alive in their scuffling days; the other cleaned up their act, found them national gigs, and got them a record deal which helped launch them to international fame.

One lesson here is that a business may need one kind of management to get it off the ground, but another kind to get it into the global market. This week let us give thanks to the former. RIP, Alan Williams.

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It’s great to see the pop music community continue to resist the roar from the cave in American politics, as we await the changing of the guard in two weeks. Rock/pop artists are not always paragons of virtue, but they can be counted on to speak out against the most virulent forms of prejudice they witness. The campaign of the President-Elect has promoted the most toxic brew of racism, jingoism, xenophobia, bigotry, and sexism I've seen in American politics in my lifetime, so it's no wonder the PEOTUS can’t find a single A-list entertainer to play at his inauguration, as mentioned here.

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