New Podcast: Alphabeatical

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I am a fan of the Ink Panthers podcast. I love the cartoonist hosts Mike Dawson, Alex Robinson and frequent guest-host Tony Consiglio. The show is on my list of ones that always made me happy to hear an epsiode. In February 2014 they sort-of closed up shop on the podcast, ceasing weekly production. However, I stayed subscribed and was pleased to find they still publish an episode every now and then.

I just got to the “Winter Special” from November, and in it they mention Alex’s other podcasts. He has long been a co-host of The Star Wars Minute, a killer concept where in each episode they discuss in depth 60 seconds of a Star Wars movie. The newer one is what I subscribed to, called Alphabeatical.

Alphabeatical is another OCD type completist podcast. In it, they discuss every Beatles song in alphabetical order, “from 12 to Y” as they say in the show. The shows are generally around 10 minutes an episode and come out two or three times a week. With the episodes relatively short, I just downloaded them all and am listening to a few every day before I get into my regular episodes. Eventually it will just shuffle into my standard chronological queue.

I am usually hard on multi-person podcasts, and even though they have four hosts I don’t mind the interactions. It is not a constant race to the next in-joke, and I like the differences in insight amongst the guys. Even more interesting is that there can be wildly varying opinions about the songs. Some of the guys didn’t like “A Day in the Life” so it is not as if they are hewing to common wisdom. It is waning for me as I age, but at one point I was enough of a nut to own the book of the Abbey Road studio logs which they refer to repeatedly in the podcast.

If you like Alex Robinson’s graphic novels and/or are a serious Beatles fan, try this show. You might like it.

Aimee Mann Channels Abbey Road

I recently watched the episode of the Henry Rollins show that had PT Anderson talking movies and Aimee Mann as the musical guest. That led me to break out my copy of Bachelor No. 2 and spin it. When I first got this album, and even before when I had MP3s of a few of the songs, I listened obsessively. I must have listened to “Ghost World” and “Calling it Quits” hundreds of times each. I never really noticed before how much the album reminds me of Abbey Road in some strange way. The way the lead guitar sounds, the feeling of the songs and all just put me in mind of it.

This might be because my subconscious mind is always trying to connect everything to Abbey Road at all times. Anytime I see one of those lists of the best albums of all time that has Sergeant Pepper up top, I always scoff and point out that it isn’t even the third best Beatles album. If history was different and they had released the single disc White Album without some of the weaker/weirder stuff, SP might not even be in the top half.