The Beatles and East Texas

Today I made progress on a project that I started last month - listening to all of the Beatles albums in the order in which they were recorded. I'm a nerd like that.

I started my most recent edition of this project on the drive to Dallas for Christmas. Today I drove to East Texas to meet my sister and nephew for some shopping and Mexican food. Only in Texas would I drive 200 miles in a day for shopping and Mexican food. But I digress.

The Beatles recorded only about 10 hours of music. I have listened to all of the proper albums (British versions), and I'm now working on the "Past Masters," which were songs that were never included on the British albums. And by listening to them in recording order, rather than release order, I listened to "Let it Be" before "Abbey Road."

By listening to the albums in order, it is easy to hear the phases of the Beatles' musical development. For example, in what I call the "middle period" ("Rubber Soul" and "Revolver"), virtually every song has a tambourine. And they all have one of those shaker things that sounds like an empty can with a few dried beans. It's not a maraca, but it's the thing that you would hold in an upraised hand in front of you and genty shake back and forth. You know what I mean.

I need to remember that listening to the Beatles and singing along in my car can drastically improve my mood. If anyone else were in the car, their mood would not improve and would probably darken because if I'm singing no one else needs to hear it. I have been down all week because I spend most of my daytime hours around soul-sucking individuals. Most times, I can shake it when I get home, but this week I could not. But today's combination of retail therapy, Mexican food, and the Beatles has made a dramatic improvement in my outlook.

Tomorrow's goal: get back on track with the diet and treadmill.