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STRATEGY FOR THE DAY: look back, look forwards

Just got in from seeing A Hard Day's Night at the local movie house. Those exuberant images and the music - propulsive, ear-catching, irresistible! Seeing it on the big screen was like seeing it again for the first time. It was a strange sensation - there was all that buoyant joy and unstoppable energy but just underneath it was the quiet, persistent sense of what has changed.

I haven't listened to those early Beatles' songs for a long time. Though they are burned deep into the collective brain cells, still there are things we forget - like how dumb the lyrics are, how solid the beat, and how sweet and wonderful the vocals. I now want to go back and reread Ian MacDonald's Revolution In The Head - the section that deals with that period of the Beatles' music.

The movie is like a non-stop roller coaster ride with big explosions of energy punctuating a barebones story line. The handheld camera work with its constant movement adds a frantic, kinetic element of its own. The casting of the supporting actors is brilliant. The script's skewering of Authority as dull, restrictive, hidebound, and manipulative but also slow to react and unable to comprehend the 'magical' youths has an almost mythic quality. (I'm sure someone must have interpreted this movie in Jungian terms so I'm not even going to go there.)

I walked home from the theater. It's a coolish summer night and quiet. I thought about the difference in the times - then and now. Growing up is inevitable and they did and we did. It's good to know that a piece of it was caught and held almost by accident.

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Read A Brief History Of Love Songs by Robin Frederick at the Sound Experience Music web site.

Copyright 2005 Robin Frederick. All rights reserved.