Tags: bad music, celebrities
November 17, 2008 | celebrities
According to reports, the Beatles’ experimental song Carnival of Light includes gargling, distorted guitar and shouts of ”Are you alright?”, or to put it another way, complaints that would rouse an apartment building superintendent at 4AM.
Apparently, during the Penny Lane sessions when he penned his 14-minute opus, Macca was gleaning inspiration from avant garde composer John Cage, perhaps best known for 4′33, a ‘completely silent composition’, which prompts the question: ‘if you were ever to attend a live performance, when would you applaud?’ Click here for an extraordinarily uninteresting sample, where the piece ‘allows the audience to absorb the sounds around them’, or to put it another way, the most conspicuous time to head to the bathroom.
One thing that can be said about the Cage piece, is that it can be performed by any instrument regardless of whether it’s in tune, or by anyone who can count to ‘273′, has access to throat lozenges and who doesn’t have gas (see the phrase ’silent but deadly’)
Further cementing his legacy as the least interesting Beatle, Sir Paul’s musical direction for these recording sessions included the decidedly un-Cagian: ”just wander round all of the stuff and bang it, shout, play it. It doesn’t need to make any sense.”
Speaking of not making sense, getting this song released is going to require legal challenges a la passage of the US bailout bill: approval from the widows Lennon, Harrison as well as Ringo Starr, even if his artistic contribution to the Beatles is comparable to those transients Picasso painted during his ’Blue Period’.
McCartney also expressed an interest recently in working with Bob Dylan, who unlike Paul has put out some of the most vital music of his career during the last decade, in what these days would be an asymmetrical collaboration akin to rolling an organ grinder across the stage during a performance by the Vienna Philharmonic. 
In other Beatles news, their back catalog is now available for online purchase in a case of not only shutting the barn door while the horse is already gone, but putting a jockey on it and running it around the track a few times as everyone from Tallahassee to Tuvalu has downloaded everything the Fab Four has ever put out, including Carnival of Light, if and when it does see the light of day.
The dirge also apparently contains lots of organ and shouting ‘Barcelona’, but no word if the Maharishi was kicking a soccer ball around the studio during the recording.
Completists eagerly await the Revolver bass guitar tune-up sessions of 1966.
Least interesting Beatle? I thought that was Ringo? Jaysus, let us at least hear this ‘tune’ before dismissing it completely. You Know my Name, Look Up The Number was a load of nonsense too but, I have to admit, I still liked it.