October 7ths
10/7/1968
(Diary of John Barrett, from the book, The Complete Beatles Recording Sessions, The Official Story of the Abbey Road Years, 1962 to 1970). [White Album sessions]
It took 67 run-throughs of the basic rhythm track, acoustic guitar and vocal (George), organ (Paul), and drums, (Ringo)—before the best version of “Long Long Long “was found and onto which the overdubs would be made. There’s a sound near the end of the song in which a bottle of Blue Nun wine was rattling away on the top of a Leslie speaker cabinet. It just happened. Paul hit a certain note and the bottle started vibrating. We thought it was so good that we set up mics and did it again. The Beatles always took advantage of accidents.
10/7/2000
Benjamin Orr, bass player for The Cars died of pancreatic cancer at 53.
10/7/2001
United States makes first military strike on Afghanistan...
20 years later: 10/2021 Headline: ‘What was all of this for?’: US veterans are at a loss watching Taliban takeover.
10/7/2020
RIP Eddie Van Halen. One clip that I really liked of him was from 1988 at a Les Paul tribute when he expressed effusive praise for Les Paul, in his 70s at the time. What I liked was the generational deference and realizing the unbroken line from Django Reinhardt, Les Paul’s main influence.
The power of generational influences in music began to become more diffuse in the 1990s with Remix, in which it wasn’t the musicians themselves, but rather the Sample as a way to pay homage. It used to be that we appreciated individual contributions to the art form as a skill, not as a product and/or image—although blues in many ways was exploitative, and Van Halen was one of the first bands after the MTV paradigm shift from music for music’s sake to a focus on image and celebrity.
In 1988 Eddie Van Halen was in his 30s. Who in 2060 will praise any of today’s artists as musicians in the spirit of someone in the 1920s, as Les Paul did with Django? Will a thread be there? Perhaps, but it won’t be about skill but rather the mythology. Django will still have to be “cool” in some way.
[10/7/2024: It remains to be seen how music history will have a history post-AI. Who would be a young musician’s hero when you don’t know who they are? (A form of “Lostwave”) They might even be made up. Over the centuries fictional characters may be known as having been real people. If an Eddie Van Halen–or Les Paul–sample is in your generated track, and you release it as your music, do they get credited, and who or what defends it? AI itself or “We The People”?]
[10/7/2025: Discuss musical influence across generations]
10/7/2023, Saturday
Hamas stages surprise savage attack on Israel, Israel retaliates in Gaza, killing hundreds, interestingly on the same day that the US attacked Afghanistan on 10/7/2001, 50 years after 1973.
A musical response:
10/7/2025
YouTube is on fire about the Rush 2026 Tour and the German female drummer Anika Nilles. It's curious that we all have a hunger for something which seems uplifting and we "rush" towards it unwittingly. I watched a video that mentioned the Signals album and I listened to it in its entirety. (Does anyone do that anymore?) As much as I like Neil Peart as a drummer and overall musician and philosopher, the lyrics are much too wordy. It's remarkable that Geddy seemed to have never tweaked them. I suspect it's because it was a tacitly written rule that you don't edit the work of others. It's probably the reason the band has such wide appeal: it's democracy and cooperation at work, as opposed to solo work.
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