The Beatles - Magical Mystery Tour

Oh my stars and garters, look what the dollar bin coughed up. A 1967 first Canadian pressing of The Beatles Magical Mystery Tour. Yeah, this is a pretty awesome score. Too bad the 24-page full color picture book has been lost to the ravages of time. The vinyl itself though despite looking a little sketchy in a couple of places, particularly on the first side, turned out to play really clean with a few little pops here and there but overall this was a really pleasant surprise. The gatefold itself was obviously well loved by the previous owners, who marked their names under several of the songs. I'm guessing they were siblings who fought over ownership. Somewhere David, John, Ellen and Author ended up with nothing, and here I am 55 years later claiming sole ownership.

Let that be a lesson kids. DON'T MARK SHIT UP WITH INK.

Anyways, here I am geeking out and listening to the album for the first time in its entirety. Now, like a lot of people too young to have witnessed The Beatles first hand, I lived through the echoes and reverberations of their work. Heck the band had already broken up before I started getting into music. I do recall watching Yellow Submarine and being mesmerized. 

Osmosis is pretty cool, as with the passage of time the amount of Beatles tunes that have been stored in my subconscious is pretty astounding. In the '70s all you needed to have were the Red and the Blue and that covered everything you needed. However, those were my second and third Beatles albums. My journey started when I was in high school. There was an awesome second hand store where I grew up where I got all of my Robert A. Heinlein novels, a lot of comics, and on occasion records. It was there I found The White Album. The actual white vinyl release, and I played it and played it. I learned the chords to "Rocky Racoon" and wondered what the hell they were doing in the road. I would play my record backward and try and figure out what number nine was all about.

Then I got the Red and Blue. 

Then I lost them. I still feel sad when I think about the loss of my treasured white vinyl. Sigh.

Then vinyl died, and The Beatles were not showing up on CD. I guess they were in a battle of wills with The Dave Clark Five to see who could hold out the longest and not release their albums to a waiting public. The Beatles eventually blinked ... and the mono mixes NO ONE had were released ... anyway this is a rabbit hole I don't want to keep going down. We all know that once The Beatles started re-issuing stuff, it simply did not stop. By the time The Dave Clark Five figured the time was right to get with the times it was too late. No one remembered them or seemed to care.

There's a joke where people of my generation were asked about Paul McCartney and most of us associated him as that guy from Wings who used to be in The Beatles.

Anyway back to the task at hand. The Magical Mystery Tour. I wish I could pinpoint where my opinion that this was an inferior and throw away album came from. The TV special from what I've read was a rare misfires for the band, and I guess it's this more than anything that has coloured my impression of the album. The cover didn't help, it just seemed ... off and silly. Not Monty Python silly, stupid silly.

As the album played one great song after another came on. By the time it was over I'd counted eight of the eleven songs as stuff I knew, and thought of as classic Beatles. Songs like the quirky instrumental "Flying" were kind of fun, and "Blue Jay Way" psychedelic, but not really a song as much as it was a sonic experience. "Your Mother Should Know" was new to me, and it's odd I'd not heard it before.

Playing this has been a delight. Heck even the unfamiliar songs have a charm, and it's always fun hearing something for the first time from an old band.

The album was certainly a surprise, in a good way - I have enjoyed the Magical Mystery Tour, and I think I'll hop back on the bus and do it again.