Beatles 'Love' cd review

The Beatles, Love Sunday November 12, 2006 The Observer Of all the possible posthumous incarnations for the Beatles, here's one of the most unlikely - as soundtrack to a Las Vegas circus. It isn't any old circus, admittedly, but Canada's arty, super-acrobatic Cirque du Soleil, whose current Las Vegas show, Love, is modelled on the story of the Beatles and characters from their songs: Eleanor Rigby, Sergeant Pepper et al. More importantly, Love the show - the result of George Harrison's friendship with Cirque founder Guy Laliberte - involved producer George Martin disinterring the group's master tapes from the Abbey Road vault for he and his son Giles to remix and remodel. The results blast Love audiences from a state-of-the-art surround-sound system that includes speakers in individual seats. And the first thing Love the album does, at least in its DVD surround-sound format, is to blow you away with sheer sonic wizardry. Set to a noisy dawn chorus, complete with fluttering wings, the three-part vocal harmonies of 'Because' arrive with the clarity of an ice blue sky. The chugging introduction to 'Get Back' hurtles out of the mix like a train. The pumping fairground organs of 'Mr Kite' reek of steam and sawdust. Hearing many of the familiar tracks is like viewing an old masterpiece after cleaning: the light is brighter, the shadows deeper. Here, the trebles tingle while the bass end booms. Some of this is painstaking technical restoration. After the Beatles swapped touring for the studio, they and Martin became experts at squeezing a quart of sound into a pint pot, extending the limits of four- and eight-track recordings by 'bouncing down' tracks. Today's technology has let the Martins reverse the process, giving instruments and voices more autonomy. Ever notice the pizzicato violins on the middle 8 of 'Something'? You will now. The ambitions of Love go beyond renovation, however. Its 26 tracks are set in an ambient flow of sound collages distilled from hours of Beatles tapes and containing fragments and echoes of 130 songs in all. Frequently the effect is ghostly, as the stalking strings of 'Glass Onion' and a snatch of 'Nowhere Man' drift like ectoplasm down a corridor. 'I Want to Hold Your Hand' - one of the few numbers from the moptop days - surfaces from a scratchy haze of screaming. The most ambitious songs emerge most improved. There is not, after all, much to be done with the rock'n'roll retro of 'Lady Madonna', whereas 'Strawberry Fields' and 'I am the Walrus' sound more than ever like avant-garde masterpieces. Harrison's 'While My Guitar Gently Weeps' (the slower version from Anthology 3) is given a sumptuous string setting by Sir George. Throughout, the McCartney/Starr rhythm section has never sounded so heavy, or the group's vocal harmonies so sharp and affecting. Love vindicates the Beatles' status as master musicians and conceptualists. Not only for the spirit of optimism they embodied but artistically, they remain the act to beat. On this evidence, no one else comes close.

'Storm Warning'

This 1951 Warner Bros. production is a very strange film. It stars Ronald Reagan, Ginger Rogers, Doris Day (in a very early role), and Steve Cochran.
In the movie, Rogers' character is a model who is visiting her sister (Day) in a small southern town as a break from a stressful tour. Shortly after she arrives, Rogers surreptitiously witnesses a murder by the Ku Klux Klan. Even more shocking is that she learns Day is married to the murderer (Cochran) and she soon finds herself torn between telling the crusading District Attorney (Reagan) what she knows and sparing her sister's feelings.
'Storm Warning' has been called a "feverish melodrama" and it is certainly that, but what is really odd about the film is the way it portrays the KKK. It wants to be an expose' of the hate group, and I suppose in a way it succeeds, but the movie's conception of the Klan is radically different from how most people today view them.
The KKK, as seen here, are essentially a corrupt men's club, an older bad boy's fraternity if you will, whose main crime seems to be spending their members' dues unwisely.
There are no black people in the film, not a hint of the Klan's intolerance of Jews or Catholics... not the slightest inference of all the things people normally associate with them. Yes, Cochran does kill the man (a newspaper reporter) at the beginning, but it's made to appear that he and the boys just got a little carried away. Basically, they're all a bunch of small town louts who don't know any better, except of course for their corrupt boss.
Reagan is pretty good as the laidback DA who's been trying to nail the KKK for something, and hasn't had much luck. The reason, not surprisingly, is that all the locals are scared and unwilling to testify.
Rogers wavers, saying at first she will identify them and then changing her mind because of her sister. It's only when Cochran shows his true colors, first by making passes at her (this is the 'feverish' part) and then beating up both her and Doris Day, that she decides to turn him and the rest in.
The final scene, finally, shows a typical Klan meeting out in the woods, everyone decked out in hoods and robes and a big burning cross. Rogers has been kidnapped and brought before the Klan leader, who demands she remain silent and leave town. She refuses, so she is bound and whipped with a bullwhip. (Maybe this is the 'feverish' part.)
Even here, the scene is not very believable... as the whip comes down, the Klan boss taunts Rogers by saying through a megaphone, "Busybody! Outsider! Troublemaker!" The Klan might not have been the sharpest knives in the silverware drawer, but I daresay they came up with more cutting remarks than that in real life.
Reagan and a couple of cops with rifles show up, everyone in the crowd is shamed for being there (One woman wearing a Klan robe has a little girl in similar garb; Reagan tells her, "She should be home in bed.") and the meeting breaks up. The end. Presumably, justice is done after the end credits roll.
Why did Warner Brothers want to tackle such a subject, and then hold back to the extent they did?
Perhaps they figured the shocking subject matter would be enough to sell the film, and there was no need to actually present the evidence. Perhaps in that more innocent time, it wasn't possible to in a mainstream movie.
'Storm Warning' remains a real curiosity.