TBone and Fishie -- Confessions thread
Posted: Wed Jan 07, 2009 9:59 pm
I've never been a Beatles fan. I admired what they achieved, their songs never offended me, even when they were being overplayed, but they just didn't do it for me.
Until two nights ago. One of my resolutions for this year is to spend more time at the piano and on the guitar, so I sat down at the piano with some music books I borrowed from the library, and started playing and singing. I don't "play" piano the conventional way -- I pretty much play it the way I play acoustic guitar -- just strumming chords for accompaniment. So I noticed there were a couple of Beatles songs in the one book, so I thought, "what the hey?"
I played "Let it Be." Possibly the most overplayed of the overplayed Beatles songs. And about halfway through, I got that old familiar feeling in my chest I used to get a lot when playing and singing -- expansion and lightness and feeling like a helium balloon was going to lift me right off the bench. That one simple nine-chord progression that recurs often, and finally finishes the song may be one of the most awesomely simple-yet-powerful things I've ever played.
So now I'm going back through the catalogue, trying to find songs I can play without embarrassing myself. It's pretty amazing. But I keep having this urge to apologize to every Beatles fan I ever knew. So here you are.
Until two nights ago. One of my resolutions for this year is to spend more time at the piano and on the guitar, so I sat down at the piano with some music books I borrowed from the library, and started playing and singing. I don't "play" piano the conventional way -- I pretty much play it the way I play acoustic guitar -- just strumming chords for accompaniment. So I noticed there were a couple of Beatles songs in the one book, so I thought, "what the hey?"
I played "Let it Be." Possibly the most overplayed of the overplayed Beatles songs. And about halfway through, I got that old familiar feeling in my chest I used to get a lot when playing and singing -- expansion and lightness and feeling like a helium balloon was going to lift me right off the bench. That one simple nine-chord progression that recurs often, and finally finishes the song may be one of the most awesomely simple-yet-powerful things I've ever played.
So now I'm going back through the catalogue, trying to find songs I can play without embarrassing myself. It's pretty amazing. But I keep having this urge to apologize to every Beatles fan I ever knew. So here you are.
