Friday: The Beatles - In My Life

     Funerals and memorial services are never fun (excluding, of course, your Irish wakes and suchlike). No matter the circumstances, no matter your emotional proximity to the deceased or their relatives, these kinds of occasions are always, to put it flippantly, a downer.

     But funerals and memorial services can also be occasion for families reconnecting, for nostalgic trips down memory lane, for leafing through photo albums and sharing again all the stories connected with each frozen moment in time. As I start the usual process of catching up on a few missed days, it is in this bittersweet spirit that I've picked your belated Friday song.

     That song is "In My Life" from the classic 1965 album Rubber Soul by The Beatles. Even as a kid I found this a beautiful but melancholy song, and as I get older "In My Life" only gets more poignant. Put this one on and raise a glass to everyone, dead or living, that you've loved in your life.

Monday: Beatallica - A Garage Dayz Nite

     It's Tuesday already, and I'm still playing a little catch-up, so it's actually time for a Monday post. It's been a bit, so I've decided to have another go at Metallica Mondays... sort of.

     How can I "sort of" do a Metallica Monday post? Well, picture the old, "you-got-your-peanut-butter-in-my-chocolate-no-you-got-your-chocolate-in-my-peanut-butter" thing, only replace "peanut butter" with "Metallica" and "chocolate" with "The Beatles". The resulting Reeses cup of awesomeness, and subject of today's post, is Beatallica.

     I first heard Beatallica way back in the day, after the release of their first EP A Garage Dayz Nite. As you can hopefully infer from that title, Beatallica is a ridiculous mash-up of Metallica songs and Beatles songs, with musical and lyrical cues coming from either or both. Sure, it's jokey and silly, but it's also pretty well done. Think Weird Al-levels of quality and you'll have an idea of how seriously these guys take their strange brand of alchemy.

     I'm going to start you off where I started, with the title track "A Garage Dayz Nite" from the aforementioned 2001 EP, because it will give you an instant feel for what Beatallica sounds like in a way that my descriptive powers never could. What you do with the knowledge that such a bizarre amalgamation exists is up to you.

The Beatles - Blackbird

     After all that bother with the lateness of posts over the last couple of days, time to get back on track with a quickie song for Sunday.

     We're going with something mellow and lullaby-ish to get us off to dreamland tonight. The Beatles' "Blackbird" has both of these qualities as well as boasting a really cool little acoustic guitar part. If you have friends that play guitar, and aren't just into 8-stringed monsters or something, chances are you've heard "Blackbird" pulled out on one occasion or another. Now I'm pulling it out on this occasion to say goodnight, sweet dreams, and here's to a good Monday.

Song of the Yesterday: The Beatles - Birthday

     You may have noticed that there was no Song of the Day yesterday. And you may subsequently be curious as to why that was the case.

Song of the Day: The Beatles - Hard Day's Night

     Goddamn, last night was long. Round two is tonight, but at least it's not another twelve hours...

Song of the Day: Thrice - Eleanor Rigby

     A little over a month ago, Loud Noises had its first theme week when I did Classic Rock Week. Now, maybe classic rock isn't your favourite thing in the world, but I hope the concept of having some sort of running theme for songs from one day to the next isn't too offensive to you, because I've got a couple of ideas for doing it again, and I'm going to do one of them this week.

Songs of the Days: Yeah, I know...

     Yeah, I know, shut up. My excuse today is that I've been working a bunch and it's midterm time, so students have been e-mailing me with a million and one silly questions. But no matter. Still a day late and a dollar short, so once again you get a double dose of classic rock today as Classic Rock Week continues not-quite-apace.

Songs of the Weekend/Classic Rock Week Kick-Off

OK, I missed doing a song yesterday, but unlike usual I have a valid excuse: we were at a friend's wedding yesterday. But on the plus side (for you, anyways) is that it kind of gave me the idea for today's Song, and possibly some direction for the rest of the week. Allow me to explain.

For a while now I've been contemplating doing a week (or more than one, if things go well) of themed songs. The idea I've been kicking around is a classic rock week, but not in a traditional sense so much as with the spirit of metal in mind. Some classic rock is considered to be directly presaging early metal, while other stuff may only have elements that have found their way into some form of metal or other, but the bottom line is there's a lot of good stuff from back in the day that's not The Beatles or The Rolling Stones or some other band you here on classic rock radio all the time (not that any of those bands isn't good). Now, I know classic rock isn't the most cutting edge music and that most of you will have heard most of it before. But maybe you're a young metalhead who hasn't heard it all and is curious about what came before. Or maybe you have heard everything before but just need to be reminded that metal isn't the only thing under the sun. Either way, I've been thinking for a while now that a week of classic rock might be a fun idea.

Then last night we're at this wedding, my girlfriend and I, and "Bohemian Rhapsody" by Queen comes on, and it seems like everybody in the room is belting out every word. That led me to the thought today that maybe I should take that as a sign that now's the time (the time is now*) for a classic rock theme week. So starting today, this week here at Loud Noises is Classic Rock Week, and today's a double feature because I missed yesterday. And your first song, as you might have guessed, is "Bohemian Rhapsody" from 1975's A Night at the Opera.  At first glance, not very metal at all, but take another look. Operatic vocals (quite literally), multi-instrumentation, an unorthodox arrangement and some heavy riffing are all qualities of this song that you might also expect to find today in proggier stuff like Opeth, making "Bohemian Rhapsody" a song that still rocks and sounds fresh today.

So that's yesterday. Now today. Your second song is one more traditionally connected with metal, namely "War Pigs" from Black Sabbath's 1970 classic Paranoid. If I have to tell you why this one's metal, you should probably just leave now.

* a million bonus points to anyone who can correctly guess the classic rock reference there.