The Beatles Never Broke Up

I don't really know how I come across these things in the course of a day but nonetheless, I do and I won't apologize for it.

Today I came across an odd little website that told a story of the Beatles, inter dimensional travel, and lost dogs. Some dude, who never tells us his real name but signs the post "James Richards" goes on about chasing his dog thru the Del Puerto Canyon when he trips and passes out in the desert sun. He wakes up in a strange room surrounded by strange machines with his dog by his side. A man named Jonas begins to explain that he's taken him thru a portal into an alternate dimension from his own where CDs "never caught on" and the Beatles not only never broke up, but were all still among the living. [aside: this reminds me of that short story by Stephen Baxter, The Twelfth Album, wherein two men travel to a parallel universe where Earth was destroyed by comets and they find a new Beatles album entitled God. They find it on the Titanic.]

Anyway, after going on far too long and unconvincingly about government commissioned dimensional travel and alternate Earths, he got to the part where he steals a Beatles cassette that never made it to our dimension entitled Everyday Chemistry. And while it's a nice thought and all this collection is little more than a mashup of random tunes penned by ex-Beatles post their 1970 breakup, à la Danger Mouse's ever elusive Grey Album. But after listening to it thru a couple times today I recognized that it's really not so lame after all. The first track has elements of John's Imagine and Paul's Band on the Run to some success. Who'd a thunk it, a Wings cover. It gets better from there tho. There's a great remix of McCartney's Somedays ("Anybody Else") and even Ringo's Hard Times ("Jenn") but not surprisingly the best tracks are made from amalgamations of Lennon & Harrison tunes like how Soft-Hearted Hana and Nobody Told Me becomes the invigorating "Days Like These" and "I'm Just Sitting Here" is like Watching The Wheels hooking up with Give Me Love.

The crazy thing about this tho, and the reason I decided to mention the whole thing to begin with is the thought that while yes, this is not a true story of the Beatles surviving in a parallel universe where maybe Yoko Ono never survived the bombing of 1945 (who knows), but that even this overly crafted hoax presents the notion of what might have been had the Fab Four not become the "unpleasant people" that led to their breakup and if their future endeavors in music recording had continued to be influenced by each other and their own distinct attributes, that it wouldn't sound something like what this "James Richards" character has created in his living room studio. It's a nice thought and you know, even with the inclusion of reworkings of Ringo's solo work, it's still beats the crap out of 99% of what you hear on the radio these days.

Here's track #1 called "Four Guys", the track that contains elements of Imagine & Band on the Run.