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Sergeant Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band is not actually one of my top albums, although it’s good (Abbey Road would actually be my top Beatles album, with a few others rounding out my top choices). It is, however, a landmark album that no one under 40 today can really appreciate. The Beatles entered a 60’s world that saw the single as the norm in the recording industry. They had a major part in changing the music field so that albums became the norm by the ’70s. The Beatles made an earthshaking move with the Pepper concept album in 1967, and nothing was ever really the same again. They initiated a huge paradigm shift in the production of the concept album, the studio album, and music techniques in general. Pepper made it clear that they couldn’t tour again–there was no way that they could duplicate these new sounds in a live arena. There was a whole world of difference between the Revolver album in ’66 and Pepper a year later.

To paraphrase a story I once read, “in 1967 at Christmastime we put Sergeant Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band on the turntable and listened, amazed by the new world the Beatles opened up for us.”

This history makes things even more interesting now that new music services like Apple’s rumored 99 cent song downloads have appeared. Evidence appears strong that these kinds of services herald a shift back to singles after more than thirty years of album-centric music publishing.

So on Saturday we went to Tokyo Diner in Lancaster, a Beni Hana kind of place where they cook the food in front of you on a huge grill. Alyssa and Drew were spellbound the first time we went there, and this second time was no exception. Drew watched wide-eyed as the chef spun an egg around on his spatula and flipped it into his hat. Then Drew froze and got big-time scared when the chef set the grill on fire and a big mushroom of flame ballooned up to the ceiling.

The best part, though, is when the chef flipped pieces of shrimp into our mouths. Drew opened his mouth as instructed, but the chef couldn’t get the flip right. Then he turned the spatula around and fired the shrimp overhand into Drew’s mouth like a rocket. I only wish I had a camera to capture Drew’s expression. First we saw the shrimp blast into Drew’s mouth. Then Drew’s eyes bugged out–we thought for a moment that he was going to choke! Then we thought he was going to spit it out, but he just had no idea what to do. Then we told him to eat it. He looked at us and began to chew slowly and suspiciously. I don’t know if he’ll ever trust us again, but the look on his face was priceless.

There’s a cool site here with all kinds of information about the Beatles’ songs. I know a lot about the Beatles, but a lot of this stuff was new to me.

And just for Brad: The Harvard Doctorate on the history of Weezer.

Hmmm. According to Metafilter, is is now illegal to smoke in any indoor public place in New York city.

From the Bell System Memorial website, the first car phone.

A mixed metaphor I use to use a lot for fun (but one I usually meant):

I guess we’ll just burn that bridge when we get to it.

I went to pick up pizza last night, and as is often the case at night, I wanted to listen to talk radio. Usually I do this on longer drives, but heck, why not? Sometimes I listen to financial talk radio, but more often I like to pick up Christian talk radio–I’m fascinated by the shows I hear.

So I tune in good old 94.5, “The Voice,” and I pick up the strangest radio show. It’s a girl out on a date with a boy at a bowling alley, but she’s upset because she thinks the boy is mixed up in something bad because of what she saw on his computer screen before they left his apartment (wait, it gets better). After they have an “intense” conversation in which she keeps bowling strikes–in the next lane over–she asks him to take her home because she’s too upset to be with him. The next day she meets her friends at a soda shop where the owner–a “Pops” kind of character–listens to her story and checks it out. Finally, this episode ends with Pops coming back to tell them that the boy (Eugene) is apparently working on something that turns brain waves into radio waves for a sinister corporation. This is the cliffhanger, and we’re to tune in next time to see what happens. Pops just keeps mumbling “Eugene, what have you gotten yourself into?” as the episode fades out.

Then the announcer wraps up and references this site. I went to this site tonight and it has seemingly no relation to the radio show.

I have yet to determine what relation this show has to this Christian radio station, or Christianity itself, or good entertainment for that matter. But it did cause me to waste the time writing this post…

I guess I caught a stange slice of a popular radio show. The official site is http://www.whitsend.org/ , not “www.atwitsend.org” as I thought from the broadcast. This makes much more sense. It’s a show called Adventures in Odyssey.

In fact, you can listen to the broadcast if you want–go to the daily radio archive pages here. The show I heard was the Friday 3/28 show, “Grand Opening, Part 2.” The part of the clip I listened to started at about 20:03 minutes in.

A quote from the clip: “How do I know you’re not part of the weird secret things?!”

Maybe it is a little bizarre at that.

It’s my sister’s birthday today. On this day in 1965, things got a little bit brighter here on planet Earth.

It was a good year overall, too. I mean after all, the Beatles came out with Rubber Soul in 1965. Maybe it’s my sister’s birth album (I have no idea what her birthstone is–diamond?).