(West Long Branch, New Jersey, U.S.A.)
On very short notice, I decided to join a friend on a road trip to a four-day academic music conference at Monmouth University in New Jersey. This was purely for fun and had nothing to do with my employment. I was free to attend whichever seminars and events caught my interest.
My previous exposure to New Jersey consisted only of passing through Newark Airport on my way to and from New York City. Most of what I saw was concrete. This time, however, I found myself at an idyllic college that seemed far removed from urban America.
The conference itself was scheduled to coincide with the 50th anniversary of the Beatles’ eponymous 1968 album (popularly known as the “White Album”). While most of the seminars had some connection to that album, the topics ranged from the media in 1960s Germany to “irregular hypermeters” (more about that in a future post).
In addition to the daytime seminars, there were “working” lunches with keynote speakers, dinners with live entertainment, evening presentations for all attendees, vast numbers of books for sale…and, on the first night, a concert by a band called “The Weeklings“. They seemed to be fairly well known, so we decided to attend as the tickets were included with our conference fees.
I had no idea that this concert, by a band that was completely unknown to me, would be one of the very best that I had ever attended. The Weeklings are primarily a Beatles tribute band, meaning that they replicate the songs of the Beatles in concert. I’ve seen plenty of these bands before, and many of them are quite good. My brother-in-law even portrayed John Lennon in one of them. However, the Weeklings (see photo at the top of this post) don’t look anything like the Beatles, nor do they even try.
The concert was a live recreation of (most of) the White Album. For those of you who are unfamiliar with that double album, it is by far the most musically varied of any Beatles album. The songs range from acoustic ballads to heavy metal, ska to music hall, and everything in between. The songs are also full of musical tricks, including multiple time signature changes within the same song or even the same verse. Playing it live is an extreme test. But the Weeklings were up to it…for this special event, they even had a 5-piece string section and a 6-piece horn section.
It was astonishing. Even with Paul McCartney’s vast financial resources, the string and horn parts at his concerts are generally played by one guy with a fancy keyboard. To hear these songs live, with the actual arrangements and instruments that appear on the record, was really something special.
But that wasn’t all – the Weeklings then proceeded to play a handful of their original compositions (with obvious Beatles influences)…and then play even more Beatles songs that are rarely performed live with full string and horn sections. While their string-heavy and amped-up version of “I am the Walrus” was deeply impressive, it was “A Day in the Life” that really took things to the next level.
“A Day in the Life” is, in my opinion, the Beatles’ finest song. The recording, with its unprecedented and seemingly random 24-bar orchestral crescendos, represents one of the highest points of 20th century popular music. To hear it live, with that instrumentation, was like nothing I had ever heard.
It has been said that writing about music is like dancing about architecture: it is very difficult to do well. But If I haven’t conveyed it clearly enough, please just take my word for it…this was amazing, and you should definitely see these guys if you ever get the chance. They don’t always have the strings and horns with them in concert, but even as a 4-piece band with a keyboard player on the side, they are still incredible. What a great way to start the conference!