waxbanksall my non-#krautrock music listening for the last couple weeks has been the #beatles, and i am once again annoyed with almost everyone who’s written anything about the beatles, the same way i’m annoyed with everyone who treats shakespeare like a normal human writer
that said, in addition to Ian Leslie’s excellent essays about #mccartney and #GetBack, i recently enjoyed rob sheffield’s book DREAMING THE BEATLES, which says very very little about the music itself and seems to get some fundamental aspects of the band’s later history just wrong, but which is far and away the best treatment of the #beatles as a **girls’ phenomenon** (his loving, empathetic chapter on ‘The Scream’ is worth the cover price all on its own)
as for #shakespeare, while #HaroldBloom was quite mad, i really admire the passion and candor of his ‘bardolatry’ and enjoy his writing on the plays waaaaay out of proportion to their analytical value (analytical ≠ ‘critical’ of course)
whatever else he was, bloom was the #JulianJaynes of his field, which i dig