To be continued next week...

Who: You! Everyone is welcome, and the event is free. Add your name to the list below.

When: Saturday May 10th, 2008 starting at 8:30am. Registration begins at 8:00 please come early.

Where: Coffman Union at the University of Minnesota Campus (Minneapolis)
Address 300 Washington Ave. S.E. Minneapolis, MN 55455-0110

Parking: There is metered and street parking around and also several large ramps.

Also, its not too late to whip out a t-shirt design for the event (but it almost is). Download a zip file with the Illustrator template. Just send it my way.

I've Just Seen A Face (Chikezie) and You Can't Do That (Amanda Overmyer) are two possible exceptions, as I thought they took poor songs and at least made them interesting.

Almost without variance the judges and the call-in voters like performances more if they like the songs being sung. That is why there are cover bands. That is also why, according to the Guinness Book of Records, "Yesterday" has the most cover versions of any song ever written. The song remains popular today with more than 3000 recorded cover versions.

As I sit in the office today listening to the songs I have heard thousands of time before, I am reminded of how good the Beatles were and how good their music still is. Here are a few achievements, feats, and fact from various Wikipedia entries on the Beatles and their music:

• The Beatles are the best-selling musical group of all time, estimated by EMI to have over one billion discs and tapes sold worldwide.


• The Beatles have notched up the most multi-platinum selling albums for any artist or musical group (thirteen in the U.S. alone).


• The Beatles have a record six diamond-selling albums (10 million copies): Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, The Beatles, Abbey Road, The Beatles: 1962-1966, The Beatles: 1967-1970, and The Beatles 1.


• The Beatles have had more number one albums than any other group (19 in the U.S. and 15 in the United Kingdom).


• The Beatles spent the highest number of weeks at number one in the albums chart (174 in the UK and 132 in the U.S.).


• The most successful first week of sales for a double album (The Beatles Anthology Volume 1, which sold 855,473 copies in the U.S. from 21 November to 28 November 1995).


• The Beatles have the fastest selling CD of all time with 1. It sold over 13 million copies in four weeks.


• The Beatles have had more number one singles than any other musical group (23 in Australia, 23 in The Netherlands, 22 in Canada, 21 in Norway, 20 in the U.S., and 18 in Sweden). Ironically, the Beatles could easily have had even more number ones, because they were often competing with their own singles.


• In terms of charting positions, Lennon and McCartney are the most successful songwriters in history, with 32 number one singles in the U.S. for McCartney, and 26 for Lennon (23 of which were written together). Lennon was responsible for 29 Number One singles in the UK, and McCartney was responsible for 28 (25 of which were written together).


• During the week of 4 April 1964, The Beatles held twelve positions on Billboard Hot 100 singles chart, including the top five positions, which has never been accomplished by any other artist. The songs were "Can't Buy Me Love" , "Twist and Shout", "She Loves You", "I Want to Hold Your Hand", and "Please Please Me". Furthermore, two Beatles tribute records appeared on the chart: "We Love You Beatles" by The Carefrees (at #42), and "A Letter to the Beatles" by The Four Preps (#85).


• The next week, 11 April 1964, the Beatles held fourteen positions on the Billboard Hot 100.


• With their performance at Shea Stadium in 1965, The Beatles set new world records for concert attendance (55,600) and revenue. This was the first time in the history of popular music anyone had played in a proper stadium as opposed to a theatre or concert hall.


• The Beatles broke television ratings records in the U.S. with their first appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show with over 70 million people viewing.

More from Wikipedia:

Main entry for The Beatles

List of All Beatles Songs including composer, initial performers etc.

The 1965 Tour (including Shea Stadium show)

This is having devastating effects on marine life. In addition to blocking sunlight from getting down into the ocean which can affect algae production (and thus be a contributor to global warming), marine animals can ingest or become entangled in the debris like this photo of a deformed sea turtle who likely crawled into that plastic ring when it was much smaller. From GreenPeace's website:

The larger items, however, are consumed by seabirds and other animals which mistake them for prey. Many seabirds and their chicks have been found dead, their stomachs filled with medium sized plastic items such as bottle tops, lighters and balloons. A turtle found dead in Hawaii had over a thousand pieces of plastic in its stomach and intestines. It has been estimated that over a million sea-birds and one hundred thousand marine mammals and sea turtles are killed each year by ingestion of plastics or entanglement.

The garbage patch can even provide a mechanism for invasive species to travel to parts f the world they would never normally get to by floating on the plastic.

This actually has led to action, with some governments, like the city of San Fransisco putting an outright ban on the use of plastic bags. Many countries are also following suit, with Australia, Bangladesh, Botswana, Canada, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Kenya, South Africa, Singapore, Taiwan, Tanzania, Uganda, and perhaps most surprisingly China banning plastic bags. Found out about most of these from last week's ZapRoot videoblog from ViroPop (which I get through the increasingly impressive TiVoCast downloads functionality on my TiVo). Completely coincidentally ZapRoot has a feature about the garbage patch or Gyre on this week's show.

Find out more about the Great Pacific Garbage Patch at Wikipedia or listen to this NPR segment.

Here are some excerpts for the laziest of my readers:

Senator Obama's political opponents tend to try to paint him as some kind of lightweight, which he most definitely is not. Two, I think he's at or near the top of the scale of intelligence of anyone in political life today.

You can see how smart he is in his background -- for example, lecturer in constitutional law at University of Chicago; before that, president of the Harvard Law Review.

But it's also apparent when you interact with him that you're dealing with one of the intellectually smartest national politicians in recent times, at least since Bill Clinton. He's crisp, lucid, analytical, and clearly assimilates and synthesizes a very large amount of information -- smart.

Then when asked if voters should be concerned that Obama hasn't had a lot of experience as a manager or leader, he said this:

Watch how I run my campaign -- you'll see my leadership skills in action.

At the time, I wasn't sure what to make of his answer -- political campaigns are often very messy and chaotic, with a lot of turnover and flux; what conclusions could we possibly draw from one of those?

Well, as any political expert will tell you, it turns out that the Obama campaign has been one of the best organized and executed presidential campaigns in memory. Even Obama's opponents concede that his campaign has been disciplined, methodical, and effective across the full spectrum of activities required to win -- and with a minimum of the negative campaigning and attack ads that normally characterize a race like this, and with almost no staff turnover. By almost any measure, the Obama campaign has simply out-executed both the Clinton and McCain campaigns.

Finally, when asked about his foreign policy experience - on whether voters should be concerned he said this (paraphrasings of poster):

First, I'm on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, where I serve with a number of Senators who are widely regarded as leading experts on foreign policy -- and I can tell you that I know as much about foreign policy at this point as most of them.

Think about who I am -- my father was Kenyan; I have close relatives in a small rural village in Kenya to this day; and I spent several years of my childhood living in Jakarta, Indonesia. Think about what it's going to mean in many parts of the world -- parts of the world that we really care about -- when I show up as the President of the United States. I'll be fundamentally changing the world's perception of what the United States is all about.

One of the biggest legacies Bush Jr. leaves behind is one of distrust and dislike of Americans by other countries. Even in places where we have traditionally been viewed well, our image is tarnished. Pre-emptive wars, ignoring diplomacy, and overbearing trading rules will do that. I hadn't thought mush of it before but, Obama has a better chance than anyone to mend those relationships simply by being who he is. That is a powerful idea for me.

Joey Curatolo is amazing as Paul. There was never a moment when he was off, from melodies and more guttural sounds to the banter between songs. Just about the only flaw I could find was that John played guitar left-handed and so it was a little weird seeing him up there playing with a right-handed guitar. Joe Bithorn (aka George) was also great. George Harrison doesn't get to sings as much but there were still some great songs, with the stand-out being While My Guitar Gently Weeps, in which he is also wonderful during the longest and most difficult guitar solo to appear in a Beatles song. John and Ringo were performed well, but Steve Landes (aka John) and Ralph Castelli (aka Ringo) had perhaps more difficult tasks. John's vocals changed so much from the early years through to the end that I imagine (no pun intended) it would be hard to be dead-on throughout (though he was mostly on - Come Together being perhaps the weakest in the set). As for Ringo, with only one vocal part, and only drums, it is hard to tell how accurate Castelli's renditions are - though there was certainly nothing that came to mind.

Due to the no photography policy at the Orpheum for this show, I only had my little point and shoot with no flash. Needless to say the photos I got were not good. Luckily Flickr user hddod has come through with the wonderful photos included in this post of a show in England.