Category: things I love

It’s getting better all the time

sgt-peppers.jpgInspired by all the news buzz surrounding yesterday’s the 40th anniversary of arguably the most influential concept album of all time, I’ve decided to crank up my digitized version of The Beatles’ Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band as I skim the news, blogs and email. I haven’t listened to the entire album in ages. How amazing that it still holds up after all these years. While Sgt. Pepper’s seems to be the consensus pick greatest rock album of all time, it doesn’t quite fit that bill for me. (The Clash’s London Calling holds that spot.) Nor is it even my favorite Beatles album. (Abbey Road holds that distinction.) It’s been in my top 10 for as long as I’ve been making and remaking that list, though, and I have to admit — as the hypnotic, sitar-soaked sounds of “Within You Without You” ooze from my computer — that this album might be getting better all the time.

Since this is a blog about higher ed, I suppose I should link to this story about how the album has become a serious subject of academic study. Experts will gather at the University of Leeds later this month to discuss the album’s impact on popular culture. But the pop critics of the mediasphere is already telling us everything we need to know about that, isn’t it?

Forty years later, music lovers are still gushing about it. For example:

  • “Every concept album that came afterward, from Pink Floyd’s ‘The Wall’ to Green Day’s ‘American Idiot,’ never surpassed ‘Sgt. Pepper’s.’ We decided that The Beatles were not only brilliant, they were first” (via).
  • “It was, by any estimation, a revolutionary moment, one that marked the closing of one chapter and the beginning of another that is still being written to this day. Just about everything – not just music, but popular culture in its entirety – seemed different after the Beatles released their masterpiece on June 1, 1967” (via, which also lists 10 other great albums from 1967).
  • “This album is as fresh and unusual and groundbreaking today as it was on June 1, 1967. And I haven’t even dropped any acid” (via).
  • 40 reasons to still love Sgt. Pepper’s.
  • One I overlooked previously: Design of Experience, the Sgt. Pepper kind, from Valeria Maltoni’s Conversation Agent

Friday Five: things I love (about the Internet) edition

I conclude my three-part series on things I love with a short list of things I love about the Internet:

  1. It’s a wellspring of information that you aren’t likely to find elsewhere (except when the mainstream media pick up on something that becomes huge, like those JibJab videos. Where else can one learn that Sept. 19 is International Talk Like A Pirate Day, or that yesterday was International Talk Like Bob Dylan Day? (Hat tip to Courtney for the Dylan thing. If you click on that link, I highly recommend you watch the mockumentary “No Direction, Period.”)
  2. Mashups. The Internet is the perfect vehicle for DIY video and audio bricalers to deliver their video and audio mashups (definition (YouTube video)) to a global audience. Whether it’s a video of a Tony Blair tribute to the Clash or the musical mixology of the Kleptones (samples), you can find all manner of creative mashup artistry on the web, if you know where to look.
  3. Memes. Those little virtual parlor games that propagate like kudzu all over the ‘net. They range from the five bloggers who make me think-style pass-alongs to the ubiquitous “which ______ are you” quizzes (about which more later).
  4. Online quizzes. I love me some online quizzes. Through these quizzes, I know that if I were in Star Wars, I would be Boba Fett (“Because of your dark past you don’t say much, and you don’t have many close friends, but man do you look cool!”), and that of the ensemble of The Office characters, I am most like receptionist Pam Beezly. If I were a theologian, I’d be Calvin, and if I were a Calvin and Hobbes character, I’d be Hobbes. The path to self-enlightenment is as close as AllTheTests.com.
  5. Blogging. I love blogging. Isn’t it obvious?