Beatlemania Redux

Scene from Hard Day's Night
at http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/28/books/review/Handy-t.html

My brother, Dan, has been after me to come up with a list of my top 100 Beatles songs in honor of the fiftieth anniversary of the Beatles' first US tour.  I unilaterally compromised, and came up with a list of 50.

Dan, five years older than me, introduced me to the Beatles. We shared a bedroom and its radio and little record player (which taught me the concept of infinity--we noticed that the picture on the inside of the lid was a silhouette of a boy and girl dancing near the same record player, with the image repeated, of the same boy and girl dancing in front of the same record player--this kept me up a few nights wondering if that ever-shrinking boy and girl would ever end).  Dan was, what, maybe twelve when he started building his collection of 45s, and he had some of the mid-Sixties releases.  The only one I remember for sure is Twist and Shout.

We of course did the air band thing--though we didn't call it that back then, and I'm not sure the term is even used anymore today--perhaps it went away with the 20th century.  Anyway, Dan always got to be Paul, my older sister Julie was usually John, I was George (unless my fit about never getting to be John worked on Julie), and if we got my younger sister, Robyn, into the act, she would be Ringo.  We even got Mom and Dad to watch us a few times.  In other words, if not immersed, we were still sharing the national bath of Beatlemania.  None of us did the rock posters, though, and Julie and Robyn didn't pine over Paul or John (at least, not to my knowledge).  And I remember watching Help! and Yellow Submarine with interest, but not fascination.

Our repertoires of musical tastes soon diversified, and by the time of high school for me (1975-78), I was rarely listening to the Beatles, and latched on to other music Dan introduced me to every summer when he was home from college: Led Zeppelin, Harry Chapin, Joni Mitchell, CSN&Y, the Doobie Brothers, among others.  And I fell under the thrall of Stevie Wonder and other R&B musicians like Earth, Wind, and Fire, Sly and the Family Stone, and Aretha Franklin.  And there were Kansas, ELO, and, well, forgive me, Styx (if I hear Come Sail Away one more time--or worse, Lady--I swear I'm going to throw up).  And I was developing a little classical side, a gift from my father, who sat me down one day in front of our console stereo (with stereophonic speakers, don't you know), and had me listen with him, at full-blast--we were the only ones home--Mussorgsky's Pictures at an Exhibition.  I was duly blown away.

But I started listening to the Beatles again regularly during Peace Corps (1984-88), and haven't really stopped.  The White Album has become the common opening music for long road trips with Margo.  I'll often listen to the Abbey Road medley while doing some sort of data entry.  And after reading Jeff Gould's Can't Buy Me Love a few years ago, my admiration their music has only increased (Gould walks the reader through the production of each album and song, noting the techniques and innovations along the way--his insights just fascinated me).  They are the touchstone of my childhood, and occupy a high place in my pantheon of musical demigods.

So here's my top fifty Beatles songs.  My Beatles collection is not comprehensive, but I selected these from fourteen albums holding more than 200 songs.  Choosing them was more difficult than I thought it would be.  I tried scoring songs in terms of musicality, lyrics, sheer cleverness, and the time-and-place thing.  But that was taking way too long.  So I went with this criterion: what could I not bear to not hear ever again?  But my original four criteria continued to play a role.  Musicality is why A Day in the Life is so high on my list.  That simple acoustic strum, joined by ghostly piano chords, and then Lennon's plaintive voice, a moment of chaos, and then McCartney saying he "Woke up. . ."  Something gets the the three spot for musicality and lyrics.  Harrison's sumptuous guitar work and lines pop up in my head all the time.  Cleverness?  That's why McCartney's hilarious Rocky Racoon is way up there--that faux western twinge, and that joke at the end about Gideon's Bible.  That's also why Happiness is a Warm Gun, Piggies, and Why Don't We Do It in the Road, made it in the top 50 (and I love the satirical high brow musical style in Piggies).  As for time-and-place, there are innumerable references I can make between songs and moments in my life, but for an example, a Peace Corps friend, Jack, and I broke out into Lovely Rita, as a fellow volunteer, named Rita, joined us in the back of cattle truck, to the mystified merriment of everyone there.  I regularly sing, in my head, the opening lines to Baby You're a Rich Man when encountering the pretentiousness of the wealthy, or the super-hip ("How does it feel to be/one of the beautiful/people?").  The Abbey Road medley gets number one spot because it combines all four.

There are columns for Dan and Julie's rankings of the same songs.  NR means my song didn't make it into their rankings (for Dan, his top fifty; for Julie, her top twenty).  You'll find Dan and Julie's lists below mine.  It's interesting, to me, anyway, how three siblings born in 1955, 1957, and 1960, can have very different takes on Beatles music.  Two of my top twenty songs make it into Dan's top twenty compared to eight in Julie's list.  Dan and I share but 27 songs in our top fifty lists, in part because I like Magical Mystery Tour and the White Album a lot more than Dan does, while Dan shows an affinity for Help! and Hey Jude.

Is it my penchant for stranger sounds?  That still begs the question of why I might have that penchant, and I guess what I'm getting at here is the question of where taste comes from.  The three of us experienced the same socialization.  But we occupied different rungs in the five sibling set, and came into the world, and became cognizant, at different stages of a sometimes turbulent family history.  And there's the obvious point of individual variation--age and gender, different kinds of internal wiring, different experiences, and our own sets of peers (a psyche colleague once told me that by the age of ten, peers have a stronger socialization effect than parents).

Rather than focus on difference, I could also note our similarity--that we three even bothered to put together these lists, which reveals something of our "sociodemographic niche."  As one researcher put it:

Music may seem like a light topic, but sociologists would argue that it's important because the things people do for fun form the basis for a lot of connections between people, and across those social connections a lot of social resources and information about jobs and other things can flow. Being familiar with the right kind of culture can put you at ease with people who can provide you with certain resources.

"Blah, blah, blah" the Beatles might say, and then start singing "I'm just happy to dance with you."

Rank	Andy's List	Album	Dan	Julie
1	Abby Road Medley	Abbey Road	14	NR
2	A Day In The Life	Sgt. Pepper's	1	NR
3	Something	Abbey Road	22	6
4	Rocky Racoon	White Album	NR	NR
5	I Am The Walrus	Magical Mystery Tour	23	NR
6	The Fool On The Hill	Magical Mystery Tour	NR	NR
7	Hello Goodbye	Magical Mystery Tour	NR	5
8	I'm Looking Through You	Rubber Soul	NR	NR
9	You've Got to Hide Your Love Away	Help!	29	8
10	Here, There And Everywhere	Revolver	37	3
11	Baby You're A Rich Man	Magical Mystery Tour	NR	NR
12	Yesterday	Help!	19	NR
13	Magical Mystery Tour	Magical Mystery Tour	NR	NR
14	In My Life	Rubber Soul	3	14
15	Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band	Sgt. Pepper's	NR	NR
16	Blackbird	White Album	34	2
17	All You Need Is Love	Magical Mystery Tour	NR	19
18	With a Little Help From My Friends	Sgt. Pepper's	36	12
19	While My Guitar Gently Weeps	White Album	21	NR
20	Dear Prudence	White Album	NR	NR
21	Martha My Dear	White Album	NR
22	A Hard Day's Night	A Hard Day's Night	8
23	Eight Days a Week	Beatles For Sale	18
24	Lovely Rita	Sgt. Pepper's	NR
25	Please Please Me	Please Please Me	NR
26	I'm So Tired	White Album	NR
27	All My Loving	With The Beatles	NR
28	For No One	Revolver	46
29	Love Me Do	Please Please Me	NR
30	Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da	White Album	NR
31	Across The Universe	Let It Be	33
32	We Can Work It Out	Yesterday and Today	38
33	Strawberry Fields Forever	Magical Mystery Tour	9
34	Can't Buy Me Love	A Hard Day's Night	28
35	Hey Jude	Hey Jude	6
36	I Saw Her Standing There	Please Please Me	25
37	Help!	Help!	16
38	Penny Lane	Magical Mystery Tour	26
39	Revolution 1	White Album	NR
40	Lady Madonna	Hey Jude	35
41	The Long And Winding Road	Let It Be	NR
42	Got To Get You Into My Life	Revolver	NR
43	Happiness Is A Warm Gun	White Album	24
44	Mother Nature's Son	White Album	NR
45	Norwegian Wood	Rubber Soul	47
46	I Should Have Known Better	A Hard Day's Night	17
47	Piggies	White Album	NR
48	Maxwell's Silver Hammer	Abbey Road	NR
49	Come Together	Abbey Road	11
50	Why Don't We Do It In The Road?	White Album	NR

Rank	Dan's List	Album	Andy	Julie
1	A Day in the Life	Sgt. Pepper's	2	NR
2	Let It Be	Let It Be	NR	NR
3	In My Life	Rubber Soul	14	14
4	Revolution	Hey Jude	NR	NR
5	I Want to Hold Your Hand	Meet the Beatles	NR	NR
6	Hey Jude	Hey Jude	35	NR
7	Here Comes the Sun	Abbey Road	NR	1
8	A Hard Day's Night	A Hard Day's Night	22	NR
9	Strawberry Fields Forever	Magical Mystery Tour	33	NR
10	Lucy in The Sky With Diamonds	Sgt. Pepper's	NR	NR
11	Come Together	Abbey Road	49	NR
12	Ticket to Ride	Help!	NR	NR
13	If I Fell	A Hard Day's Night	NR	18
14	Abbey Road Medley	Abbey Road	1	NR
15	She Loves You	Beatles' Second Album	NR	NR
16	Help!	Help!	37	NR
17	I Should Have Known Better	A Hard Day's Night	46	NR
18	Eight Days a Week	Beatles VI	23	NR
19	Yesterday	White Album	12	NR
20	I Feel Fine	Help!	NR	NR
21	While My Guitar Gently Weeps	Beatles '65	19
22	Something	Abbey Road	3
23	I Am the Walrus	Magical Mystery Tour	5
24	Happiness is a Warm Gun	White Album	43
25	I Saw Her Standing There	Meet the Beatles	36
26	Penny Lane	Magical Mystery Tour	38
27	Eleanor Rigby	Revolver	NR
28	Can't Buy Me Love	A Hard Day's Night	34
29	You've Got to Hide Your Love Away	Help!	9
30	She Said She Said	Revolver	NR
31	Paperback Writer	Hey Jude	NR
32	Day Tripper	Yesterday and Today	NR
33	Across the Universe	Let It Be	31
34	Blackbird	White Album	16
35	Lady Madonna	Hey Jude	40
36	With a Little Help From My Friends	Sgt. Pepper's	18
37	Here, There, and Everywhere	Revolver	10
38	We Can Work It Out	Single	32
39	You're Going to Lose That Girl	Help!	NR
40	Don't Let Me Down	Hey Jude	NR
41	Get Back	Let It Be	NR
42	Girl	Rubber Soul	NR
43	All You Need is Love	Magical Mystery Tour	17
44	The Ballad of John and Yoko	Hey Jude	NR
45	I've Just Seen a Face	Help!	NR
46	For No One	Revolver	28
47	Norwegian Wood	Rubber Soul	45
48	Back In the USSR	White Album	NR
49	Drive My Car	Rubber Soul	NR
50	I Want You (She's So Heavy)	Abbey Road	NR

Rank	Julie's List	Dan	Andy
1	Here Comes the Sun	7	NR
2	Blackbird	34	16
3	Here, There, and Everywhere	37	10
4	Penny Lane	26	38
5	Hello, Goodbye	NR	7
6	Something	22	3
7	Happy Xmas	NR	NR
8	You’ve got to Hide Your Love Away	29	9
9	The Long and Winding Road	NR	41
10	Ob-Li-Da, Ob-Li-Da	NR	30
11	Get Back	41	NR
12	With a Little Help From my Friends	36	18
13	And I Love Her	NR	NR
14	In My Life	3	14
15	Happy Birthday	NR	NR
16	Love Me Do	NR	29
17	Norwegian Wood	47	45
18	If I Fell	13	NR
19	All You Need is Love	NR	17
20	Hey Jude	6	35

Patriotic Providentialism

Earlier this year there were rows in the Michigan Statehouse over compelling public schools to abide by the Common Core standards.  Senator Colbeck "expressed concerns about a possible lack of local control over what is taught in Michigan schools."  This same Senator was the primary sponsor of three measures recently passed by the Michigan Senate that instruct our public schools how to teach civics.  I guess "local control" is a very flexible principle.

I'm a political scientist, and am all for bolstering instruction on our country's political system, but these measures seemed to be based on a presumption that public schools aren't already teaching civics.  Indeed, Senator Colbeck "conceded that Michigan's current high school curriculum does a good job of covering the topics envisioned in his bill, but said he believes that this additional instruction is necessary" (you can find the Michigan Department of Education's civics curriculum here).

What is this "additional instruction?"  Well, it's really just an injection of religion and a conservative understanding of our country's political history, á la the faux historian David Barton, I'm guessing.  It's no surprise that the group backing this legislation, Patriotweek.org, passes on lesson plans from The Providence Forum, an organization committed to the following idea:

The Doctrine of Providence declares that the world and our lives are not ruled by chance or by fate, but by God. The Providence Forum demonstrably acknowledges that the Providence of God continues to be at work and calls us to action.

Senate Bill 120 is not so forthright about its political theology, but tells schools that it cannot

. . .censor or restrain study or instruction in American history or heritage or Michigan state history or heritage based on religious references in original source documents, writings, speeches, proclamations, or records.

Have Michigan public schools engaged in routine censorship of religious references in political documents?  I can find no news or report on this supposed perfidy (though if someone out there has plausible evidence, I'd love to see it).  This language invents a problem.  Thankfully, pushback from educators forced Colbeck to drop this language that would have encouraged public school teachers to use sectarian documents as part of civics instruction:

. . .school districts may post documents and objects “of historical significance in forming or influencing the United States or its legal governmental system” and explicitly allows for “documents that contain words associated with religion.”

This law also implies that "original source documents," presumably the US Constitution, Declaration of Independence, Federalist Papers, among others, are chock full of religious references.  They're not--as Senator Colbeck and other "patriots" should know.  That said, I'm all for talking about religion as one element in a fascinating political history, but not as an occasion to paint a picture of Jesus present at the founding of the nation (and I imagine he would have felt a little uncomfortable among all those deists who denied his divinity).

John McNaughton (Mcnaughtonart.com)

Senate Bill 121 mandates schools to "designate and observe 1 week each year as 'Patriot Week," during which curriculum will focus on what is already in the civics curriculum--US foundational documents, political principles, ideas such as the "social compact" and "rule of law," and so on.  Moreover, students are to get the lesson that all of our nation's war making has been about "liberty."

Instruction in the sacrifices made by millions of military personnel and their families in the defense of liberty starting with the Revolutionary War and progressing to current conflicts.  Discussion should address the historic and modern-day significance of Veterans' Day, Independence Day, and Memorial Day.

I have no issue with honoring past and present members of the military, nor with studying the origins and meanings--not one meaning, as the text implies--of patriotic holidays.  But it is facile to equate all US military actions with the "defense of liberty."  Were we defending liberty while butchering Filipinos in what might be called the US's first counter-insurgency war (1900-1913)?  How about military interventionism and occupations in the Caribbean and Central America in the first third of the 20th century?  Or we could think of Vietnam, or, more recently, Iraq, where "liberty" became the cause only after we couldn't locate Iraq's WMDs.

Patriotism doesn't have to be about chest thumping (the US is "the greatest nation in world history," spouts Patriotweek.org).  It doesn't have to an unquestioning stance towards the military and US military actions.  Nor am I arguing that political and military history should be one long guilt trip.  Lessons in patriotism should include sober reflections on how the US has used its power, and the costs of war.  We should want informed students, not uncritical ones.

Huynh Cong "Nick" Ut, 1972 (acquired here)

Senate Bill 423 is a selective mash of lines drawn from the US Constitution and other national and state-level foundational documents.  Seems so redundant to be telling schools to teach students about things like separation of powers, the Bill of Rights, etc, when it's already in the curriculum (whether they are taught or learned well is another matter).  But I think the point of this law is really in the first "core principle" on which public school teachers are to focus.

(A) The core principles of the Declaration of Independence, including, but not limited to, the following:
    (i) We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness.

This instruction is lifted from Patriotweek.org's playbook, which is based on the idea that rights and liberties come not from government, nor from action by social movements demanding certain rights and liberties, but from God and its creation.  For example, in its explanation of the "First Principle" of equality,

The Founding Fathers embraced the Judeo-Christian understanding that the Creator created all individuals, that each person arises from His handiwork, and that every person embodies His blessing. Regardless of physical, mental, and social differences between individuals, each individual is equally precious in His eyes. While this First Principle originally arose from a belief in the nature of the Creator, the laws of nature lead many to the same conclusion.

At a very, very general level, the argument that the founding of the US rests on a Judeo-Christian understanding of the world is correct (though we'll have to ignore all the anti-semitism in the US history, and that the term "Judeo-Christian"wasn't popularized until the early 1950s).  However, it's questionable that a Judeo-Christian understanding of the world was the crucial factor behind the US's "exceptional" origins.  By the same reasoning, we could say that understanding was also responsible for fascist horrors in Italy and Germany, two countries also resting on the bedrock of Judeo-Christian ideas.  Association is not causation.

I suspect the other thing driving this legislation is the standard conservative jeremiad in which 'we've lost our way, and need to strip away all the extraneous stuff we've wrapped around our origins.'  For some Christian conservatives, this is the "sola scriptura" argument.  For political ones in Michigan, it's the Declaration of Independence, the Articles of Confederation, the Northwest Ordinance, the US Constitution, parts of the Bill of Rights (SB 423 mentions Amendments 1, 2, 9, and 10, omitting 3-8), and the Michigan Constitution.

A lot has happened and changed since the late 18th century.  The world today would likely mystify our founding fathers.  Many were brilliant and we should study them and their works.  But we shouldn't sacralize them, nor turn foundational documents into a holy canon.  If God and nature were behind the "First Principle" of equality, certain social groups still had to struggle mightily to win that equality, against others--including agents of local, state, and federal government--who thought they had divine and natural law on their side.

Patriotweek acknowledges that our nation took some time to grant women and African Americans political equality, and that this "First Principle" is still a work in progress.  But it's telling that Patriotweek does not give a nod to other social groups who have suffered from inequality, e.g., Native Americans, Latinos/as, the disabled, and the LGBT community.  Hagiographic lessons on patriotism are inevitably myopic.

To my mind, real patriots can celebrate our country's achievements, and recognize its flaws.  Real patriots aren't so insecure that they must take the arrogant position that the US is "the greatest nation in world history," and that God is on its side.  Real patriots can love their country without such idolatry.

Oh, High Cost of Living Canada!

A cousin asked me for my take on whether or not universal healthcare is a reason for Canada's high priced food.  He works at a Costco in Bellingham, Washington, not far from the Canadian border, and he has seen a lot of Canadians shopping for food in his store.  "For example," he wrote, "a block of Tillamook Colby/Jack cheese is $24 in Canada!  One gallon of milk is over $5, and so on. . .(I checked Tillamook's online store--you can get a 2lb baby loaf of Colby/Jack for $16).

While I appreciate his confidence in my knowledge, I'm no economist.  But I rarely let the lack of expertise stop me from giving an opinion, so here's my shot at this interesting question.

First off, across the board, the cost of living (COL) in Canada is much higher than it is in the US.  Here's some numbers according to Numbeo:

Indices Difference

Consumer Prices in United States are 16.46% lower than in Canada

Consumer Prices Including Rent in United States are 13.21% lower than in Canada

Rent Prices in United States are 4.66% lower than in Canada

Restaurant Prices in United States are 18.36% lower than in Canada

Groceries Prices in United States are 17.06% lower than in Canada

Local Purchasing Power in United States is 29.00% higher than in Canada

Not only that--again according to Numbeo--the average net monthly salary for Canadians is $3,000 compared to around $3,360 in the US (both in Canadian dollars).  So on average, Canadians are paying more with less in their pockets.  We should keep in mind, though, that the COL varies from province to province, from city to city.  According to Statistics Canada, using 2002 as the baseline (COL=100), British Columbia's COL in September 2013 for food was 127.0, the lowest of any the provinces (Ontario's was 131.7 for example).

So is the COL in Canada higher due to higher taxes necessary to pay for universal healthcare?  In other words, one could suppose that in order to pay for universal healthcare, Canada would levy higher taxes in order to pay for it, and those higher taxes would be passed off to consumers in the form of higher prices. Turns out it's not that easy to answer that question because it's hard to compare the Canadian and US taxation systems.  Comparing income taxes, as one source explains,

is like comparing the stats of hockey player with those of basketball player. . .[and using] an average is also problematic as the very poor and the very rich skew it on both ends.  In general, lower income Canadians pay less in tax for the services they receive and rich Americans are better off than rich Canadians" (Investopedia).

How about corporate taxes?  The Business Roundtable reports that the effective corporate tax rates were lower in Canada (21.6%) than in the US (27.7%) over the years 2006-2009 ("effective tax rate is defined as total income taxes divided by pretax income).

On top of that, as in many other advanced industrial economies, the marginal tax rate for top earners in Canada has dropped significantly over the past 40 years (see "Do falling tax rates explain the rising income of the top 1%?").

In short, I don't think we can attribute higher food prices in Canada to the taxation needed to fund universal healthcare.  But there are all sorts of factors shaping food prices.  Canada doesn't subsidize agriculture near as much as does the US.  Fuel prices are higher in Canada, which drives up prices for transporting food, and proportionately fewer Canadians than Americans don't or can't buy locally.  Also there are just economies of scale.  The US population is almost ten larger than Canada's--a huge maw of demand, met by a huge and diverse welter of food producers--that interaction of supply and demand is another reason why food prices are lower in the US than in Canada (see "Canadian consumers cope with dramatic increase in food prices").

As well, it is difficult to attribute soaring food prices in the present to an institution--Canadian universal healthcare (which is called Medicare) that's been around since 1946.  If there were a relationship--then food prices would be astronomical by now.

That said, it's plausible to suppose that Canada's somewhat stricter regulatory environment, and proportionately bigger welfare state, in general raises the price of everything.  It's a tradeoff.  Local taxes raise the price of doing business in Grand Rapids, and those costs also get passed on to me as a consumer.  But I also get something for it--parks, pretty good snow plowing on public roads, subsidized garbage and recycling collection, among other things.  Canadians have a higher cost of living, they may have to wait longer to get in to see a doctor or get a procedure, but they don't have to deal with the bureaucratic nightmares that private health insurance companies routinely give health providers and consumers (see Care Abroad: Canada).  They spend less on healthcare individually, and as a whole (the US spends the equivalent of 9.5% of its Gross Domestic Product on healthcare, Canada spends 8%).  And Canada has better results.  According to the UN's Human Development Index (for Canada, for the US):

Under five mortality (per 1,000 live births)--Canada: 6; US: 8

Life expectancy at birth--Canada: 81.1; US: 78.7

Overall health index--Canada: .964; US: 926

I know my cousin's question wasn't about comparing healthcare in the US and Canada, but I couldn't resist some talk about that comparison.  After 20 some years of hearing my wife's experience as health care administrator, and fifty some years of living in a country that sadly tolerates a great deal of inequality (see map below for example), I'm all for single-payer universal health (with opt-out options for the rich who can't bear to mix with the masses).  But I realize that's fanciful.  We can't seem to even get a market-based, private-insurance-friendly healthcare reform off the blocks.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/worldviews/wp/2013/04/15/
map-how-35-countries-compare-on-child-poverty-the-u-s-is-ranked-34th/