Wednesday, November 20, 2013

Four Boys from Liverpool

I'm not very familiar with the Beatles (though I do enjoy the music I know*), but I have known for a while that my mom wanted to own some of their "Ballads" and I want to surprise her with them for Christmas. I think that she wants to be brought back to her teen years and I'm more than happy to help her! (My parents don't own a lot of music, just some classical and religious stuff).

How could I figure out which are their "ballads" as opposed to their other songs when I'm not very familiar with their catalog, though? So with the help of Wikipedia I looked at the tracklist of this double compilation album, listened to part of all the tracks on YouTube. Then I bought the 1 CD (used, with free shipping for 4 bucks!) because it had four of the "ballads" plus many other big hits. Then I bought six other tracks on iTunes - links to YouTube videos if you feel like listening to these ("Across the Universe", "All My Loving", "And I Love Her", "Michelle", "Here, There and Everywhere", "Here comes the Sun"), so hopefully I'm all set!

I'm just wondering whether it will be possible to burn the iTunes tracks onto a CD so my mom can play them?? Is anyone familiar with that? (I may need to ask my sister- & brother-in-law). I've googled it and didn't get a clear answer. I hope it works! One thing we should probably give my mom is an iPad or at least an iPod. If I can't burn a CD I can at least download iTunes and teach her to use it in her computer.

I LOVE to plan and to buy presents for people! (at least for people I'm close to and know what to give ;-) I already bought gifts for my brother's wife, my nephew & my mom and I'm planning what to buy for my brother. For my dad it's harder, we'll see about that.

* Not so much the one album I own, Love, a compilation prepared for the Cirque Du Soléil spectacle of the same name which K brought for me from London back in 2008 -- he wanted to buy something with "local flavor." :)

Interestingly, the best introduction to the Beatles that I've had/heard (apart from being tired of listening the standards "Yesterday," "Hey Jude" and others) is an album by a Brazilian singer/songwriter named Rita Lee. The album (Aqui, Ali em Qualquer lugar in Portuguese) was weirdly titled Bossa N Beatles)

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