Gear!

Fab Four

This is a link to a photo featuring a Beatles tribute band posing in Sgt. Peppers-style uniforms along with Ayano Fukuda.  The band is (are?) performing a show at several locations around Japan right now, while Fukuda "does imitations."  I believe we've watched her on television, but I don't know what that means.  Does she do celebrity voices, bird calls, sound-alike singing?

Years ago, I sang and played rhythm guitar in a band.  Although calling what I did with my guitar "playing rhythm" is putting it charitably.  We did a cover of the Beatles' "The Continuing Story of Bungalow Bill," which generally went over pretty well live.  When we weren't too drunk to finger chords and our more rhythmic guitarist wasn't turned up to 10 after doing sound check at 6 or 7, that is.  We tried to write songs that sounded as if the Beatles might have written them and this was years before anyone in the US had ever heard of Oasis and their melding of Beatles and Rolling Stones songs into "originals."  Saying our own originals sucked is also putting it charitably.

My greatest ambition was to tour with a Beatles tribute band.  Not as my main musical job.  Just as a fun experience.  My tenor isn't as clear as Paul's, but I could in those days do a passable John impression.