The Honest Courtesan

I know, it seems like a fairly random thought, but it came into my head when I recently favored George Harrison’s “When We Was Fab” as my video of the day.  When I was very young, I had a big AM radio on my nightstand; every night my dad would turn it on for me to fall asleep to, then he’d come in later to turn it off.  So I can remember when “Let It Be” was in heavy rotation, and the DJs were talking about The Beatles breaking up.  But even though I was just a wee lass at the time, they were still a major cultural force through my formative years.  All four of them (but especially Paul and Ringo) had a string of hits throughout the early ’70s, and when Yellow Submarine was first shown on TV (IMDb says it was just two days before my birthday: October 29, 1972) I was absolutely fascinated.  My dad had just bought a new recliner, and I cut a door and windows in the big cardboard box it came in, and decorated the outside with my renditions of scenes from the movie; I kept that silly box in the garage for several years, until my youngest sister left it out in the rain.  A few years later I discovered the bargain record section at TG&Y, and it was there I found and bought the “Blue Album” and “Red Album” and played the hell out of them.  I can remember lying on the floor listening to the Blue one with Mae just a few months after John was murdered, an event I heard about on WRNO on the way to school; by general consensus, the radio was always on that station, New Orleans’ premier Classic Rock source, which had an annual “Beatles/Stones week” in which the first song at the top of every hour was from one of those two bands.  All through the ’80s they regularly appeared on MTV; that included John, via a couple of videos from Double Fantasy (1980).  And of course George was in the Traveling Wilburys and had a sideline producing movies such as Time Bandits (1981).  It was probably the early ’90s before I really started thinking of them only in the past tense, and then we lost George to cancer about two years after I started my escort service.  Anyhow, I don’t really have a point to make here; I guess I was just feeling a wave of nostalgia, and wanted to share it with y’all.