While the whole world can listen to the
Live! At the Star-Club
album and find out what
the Beatles
sounded like at the end of their early-'60s rock & roll apprenticeship in Hamburg, only those who were there can ever know what they sounded like at the beginning. Nevertheless, a few Beatlemaniacal U.S. rockers have banded together in an effort to address that knowledge gap.
Doug Gillard
(
Guided by Voices
),
Mark Rozzo
Maplewood
Eric Papparazi
, who plays bass with
Cat Power
, and
Ira Elliot
, who drums for
Nada Surf
, first got together in 2009, in anticipation of the 50th anniversary of
' first German gig at the Indra Musikclub in 1960. They learned the repertoire
were playing at the time and traveled to the club to deliver their tribute on the appropriate date in 2010. The results were recorded for posterity, unlike
' Indra gig, and released under the band name
Bambi Kino
, the name of the place
stayed on that first Hamburg jaunt. There have been
Beatles
tribute bands before, Lord knows, but it's difficult to recall one with an agenda quite this specific, not to mention quite this novel. It even trumps
the Smithereens
' song-for-song tribute to
Meet the Beatles!
It also opens up a window into that rarest of phenomena: a period of
' musical development that hasn't been constantly crammed down our throats for decades. Listening to
tackling everything from
Buddy Holly
's
"Crying Waiting Hoping"
and
Johnny Kidd & the Pirates
'
"Shakin' All Over,"
to
Carl Perkins
"Lend Me Your Comb,"
the Teddy Bears
"To Know Him Is to Love Him"
(in a gender-corrected version), all in a scrappy Merseybeat style, you get a real feeling for what all those Hamburgers must have heard. And equally importantly, the album also happens to rock on its own merits. ~ J. Allen