I figure that I should mention Paul McCartney on his birthday every year, as long as he’s still around. Fortunately, this year, there’s the big news to talk about.
That, of course, would be him being named the third Library of Congress Gershwin Prize winner, after Paul Simon and Stevie Wonder. At an event with President Obama, McCartney created a bit of bluster with the right-wing bloggers when he made a joke at the expense of Obama’s precessor, GW Bush. Horrors! Paul hadn’t been that controversial since he recorded Give Ireland Back to the Irish back in 1972.
The event will be televised on PBS on July 28.
Here’s a live recording of Cosmically Conscious, written back when Paul was in India in 1968. A snippet of this song appeared at the end of his 1993 Off the Ground album
Check the June 17, 2010 episode of Coverville, #683; Brian Ibbott has promised a McCartney cover story.
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It’s also Roger Ebert’s 68th birthday. He just won a Webby award, indeed was named person of the year; he needed just three words in a dead language to express his appreciation of the honor. While he’s still writing his fine movie reviews, it is his journal about American flag T-shirts, racism, alcoholism, death, and how Twitter has empowered him now that he cannot speak that has been the truly amazing part of his narrative.