Curious Thing

UPDATE: I have been listening to the Iamaphoney Bootleg #2 and you should too. Thanks Mike. http://www.youtube.com/user/iamaphoneymusic

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We have another one of those curious ads for a new McCartney product. One YouTube user named PauIMcCartney (I believe the first name is pronounced PAY-OOOWEE) has uploaded Paul McCartney's (I believe the first name is pronounced PAUL) 30-second trailer for Good Evening New York City with a little bit of spice added. I don't recall the original ad having quick flashes of Aiwass in it.

I found a few more little quickies in there including these two:





Check out the 30-second spot by clicking the image below:



This silly trick notwithstanding, there has been quite a bit of thought and work, along with some incredible expression of talent in the Rotten Apple Series over the years. Many fans and former fans have found the pace to be frustrating. Iamaphoney himself (or themselves as the case may be) has (have) expressed some frustration at the less than blistery pace of this long promised revelation. It's a bit like Alice In Wonderland. (Did I really say that?) At one point Alice found herself in a strange place where every time she seemed to get closer to an object, the more out of reach it became. Those who are looking in the Rotten Apple videos for that elusive thing called the truth have become increasingly frustrated. Several times it seemed like the vehicle was moving forward, but do we really know any more than when we started?

If you are looking for artistic expression and mystery and entertainment, there is no shortage of those things in the Iamaphoney saga. Truth is much trickier to nail down.

There have been some misleading things in Iamaphoney videos and I have pointed several of them out right here. But this is happening at a time when documentary makers are using many of the same tricks. So if we see footage of Derek Taylor speaking and the audio running simultaneously is Derek's voice from a different time, we can say that's a little misleading. But if there is no video footage to go with the existing audio, many filmmakers would do the same thing.

So, let's look at a couple aspects of Rotten Apple 78 again and evaluate what we have.

There is video footage of Paul McCartney talking to John Lennon. Most people who watch Rotten Apple videos can probably identify the footage from the movie "Let It Be." Many of them can probably recognize that the accompanying dialog is not from "Let It Be." When that video was shot, Paul was talking to John about live performances, but in the Rotten Apple video, a voice that sounds like Paul is saying, "I haven't the slightest doubt that we did the right thing and that we acted in accordance with the law. But he kept the book, you know, but you can't retain that book. It must be thrown away, burned or destroyed by... and what ever happened to him, is the invisible god. The world isn't ready for a revelation." If Iamaphoney has audio of Paul saying those words, that is pretty significant and relevant to the story he is telling. If that really is Paul's voice (and I cannot prove that it isn't) I don't have a problem with using footage of Paul talking to John as a companion piece.

Now, as I pointed out in a recent post at "Nothing Is Real" the John Lennon quote about hiring a phony was taken from his famous interview with Jann Wenner of Rolling Stone. He was actually talking about Alun Owen, who wrote the screenplay to "A Hard Days Night." You can find the Lennon quote with some context here.

So if the Lennon quote was presented as a piece of evidence, that would definitely be a deliberate attempt to mislead, right? But was it presented as a piece of evidence? Iamaphoney is telling a story in an artistic manner. So, I suppose some of us will grant him some artistic license. If you watch Rotten Apple 78 again more closely, you might notice that he gives us a little sign immediately before the Lennon quote.



That is the word "Imagine" more or less - Your brain has to fill in some of the holes. By preceding the out of context Lennon statement with this fragmentary representation of the word "Imagine", Iamaphoney may be telling us to use our imagination rather than our critical mind when interpreting the quote.

Just because he didn't have video of the statement that sounds like Paul saying "...we acted in accordance with the law" doesn't mean that he didn't say it. And I guess you could make a case that just because he didn't have audio of John saying that the Beatles hired a phony to take Paul's place, doesn't prove he didn't say that either.

He had audio of John saying words that went with the story he was telling and he used them. And he might have even tipped us off that he was exercising artistic license by showing the word "Imagine" up front.

In looking back on previous videos, there might be other examples of Iamaphoney guiding the viewer on how to interpret what they are watching. He lets us know when to fill in the holes. I wouldn't call it Journalism, but it certainly qualifies as Storytelling in my book. I haven't read the thing, but I'm guessing that it doesn't really violate any passage from Iamaphoney's book of the law. Curiously, I guess it all depends on what book you are using.