Tuesday Tune Two-Fer: Get the Cool Old Brown Shoeshine

Last week we went to see the House of Kong installation in Los Angeles (which has ended by now), a collaboration between Gorillaz and Meow Wolf that was an interactive celebration/history of the band with a promotion for their new album.

It was pretty neat, although as someone who’s a mid-tier fan of Gorillaz at most, I think it would have had a bigger impact on fans of the band than fans of location-based entertainment. There were a few guys in our group who seemed to recognize everything and were really into it; for me, they had already played the only three songs I know within the first 10 minutes. One of those songs is “19-2000”, and I wish that the superior Soulchild remix version had been the one to get the animated video.1

If it sounds like I’m underselling it, I don’t mean to. It was a pretty ingenious way to not only satisfy fans, but pull newcomers into the elaborate, years-long art project they’ve built up around the music. In particular: at exactly the point where it feels like an overblown hagiography of the band, overstating the depth of its character- and world-building, that’s when the immersive part takes over. It didn’t turn me into a super-fan, but I did think it was a perfectly-balanced combination of promotion/hype-building and interesting experience on its own merits.

(I especially liked my husband’s main take-away, though: “I knew living in London was expensive, but how can you be in Blur and make Tank Girl and still need to share an apartment?”)

Yesterday, I saw Project Hail Mary, which has surprisingly effective music throughout, and uses The Beatles’ “Two of Us” really well. It’s been stuck in my head ever since, because it’s I’m-not-researching-it-but-I’m-99.9%-sure-is by Paul McCartney, who’s cranked out so many unforgettable melodies over his lifetime that even his lesser-known songs2 would be career-defining for other songwriters.

But in my brain it’s always quantum-entangled3 with a song I like even better, which is George Harrison’s “Old Brown Shoe.” The opening combination of bass line and honky tonk-sounding piano was unlike anything else I associated with the band, almost as distinct as “Helter Skelter” and “Tomorrow Never Knows” as making me believe these guys could do everything!

I always wondered why “Old Brown Shoe” never seemed to get the same kind of attention and same level of prominence as the band’s other songs. After reading a little bit about it, it sounds like it was mostly yet another case of John Lennon being a jerk.

1
For the record: the other two songs I know are, of course, “Feel Good, Inc” and “Clint Eastwood.”

2
For however much “lesser known” even makes sense when talking about The Beatles

3
Probably because I got Let it Be and Past Masters at the same time

1 For the record: the other two songs I know are, of course, “Feel Good, Inc” and “Clint Eastwood.”

2 For however much “lesser known” even makes sense when talking about The Beatles

3 Probably because I got Let it Be and Past Masters at the same time