#198: Love Me, Do

Looks good, doesn't it? An Australian Beatles Programme for the 1964 tour, you know the one - the only time they ever visited the country and the source of an ongoing feud between Ernest Sigley and Robert Francis. But seriously, this isn't the original programme, it's a lovely reproduction that was issued in 2004, to commemorate the 40th anniversary of the tour. The reproduction is perfect in every way, and to ensure that people aren't fooled and ripped off into paying the few hundred that an original programme costs, it actually has text detailing the reproduction on the rear cover.

Still it's a great artefact to own and if you can't afford an original, then this is the next best thing to have.

How much do they cost?  Depends on who you buy it from and where you find it.  Amazingly I found three brand new ones this morning at one of the many trash and treasures that are held around Adelaide for a whopping $5 each.  That's right, three of them for $15 all up.  Tasty.

The programme is full of the usual propaganda, but the stuff that always interests me are the ads and the peripheral material - such as this brilliant ad for the Melbourne Southern Cross - get a room for as little as four pounds per day.  I'm betting that the Beatles paid a bit more than that.

And Vox amplifiers.  It didn't matter what instrumentation that the Beatles used, nobody could hear them over the screaming idiots that went to the show, but then again things aren't that much different these days, especially if you see something like Justin 'Wanker' Beiber, just on a much smaller scale.  Trust me Beiber, you might think you're it and a bit, but you're nothing and, to my ears, you sound like a female version of Usher anyway.

Bring back real music.

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