The Beatles 'With the Beatles' - Album Cover Parodies

Left: 16 parodies of "With/Meet the Beatles" album cover. Right: The original album cover.

In terms of album cover parodies, the Beatles are some of the most parodied. In this post we show 16 parodies of the Beatles' Meet the Beatles! (US) or With the Beatles (UK) release. The album spoofs include muppets, zombies, bluegrass pickers, and dogs barking the album's songs. This post if full of holiday gift ideas for the music lover that has it all!

Most of the album covers shown here pay tribute, parody, or otherwise contains covers of the compositions by the Beatles. Of particular mention of these album parodies is The Zombeatles' release whose album cover reads "The First Album by the Phenomenal Undead Pop Combo". How could you not laugh at "I Wanna Eat Your Hand", a cover of "I Want to Hold Your Hand", or "Dead Prudence" instead of "Dear Prudence"?

We sampled almost all of these parody albums. Some are pretty awful, and shall remain nameless. A few were pretty good. Besides the Zombeatles, we also liked Young Black Teenagers and Stone City Band.

Meet the Beatles! was the second studio album by the Beatles, released in the United States in January 1964. It was released previously in the UK in November 1963 as With the Beatles, with the same iconic photo of the quartet but colored differently.

First row:

• 2010 1966 Quartet – "Norwegian Wood" – pop, classical
• 1983 The Woofers and Tweeters Ensemble - "The Beatle Barkers" – parody
• 1996 Bítlavinafélagið – "Ennþá til sölu" – Icelandic pop
• 2008 Any Time at All: Session Picker's Tribute Beatles by Brian Hebert & Friends – acoustic, picking

Second row:

• 2007 Buddha Lounge – A Buddha Lounge Tribute to the Beatles – electronic, pop
• 2000 4 Bitchin' Babes – "Beyond Bitchin'" – folk rock, country
• 1986 Genesis – "Land of Confusion" – synth pop, pop rock
• 1973 The Bad Boys – "Meet the Bad Boys" – Japanese Beatles tribute/cover band, 1969-1975

Third row:

• 1994 "With the Mupples" starring theMuppets – children, parody
• 1974 The Residents – "Meet the Residents" – experimental, rock
• 1991 The Spongetones – "Beat! The Spongetones" – pop, power pop
• 1983 Stone City Band – "Meet the Stone City Band!" " – funk, disco

Fourth row:

• 1997 Various – Meet the Covers – pop
• 1991 Young Black Teenagers – hip-hop
• 2011 Zé Ramalho Canta Beatles – Brazilian, world
• 2009 The Zombeatles – horror rock, punk, comedy

Clickable grid of parodies:

Bergamo Wall Plant - Sedum palmeri

Left: The flowers of Sedum palmeri with 5 petals and 5 sepals.
Right: Sedum palmeri in a windowsill flower box in Bergamo, Italy.

Sedum palmeri is a plant adorning many windows around Bergamo and other Italian cities. While sometimes found growing on walls around Bergamo, S. palermi is not as common as its cousins Sedum album and Sedum dasyphyllum on walls, instead S. palermi is mostly seen gracing windowsills and planters suggesting intentional planting.

S. palmeri is in the family Crassulaceae native to mountains of Mexico. It forms rounded cushions about 30 cm high and 40 cm wide. Leaves are arranged in rosettes located at the tips of stems. The golden yellow flowers bloom in spring and are abundant and long lasting. In fact, walking around a city like Bergamo, you are likely to notice the bunches of yellow S. palmeri flowers dangling over your head.

This sedum is relatively easy to grow, which leads to its ubiquitous nature. S. palmeri leaves are light green. In winter, the leaves can be tinged with red depending on their exposure to cold. In fact, S. palmeri can support suprisingly low temperatures. According to WorldOfSucculents, it can withstand temperatures as low as 0 °F or -17.4 °C, with a lower hardiness zone of 7a. In short, there is little wonder why this tough plant is such a popular ornamental succulent. From Mexico to Bergamo flower boxes: Sedum palmeri has come a long way baby.

In Italian, it's called Borracina di Palmer, where borraccina is the general name for a related and similar looking (flower-wise) stonecrop (sedum), Sedum acre.

All photos of Sedum palmeri in this post were taken in our palazzo. Our sedum plant (shown in flower close ups) was started from plant bits found on the ground after a storm.

Sedum palmeri was first described by the American botanist Sereno Watson (1826 - 1892). The specific epithet "palmeri" honors the self-taught British botanist and an early American archaeologist Edward Palmer (1829 - 1911). Palmer collected specimens in the southwestern United States, Florida, Mexico (including Baja California), and South America. About 200 species and two genera (Palmerella and Malperia) of plants are named in his honor. The standard author abbreviation Palmer is applied to botanical taxa he described.

A list of our wall plants of Bergamo thus far:

• [Crassulaceae] Sedum album and Sedum dasyphyllum (post) - White Stonecrop and Corsican Stonecrop
• [Papavero] Fumaria officinalis (post) – Earth Smoke
• [Brassicaceae] Aubrieta deltoidea - Purple Rock Cress and Iberis sempervirens - Evergreen Candytuft (post)
• [Geraniaceae] Geranium robertianum (post) - Stinking Bob
• [Asteraceae] Erigeron karvinskianus (post) - Mexican Fleabane
• [Aspleniaceae] Asplenium ceterach (post) - Rustyback Fern
• [Aspleniaceae] Asplenium ruta-muraria (post) - Wall Rue
• [Aspleniaceae] Asplenium trichomanes (post) - Maidenhair spleenwort
• [Urticaceae] Parietaria diffusa (post) – Pellitory
• [Plantaginaceae] Cymbalaria muralis (post) - Pennywort

Left: A typical planter of Sedum palmeri.
Center: Our Sedum palmeri plant, which usually sits outside this window.
Right: Sedum palmeri flower.

40 Doors of Bergamo - The Wonder and The Passage

 

What is the 40 Doors Project of Bergamo?

This project showcases interesting doors of Bergamo, Italy. In a series of posts, we'll show 40 different doors per post. And, each post has a theme that connects to doors. This post is the fourth in the series and its themes are sabbatical and wonder. 

The Wonder and The Passage

Many of the doors we show in the 40 Doors series are called portone in Italian, an augmentative of porta, or "door". The word portone refers to a door that is usually of an impressive size and serves as the principal entrance into a building. Sometimes, a portone is the honorary entrance to a building, used by dignitaries. The diminuitive of portone is portoncino, a normal-sized front door, literally a "little big door" with the use of the diminutive ino.

We started visiting Italy in the late 1990s. We remember the feeling of awe during our first experiences in Italian cities, especially looking at the architecture in the historic borghi. We wondered what it would be like to live on a narrow cobblestone street, in a masonry and stone house with a portone. Our point of reference for comparison was the typical US suburban street, with a typical wooden house with a typical front door, a door that might be called understated and almost flimsy. Little did we know that decades later we would live on one such historic Italian street, in one such building, and with one such big door. (Our portone is featured somewhere in the series. It's number 5 and green.)

The arc of our lives from the US to Italy – taking our first sabbatical, getting Italian citizenship, taking our second sabbatical, and finally living in Italy – seems like, on one hand, no big deal. Yet, on the other hand we are amazed that we are here. Moving from the US to Italy has been a passage through a figurative and literal door. We wondered what was on the other side of the door and we went through. Growing up, the idea of living outside our country of birth was never a thought. As adults, we broached the subject slowly over the years, conversations that started with "I wonder if…". Like good engineers, we moved slowly, testing the water. In fact, we tested the idea of living in Italy with two sabbaticals. At some point it became clear that an Italian life was possible. The door opened, and we could see through it.

So maybe we pushed a little on the door to make it open all the way. That's needed sometimes.

Yet as we moved through the door from a life in the US to a life in Italy, we don't feel the door we passed through to be closed or in any sense a one-way passage. Many people ask us: "Where do you feel more at home?" We answer both countries. We haven't passed through the door never to return. Our concept of home is big enough to stretch across the two countries.

In our journey from the US to Italy, we've come to appreciate that need for wonder in our lives. When we are without wonder, we become small, mean, and diminished. As we get older, one of the jobs we take very seriously, besides staying healthy, is to keep our wonder alive. Wonder at the big and small things in life. To never stop asking the question: "I wonder what's behind that door?"