Another Shutdown Day

♂

 22 January 2019 is Hot Sauce Day; also Grandfather’s Day in Poland. The saints of the day are St. Anastasius and St. Vincent. And it’s Robert E. Howard’s birthday; he would be 113 years old. The partial shutdown of the American government continues—I think it’s Day 31 now—and there is still no indication of when Trump is going to call it off. And in the meantime we read that Greenland’s ice sheets are melting at an “unprecedented” rate; this on top of the recent bad news from Antarctica.

22 January 1969 was the day the Beatles finally recorded some releasable takes for the Get Back project. Versions of “Don’t Let Me Down,” “Dig a Pony,” and “I’ve Got a Feeling” were mixed and cut to acetate for the band members to listen to, and these turned up on the first Beatles bootleg recording—Kum Back. While some takes from this day were mixed for the early attempts at a releasable LP (the various stages of Get Back), none were chosen for either Let It Be or Let It Be Naked. A different take of “Dig a Pony” would eventually surface in the third volume of the Anthology project. These may well be the first version of the tracks I listened to; at least my brother had a rather badly-recorded tape of what were supposed to be songs from the upcoming Beatles album taken from a radio broadcast, and I listened to it. When the album came out we recycled the tape—I think to record the amateur efforts of a local band a friend was in or something, but the details are now vague. I may well be confusing this with other events from other times.