Many often label The Jazz Singer as the first talkie but that’s far from true.

Experiments with sound films began in 1895, with the oldest known example being a Thomas Edison clip involving a violinist. However, amplifying sound to a large theater would be impossible for a couple of decades.

In 1921, D.W. Griffith released his film Dream Street with a spoken prologue using the sound on disc format Photokinema and was later reissued with a singing sequence and some crowd noise. However, unlike most part talkies, there was no synchronized score so live music was still needed when there was no dialog.

Around the same time Lee DeForest released his Photofilm system which was used on many shorts as well as a few films, most notably Bella Donna and The Covered Wagon. However, while the shorts had dialog, the feature length films only used the sound for a synchronized score and sound effects.

Then Warner Bros. became interested in Vitaphone and starting with Don Juan in 1926, they started to release their films with a synchronized score and sound effects. This film caught Fox’s attention, which led to their Movietone system.

While Don Juan lacked any dialog, their next film The Better Ole has one spoken word (coffee) and the following year they released The First Auto, where you can clearly hear a crowd say “Come on, Hank” and “Hank wins”.

Later that year, they released The Jazz Singer and the silent era of films crumbled to dust by 1930.

It’s often said that The Beatles used a Gibson J-160E on every one of their albums but is it true?

To start, we must define the criteria. For the guitar, any Gibson J-160E will do because they had a few (3 to be precise). As for what constitutes as a Beatles album, i will first only cover their 11 major UK releases and then go into A Collection Of Beatles Oldies, Magical Mystery Tour, Yellow Submarine, and Hey Jude. This way, everybody wins. Also, i will try to list at least one song per album that uses the guitar.

Let’s begin.

Their first album, Please Please Me, has both John and George playing the guitar quite prominently, both acoustically and plugged in. On some songs like Ask Me Why, John will use it acoustically while George uses his plugged in.

With The Beatles mostly sticks to John’s Rickenbacker and George’s Gretsch but there ar still a few tracks with the J-160E, most notably John used it on Till There Was You while George played a classical guitar.

A Hard Day’s Night features the guitar quite prominently on songs like A Hard Day’s Night and If I Fell. One thing i find interesting is that John’s actually using George’s guitar, as his was stolen at the end of 1963 and he had yet to get a replacement.

Beatles For Sale also features the guitar on quite a few songs, including Every Little Thing where John plays his Rickenbacker 12 string (not to be confused with George’s) and George plays the acoustic.

For Help!, John got a 12 string acoustic by Framus. However, George still used his on songs like Another Girl and You Like Me Too Much and even John used his on I’ve Just Seen A Face while George played the Framus.

Rubber Soul sees George playing the Framus and John returning to the Gibson, using it throughout the album on tracks like Nowhere Man and Girl. While recording Michelle, George is seen playing this guitar plugged in, which seems to suggest that this was the guitar used to record the solo.

Revolver sees The Beatles drifting away from acoustic guitars but this guitar can still be heard on I’m Only Sleeping, Love You To, and Yellow Submarine.

Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band is quite the ambitious album, using a wide array of instruments, but that J-160E can still be heard on a few songs, most notably the album’s closer A Day In The Life.

The BEATLES is the last time this guitar was featured prominently, as George had moved on to his J-200 and John would soon do the same. However, John still used his on quite a few tracks and was even seen using George’s plugged in during the sessions for Bungalow Bill and I’m So Tired, although he later switched to his Casino for the latter.

Abbey Road is quite barren of acoustic guitar and out of the 4 songs that contain it, none of them use the J-160E. Maxwell’s Silver Hammer has George on his J-200, Polythene Pam/Bathroom Window has John on his Framus, and Paul uses his Martin for Her Majesty.

Myth busted, case closed. While used on most albums, the Gibson J-160E wasn’t used on Abbey Road. But let’s carry on anyways to see if it wasn’t included on any other albums.

To start off where we left, it’s unlikely that John used his J-160E on Let It Be either. Out of the songs he used an acoustic guitar on, we know that he used his Martin on Two Of Us and Across The Universe, so it’s most likely that he used it on Maggie Mae as well.

As for those other albums, Oldies has multiple songs that use it (She Loves You and I Feel Fine has John plugging it in), MMT uses it on the title track and Flying, Yellow Submarine has both John and George using it on All Together Now, and Hey Jude features it on the title track.

When it comes to the topic of abortion, it seems like neither side gets it right.

Let’s start with the left. When you have an abortion, you destroy a potential life so stop saying that it’s empowering when a woman has an abortion because that’s like a cop saying that it’s empowering to shoot a criminal. Also, stop with this late term bullshit. You claim that the fetus isn’t developed enough to be considered a human being yet you also have no problem with terminating the life of a fetus that’s capable of surviving outside of the womb. Not to mention, stop requesting that we use our taxdollars to pay for your abortion, that’s no better than Trump asking to use our taxdollars for his multibillion dollar wall that won’t even keep many people out. Finally, stop claiming that “birth defects” are a legitimate reason to have an abortion. Ableism like that really pisses me off because people with disabilities deserve the same rights as everyone else yet it’s considered perfectly acceptable to abort a child for having down syndrome or autism.

Now onto the right. Abstinence is a failure, stop trying to convince people to abstain from sex. Instead, we should have comprehensive sexual education classes and should be encouraging people to wear protection if they want to have sex and making condoms and birth control easy to get. People are going to do it and by only teaching abstinence, you’re going to end up with lots of young mothers panicking and getting abortions because they don’t know what else to do. Also, i don’t think it’s fair to compare abortion to murder because while both are morally wrong, abortions are done for different reasons. We should be trying to ensure that no woman wants an abortion but with the way you’re going, it’s no wonder so many women are getting abortions becuase your proposals are shit.

Remember back in the day when you heard such great songs like This Love, She Will Be Loved, and Makes Me Wonder on the radio. Nowadays, you hear shit like Don’t Wanna Know and Girls Like You. However, THESE SONGS WERE ALL BY THE SAME BAND.

Originally known as Kara’s Flowers, Maroon 5 reformed under that name in 2001 after adding guitarist James Valentine. From there, they released their debut album Songs About Jane on June 25th, 2002.

Songs About Jane is a beautiful concept album where all 12 songs are about Adam’s ex-girlfriend Jane Herman. This masterpiece blends pop, rock, funk, R&B, soul, and hip hop into a perfect blend of pop rock goodness. There’s songs like She Will Be Loved and Secret that show their soft side while songs like Harder To Breathe and Not Coming Home show that they can rock. But most importantly, Adam does a great vocal performance without overshadowing the other members. What more could you possibly want from a 2000’s pop rock band.

Since very few people bought Songs About Jane until it was re-issued in late 2003, it took awhile for Maroon 5 to record their next album but then 2007 came and it was finally time.

It Won’t Be Soon Before Long replaces the gentler feel of Songs About Jane and replaces it with a more aggressive neo-disco sound, which is cool although i don’t prefer either sound over another. However, the album isn’t as good as it’s predecessor due to the inconsistent track quality. The first 5 tracks are great but after the ballad I Won’t Go Home Without You we get ANOTHER BALLAD. After that, we get the rocker Can’t Stop followed by ANOTHER BALLAD. Then after a mediocre filler track no one cares about, we get Kiwi, an underrated classic that has quite the heavy ending. Finally, we end with ANOTHER 2 BALLADS.

Nearly half the album consists of ballads, who’s idea was it to release an album where 5 out of 12 tracks are ballads. Would’ve it killed them to cut out a few tracks. They could’ve added Nothing Lasts Forever, Not Falling Apart, and Better That We Break to The B-Sides Collection and had 2 albums instead of an album loaded with filler plus a 7 track release that’s too long to be an EP but too short to be an album. But overall, tracks 1-5, 7, and 10 still make this a good album worth seeking out.

After that, we get Hands All Over. While the quality is more consistent, the tracks are sterile compared to their 2 previous albums and it makes the album sound mediocre since the songs aren’t bad but there’s nothing about them that really grabs you.

Then we get Overexposed, the album that firmly places the band in shit territory. From here on out, Maroon 5 is just Adam Levine and friends and the band completely pisses on their rock roots by going full pop.

V is the only time one of their albums was superior to the previous one. However, not by much. The only improvement is that the guitar parts are more interesting this time around.

Red Pill Blues mind as well be called Bad Generic Pop Music That Sells. At this point, Adam Levine can rot in hell with Justin Bieber, Pitbull, and all of the other awful artists who make terrible music. Somehow, they managed to make an album significantly worse than Overexposed and V and it’s depressing to be reminded of how much they’ve fallen.

Hopefully, they’re next album isn’t as bad. The single Memories is certainly an improvement from Red Pill Blues so let’s hope for the best.

The greatest pre-Rubber Soul Beatles album, A Hard Day’s Night is the perfect UK example of Beatlemania at it’s finest. However, there are 3 things about this album that make it stand out when compared to the rest of their discography:

1. All Lennon/McCartney songs

2. There’s only 13 tracks instead of 14

3. No song for Ringo

The most common conspiracy theory is that they were going to record a 14th song on 3 June 1964. However, Ringo fell ill that morning and they were unable to.

However, if you look at the 3 songs they demoed, It’s For You and No Reply would’ve been terrible Ringo songs and i don’t think George would want Ringo singing on You Know What To Do, his 2nd composition. This means they would’ve had to write a song for Ringo on the spot which while possible, would’ve been incredibly difficult to pull off in a day.

Also, they could’ve recorded one of those songs with Jimmy or Paul on drums if they really wanted to.

Now closing the album with Matchbox would’ve fixed this problem. However, it would’ve been the sole cover on the album, ruining the all original achievement they were going for.

My guess would be that the UK originally intended for the album to be the film songs plus the score, then ALL The Beatles songs in the film, before finally deciding on just the new songs in the film plus 4 bonus tracks, with You Can’t Do That being added as the final touch. The New Musical Express backs this theory up and if true, means that the United Artists soundtrack album is what the UK originally intended and the album Capitol was originally going to make before creating Something New is what the UK would’ve looked like before they added You Can’t Do That.

Mind blown.

While many like to view Capitol’s (as well as Vee Jay and United Artists) modifying of The Beatles Parlophone albums, these repackagings are rarely deserving of such scoldings. So i’m going to go through album by album and see who’s the winner.

Let’s start with The Beatles first album Please Please Me. At first, Vee Jay was planning on releasing the album in tact. However, due to legal issues the release was delayed until The Beatles signed to Capitol. Realizing what they had, they removed Please Please Me and Ask Me Why (as well as snipping off the start of I Saw Her Standing There) and released it as Introducing…The Beatles. However, they were unable to include Love Me Do and P.S. I Love You due to unpaid royalties so they swapped out those 2 for the 2 they had originally omitted.

Once Capitol finally gained the rights to the Please Please Me album in late 1964, they decided to cut out I Saw Her Standing There (which was already on Meet The Beatles!), Misery, and There’s A Place as well as move Love Me Do and Twist And Shout to the beginning and move Do You Want To Know A Secret to the end making The Early Beatles.

Here’s my rankings:
#1 Introducing…The Beatles (revision)
#2 Please Please Me
#3 Introducing…The Beatles (original)
#4 The Early Beatles

Love Me Do is easily one of the worst songs in The Beatles catalog and P.S. I Love You is okay but nothing special so i really like how these 2 songs are excluded from the revision of Introducing…The Beatles. The Early Beatles is last due to the unnecessary amount of rearranging done.

Next up is With The Beatles. While Capitol of Canada left this album in tact, Capitol of America created Meet The Beatles! by taking out the rock and roll covers and opening the album with I Want To Hold Your Hand (the hit single at the time), I Saw Her Standing There (the US B-side), and This Boy (the UK B-side).

Meet The Beatles! is by far the superior album. I Want To Hold Your Hand is a way better opener than I Saw Her Standing There, the tracks flow better, and even the cover looks nicer with that colorful blue tint. Don’t get me wrong, With The Beatles is still a good album but Meet The Beatles! is a great album and it’s a real shame this is the album Canada got in tact.

Now on to A Hard Day’s Night. Capitol was originally going to issue a 12 track album with all 7 of the film songs plus 5 new songs but United Artists rushed out their soundtrack album which contains both Beatles and orchestral songs, leaving Capitol to create Something New, which consists of side B of A Hard Day’s Night minus You Can’t Do That (already on The Beatles Second Album) and I’ll Be Back and moving Any Time At All after Things We Said Today followed by Slow Down and Matchbox from the Long Tall Sally EP followed by tracks 3-6 on A Hard Day’s Night in reverse order and then ending with the German version of I Want To Hold Your Hand.

My ranking:
#1 A Hard Day’s Night (Parlophone)
#2 A Hard Day’s Night (United Artists)
#3 Something New

Something New is a terrible hackjob that would’ve been best left scrapped. On top of the over the top shuffling of the tracks, I’ll Cry Instead and all of Side B had been previously released on the UA soundtrack (or Meet The Beatles! in the case of I Want To Hold Your Hand). That being said, the UK version reigns supreme. The soundtrack is nice and i do enjoy the score but when i listen to a Beatles album, i want to hear The Beatles, not the George Martin Orchestra.

Next up is Beatles For Sale. Here in the US we got the first 6 tracks plus the Ringo and George tracks and the other tracks replaced with I’ll Be Back, She’s A Woman, and I Feel Fine, which were placed in between Ringo’s song and George’s song.

Beatles ’65 is the winner in my book. I love side A of Beatles For Sale but side B isn’t quite as good so it’s great to see that Capitol took that stuff out and replaced it with the hit single and the super underrated closer to A Hard Day’s Night.

I’m not a big fan of Help! but i’ll take the UK album any day over the US album with that awful Indian score.

When it comes to Rubber Soul, people really seem to love the US album, which takes out Drive My Car, Nowhere Man, What Goes On?, and If I Needed Someone and open side A with I’ve Just Seen A Face and side B with It’s Only Love.

While Capitol certainly did a good job in making an alternative to the UK version, the UK version wins. I really like the 4 songs they omitted way better than the 2 songs they added, especially Nowhere Man.

UK Revolver is better than US Revolver. All Capitol did was remove 3 tracks that were already on Yesterday And Today, leaving John with only 2 songs.

US Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band is better than UK Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band because there’s no nonsensical inner groove to ruin the tranquility of the final E chord.

US Magical Mystery Tour is better than the UK double EP. In the UK you have to put the disc in, flip it over to the other side, change the disc, and flip it to other side once again for only NINETEEN MINUTES of music. Fortunately, Capitol was smart enough to put the 6 movie songs on one side and the 5 1967 singles on the other and even the UK’s been using this Capitol compilation for the past 43 years.

For The BEATLES and Abbey Road, Capitol removed some of the bass frequencies to make it easier to master. UK kept the bass and is therefore the winner.

For Yellow Submarine, the music is the exact same (at least on vinyl) but the US has a better back cover. While the UK had a review for The BEATLES on the back cover, the US has a fictional story about the movie on the back.

Finally, Let It Be came with a book in the UK but not in the US.

Overall, the UK is the winner but i still think the US albums are typically great albums.

When many hear the term SJW (short for social justice warrior), they think of these authoritarian leftists who are pro-censorship, anti-equality, and just flat out awful people that you’d never want to be friends with. However, that’s just one side of SJW’s.

The truth is that there’s 2 types of SJW’s, we’ll call them authoritarian SJW’s and libertarian SJW’s. Despite being under the same label and having similar base beliefs, these 2 groups are quite different and i’m here to give 5 examples of how.

#1 Freedom of speech

While the auth SJW’s are pro-censorship to the point of tolerating and sometimes even using violence against those they disagree with, lib SJW’s are the exact opposite. While it’s true that they make more exceptions then your average liberal or libertarian, they still believe in the 1st amendment and also typically display a level of pacifism, meaning that they’d never use violence to silence an opposing opinion and would call out anyone who does so.

#2 Equality

While the auth SJW’s couldn’t care less about misandry and anti-white racism, the lib SJW’s genuinely care about ensuring that all groups are equal. For example, i was talking to one of my lib SJW friends about how Ms. Monopoly is misandrist because it suggests that we should pay men less for the same work instead of paying men and women equally and he 100% agreed with me because he knows that sexism is sexism, regardless of gender. Try complaining about Ms. Monopoly to an auth SJW and you’ll just be called an alt-right misogynist pig who’s too scared that a woman might make more than him.

#3 Politicization

While the auth SJW’s love to politicize everything, the lib SJW’s only politicize what needs to be politicized. A perfect example of this is the 2016 reboot of Ghostbusters. While auth SJW’s praised the film for having an all female cast of Ghostbusters and called anyone who dared criticize the film sexist, lib SJW’s didn’t.

#4 Communism

While both types want communism, auth SJW’s seem to want full on communism whereas lib SJW’s want anarcho-socialism. Lib SJW’s are smart enough to know that a world where we need no law is a perfect one and that we should strive for it. Meanwhile, auth SJW’s believe that control and force are the way to go.

#5 Caring

To lib SJW’s a victimless crime shouldn’t be a crime at all, no matter how controversial it is. Meanwhile, auth SJW’s don’t care if there’s a victim. If a woman shoots porn, she’s sexist because she’s (not) a tool of the patriarchy to objectify women. If a man has sex with his disabled girlfriend, he’s sexist because he’s (not) fetishizing her disability. If a white girl identifies as black, she’s racist because she’s (not) making fun of trans people.

In conclusion, authoritarian SJW’s and libertarian SJW’s are very different creatures and libertarian SJW’s are clearly superior.

While most guitarists don’t exceed 11s, these guitarists do.

#1 Lefty Guitarist (12p-16p-24w-32w-44w-56w/12p-16p-24w-34w-48w-62w)

A new upcoming guitarist, Lefty Guitarist (who also goes by the name ME) started on lighter gauge strings, at one point even using 8s tuned down a half step to emulate Tony Iommi but typically sticking to either Ernie Ball’s Regular or Power Slinkys. However, i got fed up with how frequently they broke and decided to switch to Not Even Slinkys, replacing the 24p with a 24w. As seen with my most recent video, i might be making another upgrade to Mammoth Slinkys, which work surprisingly well in standard tuning.

#2 George Harrison (12p-16p-22w-33w-42w-52w)

While John and Paul used heavy strings at one point or another, George stuck on for much longer. While George wasn’t too picky regarding strings, it’s most likely he used Pyramid medium flatwounds until the white album where he started to use lighter strings, possibly Fender’s Rock And Roll Light Gauge which Eric Clapton was using at the time.

#3 Malcolm Young (12p-16p-25w-34w-44w-56w)

Angus may use typical gauges but since Malcolm doesn’t need to do the bendy leads his brother does, he uses Gibson Pure Nickel 12-56 guitar strings.

#4 George Benson (12p-15p-20w-28w-39w-53w)

As a jazz guitarist, George Benson likes to use thicker strings and even has a custom set with Thomastik.

#5 Stevie Ray Vaughan (13p-15p-19p-28w-38w-58w)

While he typically plays down a half step, he tuned to standard for his performance with Albert King, making him eligible for the list. His strings may just be 11 gauge GHS Nickel Rockers with a 13 on top but he plays them like their 8s.

#6 Pat Martino (15p-17p-24w-32w-42w-52w)

Another jazz guitarist but what’s interesting about these strings is that the high strings have much more tension then the lower ones.

#7 Dick Dale (16p-18p-20p-39w-49w-60w)

The king of surf not just played guitar with the high E closest to his face but also used ridiculously heavy guitar strings, even by 1960’s standards.

While Ernie Ball makes great, high quality guitar strings, they’re far from perfect.

First of all, they have encouraged players to use lighter strings. Back in the day, guitarists would typically use either 12s or 13s on their guitars. However, when Ernie Ball noticed that those strings are difficult for beginners to play, he started making thinner sets.

While this is fine, the problem is that he didn’t stop there. He didn’t just make special light gauge strings for children, he made those light gauge sets the norm and discouraged the use of heavier gauge strings. This meant that people would keep buying strings more often because those thinner strings break much easier and faster then the heavier strings guitarists typically used up until around 1967.

But the main problem i have is with the gauges themselves.

Let’s start with Extra and Super Slinky (their version of 8s and 9s). Extra Slinky consists of 08p-11p-14p-22w-30w-38w whereas Super Slinky consists of 09p-11p-16p-24w-32w-42w. The big problem i have with this is that the B string on both of these sets is the same. Either make it a 12 on the 9s or a 10 on the 8s, having the same exact gauge on both sets makes no sense.

Fortunately, they recently released Primo Slinky which sort of fixes it by replacing the 11 with a 12 but even if you ignore the fact that the 9 in this set is actually a 9.5, it doesn’t really count because Super Slinky and it’s Extra Slinky B string are here to stay.

Next, we have Beefy and Not Even Slinky, 2 great sets that were released in 2003. Unfortunately, they come with a plain G string. While a plain G string is great for lighter gauges, having a wound G makes much more sense.

And it’s not even like the plain G’s in these sets are a reasonable gauge either. On both sets, the plain G they give you has about 5 extra pounds in tension when compared to the rest of the strings, either giving you an unbalanced set or forcing you to buy a wound G separately (i recommend using a 22w for Beefy and a 24w for Not Even).

Also, please stop with this bullshit about these strings being “Optimal For Downtuning”. I use Not Even Slinkys (plus a wound G) in standard tuning and it sounds and plays great, especially for Beatles-esque music.

Remember, if you can do it on an acoustic, you can do it on an electric.

Now i know they have their acoustic sets (which have a wound G) as electric sets but here’s the thing, they’re not readily available meaning i would have to buy them online.

Finally, their extended range sets suck. I’ve tried both of their 8 string sets for a 6 string bass conversion (their 6 string bass set isn’t readily available) and neither are any good. The 10s one is tight in the middle but extremely loose on the 2 E strings whereas the 9s one is more consistent but only in the sense that it’s consistently loose across all 6 strings.

Overall, while they make great, high quality guitar strings, Ernie Ball is far from perfect.