Do you remember the once-ubiquitous but now unseen for many years (doubtless due in no small part to depressingly inevitable Yoko botherishness) The Beatles cartoon, wherein the Fab Four had proto-Yellow Submarine comic escapades tying in tenuously with the lyrics of one of their songs? The one that opened with that animated recreation of A Hard Day’s Night-style chased-by-fans slapstick madcappery with added racially dubious visual gags? Well, for all of the reasons outlined above and more, it’s probably somewhat less than likely to show up on DVD any time soon (especially considering they’ve taken about two million years over the supposedly ‘forthcoming’ DVD releases of Magical Mystery Tour and Let It Be and there’s still no sign of either), but you can still see a large number of them on YouTube, including this particularly demented one in which they overhear plans to “rob Penny Lane” and set out to protect their beloved connecting point between Allerton Road and Sefton Park from blaggards and ne’er-do-wells.
Those who are familiar with the locale may notice a distinct lack of That Cafe That’s Never Open Behind The Shelter In The Middle Of The Roundabout, tourists spilling out of the Magical Mystery Tour bus, and long-closed world-famous record shops with faded promotional cards of Cerys Matthews in the window in the animated backgrounds. Not to mention that Oxfam with a copy of Flanimals in the window where the right hand side of the cover has faded in the sun. Others may notice how bizarrely close the hilariously badly-rendered Beatle voices come to being the meeting point between Harry Enfield and Peter Serafinowicz’ ‘Dinners’-centric sketches.
Don’t worry, there aren’t going to be follow-on posts covering the decidedly more tedious Osmonds and Jackson 5 cartoons. But if anyone has a copy of Hanna-Barbera’s unscreened 1968 pilot for a Chocolate Watchband cartoon spinoff…
Why is Ringo the only one who sounds vaguely Scouse? (Eh, Scousers?) And I don’t remember George having quite such an Adonis jaw although John’s nose in uncanny.
Have you heard Bowie’s version of Penny Lane? You can grab it here
http://planetmondo.blogspot.com/2008/01/theres-good-rocking.html