Beatles

On summer nights in the mid-1960s, while black-and-white television crackled elsewhere in his Staten Island home with news of Southern violence and Vietnam, Bobby Lasnik would stretch out in his bedroom to let the righteous soundtrack of the civil rights movement waft into his impressionable teenage soul. Tuned in to WBAI-FM, coming across the water from Manhattan, he heard baleful laments about injustice that he would carry with him for a lifetime. "Suddenly there was someone speaking a certain kind of truth to you. You'd say, 'Wow!

Sir Paul McCartney is one of the best-known musicians on the planet, thanks to his years as a Beatle and a chart-topping solo artist. Yet when he sang a newly released number on the Grammy Awards telecast Sunday, the response from some corners of the Internet was a blank stare. "Wait, who is Paul McCartney?" read one nonplussed tweet. "To be honest, I have no idea," read another. Although the overwhelming majority of music fans aren't so clueless, such reactions reflect what one label executive calls the high "noise floor" of the Internet: There's so much music being created and distributed, it's hard for anyone's work to get noticed.

A former Miss Canada finalist has become the first graduate of a Liverpool university's groundbreaking degree program based on analyzing the Beatles' music and their influence on Western culture. Liverpool Hope University officials believe the master's program offers the first advanced degree based on the life and times of the Fab Four. Mary-Lu Zahalan-Kennedy, a singer and actress, joined the program when it started in 2009 and graduated Wednesday. She is one of 12 full-time students of the program, "The Beatles, Popular Music and Society.

"The Help's" Octavia Spencer was still acclimating herself to the A-list experience, catching her breath as she cataloged the luxuries of her two-week European press tour. Red carpets on the tarmac, a motorcade of sleek sedans, strangers waiting in the rain for autographs. "It was like the Beatles had come to town!" she said during a recent break at Mo's restaurant in Burbank. Spencer threw her hands in the air, sending her white silk blouse into a cascade of ripples. In the last six months, the veteran actress has gone from relative anonymity — or "crickets," as she put it — to life-changing "overdrive" after "The Help's" blockbuster success.

'How the Beatles Rocked the Kremlin' Where: KCET When: 9 tonight Rating: TV-PG (may be unsuitable for young children)

It wasn't the equivalent of selling out Shea Stadium, but the Beatles had a decent debut in the video game world. The Beatles: Rock Band, Viacom Inc.'s heavily hyped and costly video game based on the music of the biggest-selling rock band of all time, sold 595,000 units in its first 25 days for sale in the U.S. last month, according to NPD Group. That's bigger than the first-month sales of either 2007's Rock Band or 2008's Rock Band 2, but far below the best launches in the music-video-game genre and some analysts' estimates.

A Sept. 10 concert featuring music from the Beatles and the Rolling Stones will benefit the Ojai Valley Museum; $45 for general admission and $25 for lawn seating at the Libbey Bowl in downtown Ojai .... You have until Sept. 15 to enter Southwest's Orlando sweepstakes - airfare, hotel, rental car and theme park tix .... Cake Plate Boutique in downtown Napa is taking fashion cues from the fall harvest season , with a clothing line featuring “warm touches of chocolate and orange mixed with sweet and savory embellishments.” Which is exactly what I look for in a T-shirt   ....   Santa Rosa stages its Handcar Regatta on Sept.

It says so on Rodolfo Vazquez's business card: He's the owner of the world's biggest collection of Beatles memorabilia, a claim backed by none other than Guinness World Records. So how did an accountant from Argentina — which seems about a million miles away from Liverpool, England — amass a staggering 8,600 Beatles-related items? Hint: Being a self-confessed pack rat helps. "My history shows there is a virtue in collecting things, and I think schools should do more to encourage kids to do it," says Vazquez, a gregarious, heavyset guy with a ready laugh, often directed at himself and his obsession.

RE "FAB FOUR Over Easy," by Randy Lewis, June 28: There is another local radio station that is dedicated on Sunday mornings to the music of the Beatles: KCSN-FM (88.5). Les Perry has been hosting a show called "Meet the Beatles" since 2001. He also plays "a wide range of alternative takes, performances from radio and TV broadcasts, bootlegs and solo music by former Beatles," plus a request hour. Talk about old school! And best of all: It's commercial-free. Kim O'Reilly Newman Sherman Oaks

Re "The Beatles Could Bail Out Jackson," April 16: I was distressed to learn that Michael Jackson may be forced to sell the rights to several of his Beatles songs, thus reducing his annual gross earnings to a mere $10 million, not to mention, according to the article, causing severe emotional damage. Why can't The Times produce more of this pivotal coverage instead of that stuffy cant about poverty, the Iraq insurgency and global warming? In fact, why not create an entirely new paper, devoted exclusively to Jackson's personal life?

Remember George Harrison's unforgettable opening line in the Beatles' 1969 hit "Something"? "Something in the way she moves / attracts me like no other woman. " Of course not, because he sings "lover," not "woman. " But "woman" is what Harrison wrote before changing one word that could well have spelled the difference between a hit and a miss, an edit that's on display at the Grammy Museum in "George Harrison: Living in the Material World" a show focusing on the man pigeonholed early as "the quiet Beatle.

Meniere's disease is an inflammation of the inner ear. Specifically, a swelling in the tubes of the ear canal that control the body's balance. No one knows its cause, but stress, exhaustion and substance abuse are among the factors thought to contribute. Its symptoms include nausea, physical disorientation and occasionally debilitating bouts of tinnitus and the loss of hearing at certain frequencies. There is no known treatment. For an average person, Meniere's is irritating. For musicians, it can be the end of a livelihood, even a loss of their identity.

"George Harrison: Living in the Material World," which premieres Wednesday and Thursday on HBO, is a long, lovely meditation on the Beatle sometimes called the Quiet One and the quiet one sometimes called a Beatle. Directed by Martin Scorsese at the invitation of widow Olivia Harrison, it is not especially informative in the way documentaries usually strive to be, a cataloging of causes and effects and significant facts and figures; nor has it been made as a brief for George's unsung genius.

When Martin Scorsese and Olivia Harrison first sat down about five years ago to strategize about a documentary on the life of George Harrison, both quickly zeroed in on a letter the young Beatle wrote to his family at the height of Beatlemania. "It was a letter George had written when he was not more than 22," Harrison said of the man to whom she was married for 23 years before his death from cancer a decade ago. "It was in 1965, and the Beatles would have been really cresting at that point.

Remember who was playing second base for the Dodgers 45 years ago Sunday? If you said John Lennon, you're close. All the Beatles played the infield that night, on a stage set up at second base, draped in blue and white, of course. Yes, Sunday is the 45th anniversary of the "bigger-than-Jesus" Beatles at Dodger Stadium, the first concert in the history of the gleaming 4-year-old ballpark. The third-place Dodgers were off playing the first-place Giants in San Francisco on the day "Nowhere Man" rang out across Chavez Ravine.

A Sept. 10 concert featuring music from the Beatles and the Rolling Stones will benefit the Ojai Valley Museum; $45 for general admission and $25 for lawn seating at the Libbey Bowl in downtown Ojai .... You have until Sept. 15 to enter Southwest's Orlando sweepstakes - airfare, hotel, rental car and theme park tix .... Cake Plate Boutique in downtown Napa is taking fashion cues from the fall harvest season , with a clothing line featuring “warm touches of chocolate and orange mixed with sweet and savory embellishments.” Which is exactly what I look for in a T-shirt   ....   Santa Rosa stages its Handcar Regatta on Sept.

I have been enjoying Alice Kahn's columns, and as the mother of a 15-year-old daughter I was particularly amused in reading about her "intellectual discussion" of rock 'n' roll with her teen-ager. I was reminded of an incident that took place a few months ago when I was attending a birthday party in a park in Torrance. A large family of picnickers, sitting at an adjoining table, were visiting while listening to music blaring from a portable radio. Two young girls--probably 12 or 13 years old--were part of the group and when the Beatles began to sing, "I Saw Her Standing There," one of them yelled across the lawn to the other: "Hey!

It says so on Rodolfo Vazquez's business card: He's the owner of the world's biggest collection of Beatles memorabilia, a claim backed by none other than Guinness World Records. So how did an accountant from Argentina — which seems about a million miles away from Liverpool, England — amass a staggering 8,600 Beatles-related items? Hint: Being a self-confessed pack rat helps. "My history shows there is a virtue in collecting things, and I think schools should do more to encourage kids to do it," says Vazquez, a gregarious, heavyset guy with a ready laugh, often directed at himself and his obsession.

Jane Scott was a code breaker for the Navy during World War II. She owned a wind-up Victrola. And the first song she ever loved was from the big band era: a Jimmy Rushing hit for Count Basie called "Sent for You Yesterday (And Here You Come Today). " So she was among the most improbable candidates for the job she would perform with undisguised gusto for almost 40 years. She was a rock critic. Scott, 92, who died in Cleveland on Monday after a long illness, was middle-aged when the Cleveland Plain Dealer sent her to cover the Beatles in 1964.