Twitter Easy Listening: Have a chat with Ringo Starr

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Ringo Starr was there the other day.

Just came in, offered a "Peace & Love!" And told them how it was when he took part in the recording of John Lennon's album "John Lennon / Plastic Ono Band" in 1970.

Ringo said he played the drums just like the Beatles did, covering the tom-toms with old tea towels.

It went on like this for a while.

Yoko Ono talked about the primal scream therapy she had done with Lennon to shake off childhood demons.

At some point she took out a few photos from back then.

And the people sitting around them had to swallow a little.

Not only because they missed the time, but also because it was so touching to sit down with Ringo Starr and Yoko Ono on a normal lockdown evening and talk about music.

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It has been going on like this for more than a year, every evening.

Exactly at the same time as the television news starts in the UK, thousands and thousands of people are disconnecting from all streams of current affairs and playing the same album on their turntables or on Spotify, listening to it song by song, just like in the past When albums were everything.

It's called “Twitter Listening Parties”: a kind of virtual small talk in which everyone can take part and in which everyone can tell why this riff is still knocking them over, where and with what past love they saw the band or whatever else they thought of the search for lost time comes to mind.

The special thing is that the artists take part themselves - Liam Gallagher, for example, or Kevin Rowland from Dexys Midnight Runners or the Franz Ferdinand singer Alex Kapranos.

You can ask them what you always wanted to know (will you ever perform together again?), And they unpack stories they haven't told anyone (actually, there should be a knife on the cover instead of the band that cuts it) Butter cuts).

Twitterwall of a “Charlatan”: Tim Burgess invites you to a digital exchange

Source: timstwitterlisteningparty.com/Screenshot WORLD

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It is actually like sitting in your own apartment with a few thousand other fans to be initiated into arcane knowledge by the heroes of your wild years.

Tim Burgess, singer of the British indie band The Charlatans, came up with all of this and presented his new album at a Twitter get-together in March 2020, during the first lockdown, and thought afterwards that something like this could also be done with others .

And then he wrote to musician friends who just had nothing to do.

A new ritual was born: informal get-togethers with musicians who talk about their music as readily and informally as they never do in interviews, plus a warming sense of community.

All parties with one click

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Bonnie Tyler and Paul McCartney were there, Ken Scott, the producer of David Bowie's album "Hunky Dory", or Wendy Smith from Prefab Sprout, Peter Doherty and Kurt Vile.

There were 795 episodes at the beginning of May, and there are now three such get-together on some evenings.

In the summer, Burgess even held a “festival” for a few days - with up to eight performances a day.

You can also listen to all of them retrospectively: A few nerds have programmed a website for Burgess on which every single Twitter listening party can be retraced in its original tempo (at timstwitterlisteningparty.com).

All of a sudden, Burgess invented a new way of listening to music: everyone for themselves and yet all together, with expert comments, with a willingness to be friendly with each other that is rarely found on Twitter, and without the stress that comes with each other sees in analog life.

Otherwise musicians have to get ready for each of their performances, because otherwise you can immediately see how uncool they sometimes look on the Internet.

While at real concerts you lose your place in front of the stage when you have to go to the bathroom, you now sit in pajamas and with a cold beer between the speakers and don't have to go home afterwards because you're already there.

The perfect couch potato pleasure that should not end even after the end of the pandemic (at least that's what Burgess promised), and a high mass of communal nostalgia - you don't meet the people with whom you share them and notice them therefore do not assume that they have long since looked just as battered in the mirror as you do.