Ah, the venerable Beatles. I can't seem to get very far from the first band I ever loved. My obsession with the Fabs contributed to my eighth-grade social outcast status, and next month I begin rehearsals to perform the entire White Album live at the Phoenix Concert Theatre in Toronto. Check it here. I've been listening to that album over and over again for the past month, sometimes playing along and sometimes not, but it does not take a fatty of kind bud to affirm the essential goodness of all things Beatle. Funny thing about the moptops. Unlike, say, Dylan, Beatle outtakes tend to deserve their obscurity. I've listened to a few of the studio boots from the White Album era now and I can say that not one of the performances really deserves a place on a legit Beatles album. Not so with Bob, whose "Blind Willie McTell", "Series of Dreams", etc could easily have supplanted a few of their more favoured contemporaries ("Union Sundown" and "Disease of Conceit" spring to mind).