Ever heard of Ted Lapidus?  Me neither.  He’s the French designer who custom made John Lennon’s white suit for the Abbey Road album cover.  The suit, along with other Beatles memorabilia, hit the auction block at the Braswell Galleries annual New Year’s Day auction.  An anonymous online bidder took the suit home, so to speak, for a mere $46,000. 

     Got me thinking about my most expensive clothing purchase.  Certainly wasn’t my wedding dress (I wore an off-the-rack number to our extremely low key affair).  It might be my winter coat, retail price.  But I got it end of season with major discounts and coupons.  So, it has to be the Betsey Johnson designer dress I bought on a whim while on vacation many, many moons ago.  What a splurge…but nowhere near $46,000, that’s for sure!!

If you’re like me, you probably have several of The Beatles albums. I’ve got The White Album and Sgt. Peppers still in working condition on vinyl. I have The White Album, Magical Mystery Tour and The Red and Blue on cassette tape and I have all of them except Please Please Me on CD.

That’s three versions of The White Album! Do I need a digital download? Not really, because I already have the albums loaded into my iTunes player.

With Apple’s announcement today that the entire catalog is now available on iTunes for download at $1.29 per song, does that mean I’ll buy more?

I’m thinking I wont. There are some cool things like the entire 1964 Washington Coliseum show and a mini-documentary you also get on iTunes, but they didn’t seem all that tempting.

Still, I thinking the opportunity to download is a good thing. It will give the music to another generation and allow people to only buy the tracks that they really want. Personally, I think they’re all worth having.

At least one of the answers will be yes. Beatles: Rock Band is out. Here’s a sample:

Looks cool. If its addictive as the rest of the Rock Band games, I know what I’ll be doing in every spare minute of mine for the next six months. The thing that gets me though is the re-release of the Beatles 14 albums. I already have them. Do I need another copy? Its not like we’re switching from vinyl to CD this time. It’s just another remaster. Then again…to quote Tommy Lee Jones from Men In Black…”guess I’ll have to buy the White Album again… Ahhhh…”

Before you start criticizing the game for being a phony version of playing real instruments, let me just say, don’t knock it before you try it.

It’s not a substitution for actually learning how to play and instrument, but it is an extremely fun game to play. “Rock Band” is different from “Guitar Hero” because it allows up to four “instruments.” You get vocals, lead guitar, bass guitar and drums.  You get some basics of playing music, like counting off quarter beats and such, but still not quite the real deal.

Give it a shot.

That’s not really why I’m telling you about this. There is a new version of Rock Band that looks quite cool and my be of interest to you. The Beatles Rock Band comes out in August.  Again, try not to dismiss it quickly as another repackaged Beatles

Check out this link to see the opening video sequence.  It’s pretty cool.