Dropkick Murphys raised $65,000 in 15 hours for Boston bombing victims

Dropkick Murphys raise cash for Boston

Boston local heroes the Dropkick Murphys raised $65,000 in just 15 hours for those affected by the Boston Marathon bombings by selling a new t-shirt on their website.

The tee is priced between $24.99 and $26.99, based on size, and the front reads "For Boston" with a photo of the skyline.

The back is emblazoned with the city's seal and the note, "Thank you, to all who purchased this shirt. All proceeds go to the victims and families of the Boston Marathon bombings. Love, Dropkick Murphys."

In a Tweet revealing the sales news, the punk band added that the shirts are still available for pre-order and are shipping to Ireland, the United Kingdom, Europe and Australia. 

Tasty cotton candy from Tara O’Grady’s new album

Tara O'Grady

"I wanted the fun we have onstage to make it onto the album.”

That’s how jazz and blues chanteuse Tara O’Grady describes the spontaneous energy that crackles through her excellent new album, A Celt in the Cotton Club.

“We did everything live in the studio. We don’t rehearse at all before a show and we didn’t rehearse much for the record, either,” she says.

“We recorded everything in about eight hours.  I’m not concerned about mistakes.  I don’t care if someone cracks up laughing in the middle of the song or if someone reacts in a certain way. That’s what happens on a live gig.”

The results make for a sassy, fizzy cocktail of bossa n’ blues that’s perfect for a spring garden brunch or a romantic evening at the Garden City Hotel in Long Island, where she plays most Saturday nights.

As was the case on her first album, Black Irish, O’Grady puts the classic melodies of the most popular Irish parlor songs into a martini mixer, shakes and stirs the life out of it, and pours out something unique and delightful.

“Black Is the Color” is a sexy bossa nova tango that bounces on a summer breeze. “Go Lassie Go” is a jumpin’ jivin’ saxophone-laden ditty atop the purr of an upright acoustic bass.

“Too Ra Loo Ra” has a closing time feel, with O’Grady’s torchy delivery couched by a lazy snare beat and lingering blues chord structure.

“I was surrounded by music growing up,” O’Grady explains. “My granny Nora in Donegal would always sing in the kitchen and my dad is a fiddle player, so there was always Irish music around the house.

“My brother played clarinet, flute and saxophone in high school as part of the jazz band, and that introduced me to big band swing and the Great American Songbook when I was a teenager.  So here I am. I have Irish music in my head, and then I have this American jazz in my head as well.”

The notion of making Irish standards into jazz standards is, in this writer’s humble opinion, a stroke of genius, yet O’Grady explains how the concept met with some resistance in her family at first.

“My album Black Irish got mixed reviews,” she says. “Some of the family didn’t embrace it and had a hard time understanding it.  They felt like I couldn’t mess with those songs.

“But people who didn’t come from the Irish genre loved it. Overall, I think audiences like happy surprises, and doing these songs people know so well with a different spin does surprise people.”

O’Grady mixes those traditional tunes with nine original compositions that are so good they sound like jazz standards.

“When the band was playing them in the studio, the bass player asked if my song was a jazz standard written in the 1930s. I took that as a compliment!” she says.

“I’m off my lover/done with him/turning to this bottle of gin,” she sings as the playful clarinet blows a perfect foil for O’Grady’s cartoonish sexiness on the Cajun-fried “You Won’t Get Me There Tonight.” It’s a double entendre about reaching the climax that is eventually attained by the exuberance of the band itself.

“Love Me Madly Lashes” is the sexiest song about eyelid hair that you’ll ever hear! Her songs crackle with the life that can only be attained by the immediacy of the stage--or the whirlwind of an eight-hour recording session!

“For ‘Black Is the Color’ I asked Michael Hashim, the sax player, for a bossa nova feel. He did something completely different and ripped it up,” says O’Grady.

“We were so stunned during the live studio recording by his performance that we didn’t come back in after his solo, so we had to do another take. It’s one of my favorite tracks on the album.”

O’Grady says she does not read music, preferring instead to hum things into a phone or something digital so that it is preserved until it can be given to a musician who can chart it for the rest of the band.

“I just write whatever time and whatever genre it falls into, I let that happen organically,” she says of her songwriting process.

“It’s almost like a wind that hits you and like the wind, it will blow through you if you don’t stop and take notice of it. I just stop what I’m doing and get it on paper.”

“A Celtic bloodline sings through her veins/wouldn’t you know the Irish want to claim you, too,” she sings on the beautiful tribute to her idol Billie Holiday on “Gardenia Girl.”

“It’s a song about Billie Holiday being Irish,” she says.

“I was talking to the writer Peter Quinn about the Bronx; he lives near St. Raymond’s Cemetery, where Billie Holliday is buried. I told him I wanted to write something about Billie. I grew up under the Whitestone Bridge on the Queens side, so it was amazing to discover that I was so close to her all that time.

“Her grandfather or great-grandfather was Irish and her real name was Eleanor Fagan. People call me black Irish because they think I sound like a white Billie Holliday, but as it turns out she was Irish like me!”

The album is a family affair, with O’Grady’s brother Tom co-writing some songs and the designing the disc’s cover art.

“There’s a light in your eyes when you look at me/I get weak in the knees when you stare/all it took was one look I’m yours dear/take my hand take my heart if you dare,” O’Grady coos atop a soulful shuffle of “La Dee Da,” a song the pair co-wrote.

“My brother sends me melodies all the time,” O’Grady says. 
“The song ‘La Dee Da’ was a melody he wrote after listening to Van Morrison --he’s hugely influenced by him. He influenced me, too.

“I was asked to do a jazz version of ‘Too Ra Loo Ra’ and I didn’t want to do it because I thought it was a corny song. Then I heard Morrison’s version and decided to do it because Van made it sound so cool.”

“La Dee Da” is one example of the delicious musical dialogue that breaks out throughout the album between O’Grady and the saxophone riffs played by Michael Hashim.

“I feel the album is like Ella and Louie, because it’s a conversation between the vocalist and the horn player,” she says about working with Hashim.

The cool, deft jazz provided by Justin Poindexter (guitar, banjo), Kelly Friesen (bass) and Andrew Burns (drums) is absolutely delightful. There may be more strings joining the band soon -- who knows?

“I got a ukulele for Christmas from my fiddle playing dad and I am determined to use it,” says O’Grady.

“Maybe I’ll record a bunch of standards or write some new songs to play on it. I am open to everything, with no rhyme or reason.”

O’Grady is having a ball with her regular engagement at the Garden City Hotel, actively working with the staff to create special events that spice up her gig. 
“Last week we had a cherry blossom theme and I wore a kimono, as the bar whipped up these Japanese-themed drinks and entrees,” she says.

“I work every Saturday night at the Garden City Hotel with a pianist. The dining is so good and the hotel guests are always there, so it has a built-in good crowd. But now there really has been a buzz about the shows and it has become this reservation-only sellout situation ever since we started.”

O’Grady can’t wait for the release party for A Celt in the Cotton Club on May 23 at Mary O’s, 32 Avenue A, New York, from 7-10 p.m.

You can get your signed copy of O’Grady’s new CD in person there, at the Garden City Hotel, or at any one of her gigs around Manhattan.  For more information visit www.gardencityhotel.com or www.taraogradymusic.com.

The luck of John Rafferty - a masterpiece of folk storytelling

John Rafferty

I got a phone call out of the blue from Seanchai leader and Black 47 founder Chris Byrne not long ago, and there was a real sense of urgency in the man’s normally deadpan voice.

“I’m sending a guy your way -- you’ve just gotta hear this.”

That guy is John Rafferty, and his new album, Lucky, is a masterwork of folk storytelling.

This Brooklyn native is the outer borough cousin of another tortured Irish tunesmith, Bruce Springsteen, with the songs from Lucky reminiscent of Nebraska, Springsteen’s stark acoustic masterpiece.

A lonesome harmonica riff starts off Lucky as Rafferty paints an urban picture about a run-in with the police.

“Cop in the subway stuck an eye in my cup/he said pour it out Paddy I’ve seen enough,” Rafferty sings on “30 Minutes,” a tune whose chorus “watch me chase the snakes away/I can think of something to say/raise your glass to St. Patrick’s Day” makes it a perfect addition to jukeboxes in Irish pubs worldwide.

“It’s funny you said Nebraska, because that was definitely where I was trying to sail the ship,” admits Rafferty during an interview.

“Springsteen did a left turn on that album after Born in the USA and he came to some common lines on that album. I have some common lines in there as well --common themes and relationships. 

“I always say it’s telling some simple stories through music.  Maybe it’s like reading a book of short stories that might be connected with one another within the book. Same characters; sometimes it’s the same girl, sometimes it’s a compilation of 10 different girls.”

Rafferty has a way with words, painting riveting pictures in his songs.

“My mother was born in Sligo and my dad was an Irish American,” Rafferty explains when asked about his musical background.

“There was no music in our house. I have an older brother who told me, ‘You can listen to these records, but you can’t listen to these.’ Of course, I went to the pile that I couldn’t listen to.

“When I was 12 I was allowed to buy The Who’s Who Are You. I was fascinated by Pete Townshend and all the great writing and playing that came through him. I didn’t understand what he was writing about. Any magazine I could get with The Who in it, I got it.”

Rafferty’s pyrotechnics on the acoustic guitar do not mimic Townshend’s work with the Who, favoring the guitar legend’s stripped down understatement of the Scoop demo series. Rafferty lets the words do the talking throughout Lucky.

“You’re singing your heart out to some empty glass,” he sings on “St. Patrick’s,” a ditty about being down and out. The sparseness of the production adds to the somewhat bleak subject matter of Lucky.

“I had a two microphone setup in the room and every song was one take. I didn’t allow myself to go back and edit,” Rafferty said.

“I added piano and a few things a little later on, but the basic tracks were laid down once and never look back. I wanted the mistakes made.”

Rafferty was in a band, Pill Hill Radio, that recorded and toured briefly, and while he is proud of his work on that project, you can tell that he was committed to not over-producing himself this time around. Rafferty says he wrote more than two dozen songs in a six week cycle, cut about 12, and never looked back.

Lucky for him that he didn’t mess too much with perfection.  His Lucky is a fantastic collection of songs from a potent, tortured poet.

For more information on Rafferty, visit www.brooklynraff.com.

Celtic Cross tests news songs from upcoming CD for rapturous audience

Celtic Cross

I had the rare pleasure of seeing Celtic Cross not once but twice in the last seven days. The band’s long-awaited follow-up to the award-winning Shores of America was derailed when their Hoboken recording studio was flooded following Hurricane Sandy, so they’re taking the time to road test the new songs in front of a rapturous audience.

“I think everyone is overly ready for some new material,” jokes singer Kathleen Fee. “Everything has been positive and digging the new stuff. It’s been fun. Having this studio delay allows us to work out the kinks so that we will bang out the rest of the album quickly.”

One of the standouts from their new album will surely be “One Last Party,” a countrified rocker inspired by a trip Fee took to Ireland with her mother.

“Her birthplace sat dormant for five years and we went there to clean it up,” Fee explains. “When the work was done we threw one big party to send the house off properly!”

“Climbed through the kitchen window/To the house that I adored/It was just how we had left it/Jimmy's hat behind the door/On the wall the sacred heart/woodbines on the floor,” she sings about the house that “stood two stories but a thousand it could tell.”

Easily their best work, the song is evocative of the band’s innate ability to capture the Irish American experience so clearly and universally.

“I’m surprised with how well people are connecting with that song in a powerful way,” Fee’s brother Ken Vesey says.

“I think Irish and Irish Americans can identify with making that trip back to the homeland and seeing the old house falling away like that. Though I love the new songs, I am partial to the jams we are doing as well because I am a trad fiddle player. The audience reaction to those has been amazing as well.”

Frankie McCormick (All-Ireland Scor winner), and brothers Ken (All-Ireland fiddle champion) and John (three time North American accordion champion) Vesey have a bushel of Irish music awards between them.

Their mastery of instrumentation is on full display during “Monster Jam,” a hot stop-on-a-dime instrumental that is the sonic equivalent of a hair dryer to the face. The chemistry onstage with the band is jovial in most spots, but the lads get ferocious when they lean into their instruments to produce the sparks!

The entire band had a hand in songwriting this time around, including the shy McCormick. The Tyrone native came to America in 1986 and grew up amidst The Troubles and hunger strikes in his teens. His father sent him over to America to save him from the bloodshed.

“Kathleen has been fascinated with that story and she started to type some lyrics into her Blackberry during these 4 a.m. bar chats we’d have,” he explains.

“After a while, I became more comfortable talking about it I suppose, and I decided to tell my story myself.” His track features some rapping and will be produced by Black 47’s Larry Kirwan.

Keep your eyes peeled here for news on the new CD. To find out where the band will be next, visit www.celticcross.com.

Front page news from Enter the Haggis - VIDEO

Enter The Haggis

With the onslaught of iPads and other digital devices, publishers have been wringing their hands about the future of the good ol’ fashioned pulpy newspaper.

Toronto's Enter The Haggis (ETH) has made a resounding case for the newspaper with their new disc, which was based on and inspired by the contents of one day in one newspaper.

The newspaper was the March 30, 2012 issue of the Toronto Globe and Mail, and the album that transpired is called The Modest Revolution, a name taken from the front page headline. The date was chosen at random, but the band was committed after pre-ordering 1,500 copies of the issue. Those newspapers were then delivered to their fans with copies of the new album.

This concept was obviously fraught with risk. What if nothing interesting happens on the day the band picked? 
“You start to see all of the little things that are so inspiring," Brian Buchanan recounts of the writing experience.

"Everything from the front page through to the personal stories that fill the obituaries, you realize there are so many stories going on every day. There's so much more than the talking heads on television or the headlines themselves.”

Take “Copper Leaves,” Trevor Lewington's lament for the penny, which had been condemned to obsolescence in the federal budget.

“Though your aspirations soared/the sidewalk would not take your seed/now they’re showing you the door,” Buchanan sings about the coin, an interesting metaphor for souls who feel outdated. The tune is a rattling country rocker with beautiful fiddles that make it a Celtic gem! 
Buchanan, (vocals, fiddle, keyboards, guitar), Craig Downie (vocals, highland bagpipes), Lewington (vocals, bass, guitar), and Bruce McCarthy (drums, percussion) are all fantastic players at the top of their game on The Modest Revolution.

Their musical palette stretches from the alternative rock of “Can’t Trust the News” to the soaring Horslips Irish stomp of “Balto,” which gets this reviewer’s vote for best top-down spring driving tune of 2013!

Behind the fiscally-focused front the band found a handful of smaller pieces that turned into some of the bigger songs.

“Can't Trust the News,” the album's first single, was inspired by a 65-year-old woman's decision to find distraction from the traumatic events in her life by climbing the highest peaks on each continent. The article was only 150 words long, but it was enough to grab Lewington's attention.

Though ETH got their inspiration from the newspaper, they are clear that it is not their Bible.

“Trust your eyes/ they will follow the light/it’s a new tragic story/trust your heart/it will swallow the dark/it’s a mecca of heartache and doom/you can’t trust the news,” Lewington writes in “Can’t Trust the News,” an arty little rocker with trumpets and an addictive melody.

Even the sports section was fair game.  “Blackout” was written based on an article about concussions in hockey that also dug into the Toronto Maple Leafs for their lousy record that season.

"It’s a blackout/but we follow along/we keep chasing the puck/ever whispering someday/we'll drink from the cup" Lewington sings, a sentiment shared by every Leafs fan. The song has a reflective quality to it overall, though you could easily imagine the barnstorming chorus blaring from the speakers of an arena as the hockey players take the ice!


ETH has always done music their way and have relied on the support of a rabid fan base that they earned through relentless touring. They set a reasonable goal of raising $20,000 in recording funds through the crowd funding platform Kickstarter. They knew their fans loved them, but they weren’t prepared to triple their goal attainment in just a few days!

The band has been embarking on “a modest revolution” of digital independence from the beleaguered music industry model, and it is great to see and hear from this band again. Anyone who has seen their jaw-dropping live shows knows that they earn their audience one furious set list at a time. Fair play to them! 
I spoke with Buchanan over the weekend about the new album and the support of their fans.

Here’s how it went:

How would you describe the differences between this and your last CD Whitelake? What has the fan reaction been so far? Or have they heard much of it based on the fact that it is released next week?

This record is louder and more aggressive than Whitelake, with bigger guitars and more epic moments. We really enjoyed stepping back to a more acoustic approach on the last album, but we're first and foremost a rock band and it's been a lot of fun cranking the amps back up. The fans have responded enthusiastically thus far, which has been really great.

Love "Can't Trust the News." How did it come about?

Trevor had the chorus idea for that song written before he ever tied it into the concept of the album. He eventually decided that "Can't Trust the News" was more a reference to the idea that when everything around you is in turmoil and every headline seems slanted against you, to follow your heart and shut out the noise.

Any offers for "Blackout" to become the Maple Leafs’ anthem? Ha ha!

Not yet, although a couple of sports journalists have written me about it.  Of course, now that we've written an anthem for a losing team they've started winning. Not that I'm complaining.

I love the concept of getting inspiration from one day in a local daily newspaper. How did that idea come about?

We all get so wrapped up in the 24-hour news cycle that we miss dozens of compelling stories every single day. Newspapers are unique in that they tell SO MANY stories, and you can go back and find them the next day or the next week if you like.

It's also fascinating to us that every single story -- whether it's a dry budget report or a sports recap -- has a human element to it, a story worth telling. We thought it would be an interesting challenge to find those stories and tell them.

It was far from easy and there were times when we definitely thought we'd bitten off a little too much, but in the end we found the seeds and followed them.

Congratulations on exceeding your fundraising target! How did it feel to get that love from the fans and how did that effect the creative process?  Was there extra pressure to deliver?

The Kickstarter was mind-blowing. Never in a million years did we think we would triple our goal, and the funds that came in allowed us the flexibility to make the album we wanted to make, without having to make compromises or watch the clock too closely. It is a bit of extra pressure when you pre-sell 1,700 copies of the album though. You really feel the trust of the fans and you don't want to let them down.

We've been really lucky over the years to have an awesome fan base that indulges our creative fugues. We never feel pressure to conform to their idea of what we are, and it lets us really spread our wings. We've found that as long as we're honest with ourselves and write and record the music we enjoy, they tend to follow us down the twisted paths we choose to explore -- and they got pretty twisted on this album.

Enter The Haggis is touring up and down the East Coast of the United States.  For information visit www.enterthehaggis.com.

Check out Enter The Haggis performing 'Can't Trust the News' here:

Dublin’s Little Green Cars rev it up with “Absolute Zero” - VIDEO

Little Green Cars

Dublin's Little Green Cars have been revving their engines on both sides of the Atlantic with the release of their excellent new album, Absolute Zero.

The band’s sound is a dizzying mixture of instruments -- the jangly addictive chord structure of REM, the sunny harmonies of the Mamas and Papas, and the crisp alt-rock production of the Smiths.

“Like a storm I wait for the silence/like a bluff I wait till you fall,” Stevie Appleby sings on “Harper Lee,” the leadoff single on Absolute Zero. 

The melodies and guitar solos are instantly hummable, like you’ve known the songs for years.

The band first formed in 2008 in a bungalow in Appleby's parents' backyard with the intent to win a battle of the bands competition. With guitarist Adam O'Regan and bassist Donagh O'Leary, his friends since primary school, and the rest having met in secondary, the five rehearsed for the gig at which they promptly lost out to another local band.

“We've always been more interested in recording and writing and experimenting with everything than in touring,” Appleby says in the band’s press release.

“The past five years was time spent finding our sound, finding ourselves. We've gone through everything, from acoustic guitars to electronic music. We needed the time to grow up as people and as musicians."

The results are worth the wait. “Goodbye Blue Monday” is a gorgeous acoustic folk ballad that Simon and Garfunkel would give their eye teeth to write in the present day, an organic chemistry within the musicians evident in the lazy harmonies.

On the record's debut single "The John Wayne," a song for the broken hearted, they sing, "It's easy to fall in love with you/It's easy to be alone/It's easy to hate yourself when all your love is inside someone else."  A fuzzy, foreboding guitar and Neanderthal beat slinks behind the band as they sing the most beautiful harmony.

Little Green Cars is fresh off a buzz-worthy whirlwind month of touring that included several showcases for the influential College Music Journal (CMJ), appearances that caught the attention of outlets like NPR and The New York Times.

If there is any justice left in the music business, this new model Little Green Car will win a Grammy for Best New Artist. For more information, log onto http://littlegreencars.co.uk.

Check out Little Green Cars' 'Harper Lee' here:

An Owl swoops and kills it - get your metal on with “The Right Thing” - VIDEO

Owl, featuring Chris Wyse, far right

When you’re a bass player, you bring out the percussive rhythm of music.  So, it’s no surprise to have people dancing to your music.

But what if that person dancing is Mick Jagger?

“I was in the studio working on a track from his solo album and he was trying to describe a feel that he was going for on this track,” Chris Wyse explains.

“He got up and started to dance as he was walking me through how he heard the track in his head, and I must say it was hard to concentrate -- it was so surreal, but then you have to snap back into it because you have a job to do.”


This is one of the many great stories you hear when you talk to Wyse, a much sought-after session bassist. Thanks to tight relationships with music producers like Bob Rock (Metallica), Wyse has contributed to recordings from the likes of Jagger, the Cult, Ozzy Osbourne and Tal Bachman.

After many years as a bass man for hire, Wyse has moved front and center with the heavy alternative trio, Los Angeles-based rock band Owl. They have released a scorching new disc, The Right Thing.
Wyse (vocals/bass), Dan Dinsmore (drums) and Jason Achilles Mezilis (guitar/vocals) ignite from the opening drum roll that opens with a rousing cover of The Kinks’ “Destroyer,” which puts a futuristic snarl to the punky original.

Utilizing both electric upright bass and bass guitar, Wyse is a versatile, vibrant, vital player who surrounds himself with ferocious musicians. Born in Queens to parents who hail from Waterford and Mayo, Wyse became fascinated with music at an early age.

After immersing himself in the Celtic tunes his Irish parents fancied, he discovered Kiss, the Doors and Led Zeppelin in grade school, and soon landed on the bass as his instrument of choice after being inspired by Iron Maiden's Steve Harris.

Wyse soon began fashioning a style all his own. In fact, he was even profiled at just 17 years old in Guitar Player magazine for his innovative approach to the bass.

That innovation is all over Owl’s The Right Thing. “Gazing of the pictures of the wall you recall/we can listen to songs all day long and smile/because today is just like any other day I know,” Wyse sings, an intricate bass line draping over a jerky beat of spitting cymbals and bombastic guitars.

Buried under the fussy arrangements is something essential to great music -- a simple melody that sticks in your brain like syrup in silk.  Wyse laughs and thanks me for my assertion that Owl’s sound reminds me of Stone Temple Pilots and early Genesis.

“I think what you’re hearing is the cross between our prog rock love with a strong desire to make music that is melodic,” Wyse says.

“We had these great melodies that we brought into the studio but once we got in there, we really experimented and just went with whatever sparks flew between the three of us.”

Wyse revisits his Irish roots on “Rover,” an epic track about visiting the family farms and bailing hay in the sunshine.

“Just a boy when I took my trip to Ireland/train on tracks that take me there to the village called Mayo/of course, my roots are here,” Wyse sings on “Rover” over a polka beat punctuated by bagpipes. The track gets hijacked in the middle by a dizzying, fast-paced musical interlude  before resuming the heavy metal polka.

“It’s one example of how we turn rock and roll rules on their ear,” Wyse explains. “We wanted to be what I would call ‘creatively rebellious.’ Rock has fallen into this formula and we wanted to break those. We really had fun putting this together.”

Another band that Owl is reminiscent of is the Cult, which shouldn’t be a surprise. At producer Bob Rock's suggestion, Wyse cut the staggering bass tracks on the band’s Beyond Good and Evil in 2001.

In 2006, the Cult called Wyse back to bass and backup vocal duties, and they unveiled a series of live CDs followed up by the studio effort, Born Into This. He's been rocking with the Cult ever since as a full band member, including the band's 2012 landmark Choice of Weapon.

“That has been a great gig and I absolutely love the work I do as a session musician,” Wyse says.

“When you’re in those positions, you’re hired to do a job that traces over the vision of someone else. With Owl, it’s great to have the freedom to spread your wings a bit and do your own thing.”

This Owl hunts, soars and screeches like a demon bird from hell!  Get yer metal on and pick up The Right Thing, which will set for release on April 9 on Overit Records.

Check out Owl's video for 'The Right Thing':

Paul McCartney’s words of wisdom on 50th anniversary of the Beatles “Please Please Me” - VIDEO

Paul McCartney (Q Magazine)

You gotta love a rock star knight and the way he asserts his supremacy without doing so at the expense of others.

During their nineties heyday, Oasis routinely compared themselves to the Beatles and Stones, offering on a weekly basis to get the old codgers in a ring, etc.

Paul McCartney was recently interviewed by Q magazine on the 50th anniversary of the Beatles’ single “Please Please Me.”

"I'm actually kind of honored -- they could be copying anyone -- even when things happen like Oasis saying, 'We are the next Beatles,’” McCartney said.

“But I also think, 'Listen lads, you can't say that. And don't say that, because it's probably the kiss of death!’ In Oasis' case, I think it was coming from them. In others, it's the record label or management and that's never a good idea -- the poor band! Now go and do better than the Beatles did. Not an easy task."

On that point there is no argument!

Check out The Beatles performing 'Please Please Me" here: