The Boobles

Letter

An Open Let­ter
to Apple Corps and The Beatles

Jan­u­ary, 2010

Dear Apple Corps and The Beatles,

The Boobles are MASSIVE fans of the music of The Bea­t­les.  Many of the tal­ent involved with this project have even ded­i­cated their lives to per­form­ing the music of The Bea­t­les in trib­ute bands.  We have researched the record­ing notes of the orig­i­nal Bea­t­les ses­sions and pur­chased the offi­cial Abbey Road plug-ins and a dig­i­tal vari-speeder for the stu­dio for that authen­tic “Beat­ley” sound.  We have about 4 sets of the com­plete stereo re-masters and 3 of the com­plete mono re-masters between us.  We all have col­lec­tions of t-shirts, mugs, hats, song books, gui­tar straps, DVDs… and so much more Bea­t­les stuff….  In short, we love the Bea­t­les, yeah, yeah, yeah!

As the orig­i­na­tor of this project and lyri­cist of all the par­o­dies, I would like to openly pro­fess that this project is being pre­pared and hope­fully pre­sented with the utmost respect for the unequaled body of work The Bea­t­les have given us.  We only seek to con­tinue the theme of love and char­ity that the Bea­t­les pro­moted by giv­ing of our per­sonal time, money and tal­ents to cre­ate some­thing fun and light-hearted to help com­bat such a seri­ous and deadly dis­ease as breast cancer.

Most of us have been touched in some way by this dis­ease.  My own mother-in-law, at this writ­ing, is an 8-year sur­vivor thanks to advanc­ing treat­ment, a strong sup­port sys­tem and most of all, a fun-loving and pos­i­tive atti­tude!  My own wife is at high-risk because it runs on both sides of her fam­ily.  Even Sir Paul McCartney’s own mother and dear wife Linda were trag­i­cally claimed by breast can­cer.  This is a dis­ease that affects almost all of us, and per­son­ally, I want to do some­thing about it.

But what can I do?  I’m just a working-class, hand-to-mouth kind of guy.  I’m no sci­en­tist or rich phil­an­thropist; I just hang out with musi­cians and write com­edy songs!  In my opin­ion though, I have to do some­thing other than just pray and wish breast can­cer would go away.  Wish­ful think­ing is one thing… cre­ative action is entirely another!  Thus, “The Boobles” was born: the comedic bent for par­ody that I love, the great musi­cal inspi­ra­tion and spirit of The Bea­t­les, and the dream of being able to some­how help mankind for the future.

The Boobles isn’t for every­one.  It is tongue-in-cheek and comes from the per­spec­tive of lots of macho-nonsense for comedic effect.  It is a com­edy project, not to be taken seri­ously aside from the end result we’re striv­ing for.  It was born of the atti­tude exhib­ited by most of the breast can­cer sur­vivors that I love, talk to and party with… breasts don’t define them, they are not “dirty” or “nasty”, and after con­fronting their mor­tal­ity in bat­tle with a deadly dis­ease, they just aren’t that big of a deal!  Don’t be afraid of them, don’t be so prud­ish… cel­e­brate your boobs, your ta-tas, your lovely lady lumps!!  So it is with this atti­tude that I have approached cre­at­ing The Boobles.

I write this as an open let­ter to implore Apple Corps. and The Bea­t­les to under­stand what we are doing here.  We are not under­min­ing the music of The Bea­t­les and sub­ject­ing it to smut.  We do not believe we are mak­ing a mock­ery of The Bea­t­les through the exis­tence of The Boobles.  On the extreme con­trary, the music has been revered, from using the same kinds of gui­tars and drums and mics (after one ses­sion, over two evenings, one of our gui­tarists left with twelve dif­fer­ent gui­tars from being as pre­cise as he could), down to try­ing to emu­late some of the inno­v­a­tive record­ing tech­niques used to make such impres­sive music (just minus all the tape!).  There’s a lot of love in these tracks from these guys.  For my part, the lyrics have been writ­ten with an eye to NOT be dirty, rather to pro­vide light-hearted, boob-based themes for comedic effect.

All this being said, we implore you, Bea­t­les and Apple Corps., please do not attempt to shut us down, or issue one of those “cease and desist” orders that have famously been issued in the past.  We’re obtain­ing the proper mechan­i­cal licenses so roy­al­ties are paid.   This project will not affect The Bea­t­les and their legacy or sales what­so­ever… but we CAN have a pos­i­tive affect on the treat­ment and cure of breast can­cer for many, many women, and it’s to this end that we ded­i­cate this effort to the count­less num­bers who have already fallen vic­tim to breast cancer.

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it a thou­sand times:  All we are say­ing, is give teats (and us) a chance.

Rock on, boob-lovers!

~ Eric Tomme

“Juan Mel­lon” of The Boobles

01/15/2010