Turn Me On, Dead Man

I have spent so much time over the past few hours rooting around the internets looking up various entertaining nutter conspiracy sites, that I can't actually remember what started me off on it. Something yesterday got me thinking about the "Paul is Dead" rumours of the late 60s, when for some reason word got around that Paul McCartney had been killed in a car crash. I wish I could remember what it was now, but whatever, it has afforded me hours of rich entertainment observing the oddities of the psyche made manifest courtesy the modern web.

It's one thing that the rumour should start and odd enough that even Paul McCartney appearing on TV to deny it wasn't enough to quash the rumour, but when people start surmising that not only was he dead, but had been replaced by a lookalike, well...

And of course, there are the so-called clues in the Beatles' record covers and songs, too. It's all marvellously inventive and yet a very disturbing view into the mind of people with too much time on their collective hands...

It's worth having a look at some of these sites simply because of the effort that's gone into them. I particularly like this one, James Paul McCartney (1942-1966): A tribute to The Greatest Genius of 20th century music. Frankly it's mad and obsessive, but oh, so entertaining. There are many more, equally barmy, but with less technical expertise behind them.

This one, Officially Pronounced Dead is fantastic - it relates all the supposed clues in painstaking detail and just as you are beginning to reach for the big butterfly net, you find the page where the webmaster goes through and debunks most of them. He's not a nutter, he's just recording nutters for fun.

The finest moment, however, was finding this sequence - oddly enough it's on the first website I linked to above, but I found it through an entirely different route as you quite often do, once you start digging around on the internet. Batman solves the mystery of the rumoured death of Saul Cartwright, lead singer of the Oliver Twists....



For comic fans it is notable for two reasons: the writer has clearly had a brain fart in trying to make the dialogue 1970 hip, man and secondly, it's the story where you lose all respect for comic publishing legend, Dick Giordano...

Turn Me On, Dead Man

I have spent so much time over the past few hours rooting around the internets looking up various entertaining nutter conspiracy sites, that I can't actually remember what started me off on it. Something yesterday got me thinking about the "Paul is Dead" rumours of the late 60s, when for some reason word got around that Paul McCartney had been killed in a car crash. I wish I could remember what it was now, but whatever, it has afforded me hours of rich entertainment observing the oddities of the psyche made manifest courtesy the modern web.

It's one thing that the rumour should start and odd enough that even Paul McCartney appearing on TV to deny it wasn't enough to quash the rumour, but when people start surmising that not only was he dead, but had been replaced by a lookalike, well...

And of course, there are the so-called clues in the Beatles' record covers and songs, too. It's all marvellously inventive and yet a very disturbing view into the mind of people with too much time on their collective hands...

It's worth having a look at some of these sites simply because of the effort that's gone into them. I particularly like this one, James Paul McCartney (1942-1966): A tribute to The Greatest Genius of 20th century music. Frankly it's mad and obsessive, but oh, so entertaining. There are many more, equally barmy, but with less technical expertise behind them.

This one, Officially Pronounced Dead is fantastic - it relates all the supposed clues in painstaking detail and just as you are beginning to reach for the big butterfly net, you find the page where the webmaster goes through and debunks most of them. He's not a nutter, he's just recording nutters for fun.

The finest moment, however, was finding this sequence - oddly enough it's on the first website I linked to above, but I found it through an entirely different route as you quite often do, once you start digging around on the internet. Batman solves the mystery of the rumoured death of Saul Cartwright, lead singer of the Oliver Twists....



For comic fans it is notable for two reasons: the writer has clearly had a brain fart in trying to make the dialogue 1970 hip, man and secondly, it's the story where you lose all respect for comic publishing legend, Dick Giordano...