It’s only rock and roll and 50 years later … damn knee!

Perhaps I have been a bit inattentive lately. I swear I have an excuse. But you know what they say about excuses — Yes, everyone’s an ass****. Well, maybe not.

My right knee has, quite frankly, hurt like a sonofabitch for the last month. It still does but I’m hopefully getting a little closer to the reason why. I went to a non-VA doctor and he says it looks as it I have a torn cartilage. Probably a meniscus tear would be my guess. I am awaiting an appointment for a MRI that may tell me what’s up. In the meantime, the orthopedist told me no standing for more than two hours a day. I might have to get him to add no sitting for more than two hours. It feels okay when the knee is bent. It is standing up that is tricky.

Just putting my two scents in on that Beatles tribute on CBS earlier in the week. Sunday maybe? Whenever.

Someone once told me there are two kinds of people in the world. There are Beatles people and there are Stones people. Well, I’m a Stones people, uh, person. I saw them in concert 30 years ago at the Superdome and figured it amazing they were still getting around very well back then. And now. Damn, Mick must be 100 years old. Keith Richards looks 200 at least. But their music is still … great.

I like the Beatles too. Some of their music I liked more than others. Wasn’t much of a Sgt. Pepper’s fan. Abbey Road is my favorite Beatles album and one of my favorite all-time works. The White Album comes second. George Harrison’s “While My Guitar Gently Weeps,” is one of my favored songs from that album. It was played powerfully during the Beatles 50-year tribute by guitarists/vocalists Gary Clark Jr., Joe Walsh and drummer Dave Grohl. Clark is an Austin bluesman, whom sadly, I had not heard of but perhaps heard. Walsh, from James Gang and later Eagles guitarist and presidential candidate rounded out a great leading trio on the Harrison song with Grohl, of the Foo Fighters, drumming his heart out.

Not so much did I care for the covers by Maroon 5, although I like some of Adam Levine and the band’s songs, mostly “Harder to Breathe.” Katie Perry, Grammy queen, was seemingly panned by most writers I have seen after the tribute concert for her take on “Yesterday.” But then what do writers know anyway?

The two surviving Beatles? They still rock. I wonder though, what they might look like if they looked their age? Ringo? Half-bald and a pot belly? Paul, like he did singing on the Rooftop Concert. Even 80-year-old Yoko Ono was dancing during the tribute and … I wonder what John was thinking, way back when?