Come Together

In my early adolescence, I made a number of mix tapes from my father’s extensive record collection. One much-played tape included the Beatle’s ‘Come Together’. When I recorded the song, though, the record skipped once on ‘he got walrus gumboot’. It actually sounded like ‘he got walrus-guy, walrus gumboot’. Now, whenever I hear the song, I expect this little effect in the third verse.

I mention this because I just watched an extraordinary Flash animation of this song. It’s exceptionally expressive, and captures so much of the song and the band. It’s both reverential and irreverent, if that’s possible, and accurate down to the suits the Fab Four are wearing on the cover of Abbey Road. I rarely watch Flash animations to the end, but I actually watched this one twice.

I don’t know much about animation, but when I see works of art like this I feel like it’s on the cusp of overtaking live-action cinema in terms of artfulness and relevance.