Kevin Ryan had always loved the Beatles. In high school, he amused himself by attempting to recreate their sound on his dad's four-track recorder, and he eventually went into music production. Fascinated by the technical aspect of the Beatles' recording career, he searched for a book on the topic but came up empty-handed. So he set about writing it himself.
What member of the band played what instrument on what tracks? What microphones were they using? Who was on the soundboard? How did they set the mix? So, to that end, he figured out who the engineers had been and began writing letters and making phone calls, eventually making trips from Houston to London. After two years of research, he learned that a music producer from Los Angeles had been undertaking the same sort of work, and the two joined forces as co-authors. Their final product, the 540-page
Recording the Beatles, was published in 2006 and is the definitive guide to the Beatles' studio work.
That book may be Kevin Ryan's official claim to fame, but he has another, less reputable but equally admirable claim to fame as well.
Just one year after the book's publication, in 2007, Ryan decided to move on to two of his other favorite artists: Bob Dylan and Dr Seuss. He went into his Houston recording studio and produced a mash-up of two artists who go together like green eggs and ham. Ryan composed the music himself, played all the instruments and sang all the vocals, Photoshopped an album cover, registered an internet domain name, and uploaded the songs. He didn't really expect it to generate much traffic.
He was wrong.
Contrary to Ryan's expectations, his work went viral. Hundreds of thousands of (presumably) folk music and/or poetry fans visited his website. And that attention presented a problem, for Ryan had not bothered to get permission from anyone at Dr Seuss Enterprises before producing what was obviously a copyright- and trademark-infringing work. Two weeks later, that firm sent him a cease-and-desist order, and Ryan–in no mood for an expensive legal battle against a well-prepared firm–took the songs down. And that was the end of that.
Except, of course, it wasn't. This, after all, was the internet. The phrase 'Facebook is forever' hadn't yet been coined, but the gist of its message was already true. People everywhere had already downloaded the songs. And fortunately for us, copyright-dodging uploads of most of them can still be found.
There were seven original songs uploaded by Ryan:
Oh, the Thinks You Can Think!
Green Eggs and Ham
Miss Gertrude McFuzz
McElligot's Pool
Too Many Daves
The Zax
The Cat in the Hat
Of those seven, I've been able to hunt down five for your enjoyment: