On the radio the other day, I heard an ad for the upcoming Fest for Beatles Fans at a Chicago-area venue, which is what I got for tuning into geezer radio at that moment. Not that I dislike the subject matter. Just the opposite. But I don’t feel the need to attend a convention about the Fab Four.

Still, I was amused to hear that one of its featured speakers is Leon Wildes, senior partner of Wildes & Weinberg P.C. He’s the attorney who successfully represented John Lennon in his deportation proceedings in the 1970s, which ultimately allowed him to stay in the United States. It probably would have been better for Lennon had he been out of the country in 1980, but no one could have known that beforehand.

In June, I was reminded of the 50th anniversary of the American release of Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, which I have on CD. I hadn’t listened to it in quite a while, so I decided to during a somewhat rare daytime moment when I didn’t have any pressing business, and no one else was home.

But the only device I have now to play CDs is the DVD player connected to the TV. Older standalone CD players have all gone kaput, never to be replaced, and the CD trays of our laptops have all likewise broken, one after the other — a clear mechanical weak spot in laptops. So I played the disk (I really want to call it a record) on the DVD player, using the TV speakers.

My conclusion? Those speakers aren’t nearly good enough for a work of sonic charm like Sgt. Pepper’s.