Beatles historian Bruce Spizer takes us back 60 years ago, when The Beatles performed for 8,000 screaming fans at the Washington Coliseum.

Director Ron Howard’s latest includes 30 minutes of rare footage of the Beatles’ 1965 concert at Shea Stadium, and other films (and film festivals) we recommend checking out this week.

A Washington Post report of the band’s arrival from February 12 was titled “Beatles Arrive, Teen-agers Shriek, Police Do Their Duty, and That’s That.”

When it comes to today’s announcement that people can now purchase Beatles songs via iTunes, everyone seems either really excited or totally put off by Apple’s marketing. And while we’re sure that the arrangement, regardless of how anyone feels about it, will end up making both sides more money than any of us could possibly imagine (and also provide the cop-out gift of the holiday season to boot!), there is at least one really neat local thing about it: Apple is offering a free, complete copy of the Fab Four’s first American concert, held in D.C. at the old Washington Coliseum on February 11, 1964, two days after the band played The Ed Sullivan Show.

Well, obviously, not the actual Beatles. As you know, because you live in the world, The Beatles broke up in 1969, and two of them are no longer living; and if the actual Beatles had played somewhere on this planet, the Internet, your cell phone and all of your relatives in their late 50s and early 60s would have crumbled into cyclones of OVER CAPACITY error messages. When I say that The Beatles invaded…

Whether or not you were actually part of the 1960s, if you are a Beatles fan or, well, obsessed like some of us, then consider heading down to the Music Center at Strathmore tonight for Rain: The Beatles Experience, a tribute band that takes its audience on a trip down memory lane to a time when four lads from Liverpool tried to show the world that there’s nothing funny about peace, love and understanding. The…