SARATOGA SPRINGS — You say it’s your birthday. It’s the White Album’s birthday, too.

Or at least it was Saturday, the 40th anniversary of the release of the Beatles’ celebrated self-titled double album, nicknamed the “White Album.”

Skidmore College music professor Gordon Thompson seized on the anniversary to host a panel discussion on the album as part of his semester-long class about the Fab Four’s music.

The annual “Beatlemore/Skidmania” tribute concert takes place at 3 p.m. today in Filene Recital Hall on the Skidmore campus.

On Saturday, an auditorium full of fans tapped their feet to snippets of Beatles’ songs that panelist Walter Everett played to illustrate points about the Fab Four’s music.

And they laughed as panelist Jonathan Gould pointed out satirical parts of the British group’s songs.

“Before the Beatles were good, and certainly before they were great, they were funny,” said Gould, a jazz drummer and author of “Can’t Buy Me Love: The Beatles, Britain and America.”

The Beatles’ humor and almost shocking irreverence in press interviews stemmed from their Liverpool upbringing, Gould said.

“This led them to transform their press conferences into parodies of press conferences,” he said.

John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison and Ringo Starr showed that wit in the White Album, from the obviously parodic “Back in the USSR” to “The Continuing Story of Bungalow Bill,” which was reportedly inspired by an American visitor to an Indian ashram who went tiger hunting.

Many of album’s songs were inspired by the foursome’s transcendental meditation with Maharishi Mahesh Yogi at the time of the album’s production.

Everett, a professor at the University of Michigan, sampled tidbits of finished songs on the White Album and demo versions for the audience to hear the evolution.

“More than a touch of craft is employed in this back-to-nature album,” Everett said.

But Gould noted that the album doesn’t have the cohesion that the group’s earlier works do.

“They were intending not to make a well-formed piece, and they couldn’t have made a well-formed piece if they wanted to in that year,” he said, adding that the foursome’s togetherness during the meditation course may have been the beginning of their undoing.

“The amazing thing is that they lasted as long as they did,” Gould said.

More than 150 people attended the discussion, which also featured New York Times critic Allan Kozinn and Tim Riley, a National Public Radio commentator.