Beatles Remasters coming! 09/09/09

[monkboughtlunch]

Have you heard the 2009 remaster of "Beatles For Sale?" The original stereo mix is by far superior, as the mono mix was heavily compressed and EQ'd very bright and thinly for AM radio and portable "Sears type" low fi record players.

Let's agree to disagree on that one. I can actually hear the band on the mono version.

To the contrary, Harrison's Gretch guitar is almost inaudible in the mono mix, but clearly upfront in the right channel of the stereo mix. Bass response is much better on the stereo, despite it being panned hard left. Anyone who compares the two samples will notice this.

Here's the 1987 CD - original 1964 mono mix: http://www.beatledrops.com/SaleM/Party_BFS_87_CD_M.wav

Here's the 2009 CD - original 1964 stereo mix (first time on CD from master tape, 2009): http://www.beatledrops.com/SaleST/Party_Remaster.wav

Edited September 7, 2009 by monkboughtlunch

[Teasing the Korean]

The stereo version has no balls.

Edited September 7, 2009 by Teasing the Korean

[monkboughtlunch]

Here's an example of Dexter's so called "improvements" which he felt warranted him a producer credit on the back of US Lps.

Capitol Dexterized reverb added on the Something New album: (And I Love Her (extra reverb in right channel) http://www.beatledrops.com/HardDaysST/Love...N_ST2018_EC.wav

Original stereo mix by George Martin (And I Love Her) from the 2009 CD remaster of A Hard Day's Night (reverb is only in the phantom center): http://www.beatledrops.com/HardDaysST/Love_Her_Remaster.wav

Edited September 7, 2009 by monkboughtlunch

[ghost of miles]

Been rereading REVOLUTION IN THE HEAD over the holiday weekend and am probably going to pick up several more of these than planned--the local record store is selling them for $9.99 on Wednesday only. Any word on whether or not the "mini-documentaries" for each CD are any good?

[monkboughtlunch]

More about Dexter, from the New York Times:

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/02/books/review/Kirby2-t.html

A key player in the confusion is Dave Dexter Jr., a Capitol Records executive who is described on the book’s first page as someone who “despised” rock ’n’ roll and whose assembling of the album amounted to “butchery.”

The portrait of Dexter doesn’t improve as the story continues: he’s guilty of “genuine stupidity” on one page, an “idiot” on another, “nasty” and “vindictive” on a third. To Marsh, Dexter’s crimes include not only passing on the Beatles at least three separate times — rejecting “Love Me Do,” “Please Please Me” and “She Loves You” as having no singles potential — but then changing his mind, only to dismantle, reassemble and rearrange material off the first two British albums to create inferior American versions, including the subject of this book. Marsh uses the verb “Dexterize” to refer to the unwanted addition of reverb and equalization, which makes high and low frequencies proportional, and adds that “to almost everyone, the British Beatles records sound crisper, the rhythm section has more punch, the guitars ring with much more clarity.” Though what would one expect, Marsh asks, from someone who boasted of releasing albums like “German Beer-Drinking Music” and “Songs for Sunbathing in Switzerland”?

Despite the mishandling, “The Beatles’ Second Album” is a triumph; timeless songs can survive even a ham-fisted producer. And while rock ’n’ roll is about music, Marsh reminds us it’s also about sticking it to a group known collectively as The Man, those dim-witted adults who run the world and know everything except that they’re hopeless squares. In this book, Man, thy name is Dave Dexter Jr.

[Teasing the Korean]

...A key player in the confusion is Dave Dexter Jr., a Capitol Records executive who is described on the book’s first page as someone who “despised” rock ’n’ roll...

A ringing endorsement in my book.

And the writer of that article exemplifies the embarrassingly narrow musical perspective exhibited by Beatles obsessives. I am not interested.

Edited September 7, 2009 by Teasing the Korean

[monkboughtlunch]

Another comparison of Dexter reverb vs the original master tape produced by George Martin. This time, "Things We Said Today":

Dexter Capitol 1964 Lp (added reverb in right channel): http://www.beatledrops.com/HardDaysST/Said...N_ST2018_EC.wav

2009 remaster: Master tape as produced by Martin (slight reverb on in phantom center): http://www.beatledrops.com/HardDaysST/Said...ay_Remaster.wav

[paul secor]

More about Dexter, from the New York Times:

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/02/books/review/Kirby2-t.html

A key player in the confusion is Dave Dexter Jr., a Capitol Records executive who is described on the book’s first page as someone who “despised” rock ’n’ roll and whose assembling of the album amounted to “butchery.”

The portrait of Dexter doesn’t improve as the story continues: he’s guilty of “genuine stupidity” on one page, an “idiot” on another, “nasty” and “vindictive” on a third. To Marsh, Dexter’s crimes include not only passing on the Beatles at least three separate times — rejecting “Love Me Do,” “Please Please Me” and “She Loves You” as having no singles potential — but then changing his mind, only to dismantle, reassemble and rearrange material off the first two British albums to create inferior American versions, including the subject of this book. Marsh uses the verb “Dexterize” to refer to the unwanted addition of reverb and equalization, which makes high and low frequencies proportional, and adds that “to almost everyone, the British Beatles records sound crisper, the rhythm section has more punch, the guitars ring with much more clarity.” Though what would one expect, Marsh asks, from someone who boasted of releasing albums like “German Beer-Drinking Music” and “Songs for Sunbathing in Switzerland”?

Despite the mishandling, “The Beatles’ Second Album” is a triumph; timeless songs can survive even a ham-fisted producer. And while rock ’n’ roll is about music, Marsh reminds us it’s also about sticking it to a group known collectively as The Man, those dim-witted adults who run the world and know everything except that they’re hopeless squares. In this book, Man, thy name is Dave Dexter Jr.

I care nothing about Dave Dexter, but the reviewer does himself no favor by treating Dave Marsh as an authority (on anything). Shill, thy name is Dave Marsh.

[monkboughtlunch]

Here's another one -- from All Music Guide

http://www.answers.com/topic/dave-dexter-j...-artist-60s-70s

It was in this capacity that Dexter became one of the earliest, if not the first American record label executive who got to hear "Love Me Do," the Beatles' debut single, and "Please Please Me," their second single -- and their breakthrough record -- or "From Me to You," their third. And he passed on all of them, as well as "She Loves You," all of which, along with the content of the Please Please Me album, ended up in the hands of other U.S. companies, most notably VeeJay Records and Swan Records. It was a decision that Dexter subsequently became extremely defensive about, especially as Capitol became desperate for more Beatles material and found themselves legally blocked from more than a dozen of their 1962-1963 sides. But the real controversy about Dexter's career came in 1964, after Dexter -- being overruled, according to some accounts, by Capitol president Alan Livingston, who ordered the label to issue the group's newest single, "I Want to Hold Your Hand" -- was put in charge of preparing the Beatles' U.K. releases for the U.S. market.

That someone had to do this at all may puzzle those who don't know the circumstances. The basic problem was that the U.K. and U.S. markets were completely different -- in England, the recording industry generally didn't mix single tracks with LP tracks on the same platter, with the result that an artist's hits were usually reserved for "greatest-hit" and "best-of" compilations, while albums consisted of material specifically recorded (or, at least, intended) for that format. In America, by contrast, the business generally tried to place singles on albums as a way of boosting sales of the latter. (The one exception had been Elvis Presley, whose early RCA Victor releases separated the single and album tracks -- but Elvis was in a class by himself, in terms of sales and popularity; as a reflection of which, by the time the Beatles broke in the U.S., even with an 18-month interruption for military service, Elvis was already on his third greatest-hits collection). Additionally, the structure of recording royalties in America and Europe were different, with U.S. releases intended for a standard 12-song LP, whilst Europe was built on a 14-song standard.

Dexter might have initially blown Capitol's claim on the Beatles, and might not have liked their music, but he seemed determined to do his best in sculpting their albums for the U.S. market. His first effort, Meet the Beatles, was good enough, a slightly reconfigured version of With the Beatles that didn't require a lot of thought or changes. And his second effort, The Beatles Second Album, assembled from singles, B-sides, and EP sides, plus a few leftover tracks from With the Beatles, was not only successful in its own time, but has been hailed across the decades as the single finest non-hit compilation long-player ever issued of the band's music. And the albums that followed in that first 18 months of frenetic sales were all, at least based on their song content -- and the resulting sales -- good enough, given the constraints under which Capitol and Dexter were operating. (Of course, on the other side of the ledger, Dexter was working with songs being generated by the Beatles when the group was in its prime -- only a complete fool could have screwed it up, no matter what they did with it).

But then, as the group's music became more complex and the nature of their releases changed to encompass such categories as soundtracks (Capitol didn't have the Hard Day's Night soundtrack, but it did have the Help! soundtrack), Dexter's judgment seemed to fail him. The U.S. Help! album marked the nadir of his work revising the Beatles output for the United States, a miserable agglomeration of new songs and background music that offended fans and the group itself, even as it sold in the millions. The record was enough of a problem for Capitol and the Beatles, that a new process for adapting their work for the U.S. was worked out and put into place starting in 1966.

Following the U.S. release of Rubber Soul, Capitol removed Dexter from the task of working with the Beatles' music -- he'd been on the job for a little over two years, and had blown it, probably over the Help! album more than anything else. There would be occasional U.S.-only and U.S.-revised Beatles albums -- the Magical Mystery Tour album was the most prominent example of this -- in the years that followed, but these would be done on a wholly different level from Dexter's work. Additionally, aside from the Help! album deficiencies as a U.S. release, the biggest criticism of Dexter's work derived from his constant remastering of the original British recordings -- his sculpting of the Beatles' albums had some basis in raw economics and practicality, but his re-sculpting of the sound of the actual songs seems to have been an active, aesthetic choice that he later had to defend many times. Dexter and other executives at Capitol apparently believed that American listeners preferred their rock & roll music drenched in reverb, and added layers of it to many of the group's recordings when they hit these shores. It made the British originals, when they started coming over as direct imports, all the more impressive to U.S. ears. The one defense of Dexter is that neither he (nor anyone else) could ever have envisioned that listeners would ever be evaluating every nuance of the Beatles history, either then or four decades later, or putting their work (and, by extension, his) under a microscope.

Dexter was let go from Capitol in 1974, after 30 years with the company, and eventually wrote a book about his experiences in the business, entitled Playback. It was received negatively, as a self-serving, ill-tempered piece of personal payback against everyone whom he felt had slighted or wronged him across his career, and people he simply didn't like personally. It fit with his own status within the business -- he was, by then, perceived as little more than an unhappy sore loser in the generational "culture wars" of the 1950s and 1960s, who had blown his one major opportunity to contribute to American popular culture, between his own prejudices and short-sightedness. He passed away in 1990. ~ Bruce Eder, All Music Guide

[Teasing the Korean]

We're very impressed by your ability to do internet searches. Let us know when you learn how to use the Dewey Decimal System.

[WorldB3]

Btw, friend of mine who runs a record store tells me EMI severely underpressed the mono box--10,000 copies, and the demand is for far more...from what he says, EMI will end up with millions of dollars in lost profits from the low run.

EDIT: apparently it's already sold out at Amazon US and Amazon Canada, but still available through Amazon UK.

I have no clue on how this will effect the people that pre-ordered on Amazon or the long term effets on EMI since they will put out another batch of the Mono Box later in October to meet the demand from what I was told.

To give you some real numbers on how it will effect local merchants short term I asked my local mom and pop vinyl store about this today and he said he ordered 4 Mono Boxes for people that pre-ordered through him and he is only getting 1. He called his contacts at Amoeba SF (the biggest independent record store in San Francisco) to see if they could help him out and they laughed and said they ordered 150 Mono Boxes for Wednesday and are only getting 10 from the distributors.

On Ameba's web site their is no option to pre order the Mono or Stereo Box.

Again this all may just increase demand later in the year but in the short term it looks like some people are losing money.

Edited September 8, 2009 by WorldB3

[monkboughtlunch]

We're very impressed by your ability to do internet searches. Let us know when you learn how to use the Dewey Decimal System.

Here's an audio interview with Dave Dexter Jr:

http://groups.google.com/group/rec.music.b...9bd98647083c10b

Edited September 8, 2009 by monkboughtlunch

[Big Beat Steve]

So it's Beatlemania all over again ...

This is a truly funny thread, even to a relatively casual Beatles listener such as me, and particularly for European readers where the Capitol pressings (except among 200% Beatles diehard collectors) figure nowhere and are considered oddball footnotes at best.

I remember in my younger collecting days there was at least one among my rock music collecting friends who had those Capitol pressings (due to U.S. family connections), and while listening to those pressings, the reverb or other changes in fidelity were never given any consideration, the George Martin muzak stuff on one half of the HELP album was considered a curiosity at best, and the missing tracks on some US releases made us think that the original buyers of these were shortchanged for their money.

So why not let those Capitol masterings lie in peace as long as there seems to be recent remasterings for everybody's taste? Isn't it enough that so many jazz releases are dissected to death for minute sonic differences that in the end are primarily a matter of personal taste?

But did I get this right? An ENTIRE book being written about the "Second Album"? Oh my ... So books on single albums such as KOB do need bookshelf companions? Or is a book with a likely working title of "Trashing Dave Dexter While Listening to the Beatles' Second Album" (as somebody else said somewhere else on the net) really that very fascinating? Seeing all the recent huge, huge Beatle anthologies put into print, music writers really leave no stone unturned in search for one more aspect to cover.

Ah well, I guess if I want to get a deep, deep look at overlooked aspects of the Beatles' career I guess I'll go back to the "Silver Beatles" by Marco Crescenzi.

[JETman]

We're very impressed by your ability to do internet searches. Let us know when you learn how to use the Dewey Decimal System.

Ok, we get it! You don't like the Beatles or Rock 'n Roll. Fine, now go listen to some Sinatra.

[clifford_thornton]

LC classification is really what you need to know at this point.

ML421 B4...

[jazzbo]

Interesting information about EMI's projected revenue and their "drop in the bucket" impact:

The album sales will do little to clear debt at Terra Firma Capital Partners Ltd., the owner of EMI Group Plc -- the record label with rights to the music. The London-based buyout firm owned by Guy Hands, which bought London-based EMI in August 2007 for 2.4 billion pounds, has written off half its investment and injected 28 million pounds to prevent a breach of debt covenants.

“The scale of problems at EMI are so significant that the Beatles release is not going to make a material impact,” said Claire Enders, chief executive officer of London-based media researcher Enders Analysis Ltd. “It cannot budge the needle that much given the billions of pounds of debt it’s carrying.”

The Beatles’ releases could increase EMI’s revenue by 5 percent to 10 percent and help retailers ahead of the Christmas season, Enders said. The Beatles have sold more than 1 billion albums worldwide, according to EMI, whose 2008 sales totaled 1.07 billion pounds.

“It’s a good thing for EMI just to keep chugging away and exploiting its catalogue,” Enders said. “The recycling of the Beatles is something that occurs on a regular basis and this is a big play on the nostalgia market.”

From: http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=206...id=aIT1HEXKk9qc

[felser]

So it's Beatlemania all over again ...

This is a truly funny thread, even to a relatively casual Beatles listener such as me, and particularly for European readers where the Capitol pressings (except among 200% Beatles diehard collectors) figure nowhere and are considered oddball footnotes at best.

I remember in my younger collecting days there was at least one among my rock music collecting friends who had those Capitol pressings (due to U.S. family connections), and while listening to those pressings, the reverb or other changes in fidelity were never given any consideration, the George Martin muzak stuff on one half of the HELP album was considered a curiosity at best, and the missing tracks on some US releases made us think that the original buyers of these were shortchanged for their money.

So why not let those Capitol masterings lie in peace as long as there seems to be recent remasterings for everybody's taste? Isn't it enough that so many jazz releases are dissected to death for minute sonic differences that in the end are primarily a matter of personal taste?

But did I get this right? An ENTIRE book being written about the "Second Album"? Oh my ... So books on single albums such as KOB do need bookshelf companions? Or is a book with a likely working title of "Trashing Dave Dexter While Listening to the Beatles' Second Album" (as somebody else said somewhere else on the net) really that very fascinating? Seeing all the recent huge, huge Beatle anthologies put into print, music writers really leave no stone unturned in search for one more aspect to cover.

Ah well, I guess if I want to get a deep, deep look at overlooked aspects of the Beatles' career I guess I'll go back to the "Silver Beatles" by Marco Crescenzi.

Perfectly rational thoughts, but for some of us, those early US Beatles albums were literally life-changing experiences, and it's an emotional response we have to them being reissued as opposed to a rational one.

Edited September 8, 2009 by felser

[Teasing the Korean]

We're very impressed by your ability to do internet searches. Let us know when you learn how to use the Dewey Decimal System.

Ok, we get it! You don't like the Beatles or Rock 'n Roll. Fine, now go listen to some Sinatra.

If you post or lurk in the "What Vinyl Are You Spinning" sub-forum, you will note that just yesterday I played my beloved mono copy of "Triangle" by the Beau Brummels on WB.

I like the Beatles and rock music just fine. I also like what came before and after them. I simply objected to what I see as a two-dimensional, cartoonish image of Dave Dexter that has been perpetuated by Beatles obsessives, that's all. We don't all agree on everything here. That would be boring.

[medjuck]

Didn't Dexter have a jazz connection? He signed Stan Kenton and I seem to remember some writing about jazz.

[Teasing the Korean]

Didn't Dexter have a jazz connection? He signed Stan Kenton and I seem to remember some writing about jazz.

http://www.organissimo.org/forum/index.php...st&p=951444

[Aggie87]

One of the local Walmarts has them out early. Picked up Abbey Road and Let It Be this afternoon. Gonna see if I can stumble onto a Mono Box somewhere and get the rest in one fell swoop.

[kinuta]

Just dropped in at my local dvd-cd rental shop and the stereo remasters are already on the shelf !

The shop chap said they don't plan to rent the monos but I'll get those from a friend.

[David Ayers]

Well I am waiting on a box, but I saw the individual digipac issues in the supermarket this morning. If you like digipacs you might be in for a treat, but I don't and didn't like the packaging much. These are double gatefolds, with original cover art and additional photopgraphs. There is a leaflet inserted in the front cover, the inside gatefold has a large D-shaped cutaway to aid handling (?). It would be dumb to be put off by the packaging; I am hoping the box is better.

[king ubu]

(...)

With the exception of "Abbey Road" and "Let It Be," every single Beatles album, from "Please, Please Me" through the "White Album" was released in both mono and stereo mixes. There are subtle differences between the two mixes, and generally the mono mixes are considered the more "authentic" because those are the mixes the Beatles and George Martin worked on. The stereo mixes were generally left to engineers who knocked them off in less time (stereo still being considered something of a novelty at the time).

(...)

The new reissues are far simpler:

The individual CDs coming out on Wednesday are all in stereo, including the first four albums originally issued on CD in mono. There is also a stereo box set, which offers the same CDs sold individually, plus a couple of bonus discs containing documentaries. Then there is the limited edition mono box, which will contain every album in mono except the last two albums and the tracks on "Past Masters" that were never issued in mono.

(...)

To clarify, here's a list of what's included in the mono box:

Please, Please Me

With the Beatles

A Hard Day's Night

Beatles for Sale

Help! (CD also includes original 1965 stereo mix)

Rubber Soul (CD also includes original 1965 stereo mix)

Revolver

Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band

Magical Mystery Tour

The Beatles (aka The White Album)

Mono Masters (features all of the mono tracks that appeared on singles and EPs or that never made it onto the albums)

So in short: with the mono box on its way, to complete the Beatles collection, I'd need the stereo single disc reissues of "Abbey Road", "Let It Be" and "Past Masters"?

Is that correct? Still trying to figure things out... the box should be on the way by now, but I bet customs will hold it up, I don't count on having it before two weeks from now, but I'm no hurry whatsoever... will play all The Byrds albums I just got until then, and the Velvet Underground box set and the cheapo "Original Albums" by Patti Smith (and some of ye olde jazz in between, too).

[Clunky]

I succumbed to the Mono box , which should arrive today ( according to amazon). I do feel as if I've been robbed but given, how much play I have had out of the Beatles LPs and CD I have already, the cost is just and only just justifiable.

Edited September 9, 2009 by Clunky