Alexander

A few tracks are on the first volume of the Beatles "Anthology," mostly made up of rather bizarre covers ("Searchin'", "Young Blood," "The Sheik of Araby"). I was just remarking on this earlier tonight over dinner, how relatively poor the Decca audition was. They really don't seem to be taking the whole thing seriously at all. If I had been the Decca producer overseeing that audition, I probably would have passed on them too. They seem to be striving to be a novelty act. There are a lot of weird little asides (John's "Not 'Arf" interjections in "Araby" and performing strange voices on the other songs. Also, would it have killed Paul to actually LEARN the lyrics to the Coasters' "Searchin'"?).

And there you have it. That's why everyone who can afford it has jumped all over the mono box. The first two albums are only of historical interest to me. HDN, BFS and H are hugely enjoyable but... It's Rubber Soul, Revolver, Sgt P (with reservations), the White Album and Abbey Road + the singles album that are the big atraction for me (I've not heard 'Let It Be' as an album ever!...should be remedied in the next couple of weeks). Mono, stereo, cylinder disc, download...doesn't enter into the equation for these ears. Ah! now here is where tastes differ! Please Please Me to my ears is one of the greatest power pop records of all time, I love it! I always return to PPM when I need a jolt of rock 'n roll. Listening to these box sets has caused me to "rediscover" early Beatles. Those first 5 albums are definitely loaded with charm and great R 'n R for me again. However, this rediscovery does not deter me from the opinion that their later albums are their best musically --- Rubber Soul on up is where it's at for me. I am still kind of befuddled as to why many Beatles fans find Revolver to be their best offering. Can this really be said about an album that has "Yellow Submarine" on it? "Revolver" IS their best album. Yes, it has "Yellow Submarine" (which I think is a perfectly charming track), but it also has "Taxman," "Love You To," "Tomorrow Never Knows," "She Said, She Said," "I'm Only Sleeping," "Doctor Robert," "Eleanor Rigby," etc., etc. "Taxman" has to be the best opening track since, well, "I Saw Her Standing There" on "Please Please Me"! (It still amazes me that only three years separate those two albums. And notice that both start with a count-in!)

Great music, though!

Or you could just...get the individual albums. Worked for me...

Paul was considered a good drummer back in the Hamburg days and when the Beatles came back to Liverpool before they blew up and when they didn't have their own gigs Paul would sometimes sit it with other bands and play drums. However when Ringo walked out on the White Album sessions they couldn't wait for him to get back as they felt Ringo was the anchor. I've always heard that a lot the tracks Ringo didn't drum on during the "White Album" sessions were largely due to the fact that the group was working on three or four tracks at a time in different studios, so Ringo wasn't always available. Since Paul could play drums, he just laid down his own drum track while Ringo was off playing on a John or George song. Not that ego might not have been a factor, but I think practical considerations were as much of a factor. Now as to Paul (and sometimes John) playing guitar parts later credited to George, if you've ever heard the outtakes from their first few albums, you know how far behind the others George really was in terms of playing ability. Some of those guitar solos are clam fests. It really sounds like George had to literally compose his solos, because he sure as hell couldn't improvise for shit. So it wouldn't surprise me to learn that there were occasions where Paul or John had to take over and play a solo because George wasn't giving them what they wanted. Not that he didn't improve rapidly. By "Abbey Road" he was every bit an equal to Paul and John as a singer, a songwriter, and as a musician. But when they started, Paul and John were clearly on another plane from George.

My guess is that they were all busy thinking about how Murray was back stage with a two-by-four ready to beat Brian's ass...

No question, Paul and Ringo - as musicians - are the greatest beneficiaries of these remasters. The bass and drums sound superb...

Mistake number three: You probably smoked it on an empty or near empty stomach. The jury is out among my cigar smoking friends on whether it's best to smoke on a full stomach or not. I've heard people swear that you are MORE likely to get sick on a full stomach than an empty one. But yes, it had been a while since I had last eaten...

Smoked my first cigar in almost a year today. It was a nice day, I was feeling mellow, and a good cigar sounded like a good idea. Mistake number one: I chose a brand I wasn't familiar with just because I was in the mood for something different. I picked a BIG mother too. Mistake number two: I smoked it too fast. Result? My lunch is in the toilet... Never got sick from a cigar before. My body is trying to tell me something...

You must live on a much fancier road than I do! I was thinking the same thing. If $8000 is "middle of the road," my system isn't even a cobblestone street. More like a dusty, unpaved, country footpath...to the outhouse...

I have not as of yet. As a kid I had the Hunter Davies book The Beatles which was written before they broke up. I now have: The Complete Beatles Recording Sessions: The Official Story of the Abbey Road by Mark Lewisohn A Hard Day's Write : The Stories Behind Every Beatles Song by Steve Turner Anthology (which should be called Mythology but makes a nice coffee table book) The Beatles: The Biography by Bob Spitz I think the Spitz and Lewisohn are two that offer good insight without a lot of personal interpretation by the authors. Here, There and Everywhere: My Life Recording the Music of the Beatles by Geoff Emerick and Howard Massey looks like a good read that I want to check out. I don't know if it's still in print, but I always loved this book:

It's almost as if they KNEW that people were still going to be obsessing over all of this stuff some forty-odd years later so they made sure to put in lots of little details for us to dwell on... Only two albums (Help and Rubber Soul) are based on the 80s mixes. All of the rest of the reissues are based on the original stereo masters (although I did notice that two tracks on Please Please Me are in mono. This is because the original two track tapes were destroyed before the stereo LP was mixed, so they originally released those two tracks in "fake stereo." The fake stereo has been removed, and those tracks are now the sole mono tracks on an otherwise stereo album).

All of these are on my wish list too. I have a boot of the Petty material. I have a few of the Minneapolis tapes on "The Great White Wonder" and the full Basement Tapes, but I'd love to have official releases of all of them. And I REALLY want some of the "Born Again" shows! I remember how much I HATED those albums when I first heard them. Now I LOVE them. "Slow Train Coming" is one of Dylan's all time best" and "Saved" is pretty damn good too...

I actually like "Self Portrait," although I freely admit that my first reaction was the same as yours when I first heard it waaaay back in the day. I've come to really enjoy it. I love his cover of "The Boxer" where his regular voice duets with his "crooner" voice. LOL!!! You should hear "Dylan," which consists of... outtakes from Self Portrait!! I found it (ahem) on-line not too long ago, just to round out my collection. I was surprised by how much I liked it. I had a cassette copy years ago and I thought it was horrible. Now I see it as a companion to "New Morning"...

I can finally hear the swear word on "Hey Jude"! For years I had heard OF it, but I couldn't make out what was said. Now I can make out "Fuckin' hell." At least that's what sounds like on headphones...

I thought that was all Paul. No? One each, George, John, Paul. Forgetting the order. John is the one with all the distortion. George is using the slide. That's how I identify them. I believe the order is Paul, George, John...

I listened to The White Album last night. Sounds better than it ever has. I heard things, honestly, that I'd never heard before (not on my LP or the old CD). "Long, Long, Long" is one of the greatest beneficiaries of the new version. I'd never realized what a really beautiful composition it was. Up there with George's best. "Revolution 9" revealed some subtleties I'd never noticed before. The little bit of studio chatter (between George Martin and another man) had always been too quiet for me to hear (except for "Can you forgive me?" "Yes."). This time I heard more of the conversation, including a quiet "Bitch" after Martin's "Yes."

Beatles For Sale, mediocre ? No Reply,I'm A Loser, Baby's In Black,Eight Days A Week, I'll Follow The Sun, Every Little Thing are mediocre ? Having grown up on the Capitol albums, I have to say that I prefer "Beatles '65" to "Beatles for Sale" (and I like the US "Rubber Soul" at least as much as I like the UK version).

It's the fucking BEATLES! Best. Group. EVER.

I've mentioned this elsewhere in the thread, but I'll say it again: In 1986, when George Martin was preparing the CD reissues, he found that the UK stereo mixes of "Help" and "Rubber Soul" were substandard (to his ears). He prepared new stereo mixes for the CDs, and these are the mixes used on the new stereo issues of "Help" and "Rubber Soul." Some completists, however, have been clamoring for the original stereo mixes ever since, so to appease this vocal minority, they have included these mixes on the Mono box. I don't feel that I HAVE to hear the original stereo mixes, but I am curious as to whether or not I already have them as part of the Purple Chick remasters...

Here's a question that occurred to me last night. I wonder if anybody here knows the answer: I know that "Help" and "Rubber Soul" both received new stereo mixes in 1986 for the '87 CD release and that the original stereo mixes are to be found on the Mono box set. My question is: Which stereo mixes are to be found on the Purple Chick reissues? Are they the original stereo versions, or the new 1986 George Martin mixes? I A/Bed the new version of "Rubber Soul" with the Purple Chick stereo version and couldn't detect any serious differences. Anybody know?

Picked up the White Album, Past Masters, and Help! at Best Buy this afternoon. I had a five dollar credit from being a Rewards Zone member (which basically means I spend way too much money in there) which I put towards the purchase. So with that and the fact that PM was only $12.99 (not that I'm complaining, but what's up with that? They have a little chart on the Beatles display that gives the sale price of each item. Both The White Album and PM are listed at $16.99. Did somebody screw up, I wonder?) I got all three for $41.01, including tax. Pretty sweet! That means that I have only seven more Beatles albums to get: Please Please Me, With the Beatles, A Hard Day's Night, Beatles for Sale, Magical Mystery Tour, Yellow Submarine, and Let It Be. My plan is to get the first four albums next, and follow that up with the last three on the list (which are, for various reasons, relatively low priority items. Yellow Submarine being the very lowest priority). My daughter is getting all of my 1987 copies (she also has burns of all of the albums that I made for her from the Purple Chick remasters. All of them are in mono up until Yellow Submarine, which means she's pretty much ONLY heard the Beatles in mono). It was because of her that I got Help today, actually. My plan had been to only get the two double disc sets, but Help is her very favorite album (one of her favorite songs on the album, btw, is George's "You Like Me Too Much," which I think is a hoot because I never thought it was that good a song), so I picked up Help as well so she can get my old copy. Everybody wins!

Haven't heard the White Album yet (planning on getting it when I pick up my paycheck this afternoon), but "Abbey Road" sounds AMAZING...

It has often been said that while the Beatles were formed in Liverpool, they were MADE in the clubs of Hamburg. Night after night of gruelingly long sets turned them from a group of amateurs into seasoned pros in a surprisingly short time. Nevertheless, Jim is right. The public face of the Beatles was only a part of a story that goes back to 1957 or 58. To me, the reason the Beatles are so remarkable is not just the amazingly rapid growth, but the fact that for whatever reason (inexperience with this sort of music or this level of success), their corporate overlords didn't bat an eye while the Beatles continued to mess with a winning formula. While it took two or three singles for them to top the charts (which is still amazing), it's important to remember that they pretty much started with a winning formula. Any other record company would have told them, "Stop right there, guys! Don't change a thing! Let's ride this gravy-train until it runs out of steam!" But while the Beatles grew and changed with every release ("Please, Please Me" to "Revolver" was less than THREE YEARS), I've never read anything where EMI tried to intervene and protect their cash cow. Somehow, they TRUSTED the Beatles artistic instincts. And it never steered them wrong. Imagine if the Jonas Brothers told their record company that they wanted to stop touring and spend all their time in the studio making artsy concept albums. I would think that SOMEBODY would try to convince them not to change. I do believe that if they had been signed to Decca and put into the hands of a more "experienced" rock producer, the story of the Beatles would have been very, very different...

Stop wondering and GET IT. Great set.