I have had it up to here waiting for the Beatles catalogue to be remastered

xpost

i mean it does take the piss doesn't it?

lo-lo-lo-looooots of piss, sir! :(

I bought Help for £1 in a charity shop the other week. It was cheap because the cover was ripped (and taped up again) and the vinyl's a bit crackly, but it's not scratched at all. Even with the crackles it sounds great - a lot better than the CD versions, The Night Before especially gaining an awful lot of character and energy. I too am amazed there's no proper CD remaster, I guess because people are still buying the current shonky versions.

This footage
http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=compleat+beatles
of 'The Compleat Beatles' (snappy 1984 cheaply-made proto-ANTHOLOGY movie, shot on film and narrated by Malcolm Mcdowell) is
making me anticipate this happening all the more.

It will happen before or since, but apparently at still takes time.

I expected they'd at least do "Sgt. Pepper" in June this year to coincide with its 40th anniversary, but they did't.

But at least, with the current trend for remasters, the ultimate edition will be better. I hope they will do like The Bee Gees and Monkees remasters, and put out 2CDs with the stereo version + bonus tracks in stereo on one and the mono version + bonus tracks in mono on the other one.

they never do anything right with the beatles catalogue, they're sure to disappoint someone. i say live with the ebbett's bootlegs for now.

Maybe something with the Apple/iPod stuff later today.

that's been the rumour, but it was the rumour a few months ago also. anyway, it's been confirmed that the albums have been remastered (by bruce spizer, in some interview last month), but not packaged or manufactured yet, and no confirmation on whether they'll have a mono/stereo split or what, or when they're ever going to come out.

macca and ringo 'secret gig' rumoured
volume one of lewisohn triple-volume biog coming at xmas

its hotting up again on the fabs front. a bit.

macca and ringo 'secret gig' rumoured

At long last their tribute show to the White Stripes.

At long last their tribute show to the White Stripes godheadSilo.

Beatles Remasters

I posted that link before realizing that it is kind of a goldmine.

Damn, wish I had a bigger hard drive...

(no penis jokes plz)

if pressed for time, go for white album disc 5 - kinfauns demos

then rubber soul through magical mystery tour, mono versions

Are the demos the same as the ones that show up on the Anthology, or are these different? And how do they compare in quality?

makes me wish i had decent external speakers for my laptop. my beatles records are not very "nice" copies. all US pressings, mostly stereo. they do sound great in mono though.

mono mixes = the mixes, up until the white album

xpost same ones, but complete & good quality. it's them camped at home with a 4 track, learning the songs as they track them but having fun, sounding much more like a band than the album

http://www.bootlegzone.com/album.php?name=vigo_183§ion=1

i really wish that circus mashup album didn't suck so bad.

has anyone ever noticed that the ebbetts bootlegs sound like crap on headphones?. especially yellow submarine and magical mystery tour.

the stereo of those albums (some of them) is very wide so that's why; ebbetts did cd versions of almost everything though, including weird shit like canadian stereo versions, etc, which differ slightly. I think the regular cd stereo versionns of MMT and Pepper are alright (and really don't have any serious problems with white album or abbey road either; I think abbey road is a pretty glorious sounding cd). the early records are a mixed bag; these days I prefer the capitol box versions (anyway I grew up with the US versions of the albums, so it's kind of nice to return to the admittedly fucked up tracklistings...though I do think 'the second album' is pretty awesome).
anyway yeah the purple chick stuff is pretty exciting, it seems to have just popped up in the past few months? or at least that's where I heard about it. and being distributed completely free so no evil bootleggers making money. it makes official remasters kind of irrelevant.
today i listened to all the 'sessions' mixes of tracks off the anthology,critically and without the 'oh wow new beatles songs' luster...these really do sound like shit, emerick should be embarrassed.

but also yeah, i'm pretty much ready to sell all my parlophone beatles cds once I can get ahold of all the purple chick stuff; i usually only listen to digital files anyway, and I have a blue box vinyl set, so there's no need to keep the crappy pressings with bad artwork.

also, while I agree that the mono pepper is interesting, i really disagree that it's the better of the mixes. I think the novelty of it is kind of cool but there are bits and pieces that just sound sloppy. I know it's allegedly the mix they approved and they apparently didn't have much to do with the stereo version, but maybe that just shows the beatles were the best people to mix their material

the purple chick version of the white album is really really amazing. i'm working on just downloading the albums (no bonus tracks) and converting them to mp3, for my ipod. the only problem is that some of the tracks are switched around. like...penny lane is on the purple chick version of sgt pepper's. it's kinda confusing when dealing with torrents.

The Purple Chick stuff is impressive though really it's just collating already available stuff in one place. It does that very very well though and as well as the main albums they've also done releases of Hollywood Bowl, The Songs The Beatles Gave Away, the fan club records, the Star Club tapes, the BBC sessions and the 92CD complete Get Back rehearsals (also check out their 10CD complete Buddy Holly and S&G's alternate Bookends)

The mono and stereo versions of the albums on the Purple Chick sets are just the UK Ebbetts versions. There is a version of the white album released by Darthdisc (? - i think) which is from a 'direct metal master' that may even be better.

The mono Pepper is sloppy in places but certainly Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds sounds better (more phasing).

Has anyone else heard the multitracks of A Day In The Life, With A Little Help From My Friends, Sgt Pepper and She's Leaving Home that were released as an addendum to the PC Sgt Pepper? Incredible to hear.

itll sound shit remastered. cant you just enjoy the originals?

you mean the 1st pressing UK vinyl? sure, we can all enjoy those.

well, I can, anyroad.

no way are these the same as the ebbet's version. especially not mmt.

Found this bootleg stereo remaster of what's probably my favorite Beatles album. It blows the original CD version out of the water and I think it's more impressive than any of the purple chick stuff.
http://octaner.blogspot.com/2008/05/beatles-for-sale-fabulous-sound-lab.html

Here's a mono version for you old-schoolers. Didn't download it, though, so I can't vouch for it.
http://6plus3.wordpress.com/2008/03/26/beatles-for-sale-dr-ebbetts-red-wax-mono/

Creeztophair, there are multiple Ebbett versions of each album: UK, US, Mono, Stereo, strange pressings from other territories. He's pretty much transferred them all so it depends what Ebbett version of MMT you've heard.

I have the PC Magical Mystery Years sleevenotes in front of me now and the stereo MMT tracks are taken from the Ebbett German MMT except for I Am The Walrus which is from the Ebbett UK EP Collection. The mono tracks are all from the Ebbett EP Collection.

I think this is the only one of the PC releases that doesn't take the main album tracks from the Ebbett transfer of the UK releases. IIRC this is because the German MMT vinyl release was in true stereo whereas the US LP was not.

these PURPLE CHICK people should be knighted.

Okay here we go then.

MOJO (who else?) exclusively reports this month that the original albums have been remastered and will hopefully be coming out in 2009, in a full on splurge of mono and stereo 2 disc versions, with fancy hardback book style packaging. Sorry but as a huuuuge Beatles fan since a kid this may well be the first time i queue up outside a record shop the morning it opens.

The piece in the mag says
"For today's playback, stereo remastering engineer Guy Massey has synchronised the remasters with the original 1987 CD masters, allowing us to flip between the two. It's like we've been hearing them under glass all these years..."

Woop Woop!

It will be interesting to see if these sound as good as the bootlegs.

Looks like Apple may have more to say about it tomorrow. No 5.1 mixes — guess we'll be buying those down the road.
http://www.musicradar.com/news/guitars/apple-to-confirm-beatles-itunes-deal-and-new-ipods-on-tuesday-172271

that was last tuesday right? and there was no fabs news i don't think.

Yup, my bad.

something is allegedly going to be in rolling stone in the next few weeks, and apple should be offically announcing in the next week as well, from what I read elsewhere.

Hopefully they'll take a leaf out of Radiohead's short-lead-time example, and pump them out in two weeks time.

i think the rumored plan was to do the white album first to coincide with the 40th anniversary, then roll out the others. but it was just a rumor so no idea if that's what'll happen.

Has anyone else heard the multitracks of A Day In The Life, With A Little Help From My Friends, Sgt Pepper and She's Leaving Home that were released as an addendum to the PC Sgt Pepper? Incredible to hear.

― cheasyweasel, Tuesday, May 6, 2008 9:07 AM (4 months ago) Bookmark Suggest

Man, this shit is thrilling, I could not believe my ears when I found out about it. I haven't gotten any of the other masters that have come out recently (Nirvana & Queen are very appealing tho...). The most amazing part was having the affirmation that Sgt. Pepper was recorded on 4 tracks. You listen to these and say, wow, crap, I guess they must have bumped down/premixed a TON of stuff. If you have experience with home recording on 4-tracks you realize just how much care went into making sure these mixes were as tight as they were. Such a cool thing to have..

Any decent new bootlegs surface lately? I've been out of the loop for a while. I don't care about the remasters cos it sounds to me like nothing new will come out just the whole 'alternate mixes' scheme. Which is one of the reasons I stopped paying attention to bootlegs in the first place. I dont care about alternate mixes give me Carnival of Light or the Beatles jamming on one chord stoned for half an hour! Anything but "Oh, this is the german stereo 1984 remix". Ugh....

I think those multitracks are the only "new" things to appear. The Purple Chick series is widely available though via torrent sites, they are very very very comprehensive .flac files of the best sources of both mono and stereo versions of each album and assorted outtakes studio sessions...nothing that wasn't already around on past masters or ultra rare trax, but everything has been compiled together with the best sources for once. but it took me like, days to get all the white album stuff, and I've not even been able to listen to it.

I've not been able to listen to *any* of it... yet.

Oh, but by the way, I have that german stereo 1964 LP, and was dead pleased to get the CD 'facsimile' when it came out: We were living in Germany at the time...

Had some pretty cool early Beatle figures in it to though like Bill Harry, Allan Williams, Aunt Mimi and some Hamburg characters.

Dumbfounded by the quality of this after seeing only one episode. Correct aspect ratios, great sound and grainy footage. Reddit and Steve Hoffman types are up in arms about the excess of Ai but i hadn't noticed it too much. Each episode has been trimmed and spruced which i don't mind at all, as the DVD set was always just that bit too glacial. I was brought up sharp even in the first few minutes by the poignant added shots of Derek, Neil and Mal in the In My Life section, because of course they were all still alive when the series was first shown.

I'm only through episode 4; while just 4 years ago my family eagerly sat through the entirety of Get Back with me, interest now was more subdued leaving me to get through this on my own. I'm certainly familiar with the source material, having taped the episodes off TV, then purchased the VHS and DVD sets, and even now still have digital versions of the DVD set. There are differences here of course but on the whole I think this is an improvement, each episode seems tighter and now with the internet, finding full performances in all kinds of different quality is easy enough that they don't really need to include all of them every time here. The only times the AI has looked crappy is when applied to the really old Super 8 films, but I'm not sure it looks more crappy than the original footage, just crappy in a different way. You're not meant to look at a moving image frame-by-frame anyway, so pulling out a single frame showing that Ai interpolated a face in a strange way is kind of missing the point.

I saw the first 4 of these in a rented home with an great soundsystem and the whole thing sounds amazing.

I quite enjoyed the Anthology 4 CD set? Wasn't familiar with a lot of the tracks that were previously on box sets and whatnot, so I guess for me it works as a repository. The tracks themselves are enjoyable and didn't feel like barrel scraping or anything.

I found Compleat Beatles doc on youtube & watched that today — some good interviews but I wouldnt say there’s much contrary info or negative portrayals in it - it’s just a little bland without the actual Beatles themselves in it, and kinda drab? I can see why they’d prefer a more comprehensive version.

Plus a lot of similar footage so maybe they bought it to get some of that too idk

can’t believe you found the unfindable documentary!

yeah I watched it on archive and it’s good, and less hagiographic and not even even-handed, but the malcolm mcdowell narration gives it a weird sheen if you know him at all. it does get at the “come on guys, what are you doing?” bit that happened after brian epstein died, without making it personalized as a loss

magical mystery tour, what are we doing here

idk mcdowell sounded bored as hell on the narration lol

well he’s talking about the beatles in the early 80s throw him a line

lmao

can we talk as a group about how funny the Penny Lane promo video is and rank their horseriding skills