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

Does anyone know if the remasters are now standard for radio play? I've heard a good bit of Beatles on the air over the weekend, in particular one station playing the entirety of Abbey Road, and they sounded really good (and had many previously mono-in-US tracks in stereo).

I'd guess most radio DJs are all over this. It's not exactly going to be "under their radar".

I too have heard some massive-sounding Beatles tracks on the radio of late.

I remember radio started playing the CD versions of the old albums as soon as they appeared (mid-to-late 80s), so I am sure they have done this time around too. Mainly the stereo versions as they are the most "mainstream" ones these days.

radio changes the sound of things so much it's not really fair to judge them based on that.

I spent a 2 hour coach journey to the airport yesterday listening to mono-masters.

the first 5 tracks off disc 2 puts the album in the top 5% of all music.

McCartney's bass in rain possibly does that all by itself.

not going near Sgt. Pepper till Ive digested the other albums more thoroughly.

currently Hard Days Night is my toppermost of the poppermost.

Playing the monos through the stereo even more enjoyable than headphones too, btw. The whole box may be the best Christmas present ever. Cannot stop listening!!!

Playing mono records on stereos with two speakers is just false.

;)

Lol! I toyed with the idea of ripping out all the speakers except the center channel but Mr Veg got mad... goddamn futurists.

I think you should really cut off one of your ears.

Quite right! New Year's resolution: ear augmentation surgery, one ear in the middle of my forehead, both canals blocked and diverted into one main canal. All mono, all the time.

You, Van Gogh, and Brian Wilson. Elite company you keep!

simply move the two speakers together = mono.

Really? Wow.

"Fold-down" mono for the lose.

Prezactly.

hey dudes, what's up i got the stereo box for my birthday! who wants to talk about THE BEATLES.

i'm listening to Yellow Submarine right now! I've never owned it before. Harrison's peak?

The stereo Submarine sounds SO GOOD.

You're a lucky man to get such a cool present.

i kinda like the george martin sdtk bits here -- a friend from way back in college had this old car w/ an 8-track player and one of the few cartridges she had was Yellow Submarine. So listening to these orchestral things is making me think of driving around the Hudson Valley late at night.

she also had a tom jones live album which was pretty intense.

yo tyler my wife is from Hudson!

I am glad the mono boxes are available again even though I can't afford one.

you can't afford not to buy a mono box.

http://www.mikemake.com/#72772/Charting-the-Beatles

http://www.mikemake.com/media/72772/Keys2.3-web-detail2.gif

a thousand times yes....

Beatles fans are CRAZY (those charts!).
I've got rips of the mono box from a friend ... but I'm not sayin' that somewhere down the line I wouldn't buy the mono box were i to become flush with cash. (and sleeve, i went to lol v@ssar so that area is near and dear!)

listening to SGT. PEPPER right now! What a good album! Weird that I now notice the radical differences in tape speed on "She's Leaving Home"! Weird!

Beatles MONO Box Vinyl In Production

A high quality vinyl edition of The Beatles Mono box, a surprise hit for EMI on CD, is in pre-production at Abbey Road, a well-placed source told musicangle.com today. The records are being cut from the analogue master tapes, we've been told. A stereo set is also planned but that may be generated from the 192K/24 bit files in order to keep the reissues consistent among the formats. There is also a 24 bit 44.1K USB stick-based edition enclosed within a green metal apple. That one sound better than the 16 bit CD edition as you may well imagine. Stay tuned for further developments!

http://www.musicangle.com/shownews.php?id=160

Fuck, Can you imagine how much they are gonna charge for vinyl versions in Mono?

they are going to charge a lot.
in other news, i watched those mini-documentaries last week finally. a waste of time!

kinda glad i waited now.

kinda wish I waited now.

Darn it -- now they're saying the mono vinyl will be digitally sourced.

Though we were originally told the records would be cut from the analog masters, it appears they will be digitally sourced and from what resolution we haven't yet been able to ascertain. A stereo set is also planned as well as individual stereo album breakouts.

http://www.musicangle.com/shownews.php?id=160

Got a copy of Jonathan Gould's 'Can't Buy Me Love' for my birthday. It's as good as I was led to believe it would be, am gobbling up every little detail. The contextual 'sidetrips' are pretty interesting and take it out of the 'then John did something weird and Paul said something naive and George grumbled and Ringo played the drums etc'. His explanation of the Beatlemania-screaming-girl phenomenon was so much more satisfying than the standard 'lol sex' explanations.

His descriptions of the album tracks were like little earworms in my head, I've madly scrambled back to the remasters again, sad crack addict that I am.

Loved this descritpion of "Love Me Do":
Paul's cool delivery of the coy lyric ("So please...love me do") combined with John's raucous harmonica to make the track sound like a collaboration between Noel Coward and Sonny Boy Williamson.

Haven't read the book; but I have to say that, absent Gould's naming any authoritative source, I don't believe for a second his assertion that "And Your Bird Can Sing" is about Sinatra.

Old Blue Eyes was famous for owing a green bird - a parakeet, if I recall correctly. QED.

white album remaster $16 on amazon.ca

free at the google

maybe not anymore tho'

thought this revive would actually be about the news that the mccartney catalogue is being remastered and re-released on concord sometime this year. also, three giant collections of mccartney outtakes leaked this week on the internet, but they are pretty underwhelming.

thought this revive would actually be about the news that the mccartney catalogue is being remastered and re-released on concord sometime this year. also, three giant collections of mccartney outtakes leaked this week on the internet, but they are pretty underwhelming.

Edited for clarity.

Could be said about any of their solo catalogs, to be honest.

solo Beatles get a bad rap imho tho all are inconsistent

Really don't need more than a greatest hits for any of them.

eh I disagree but I've become something of a completist recently, mostly because there were so many things I discovered that I loved that weren't on any greatest hits comps (Lennon's "Crippled Inside", or Harrison's "Don't Let Me Wait Too Long" or "Cheer Down", to name a few examples)

I have trouble sorting through the dross, unfortunately. I'm sure I'd find some gems, as you have, but I haven't found the inclination to start.

"Crippled Inside" is great.

it's kind of hard to conceive how any of them could have done anything that outshone their Beatles material - the pressure and the expectations crushed all of their solo careers in one way or another, they didn't have any room to maneuver really. While they may have had more or less unlimited financial resources, just assembling decent musicians to work with who weren't going to fuck things up in one way or another must have been a daunting task. Everybody involved must have been second-guessing themselves at every step of the way.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9D9JuiJNizw

always thought this was a remarkably pretty song. tbh it's too bad Spector didn't get his hands on it, not hard to imagine what he would have done with it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M7v0O8M5vKc

really it's no wonder these guys turned to Spector in the wake of the Beatles - he was one of the lone figures in the industry who could be relied upon to understand where they were coming from in terms of fame, money, and isolation and also make consistently great aesthetic decisions

Spector was probably one of the only people around at the time who you could conceivably say didn't NEED the Beatles in any way, career-wise. He was already richer than God, and with a secure legacy.