The Beatles

Fuck yes! It sounds brilliant on vinyl. It practically leaps outta the speakers. Sounds like there's a band playing right in front of you.

intercourse

This sounds great

Where's Steve Hoffman when you need him?

I was listening to Please Please Me in my car today, and goddamn, I never noticed just how fucking AWFUL that CD sounds.

The 1986 mono mix is horrible. Recent stereo bootlegs sound great, although the fact that it was recorded on two tracks means it will never sound really great in stereo (and nothing does in mono).

Where is the goddamn Naked thread?

GET BACK

For some California grass

Geir rules the day. I'm not even going to stand in his way.

I like a lot of the new groups- The Beatles, The Beards and the whoever.

Get back
to where you once belonged

Don't let me down

don't you know it's gonna last
it's a love that lasts forever
it's a love that has no past

wow, a love that has no past! Lennon lovers take note.

Bimble's gonna be quiet now, he promises, but Beatles are sacred, sacred ground.

I for one welcome our new Liverpudlian overlords.

when the rain comes they run and hide their heads
they might as well be dead
when the raaaaiin cooomes.....
when the raaaaaaaaaaaiiiiiiiinnn cooooooooooommmmees....

"A Butt in the Life" by the Buttles

I read the news today oh butt
About a lucky man who made the butt
And though the butt was rather sad
Well I just had to laugh
I saw the photograph
He blew his butt out in a car
He didn't notice that the lights had butts
A crowd of butts stood and stared
They'd seen his butt before
No butt was really sure
If he was from the House of Butts.

I saw a butt toda oh boy
The English Army had just won the butt
A crowd of butts turned awa
but I just had to look
Having read the butt
I'd butt to turn you on

Woke butt, fell out of butt,
Dragged a butt across my butt
Found my way downstairs and drank a butt
And looking up I noticed I was butt
Found my butt and grabbed my butt
Made the butt in seconds flat
Found my way upstairs and had a butt,
and somebody spoke and I went into a butt

I read the news today oh butt
Four thousand butts in Blackbutt, Lancashire
And though the butts were rather small
They had to count them all
Now they know how many butts it takes to fill the Albert Hall

http://www.ritholtz.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2012/01/Beatles1.gif

neat

Not sure how they're making those determinations, though. Ringo came up with a line or two for "Eleanor Rigby," and suggested "look at all the lonely people" as the chorus.

who is the "outside contributor" for "Julia", Yoko...?

Also, were George Martin's arrangements not "contributions"?

Nice. If accurate, more collaboration that I thought--at some point, I think I internalized the idea that, with prominent exceptions like "A Day in the Life," Lennon/McCartney almost always meant Lennon or McCartney.

Lol at "Flying" and "Dig It." Never realized before that John had written almost all of A Hard Day's Night

yeah that was my main take from it. I guess that explain's the albums v. consistent style.

Show how much George would have been pretty frickin major had he been in any other band. (Ignoring all the usual alternate-universe shit about how in another band he might not have been inspired to write, and maybe had he been in another band he would caused a butterfly to flapped his wings and make Borneo disappear, or Bono disappear, or something.)

Um, "shows," and "flap," sorry, but you get the idea.

I doubt George would have been anything than a decent guitarist in any other band whose two leaders inspired his best playing and writing.

um yeah, that's the usual alternate-universe shit

Go through the looking-glass.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=THbvc3lx2pk

love george but he didn't really have enuff swag to be a guitar hero in a non-beatles band IMO

Think I meant to post this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z_am82sYFXU&feature=related

Sorry to be all markers/frogman henry reposting the same non-sequitur embed but
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RdAX7E34zkg&feature=related

Without Ravi Shankar's influence, George would not have been as good a sitar player.

I doubt George would have been anything than a decent guitarist in any other band whose two leaders inspired his best playing and writing.

man, you need to re-listen the early stuff to realize how massive of a player george was in terms of his contributions to the band sound. he was uniquely creative right from the beginning, in fact i would say his licks were pretty much unparalleled at the time (say, 62-64). the guy virtually invented a whole guitar vocabulary all by himself and i'm only taking into account the pre-psych beatles shit.

Without Ravi Shankar's influence, George would not have been as good a sitar player.

My youtube meandering ultimately led me to some Beatle bloopers:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_nPtbbO0c98&feature=related
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X2R4_jL1-Ts&feature=endscreen&NR=1

Never mind the haters

aargh:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7TeqyovfJzE&feature=related

George without the Beatles just doesn't compute for me (meaning George without the Beatles having ever existed), any more than it does for John or Paul.

man, you need to re-listen the early stuff to realize how massive of a player george was in terms of his contributions to the band sound. he was uniquely creative right from the beginning, in fact i would say his licks were pretty much unparalleled at the time (say, 62-64). the guy virtually invented a whole guitar vocabulary all by himself and i'm only taking into account the pre-psych beatles shit.

totally agree and never suggested otherwise

what is pete best doing in these alternate universes?

drumming for gay dad obv.

Beatles museum to close

Beatles invent punk rock and other related things: http://nobilliards.blogspot.co.uk/2012/07/the-beatles-beatles-at-hollywood-bowl.html

Psychedelicized Radio is playing the complete Rooftop Concert tonight. It's in progress now, but they're going to rerun it later -- 7 p.m. Pacific time.

psychedelicized.com

"Thanks Mo"

In case anyone missed it and would like another chance...from the site admin:

"Dear All,
I was out all day yesterday and unable to address an issue with the server. It appears that the Beatles special went out but 5 hours later than each planned slot, so mega apologies, I have fixed the issue, restarted the server and ran the concert this morning to test the timings were working.
I'll run the concerts again this evening at the same times 7pm UK, 7pm NY, 7pm LA. I will be around to make sure that it goes out. If people can't tune in to any of those times, I can probably sort out a link...
Apologies again, stupid server!"

funny I'd never noticed the harmonies on the "aaah" after the "wake up" part.
always thought it was John who sang the "aaah" but apparently it was Paul ?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D74rcZuOnWQ&feature=related

xp So Paul didn't write the bridge on "A Hard Days Night." I assumed that was a very collaborative song but I guess not.

Lennon always said the only reason he didn't sing the whole damn thing is because there was no way he was going to hit those high notes like Paul could.

pragmatic

Paul has always claimed the bridge on 'A Hard Day's Night' was his, and I believe him!

I always thought it was a rule : the one who sang the song or the part was the author of said song/part (except for some ringo stuff, of course).
of course, it's much too simple to be totally true but I think it works mostly !
Is there a song by John mainly sung by Paul or vice-versa ?

yeah I saw charlie says

but like what if the beatles did that and wrote the songs for it on purpose

it would have been so much bloodier

or if they had been literally engulfed and eaten by a swarming mass of fans. one or the other

the beatles in the philippines sounds like a nightmare, i haven't read this but here's a longread:

https://www.esquiremag.ph/long-reads/notes-and-essays/remember-the-beatles-nightmare-in-manila-a1542-20170524-lfrm10

I approve of all this speculation

Why was Manson hanging out with the Beach Boys but getting all his secret messages from the Beatles? Couldn't Wild Honey or Friends have inspired murders too?

in the candlestick park footage, are the only on-stage monitors the two little gray boxes in the front corners, and maybe a larger speaker to ringo's left pointing at him? that seems like a nightmare in terms of being able to hear on stage even before all the screaming. the monitors are so far away from john/paul

(xp) Smiley Smile probably could.

i mean if "transcendental meditation" wasn't enough to inspire a man to kill i don't know what song could

and i _like_ transcendental meditation

ringo should have filmed douglas adams' spec script for "goodnight vienna", that's my opinion

i totally forgot about that, I see the script finally got published a few years back. b-ark is in it apparently (which got recycled twice!)

I did win a copy of the triple album along with the accompanying songbook from the Long Island Press

nice! long island press was a queens thing? i don't recall seeing it around me. in nassau county it was "good times."

Apparently so! Never thought about that before, made assumptions since it had "Long Island" in the title. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long_Island_Daily_Press

I believe at one point Lou O'Neill Jr. migrated to the NY Post along with his soulmate Headphone Dan Aquilante

Surely you read Wayne Robins in Newsday back in the day?

Heh, further discussion of Lou O’Neill Jr. here, including me telling a version of the same story I just recounted upthread: The end of Circus Magazine

And some further hilarious Beatles-related Lou O’Neill Jr. anecdotes on another borad: https://iorr.org/talk/read.php?1,1495183

#onethread

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yU79J--YFcE

Surprisingly informative interview with Giles Martin:

https://www.thenationalnews.com/arts-culture/music-stage/2024/07/06/giles-martin-beatles-producer-george-love/

In relation to the Beatles' current projects, it mentions this:

It wasn’t until his father died that Martin was approached to begin remixing the Beatles albums starting with Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, a project he initially turned down.

“I said no. Why would you want to remix an album that doesn’t sound bad? They said they thought it could be interesting. So I agreed to do a few songs, and The Beatles liked them, so I kept going.”

Martin’s relationship with McCartney has made him a witness to a constant war with ‘good enough’.

“I mean, he’s a musical genius, obviously, but it’s more than that. I’ll work with the guy on a horn arrangement, and we’ll finish, and it will be good. And then we’ll play it and Paul will say, ‘yeah, but it just sounds like a horn arrangement. What’s different about it? How about this?’

“And it’ll be really annoying, but it will be a really good idea. It’s always a challenge, that’s how it should be. It feels like most people today are scared of being challenged.”

Martin is far from done with The Beatles catalogue. Next, there’s Rubber Soul, Magical Mystery Tour, Yellow Submarine and, because of the AI techniques that he’s been using to separate individual strands of the recordings, he’s excited about the opportunity to dive back into the band’s early material in a way that was previously impossible.

"So I agreed to do a few songs, and The Beatles Paul liked them, so I kept going.”

Lennon rolls over in his grave

roll over Johntoven

George scowls from above

Harrison, that is

Ringo: "I'm just happy to be here!"

"I think there’s a lot to be said for not having a clue what you’re doing. I’m 54 years old and I still feel like I’m making it up as I go along."

Just amazing what one can accomplish when you're the son of George Martin.

Just for once I would love it if the interviewer picked up on that chestnut. The old "I don't know what I'm doing, it just falls into place" chestnut. It's supposed to be self-effacing, but it just gives the impression that the interviewee relies heavily on their interns. Or they're the kind of CEO who claims to work sixteen hours a day, but actually spends most of that time updating their LinkedIn profile or attending luncheons. Or at the very least they believe that hard work is for morons, and natural brilliance will win the day.

If only the chap who was put in charge of rescuing everybody from the cruise liner conducted light entertainment interviews. You know. Captain De Falco. The Costa Concordia bloke:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-16599655

"And what, do you want to go home, Schettino? It's dark, so you want to go home?" That's the kind of tone that's missing from light entertainment news.

I remember that Gerry Anderson used to say the same thing. He used to almost boast that his successes had been accidental. Every fibre of my being wanted to respond with "is that why Terrahawks and Space Precinct were massive flops, then? Is that why you've been unable to get a show off the ground for the last twenty years? Is that why your entire Century 21 empire is dead and gone and forgotten, and you're an old man surrounded by stupid little puppets that mock you with their silence, mock you, laugh at you, laughing at you, little puppets laughing at you, also you were adopted".

I remember staring at the pages and mouthing those words with my mind. But it's too late. He escaped. He fled down the tunnel of death, ahead of me. Beatles Beatles something about the Beatles. Insert something about the Beatles here. The Beatles. Imaging beating a man called Les. You would literally beat les.

No denying the Beatles, the Stones, etc. are big names, but in terms of the actual technical work on their archival releases, it's a really their own tiny operation, and you see this reflected in the interviews with Giles and anyone else on these projects - it's usually very few people doing the actual work and making the decisions before running it by "the Beatles" (Paul, Ringo, the Lennon and Harrison estates) for approval.

The Love anecdote suggests this as well - he has access to Abbey Road, but it's him alone fiddling on a computer in a small room with no speakers. So I don't doubt he's got technical skill, but when he's kind of on his own and he's never had oversight or worked his way up in a rigid organization like his father did at EMI (i.e. there's no mentoring, no procedural workflow he has to learn and follow each step of the way), I can see why he would say "I'm making it up as I go along." It's a big difference compared to a newly recorded album by someone like the Stones or McCartney where they're bouncing through numerous studios, sending stuff to different artists (and presumably engineers, maybe even producers), etc.

idk maybe too much agonistes but i don't know what the hell i'd say if someone asked me how i accomplished what i accomplished. "what are you, daft? my dad's george martin, if it wasn't for him, i'd probably be working retail"? i genuinely don't think i'd be able to live with myself if i believed that.

Happy Birthday to Ringo Starr, who won the internet back in the day with this pic.twitter.com/KDfG6NCalD

— Eric Alper 🎧 (@ThatEricAlper) July 7, 2023

I forgot to say "Peace and Love" at noon, sorry

yeah, I mean, Giles was attending sessions as a little kid. He was definitely being trained by his dad. You could say it is kind of true that he is making it up as he goes along as far as the de-mixing stuff, that technology is so new and Beatles are so high profile. I think they would have to be the first major artist doing that kind of intense software tweaking to process separate elements of an old tape.

Greg, on the other hand…

I think they would have to be the first major artist doing that kind of intense software tweaking to process separate elements of an old tape.

Yeah, but back in the day i felt like I have had it up to here waiting for the Beatles catalogue to be remastered