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

Rings Around the World 5.1 is really good. Probably the only 5.1 album I've listened to more than twice.

by most accounts Steve Wilson's 5.1 remixes are amazing, as are some of the Pink Floyd ones. Now, that tells you something about the kinds of music that probably benefits best from this approach. If I had the space and the system I'd be sure to give a fair amount of them a listen. I think Sgt. Pepper could have a pretty awesome 5.1 mix, think of the options on something like Good Morning for example.

Super Furry Animals' Rings Around the World was recorded as a 5.1 album first and foremost, with the stereo mix being secondary

As pointed out to me somewhere/by someone, really every record is surround sound first and foremost - that's how we hear music as played in the studio, from all around us - then mixed down to stereo. Stereo is a craft unto itself, like the director choosing where to point the camera.

That said, I finally saw that Ron Howard Beatles movie while I was on a flight. It was fine and familiar, but I was a little surprised/disappointed when it moved away from the touring years (as it was billed) and then sort of rushed through the studio years, en route to this dramatic beat where it's all, post-Revolver " ... but it was all a lead up to the band's masterpiece." Cue Day in the Life piano chord. And then there's some BS tag with like big white text on black stating something like "And in 2004, Rolling Stone named Sgt. Pepper the greatest album of all time." And then I sort of barfed.

the rooftop footage was cool tho

would be nice to see the entire rooftop concert uncut

yeah it's balls, no better than a History channel bio from 1999.

x-post

Well, not every record, but I see your ultimate point which is that getting all that sound to sit in two channels is an art, and I agree. The same principle applies to 5.1 also - you can be as adventurous with the mixes as you can in stereo, if not more so. That's why there are people in studios around the world that specialise solely in mixing.

was b&w footage digitally colored for that Opie Cunningham doc? I couldn't tell by watching it

There's no real rulebook with 5.1 either - with stereo, there's now established ways of, say, spreading drums across the stereo field. With 5.1, you could have the drums constantly panning clockwise - which is, of course, not how it would sound in the studio, and it's these kind of tricks that SFA had in mind when making Rings Around The World.

It was. Some of the '64 Washington DC show was colorized, but much of the audience was still black & white. They also colorized their first US press conference.

xp

yeah a bunch of colorized stuff in it. the supposedly-incredible Shea footage that was shown in cinemas for one-night-only as a supporting feature isn't coming out any time soon either, as it was *illegal* to have shown it in the first place.

http://www.rollingstone.com/music/news/beatles-companies-sued-over-shea-stadium-concert-footage-w439681

This is nuts:

"By reason of being the producer of and having made creative contributions to the 1965 Shea Stadium performance, as well as being the employer for hire of the Beatles and the opening acts, who performed at his instance and expense, Sid Bernstein was the dominant, and hence sole, author of the copyrightable work embodied in the Master Tapes, and the sole owner of all exclusive rights therein."

"I booked you guys, so that basically means I wrote and played and sang everything."

I was wondering if there was some legal nuance to that claim that I was missing cuz yeah it reads batshit insane. also the guy is dead, so it's his estate making these claims.

I don't care if it's his Ford Cortina making these claims...

I'm okay with destroying all extant documentation of the Shea concert, if only because a teenaged Trump's alleged presence in the audience casts a pall over the whole thing for me

If you play the Shea footage backwards, Ringo warns you that some asshole kid in the audience will grow up to the worst contemporary President.

the newly cut-together Eight Days A Week video on the 1+ Blu Ray/ dvd from a few years back is a blinding 'trailer' for the remastered Shea footage.
shame we may never live to see the rest of it mind.

xp I think it's a normal thing for people who didn't write the songs to own the rights to specific performances and recordings.

Owning the copyright to a filmed performance is one thing, but Bernstein's estate is claiming him as the "sole author." Which, I dunno, maybe that's an accepted/understood legal term for copyright ownership, but it sure sounds crazy.

The options for individually panning things up and around your intestines in 5.1 somewhat tempered by the Sgt. Pepper multitracks being just 4 track, I should think, although stuff can be done with frequency splitting and whatnot. Probably for the best.

It was recorded 'on' 4 track, but that does not mean only four tracks were used, you know, mix-downs etcet..

Er, that's the point. There are four tracks on the multis, that's what they have to play with. Multiple elements mixed down to each won't easily be separated.

No, but I'm assuming they will still have those earlier pre-folddown tapes.

They do; that's what was used for the Yellow Submarine Songtrack and Love.

Beatles seem like the only band of their era that where able to save everything*

*I guess there's Dylan and Elvis, but it's a little different with them as everything they did at the time was pretty much live in the studio, so there's no bouncedown tapes etc.

maybe that's an accepted/understood legal term for copyright ownership, but it sure sounds crazy

could be both. at any rate the Beatles struggled with legal and copyright issues over their own work for entire career. imo the band members themselves mostly had a tenuous grasp on control of the official releases. note how the US releases purposefully leave off songs to create new product. how "Strawberry Fields" and "Penny Lane" were meant for "Sgt. Pepper" and kept off the album due to copyright nonsense. imo this is the main reason the band broke up.

It wasn't copyright, it was that EMI wanted a single out.

If they hadn't done that, we might all be praising the 'Liverpool' concept album.

Well, when I say 'all'....

Beatles seem like the only band of their era that where able to save everything

Yeah, everything seems to have been taken care of and looked after to a ridiculous degree - from the master tapes right through to archival footage (although Neil Aspinall took care of a lot of that stuff - his role in looking after The Beatles' "legacy" was a large one)

"note how the US releases purposefully leave off songs to create new product. how "Strawberry Fields" and "Penny Lane" were meant for "Sgt. Pepper" and kept off the album due to copyright nonsense. imo this is the main reason the band broke up."

what? no.

Hahaha... yeah, there's so much that's wrong about that that I don't even know where to begin.

so why couldn't they have released those singles on the album? you can begin there.

maybe that was a bad example. my point wasn't copyright law specifically fucked w the band, but that releases have been orchestrated by powers beyond their control. it doesn't matter if it is EMI or lawyers.

They absolutely could have put 'Penny Lane' and 'Strawberry Fields Forever' on Sgt. Pepper's but they chose not to, because in the '60s releasing an LP which had the singles on it in the UK was perceived as short-changing the fans by getting them to pay for the same thing twice. Singles and albums were seen as two distinct things back then. The "single" developed into an advert for the "album" later.

Secondly, prior to the "album era", which Sgt. Pepper's had a huge part in ushering in, the single was king. Therefore, I doubt The Beatles would have complained about those US configs as nobody was really as "precious" about the album in those days as they would become circa 1966-1967 onwards. Capitol also knew the US market better than Parlophone and The Beatles themselves did, so they did what they needed to do for that particular market - and it worked.

The 11- or 12-song US Capitol albums had nothing to do with copyright law; they had to do with royalty rates. Capitol (and the Beatles, but I doubt they knew this at the time) made more in US royalties from albums with fewer tracks, and lopping off songs had the added benefit of keeping them for future cobbled-together US releases.

the UK/US official releases from Pepper onwards were exactly the same tracklist-wise until the split. aside from MMT being an album in the US and a daft double-EP thing in the UK.

What was wrong with releasing the six songs as a double EP?

Nothing at all, IMO. I generally prefer the US config of Magical Mystery Tour but I can see why it was released as a double EP here... again, why get people to pay for something they already own?

It's worth mentioning that the Stones LP's also had different US/UK versions up to 1967. The album had suddenly become as important as the single.

gee I wonder if we can pinpoint which album signaled that change

^ LOL! Yeah!

the UK/US official releases from Pepper onwards were exactly the same tracklist-wise until the split. aside from MMT being an album in the US and a daft double-EP thing in the UK.

― piscesx, Thursday, April 13, 2017 2:18 PM (thirty-three minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Also the US-only 10-song Hey Jude, aka, The Beatles Again.

It wasn't US only - it was released in many countries. Does raise the question of how many countries took their cues from the US, though.

There are even UK pressings of it from later in the '70s.

The Past Masters compilations pretty much obliterated the need for those type of compilations.

I like how tidy The Beatles discography has become - sticking with the UK albums and using the Past Masters to gather up the extras.

If only the Stones had control of their '60s stuff, they could have done the same.

Weird, didn't know that about Hey Jude. Makes sense, since it was mostly singles compiled on an LP for the first time.

xp

also, not sure penny lane and SFF would have fit on the album without cutting something else.

Yeah, the only way that they'd fit onto the album is if the tracklisting was wildly reshuffled to the point where it wouldn't even be the same album.

The stereo mixes of "Rain," "Lady Madonna," and "Revolution" were all done for Hey Jude and I think those are the ones still in use. ("Paperback Writer" had been mixed in stereo for A Collection of Beatles Oldies.)

The tidiest package is the Beatles mono box, which has fantastic Japanese origami versions of the LPS, down to mini reproductions of the Emitex sleeves. The stereo box seemed provisional, since this stuff was likely to get remastered/remixed eventually.

A Collection of Beatles Oldies has one of the best covers. So does Hey Jude for that matter. Not to mention the cover for the white album that was scrapped but used for some compilation in some other country. I love the non standard album art.