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

As usual, I am late to this party, but I think I am actually going to hold out & buy them on CD as a box (haven't decided on whether to go w/ stereo or mono yet), but this thread + Pitchfork reviews now has me totally psyched. Tom, Scott & Mark (if yr reading this), FANTASTIC job w/ the P*fork review series. It is rare that you ever encounter any new insight into the old-guard mythology of The Beatles, but you guys pulled it off beautifully.

Kenan, re; the too big apartment - turn it up. Seriously. Crank that shit.

fuckin "Helter Skelter" holy shit

if you have most of these albums on stereo/mono vinyl already would you still buy the cds?

"21:30–22:40 The Beatles: The First US Visit
The Maysles brothers' film of The Beatles' first US tour in 1964, when Beatlemania ignited (R)"

can someone tape that for me?

hope i can still get the mono boxed set by the time i've saved up enough money to buy the damn thing!

re the US film, i too saw that on saturday.
and noticed that in the second half John is hardly in it.
in fact only in the performance sections, never the off duty stuff do you see wheer the others are mucking about (hotel room stuff)
wonder what the back story is .. maybe the second film tonight will go into detail ..

As a Beatles collector of some 30 years standing, I had grown slightly jaded about all of this. I mean, yeas I was up for the remasters but

I got both boxes when they came out, primarily because I always knew I would and who the hell was I kidding to try and pretend otherwise? Anyway, I have just cherry picked tracks across both

Oops - hit submit to early. Where was I? Oh yes, I was up for the remasters but I was also tired and cynical.

And as I was saying, I got both boxes and cherry picked tracks mainly from all your suggestions upthread, playing them directly against the 87 versions. Every single one was infinitely better and, as has been mentioned, was nearly as warm as the vinyl versions.

So, I was fairly pleased, but not totally blown away, when I realised I hadn't listened to the 'new' Twist and Shout in mono. Holy cow! This is red hot and fucking gorgeous - this is the closest we are going to get to hearing them in full pelt at the Cavern or Hamburg. Astonishing stuff - I feel as though I've come back home and it's bloody good to be back. It's like discovering that your first love really was as beautiful as you remembered.

hey the mono version of Helter Skelter doesn't have the "I've got blisters on my fingers" part

http://www.norwegianwood.org/beatles/disko/

full mono vs stereo differences site there. click on any album and away you go. for instance on Helter Skelter you get this =

Helter Skelter

basic recording- 9 Sep 1968
additional recording- 9,10 Sep 1968
master tape- 8 track
mono-mixed: 17 Sep 1968. edited.
stereo-mixed: 12 Oct 1968. edited.

The basic song runs about 3:10 to a pause shortly after Paul's distorted vocal, too close to the microphone. Mono then is edited into more of the same take, with sound effects noises, and fades at 3:36. Stereo is edited instead to a different part of the take, fading out and then back in again, with another edit, ending finally at 4:29 after Ringo shouts "I've got blisters on my fingers!".
Is the distorted vocal "Can you hear me speaking-- woo!" or "My baby is sleepi

This film's great.

I loved George's solo on I Wanna Be Your Man.

I was watching George all the way through those performances, he's so expressive. I just loved seeing everyone's faces really, fans and all, I kind of wanted to know what happened to all those people - 100,000 follow-up films, please. What I'd really like to see too is footage of the moments before they exited the plane, I wonder what was going on in there. Jeez, I'm quite overwhelmed, it's just weird seeing people watching them for the first time on tv and reacting exactly the same way as I am forty five years later.

Long, Long, Long is killing me dead btw.

Yes! That & she's leaving home are so beautiful.

Remastering appears to have fixed what seemed to be a HUGE dB dropoff between "Helter Skelter" and "Long, Long, Long" so you don't have to crank it to hear the latter.

re the US film, i too saw that on saturday.
and noticed that in the second half John is hardly in it.
in fact only in the performance sections, never the off duty stuff do you see wheer the others are mucking about (hotel room stuff)
wonder what the back story is .. maybe the second film tonight will go into detail ..

MAYSLES: "Well, essentially John was hip-deep in teenage trim every offtage moment."

"21:30–22:40 The Beatles: The First US Visit
The Maysles brothers' film of The Beatles' first US tour in 1964, when Beatlemania ignited (R)"

can someone tape that for me?

hope i can still get the mono boxed set by the time i've saved up enough money to buy the damn thing!

― messiahwannabe, Thursday, September 10, 2009 6:52 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark

YOUshouldseeitontheTUBE

It would be great if people raving about their favorite bits could specify if they are listening to the mono or stereo, although i guess the default is stereo

All my raving from now on will be regarding stereo flac downloads, as I cannot afford to buy it (and am not sure whether I would, considering I own all the proper studio albums on vinyl somewhere, and many of the other '87 CDs.)

call me crazy, but i actually like to sometimes listen for myself to see if i agree with the various posters!

All my raving is on the stereo versions, right or wrong. All I can say is that I've "grown up" on the '87 discs and I'm more used to hearing them this way. Works for me.

yeah, this whole stereo v. mono thing is something i haven't reckoned with--i look forward to sitting down with the mono box and digging the vaunted "authenticity". when i read that blurb from some engineer or other saying that the mono of sgt pepper is the "real" one, i ran out and bought the whole damn box--i am a consumerist pushover

Husband threatened leg breakage (mine) if I purchased the stereo box. (He knows my junkie ways and saw the need for edicts to be passed. Trust me, it's a wise course of action. I know myself too well). Bought Abbey Road, Rubber Soul & Sgt Pepper yesterday...told husband, who jokingly called me a junkie then revealed he was planning on getting me the stereo box for christmas. [*cries*] We've negotiated an arrangement wherein I buy 1 album a month. It's not ideal but it's something. I still am interested in this mono box though. Having never listened to them on vinyl (yes yes I know), I'm really interested in the compare/contrast now. And this thread has geeked me out something fierce!!!

Am completely obsessed with Abbey today. Yesterday it was Rubber Soul. But Abbey. DAMN. I know I'm repeating a thousand previous posts but it's like hearing it for the first time. And the side b medley just shines.

It's all about Magical Mystery Tour.

That's the next stop in my 1-album-a-month mystery tour....

I have to say that I think I prefer the Capitol stereo mixes of the really early stuff to these though, definitely. The balances are better and I like all that shitty reverb (those are the ones I grew up with). These stereo mixes really, really sound weird, with instruments gating in and out in the vocal channel, it's pretty obvious that these were intended mainly as balance mixes prior to doing them monos.

I finally located a stereo box and bought it, reluctantly, for way too much money. Hopefully my mono box will show up tomorrow.

I'm listening to both the stereo and mono albums. The mono albums aren't keeping my attention as well as the stereo ones are. I'm on headphones. Mono "It's All Too Much" was breathtaking though.

I've only bought stereo Abbey Road so far but holy shit the Moog!

I ripped them all in lossless in iTunes and sorted by track name and went through each song.

Please Please Me is entirely better in Mono, but from then on I've found it differs song from song and the further forward in time the better the Stereo mix. By the second album you have the Stereo mix of Roll Over Beethoven (from With The Beatles) being just awful, absolutely horrid, while the Mono is sublime, but oddly, I prefer the Stereo mix of You Really Got A Hold On Me. After the second album I've generally preferred the Stereo mixes, though it gets a little messy comparing Mono Masters with Past Masters. Help!, which might be my favourite Beatles album (yeah I know), is a bit weird, I like Act Naturally and Yesterday (maybe it's the intimacy of that song?) in Mono while basically the rest in Stereo.

Of course that's just me. Your mileage may vary.

I'm definitely stanning for the stereo side of things, as Geir as that is.

I'm noticing (on the stereo remasters) that on some songs you can hear the limitations of their voices, in ways I couldn't on the 87 versions. E.g. on "A Hard Day's Night" I can hear enough separation between John and Paul that I can hear where John's voice gives; or on "I Should Have Known Better" where John's voice cracks. Were these hard edges, as it were, blurred over on the 87 version? Mind you I don't love them any less for their limitations.

Maybe my memory's playing tricks here, but I thought the 87 mixes showed up quite a lot of the mistakes you mentioned. Something like McCartney's failiure to reach the top note in his harmony on If I fell, for example.

But I think you're right about the seperation being more acute and therefore throwing the mistakes into even sharper relief. Personally, I think this gives them an even greater appeal - but I bought far too many bootlegs just to hear them louse things up, so maybe I'm not the best judge!

Little fuck-ups are what gives colour and character to music; otherwise you end up with Coldplay.

Couldn't have put it better myself. Although I've often thought of Chris M4rtin as a little fuck up.

Yeah, I agree, the fuck ups don't take away from the music. I just hadn't noticed them as acutely until now.

sooo... does john sing 'baby you're a rich fag jew' then?

Just curious but does anybody know sales numbers for these reissues (expected or actual).
I also assume they are counted as catalog sales and won't be on Billboards top 200 list.
I always wonder how well reissues sell. I mean I can't believe that many people need another copy of a Bowie or Costello album but EC for example seems to get reissued with bonus tracks every few years.
Beatles, Dylan, etc... 1st time reissues being exceptions to this of course.

Anybody know the numbers on things like these. Checked other threads but didn't find any info.

this is probably the biggest single catalog reissue ever so I'm sure the sales are huge. the box sets alone are sold out everywhere (amoeba has some but restrictions on how many one person can buy, etc; and NO mono boxes)

Apparently there's lots of chart action (even the Mono box is top 40), butthe highest is Abbey Road at 12 or so.

This is midweeks, though.

Anyone heard the original 1965 stereo mix of Rubber Soul, which is included in the mono box set? Just curious to know how it stacks up to George Martin's 1987 remix.

> This is midweeks, though

which, given that it came on on wednesday, is only two days

i bought it on LP in the early-'80s. so maybe. all i can recall from the last time i put it on is that there was some severe separation/panning going on between the two channels. still, i remember Revolver being even more noticeably annoying in that regard.

xp

According to The Financial Times EMI shipped 5 million units to retail and the mono box has sold 50,000 through presale.
Not bad.

Abbey Road sold 7,164 copies.

I have to say that I think I prefer the Capitol stereo mixes of the really early stuff to these though, definitely.

Just to be sure, you're talking about The Capitol Albums, Vol. One? I never got around to buying that, but I think I will now. I love comparing all the different mixes of the same songs.

The Norwegian hitlists run from Wednesday to Wednesday, so will get quite some impression here by the middle of next week, as it will then include a full week of sales.

ysi?

It's kind of interesting that Mono Sgt. Pepper doesn't sound particularly "squished" in any way. The effort that must have gone into the mix is kind of staggering. If you don't think about it much, you don't even notice that it's mono. I'm listening to it on headphones right now, and not really missing anything in terms of stereo.

The thing that hits me most is that Pepper was the first rock album I ever heard, and this is probably the first time in umpteen years that it sounds the way I remember it sounding. I'm not suddenly falling in love w/the music again just like the first time, but it does pack a pretty powerful nostalgia hit. Keep getting flashes of sitting in my parents bedroom, where the stereo was, trying to make sense of the album art. Really hated Within You Without You back then, so that's changed...

I'm finding from listening to these remasters that Beatles is a very sensory, place-time kind of band for me. The songs I know, the songs I loved, I can see who I listened to the songs with, where I was, what I was eating...maybe a lot of that comes from listening to a lot of it when I was pretty young. It's not as strong with other bands as it is with these guys.