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

there's a big variety to the approaches these bands take, from slavish recreation (musical box, lots of beatles bands) to genre merging (Dred Zepplin, for instance; the Bay Area has birthed a lot of these). Stone Temple Peruvians is one I just encountered.

It’s not academic, but Steven Kurutz's Like A Rolling Stone: The Strange Life of A Tribute Band was entertaining, IIRC. It talks about tribute acts generally (i.e., acts where band members are inhabiting specific people like Mick Jagger, rather than simply covering the songs) and the author travels with two acts specifically. Goes into the day to day of it: what happens when one's Paul wants to be a George? If one's best Keith Richards (in terms of instrumental skill) doesn’t look the part? How does a tribute act remain “authentic” but still set themselves apart from the dozen other tributes doing the same act?

I'm interested in tribute bands who 'make' it enough to have a hit single in their own right - even if Björn Again and No Way Sis are the only examples coming to mind rn - because both times it relied on riding the crest of a big wave but also not actually covering the bands they're a tribute to

Now I want to start a tribute band called the Rolling Clones

O and as soon as I think that I see that it's been done, never mind

Dread Zeppelin was sorta their own thing, more than a tribute band I guess. They took it into Dr Demento territory. I remember being really stoned and hearing them for the first time. I don’t recall what song it was, but as it built up to the expected guitar solo there was a tuba instead. I hurt from laughing so hard.

A lot of Elvis tributes go out if their way to explain that they are not trying to be Elvis, as they could never etc.

Still, they go round the audience giving out silky scarves etc again...

new trailer up:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dd5WSqOJF7M

Taxman, too:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DdTzOUUZ8Vg

never thought of Taxman as a case for "more cowbell" tbh.

New mix seems adequate, and kind of pointless. There's a little more space around the instruments, but nothing as dramatic as the dust-removal of the 2018 white album mix, and it sounds a little glitchy at points in the left channel.

the stereo situation in the new mix is not hard-panned so yeah imo there's a point

sounds good if not revelatory

the stereo situation in the new mix is not hard-panned so yeah imo there's a point

Definitely sounds like a case of doing a "modern" stereo mix rather than the super-wide hard-panned mixes that were thrown together in the '60s. I never went back to the original stereo mixes after I got the mono mixes partly because the stereo mixes always sounded like they had gaping holes in the spread. It seemed to dilute and thin out everything. Not the case here, though I wish they backed off a bit on the compression and smoothed out the top end and upper mids.

just an aside but weirdly the most pointless beatles stereo remix so far is the one i like the most (abbey road)

I never went back to the original stereo mixes after I got the mono mixes partly because the stereo mixes always sounded like they had gaping holes in the spread.

This. I haven't listened to any stereo Beatles (with the exception of The Beatles' Second Album) since I got the mono CD box in 2009. I will say, though, that one -- possibly the only -- advantage to the 1966 "Taxman" stereo mix is that it's easier to hear whatever the fuck Paul's doing on bass in the bridge. It's flat-out bizarre.

I thought the same thing.

Been listening to these jokers for 40 years, and there are still new moments where Paul's bass just makes me smile and go wtf.

OMG still don’t know what is going on there

More details from RS: https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-features/the-beatles-revolver-unheard-archives-sheffield-1234587264/

Especially excited to hear these Yellow Submarine songwriting tapes:

“Yellow Submarine” (Songwriting Work Tapes 1 & 2)
Brace yourself: Everything we thought we knew about “Yellow Submarine” is wrong. The whole world agrees on the standard origin story — a Paul ditty whipped up fast as an Uncle Ringo kiddie chant, something John grimly tolerated. But don’t be shocked if you catch yourself shedding a tear hearing John sing it. The chorus was Paul, but the verses started out as John in his sad confessional mode, with folkie guitar picking. He sings, “In the place where I was born/No one cared, no one cared/And the name that I was born/No one cared, no one cared.” The demo, on his home tape recorder, is a heart-wrenching childhood memory ballad, halfway between “Julia” and “Strawberry Fields Forever.”

“I had no idea until I started going through the outtakes,” Martin says. “This was a Lennon-McCartney thing. I said to Paul, ‘I always thought this was a song that you wrote and gave to Ringo and that John was like, ‘Oh, bloody “Yellow Submarine.”‘ Not at all. That’s like a Woody Guthrie song. But it’s beautiful in a way, where you realize that there’s so much depth behind it.” But still, what a drag to imagine a world without the Ringo version. “When you listen to the outtakes, even knowing the beauty of that John version, you know why Ringo ended up singing it,” Martin says. “And it was acutely, let’s face it, the right decision to make.”

I’ve just been to a playback of @thebeatles Revolver, which has been remixed and remastered by Giles Martin. And let me tell you, it sounds incredible.

Taxman slaps; Here There and Everywhere is a silken daydream; Tomorrow Never Knows sounds more audacious than ever. 🧵 [1/6]

— Mark Savage (@mrdiscopop) September 7, 2022

could they just please make the monos in print again? I’m all for outtakes but have less than zero interest in modern remixes

remember how all those queen CD reissues had like “stone cold crazy (1991 bonus remix)” appended as bonus tracks?

this revolver reissue includes the mono mix

I've been waiting to hear this for a few decades:

“Rain” (Take 5, Actual Speed)
The Beatles got that dreamy psychedelic buzz on the “Paperback Writer” B side by recording the instrumental track extra fast, then slowing it down. But there’s no real way to prepare for the shock of hearing them play it live at the original manic speed — Ringo turns into all four Ramones at once. Beatlemaniacs have always marveled at the drums on “Rain” — as Ringo once said, “I know me and my playing, and then there’s ‘Rain.’” Ringo Hive, rise.

xp yeah but you have to buy the special expensive boomer suitcase edition to get it, it’s not sold separately

oh i assumed it would be part of the streaming package too, nm

"taxman slaps"

see, that's more credit I've got to give to JPM. Dude never slapped.

“Rain” (Take 5, Actual Speed)

omgggg this sounds awesome!

do I want taxman to slap?

brad I was actually just talking about physical formats because i like to complain lol, the full sgt peppers super deluxe set with the mono mix is on Spotify so this probably will be too.

revolver remixed by droop-e

yeah lol the main thing i care about is that the primary medium through which ppl will newly encounter these records (streaming) has versions of these records that don't sound split down the middle like the cds i had to deal with as a kid

psyched to hear whatever kind of wall-painting giles did with "tomorrow never knows"

the main thing i care about is that the primary medium through which ppl will newly encounter these records (streaming) has versions of these records

q: are we close to a point where perceptive listeners who want to make informed decisions about what they put in their ears are going to be anything other than reflexively skeptical of streaming? i have trouble believing that what most of what is being presented to me is actually what it says it is (often it's not), so the idea of relying on these streaming companies to effectively manage multiple versions or mixes of the same catalogue doesn't exactly fill me with optimism

I'd say your first question should've been: " are we close to a point where perceptive listeners who want to make informed decisions about what they put in their ears will have to make their peace with streaming?"

weirdly the most pointless beatles stereo remix so far is the one i like the most (abbey road)

i prefer it to the original for being less hard-panned! the original isn't anywhere near as bad as the earlier stereo mixes of course but it's still a noticeable improvement there, and there was never a mono mix to prefer.

still don't get why they haven't made the mono mixes the canonical versions in general though

the only people i'm aware of who are reflexively distrustful of streaming live on this website

It's not my preferred way of listening, but I can't say I dislike having it. For those who didn't have easy access to a record store, remember what it was like NOT to be able to hear something right away? For some records, I went YEARS without knowing how they sounded even though I knew about them and wanted to hear them. I had dial-up growing up so downloads and Napster wasn't much of an option.

I didn't JUST realize this, so it's not really a candidate for "puns you had missed," but.

I was pretty old when I realized that "Revolver" was a pretty good name for a vinyl object that you purchase that goes around and around and around

so the idea of relying on these streaming companies to effectively manage multiple versions or mixes of the same catalogue doesn't exactly fill me with optimism

it's not the streaming services that are the problem here, it's the labels doing a poor job of managing their catalogues

'making informed decisions about what you put in your ears' requires like, trawling the hoffman forums to figure out which are the best-received issues for anything pre-CD era & then actually tracking those down in whatever way, legal or not, is usually a pain. i do miss what.cd for having pretty much every version of everything readily available

otm

xp

This is an incredibly niche challenge to have

yeah it's very dedicated music nerd stuff & my point is it's not exactly easy to be on top of even then

trawling the hoffman forums

i rarely take things this far, and in my own way have made peace with streaming: basically, it's good enough in most instances.

and the labels do mismanage (and misrepresent) their catalogues, but to me that's a separate thing from, e.g., cueing something up in spotify only to find it's actually a live version, or a vinyl rip, or some weird alt mix, which happens to me a lot.

if the point was that the average streamer searching for "revolver" in 2022 is going to get a markedly better experience (mix) than from the CD i bought at best buy in 2002, then yeah that's good.

it's just interesting to me that you could take a niche concern like beatles remixes (this thread) and explore it on spotify, since my experience has largely been that you just have to accept what's there.

basically, it's good enough in most instances.

yeah i agree. it can be worthwhile to chase down the best-sounding version of something (usually too much effort though) but it's rare that the one available on streaming is particularly bad - old beatles stereo mixes are an example of this, another is minnie ripperton's come to my garden where all digital releases are sourced from pretty bad vinyl rips due to the master tapes being lost

cueing something up in spotify only to find it's actually a live version, or a vinyl rip, or some weird alt mix, which happens to me a lot.

i'm not exactly sure what you're getting at, do you mean that just the first search result for a track will sometimes not be the canonical version but from a live album or something? that's not much of a problem, just check that it's from the album you want? or do you mean it does that in its auto-generated playlists which would just be annoying? vinyl rips being on streaming definitely falls under labels mismanaging their catalogue in one way or another though

i mean stuff that purports to be what it is not. not sure how else to phrase it. you click on a studio recording but it plays a bootleg instead.

Sounds like the glory days of Audiogalaxy.

does this happen to you all the time or

also all of these problems existed in the cd era :)

i mean i def agree that streaming is a much less reliable and more mutable archive than any physical media that came before it, and you're at the mercy of what a record company has provided and what catalogs said streaming service are subscribed to. if you're queuing something up on spotify and it's a surprise vinyl rip, that is the fault of the label for mismanaging or poorly archiving their catalog lol