The Beatles

gotta know how to have reach nirvana through music.. and beatles can do that.

gotta hear how vina beach vana thru music beatles norwegian burn my house down

gotta know how to have reach nirvana through music.. and beatles can do that.

Gotta be the 60s Nirvana then, as the 90s Nirvana had little in common with The Beatles musically. :)

turn me on, dead man.

not sure i know this band, anyone got any info?

The Beatles

whoever they are, i think it's cute how they spell their name :D

i only really liked the early 7 inches when sutcliffe and best were still in the band

(xxpost) oh FFS whatta shit band, their name is just a take off of Buddy Holly & The Crickets...

I was listening to Please Please Me in my car today, and goddamn, I never noticed just how fucking AWFUL that CD sounds. "Do You Want To Know A Secret?" is nearly unlistenable, despite being a great song. Are there any rumours that new editions are being worked on?

And also, does Please Please Me sound better on vinyl?

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

Epstein summons a mythic stature himself: Jewish and gay

just fun to take out of context

a couple weeks ago i went on a jag and downloaded this huge pile of beatles-related ephemeral footage

two minutes of silent 8mm footage of three of the beatles larking about with some dude on a golf course

stuff like that

it's not so much that i'm interested in the beatles as i am interested in ephemera

at last!!!!!!!!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zOBTLen_ky0

Is this the most active Beatles thread? Anyway, some passive promotion, as my friend has been making these awesome 3D/pop up light boxes and cards:

https://i.etsystatic.com/18332629/r/il/2ebd10/6755942955/il_1588xN.6755942955_bhkc.jpg
https://i.etsystatic.com/18332629/r/il/b6644b/6893535105/il_1588xN.6893535105_sj8l.jpg
https://i.etsystatic.com/18332629/r/il/f50474/6700790734/il_1588xN.6700790734_g01g.jpg

https://www.etsy.com/shop/DelightboxStore

I told my Dylan-loving friend that I'd been finally listening to all of it (and he tipped me off to some hidden gems to look out for)

He told me that he was doing the same for The Beatles and I thought for a minute and said "you know, if you start at the beginning and stop at Revolver (inclusive), they're basically the best band in history. Everything that follows Revolver is just too contentious and thought-provoking"

The most active Beatles thread iirc:

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

It's definitely a clean divide. I don't particularly like Sgt. Pepper but it interests me. Nothing before it interests me. Everything after it (extending into the whole Wings run, Yoko's solo stuff more than John's, and the All Things Must Pass sessions if not the finished record) fascinates me to no end.

sergeant pepper is their houses of the holy. revolver is zeppelin iv, and magical mystery tour physical graffiti

Wings is The Firm

Elvis Costello is David Coverdale

these new puritans are produced by graham sutton

eric clapton is the eric clapton of eric claptons (he sucks)

herbie hancock is the chick corea of keith jarretts

New Puritan is the Strawberry Fields Forever of the Kicker Conspiracy single

Early Beatles is a blind spot for me, but lately thanks to my kid being a bit Beatles fan I've been hearing more of those early albums. I have to say the British "Help!" is fantastic, absolutely top tier Beatles.

yeah it’s one of my favs too, even lennon’s castaways on side b are marvelous. I only really know the 86 stereo remix, though, I think it’s pretty good lol!

I have a stereo CD but it doesn't have a year on it, other than the 1965 copyright. Going down the rabbit hole of looking for slight distinguishing packaging marks on Discogs, it might be the '90s repress.

I may be biased cause I grew up with it but imo Help! Is the album you most want in mono.

Xp yeah i am pretty sure the only time the original 65 stereo mixes made it on to CD was as bonus tracks on the mono box set version so you probably have the ‘86s. But, I mean, those 80s mixes of “the night before” and “i need you” that I grew up on sound fabulous, spacious, not at all “modernized” imo

80s mixes = ‘86s, god i need to Mac up my posting standards

Finally took a closer look at Anthology 4, and given how much of it is already on the super deluxe box sets, it seems like it would've been a better idea to integrate the 17 tracks that aren't on those box sets into the first three Anthology volumes. They actually have enough empty space on the discs to accommodate everything, though they'd have to move the two 1968 tracks from Anthology 2 over to Anthology 3. Wouldn't seem unreasonable - if they were willing to load more tracks on to the "Red" and "Blue" albums, they could've just done that with Anthology 1, 2 & 3 and kept it as a tidy 6-disc set.

agreed but it also would have meant people would have needed to buy the other three discs again rather than just buy this one ... which they tried to do anyway, because originally they were only going to sell 4 as part of a box set with the first three until they (presumably) realized that pre-orders were in the toilet.

Fair point. In light of the Highlights collection and the eventual breaking out of volume 4, it's probably not a stretch to release something like a single CD that scoops up all the recordings added to the expanded three volume set I described above.

Just did a quick test, and these 23 cuts would fit on to one 79 minute and 12 second CD:

1 Free As A Bird (2025 Mix) 04:27
2 Real Love (2025 Mix) 03:34
3 Now And Then 04:09
4 I Saw Her Standing There (Take 2) 03:06
5 I Saw Her Standing There (Take 9) 02:51
6 Money (That's What I Want) (RM7 Undubbed) 02:48
7 This Boy (Takes 12 And 13) 03:18
8 Tell Me Why (Takes 4 And 5) 03:07
9 If I Fell (Take 11) 02:38
10 Matchbox (Take 1) 02:09
11 Every Little Thing (Takes 6 And 7) 03:28
12 I Need You (Take 1) 02:36
13 I've Just Seen A Face (Take 3) 02:26
14 In My Life (Take 1) 02:40
15 Nowhere Man (First Version - Take 2) 02:24
16 Yellow Submarine (new mix) 02:48
17 Here, There And Everywhere (Take 7 with Take 13 edit) 02:23
18 Christmas Time (Is Here Again) (11-28-67 music, 12-6-66 greet) 03:03
19 Baby, You're A Rich Man (Takes 11 And 12) 06:06
20 All You Need Is Love (Rehearsal For BBC Broadcast) 06:11
21 The Fool On The Hill (Take 5 - Instrumental) 04:42
22 I Am The Walrus (Take 19 - Strings, Brass, Clarinet Overdub) 04:56
23 Hey Bulldog (Take 4 - Instrumental) 03:14

(It's basically the three reunion songs, all the volume 4 stuff that's not in the super deluxe box sets, and all the B-sides from the "Free As a Bird" and "Real Love" singles except for that one Hollywood Bowl recording of "Baby's in Black" as the same performance was eventually included as a bonus track for The Beatles at the Hollywood Bowl. The new mix of "Yellow Submarine" may be a virtual clone of what's on the Revolver super deluxe set, but I just stuck it in there to see if it would fit.)

The updated three volume set would still have the appeal of new "upgraded" mixes across the board, but for those who wish to stick with their old sets and just want the added tracks, the above would do the trick.

Again, this is if they had configured everything into expanded editions of Anthology 1, 2 & 3 rather than adding a separate fourth volume.

If this doesn't show, it's "Tomorrow Never Knows," from 801 Live:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UkGXUn0Kuuw

anyone watch part 9 (the new part) of the Anthology series yet? I dont think I care to watch the other 8 hours lol. If they really went in and added lots of stuff to each episode I would though.

George Martin was born 100 years ago today.

he's being going in and out of style

I was reminded recently of the time i had some contact with his son.

Do tell!

The small, great joys in life: singing along with Paul's part when listening to Two of Us

You're a tenor?

Well, *amateurly* singing along. Definitely easier for me to sing high than low, though.

I'm streaming the Herbie Hancock episode of Spectacle, and he discusses Donald Byrd a lot. Byrd essentially discovered Hancock and brought him from Chicago to New York to be in his band. (They even roomed together as well.) Among many things, Byrd got Hancock his first record contract and set him up to do his first album. He basically said "you're ready" and told Hancock, "the way it works with the record companies is, half the record's yours, half the record's theirs." Basically it meant "half the songs can be your compositions, but the other half has to be something the audience (already) knows" (paraphrasing) The implication was that it could be standards/covers or new compositions based around something familiar. Anyway, it sounded like it was likely the same accepted standard that bands like the Beatles readily agreed to, hence doing albums that were half covers even if they were aspiring songwriters. Obviously the Beatles could be exceptions - they were prolific enough and popular enough to do an album of all-new compositions as early as A Hard Day's Night, after Beatlemania was in full swing - but starting out on their first two albums, it made sense as a standard convention and not simply a way of filling the album because they couldn't write enough material fast enough.

Away from jazz, wasn't the convention for a group not to put any material of their own on albums at all back in 1963? The Beach Boys are the only other major act I can think of that had much self-written stuff.

Saw a post about Tony Williams where he confessed he was a huge Beatles fan when it was uncool in the in the mid 60s; he had a huge poster in his flat, and he felt both embarrassed and proud when Miles and the band came round his place and looked at him funny because of it.

Billy Fury's first album was entirely self-written and that was in 1960.

Obviously plenty of other rock and roll artists wrote their own material of course.

Specifically groups though.

I guess the Shadows had a few.

Buddy Holly & the Crickets were a group. And Bob Gaudio co-wrote most of the Four Seasons' hits.

A third option was to present new songs but ones composed by professional songwriters outside the group, like say The Coasters filling an album with new Leiber-Stoller compositions.

Buddy Holly & the Crickets were a group. And Bob Gaudio co-wrote most of the Four Seasons' hits.

Fair enough!

half the record's yours, half the record's theirs

right but there's not a single cover across the first five Herbie Hancock records, so presumably he's an example of breaking the mold on the jazz side of things

half baked thesis, feel free to poke

Obviously the Beatles were key to introducing this idea of "auteur" rock, but I think there was a general shift in American music during the '60s that had more to do with technology and economics. Even the word "album" hearkens back to a time when these were booklets that collected single 78rpm discs, so (at least on the pop side of things) I feel like there was a baked-in sense that an album is a collection of various tunes (old, new, fast, uptempo) rather a cohesive and novel artistic statement. This in turn reflected the reality that records and record players were expensive, so you wanted to get the most bang for your buck with any given purchase. My feeling is that as the technology became more inexpensive and accessible, more consumers felt comfortable taking risks on records that presented all-new material. But even here it's worth pointing out that most people still probably would've been buying 45s and prioritizing some degree of variety in their collection more than any other organizing principle -- for their pitiful, portable picnic players, as it were.

Jazz was a different beast, though, and record companies had been marketing albums to appeal to specialists and completists since the '40s, and so the focus there was often on a single composer's work (e.g. the "Genius of Modern Music" collections of Monk's tunes on Blue Note), rather than an idea of variety. So I think there was some precedent there for Herbie to emerge fully formed with a debut album of originals in '62, although it's worth pointing out that he was a genius and a uniquely prolific figure in modern jazz. I guess my point is that jazz records tended more often to market the material with a focus on the genius of the composer or performer, whereas pop records didn't tend to put this information to the forefront or organize collections of music around this idea.

I think on the country and western side of things, there's some precedent to spotlight composers -- lots of "Singer X Sings the Songs of Composer Y" -- but I'm not sure how that fits into all of this. I think in country music as in pre-Beatles pop music, there was more the sense that the song was the thing that counted, rather than the album

bird (paraphrasing Byrd) did suggest that the "record company half" could include "new compositions based around something familiar", so though I haven't heard Takin' Off that might include genre pieces like a blues, a bossa nova etc. which are technically originals but appease the conventional listener looking for a toehold.

e.g. the "Genius of Modern Music" collections of Monk's tunes on Blue Note

Also probably worth noting that Atlantic Records was actively promoting Ray Charles as a "genius" by the late '50s as well (see numerous album titles, e.g. "The Genius of Ray Charles" of 1959) so there was already the idea that playing up the auteurist angle could sell records in pop/r&b and not just classical and jazz.

Thought of Link Wray & the Wraymen...guess it depends how much of a group you consider them; Wray and M. Grant co-wrote 10 of the 12 songs on their first album (1960).

Also true of the first few Bo Diddley and Chuck Berry albums

Saw a post about Tony Williams where he confessed he was a huge Beatles fan when it was uncool in the in the mid 60s; he had a huge poster in his flat, and he felt both embarrassed and proud when Miles and the band came round his place and looked at him funny because of it.

LOL. Well, in the same interview, Elvis C. asked Hancock how old he was when he joined Miles, and Hancock said 23, then added "Tony was SEVENTEEN!" (I think this would've been 1963 - Williams was born December 12, 1945.) Carter was older than Hancock, Miles and George Coleman even older, so there may have been something like a semi-generation gap in taste.

I tried looking for the clip online, but I actually found what's supposedly a quote from an Uncut interview that covers the same ground:

In an interview with Uncut magazine, Herbie Hancock said he wrote the song as a result of something else his collaborator Donald Byrd told him. "He said, 'half the record is for you. The other half, that's for the record company. There has to be some kind of form that people are used to hearing, like blues. People know blues. Nobody knows your tunes, they're not going to help sell the record, and that's their business.'"

Hancock started to think, "Wait a minute! Horace Silver also sells a lot of records, funky jazz things. I can write a funky jazz thing."

But Hancock wanted something really authentic. "I thought about my own childhood in a Black neighborhood, and the watermelon man coming through the cobblestone alleys," he said. "His horse-drawn wagon would go over the cobblestones and he had a little song, but it wasn't very singable. I started thinking about the woman yelling, 'Hey, watermelon man!' That's how I got the melody. The rhythm was inspired by the wagon wheels going over the cobblestones."

The clip is worth seeing, because Elvis's reaction to Byrd's words is clearly news to him, like he wasn't aware that would've been the attitude at the time, at least in the jazz world.