I don't usually do these happy birthday posts but these two guys undoubtedly changed the course of music, with The Beatles and Led Zeppelin.
I have never seen or met Beatles producer George Martin, but was able to ogle JPJ a couple of years ago when Them Crooked Vultures blew our tiny little Portlandia minds at a mid-sized club called The Roseland.
If you want to see what JPJ added to the 'heavy' of Zeppelin's heavy metal, look no further than this from 1999:
And here is a great video of George Martin going over how he and the Beatles recorded A Day In The Life:
John Paul Jones is now 66, and George Martin just hit 86.
The 'side 2' medley of songs on The Beatles Abbey Road that starts with "You Never Give Me Your Money" and finishes with "The End" has got to be some of the best 16 minutes of music ever recorded. I am not kidding. The collection of little songs span all sort of different styles, and the flow is damn near magical.
The climax of course is a mimi drum solo out of "Carry That Weight" by Ringo followed by traded guitar solos between McCartney, Harrison and Lennon (in that order) and the final "and in the end, the love you take is equal to the love you make" bit. Makes the hair on my arms stand up every time.
There is a group of musicians called the Fab Faux that includes Will Lee, bass player in David Letterman's Most Dangerous Band. I had read about this group and how obsessive they are with recreating the sounds on The Beatles albums down to using the same kinds of amps and guitars.
My friend nedmusic passed on this truly gorgeous video of the Fab Faux doing the Abbey Road suite live in the studio last year. It is remarkable, and what is truly awesome is the vocal work. They really, really have those vocals nailed and if you believe what you read, there are no overdubs here - it's all live. Enjoy!
I have bought and re-bought the Beatles. Got all the original releases on vinyl when I was a kid. Then bought some of them again when I realized I could get Apple issues at the used record store. Kind of cool to have Beatles albums first released in the 60s.
Then of course CDs came around and I had to get them all on disc. And then a couple of years ago they finally figured out how to make the CDs sound good, so I chose to re-buy them all over again.
Now thanks to the powers that be burying the hatchet yesterday, I have the option of getting them digitally via iTunes and of course I say no thanks. I already have all the superior-sounding CDs imported into iTunes for my iPod and have zero need for AAC quality versions.
I imagine I am not alone. But I guess for the younger set who may just want to buy a song here or there, it's nice to have the Beatles finally on iTunes. But I feel like that generation doesn't pay for its music anyway and probably got the tunes free from a file sharing service or their grandpa.
But dang SOMEONE is buying it up - According to this Mashable article:
Eleven of the top 25 albums on iTunes are Beatles records, including the full Beatles Box Set, which is currently at number 11 on the charts. In addition, more than 60 of the top 200 songs are Beatles tunes.
Sure, John, Paul, Ringo and George aren’t enough to knock Rihanna, Rascal Flatts and the Glee cast off the top of the charts, but these albums are 40-plus years old. We’re also smack dab in the middle of the biggest music release window of the year.
So what the hell do I know? I'm just glad people may be discovering this music for the first time. I wish I could do that all over again!
Speaking of Beatles discovery, I bet you've never seen this little clip:
I am not sure how people get a hold of stuff like this but damn am I glad that they do. Just like the Sgt Pepper deconstructed post I made last year, here is the 16 minute Abbey Road side 2 medley without any vocals. Pretty damn cool if you ask me. Enjoy it at this link (it's a Facebook video - could not find it on YouTube).
Any dream of a Beatles reunion was of course shattered by Lennon's senseless murder in 1980. We did get as good of a reunion possible with the Anthology project. The DVD bonus features of the three surviving Beatles jamming is pretty priceless even though they seem a little tentative around each other.
Of course with Harrison's death a few years later, we have half the band dead. Just like The Who as a matter of fact. So we take whatever we can get when it comes to reunions.
Which leads me to this post. Ringo turned 70 this week. He is on his umpteenth All-Starr band tour and who joined as a surprise guest in New York? The one and only Sir Paul. As reported by Spinner:
All Ringo Starr asked for as a 70th birthday gift on July 7 was "peace and love" from all his fans around the world. However, he was the one who delivered a big birthday surprise to the wildly cheering attendees at his celebratory concert at Radio City Music Hall in New York when Paul McCartney joined the legendary Beatles drummer onstage, fronting Ringo's All-Starr Band for a joyous encore appropriately consisting of the Fab Four's 'Birthday.' Sir Paul, clad in a tight black suit and skinny tie right out of 1964, waggled his iconic Höfner bass in time while delivering his full-throated take on the song. Starr merrily bashed away behind him on his kit alongside his drummer son Zak Starkey, with Joe Walsh joining in to supply guitar pyrotechnics.
And thanks to the Internet (God bless the Internet), here it is:
According to Classic Rock Magazine, Abbey Road Studios has been put up for sale by EMI to prop up crumbling finances.
According to the article, it’s expected that the complex could fetch around £20 million [~$27 million]. More:
The house, 3 Abbey Road, was bought in 1929 by The Gramophone Company, who later became EMI.
It opened as the world’s first custom-built recording studio in 1931, and became famous as the place where The Beatles recorded all their albums, except for Let It Be.
The Beatles also made the zebra crossing outside the studio legendary.
So many others have worked there over the decades, including Pink Floyd and Radiohead.
Hopefully the studio will stay open and functioning but I am bracing myself for the inevitable and the new owners turn it into a Chuck E Cheese or Hard Rock Cafe. Bleah.
I got the book Paul McCartney – A Life, by Peter Ames Carlin for Christmas and just finished it last night. It’s a comprehensive book that looks at McCartney’s entire life and career up to present day. Carlin interviewed scores of people – old bandmates, employees, friends etc. The only people not interviewed are members of McCartney’s family, or any of the former Beatles/their families. Maybe he tried and they said no.
But what he got let him put together what reads like a facts-based account of McCartney’s career. He looks at all the angles – was McCartney an obsessed workaholic who disregarded the input of all but his closest collaborators (Lennon and Linda McCartney)? Or was he an insecure worry-wart, eager to ‘set the record straight’ by rewriting history of his contributions to The Beatles and the songs credited to “Lennon/McCartney?” Or was he a savant following his muse to greater and greater heights (but in the shadow of Lennon), anyone with an opinion be damned?
The cool thing about Carlin’s book is that unlike most writers, he does not take sides. This is not a “Paul is an insecure dick” book, nor is it a glowing re-writing of history putting forth that Paul for the most part drove The Beatles and Lennon was along for the ride. Most books take one of those two angles. Rather, Carlin lays out the facts and lets the reader decide.
Where did I land? Well, I have always seen McCartney as unnecessarily insecure. There is no reason why he needs to trumpet what he did in The Beatles. His vast catalog of amazing songs speaks for itself. Latter 70s Wings material and a few glowing spots in his solo career back up the notion that he is a master of the melody, an amazing songwriter who didn’t need anyone else to help him.
Of course he was rudderless in the early 70s. Unlike Lennon and especially Harrison, McCartney didn’t have a backlog of songs to draw from. Also he was the odd man out, shut out creatively and business-wise by his three best friends who at the moment despised him. It’s amazing the dude landed on his feet at all.
The book portrays Linda McCartney as the savior who helped him get on his feet when he was down and out. Carlin again reports the facts, that Linda was not a good musician (by her own account even), but that her presence in McCartney’s creative life helped drive him to the great success of Wings and his other endeavors. The fact that she could be a bit overbearing was offset by the fact that anyone not overbearing was pretty much ignored by McCartney!
Having read way too much about the Beatles already, I knew a lot of the subject matter. But there was a lot that was new to me as well. For example, the turmoil of the songwriting sessions for the Anthology series, where the three surviving Beatles were all concerned they would not be fairly represented in the mix of the new song Free As A Bird. And how they had a three hour ‘airing out’ session in Harrison’s back yard and seemed to come back happier and got back to work.
I appreciated the themes that Carlin kept coming back to, that 1) events in Paul’s childhood affected how he behaved through the rest of his life, and 2) because he was mega-successful from a very early age, McCartney has a very distorted sense of how things are supposed to be, and this frequently clouds his judgement across the board.
Another recurring theme in the book is all of the ‘what if’s’ and close calls regarding Beatle reunions. I didn’t know that Lennon and McCartney hung out several times in the 70s and even jammed in a studio one time, with McCartney on drums. I found the bootleg of that session and it’s interesting to say the least but not very magical. They are all pretty wasted and it’s during Lennon’s “Lost Weekend.” But damn, it's interesting!
There were even a few times in the 70s when three of the four Beatles played together and just for purely logistical reasons the fourth wasn’t there (not because he wasn’t invited or because there was bad blood). The recounting of these events in the book makes me believe that the Beatles absolutely would have reunited at some point if Lennon had not been killed in 1980, if even for a one-off.
Anyway, for the most part McCartney comes across as a positive if slightly bemused artist (in the purest sense of the word) who struggles with various insecurities and the inability to identify a really good idea from a really bad idea.
It’s a fascinating read and even if you think you know all there is to know about the Beatles or McCartney I promise you will learn something from this book. And Carlin does it in 340 pages, which is a feat in and of itself. There is a LOT to cover in those pages and he does a great job not glossing over anything but not hammering the reader to death with details. And to back up his facts, there is a much appreciated appendix that outlines where he got all of his quotes and info. Very nice.
I took my boys (age 10 and 12) to see Rain, the longest-standing Beatles tribute band. I had no expectations, really. I bought the tickets for Christmas and the date just crept up, and all of a sudden showtime was here.
We arrived at the Keller in downtown Portland and took our seats. They piped 50s rock and roll over the speakers and ran Beatles trivia on video screens on both sides of the stage to pass the time. Then it was time to rock.
The motif for Rain is a little weird. They are a Beatles tribute band but they also have recreated filmed and audio moments from Beatles history to use as supporting media in the show. So when you hear Paul McCartney talk about writing songs with Lennon (it’s a clip from Anthology I think), it’s not Paul talking – it’s the guy who plays him. Same for the video clips, which is even weirder because up close, these guys don’t look a lot like the Beatles and it kind of messed it up for me. So, I stopped watching the screens and just watched the stage.
But that is where the magic happened. First of all, this was a live performance with nothing pre-recorded. There were four Beatles guys and one keyboard player – Mark Lewis, the guy who put the band together in the 1970s. Lewis played Billy Preston’s part in Get Back, for example. But he also did a lot of the string and orchestra parts in the band’s 1967 material and they had him onstage off to the side in the back so you could see what he was contributing.
Anyway, these guys were tight. Let’s set aside any resemblance to the actual Beatles for a second. The four musicians were top notch. The McCartney guy, Joey Curatolo, played lefty bass and had the McCartney bass lines down pat. The guitarists had Vox amps, with primarily Gretch, Rickenbacker, Gibson and Fender guitars and therefore sick tone. The Harrison guy had some synth patch hookup and for example played one of the string quartet parts to Eleanor Rigby on his guitar (and it sounded like a cello) – very cool to watch. The drummer was great too.
Rain has spent a good amount of time getting the parts right, musically. It was a mostly note-for-note rendition of the Beatles’ cannon. These guys are obviously fans first, kick ass musicians second. Not only did they get the parts right, they got the sounds right, as well as the spirit and energy.
The show went chronologically and Rain recreated the Ed Sullivan and Shea Stadium performances pretty religiously. To do a set/costume change, they closed the curtain and ran video of what was going on in the 60s during the time period. The audience spanned three generations – maybe four. Lots of older guys making peace signs with both hands on upstretched arms – they were THERE man (very cool to see). And of course kids and their dads like me.
Now here is the other thing – from where I was sitting, they looked a LOT like the Beatles. During the early material, it was a bit of a stretch. But as soon as they put on the Sgt Pepper costumes and added some longer hair and moustaches, they looked just like the Fab Four and it was a little eerie. Because they sounded just like them too. Great vocal impressions and like I said, they played great and had all the moves down.
Once they got to the White Album period, I had fallen hook line and sinker and it was actually fairly emotional. I could get a feel for what it might have been like to see these guys live. I also liked the later period of the show because they were not trying to recreate actual Beatles performances or films, but were playing Beatles tunes that the actual band had never played live.
For example, they put stools across the front of the stage and did a little acoustic set that included Blackbird and Norwegian Wood. I thought to myself, “Yeah! If The Beatles had gotten together and played any live shows after 1970, they for sure would have done an acoustic set.” They started While My Guitar Gently Weeps acoustically like the Anthology/Love version but then morphed into the full electric version complete with note-perfect Clapton guitar solo.
One other thing. The lefty bass player sat down for the acoustic set and they handed him an acoustic guitar, which he played right handed. I have never seen anyone play both right and left hand instruments at all, much less well. Blew my mind. Also, when the Lennon guy came out with the Let It Be outfit on, complete with chewing gum in his mouth, I kind of freaked out. The fact that they busted out Imagine and Give Peace A Chance was a nice bonus to the Beatles music and of course was rather emotional.
Other big highlights for me were the latter era stuff like A Day in the Life, I Am the Walrus, The End, Come Together, Gently Weeps, and Revolution. They nailed the three part harmonies of earlier stuff like This Boy and Eleanor Rigby.
The whole show drove a few obvious points home – namely that the Beatles had SO many classic timeless tunes, and that this was a total supergroup, with every band member being a big time star and contributor. They really created the mold that has been often imitated, never duplicated.
My music listening has been focused on three bands for the past couple of weeks: Porcupine Tree (last four studio albums), Ace Frehley (latest album, Anomaly) and The Beatles (all the remastered CDs starting with Rubber Soul). Yeah it’s a weird mix but it keeps by brain moving. Today, I wanted to post some thoughts on The Beatles Past Masters double CD.
They had the concept right with this one. Instead of dividing Past Masters into two CDs like they did in the 80s, they turned it into a double CD set. And since Past Masters is basically all of The Beatles’ singles grouped into one package, it’s kind of like a greatest hits collection too.
You see, back in the 60s, the artists felt that it was a rip off to put the songs they released as singles on their albums too. So, you had to buy Hey Jude/Revolution or Rain/Paperback Writer on a single to get it, and it wasn’t on any of their British LP releases. In the US of A, however, the record company would rob tracks off of the British LPs, combine them with the singles and give us extra "full length" albums like Something New, Yesterday…and Today, The Beatles Second Album etc. I was very confused when the original CDs came out, as they followed the British LP format and none of those weird American compilations were available. But of course it was much better because that is how the band wanted it in the first place.
When the Beatles’ work first came out on CD, Past Masters was how they got those singles into our hands, since they weren’t on any of the British studio albums.
So, anyway Past Masters is a good concept and the remastering as with the other albums sounds killer. Trouble is, on the first disc, the sharpness of the audio betrays that the band was still finding its feet in the studio. Yeah I am being blasphemous. But here it is – for the first couple of albums and the first batch of singles on Past Masters, the band was better at songwriting and singing than playing. The vocals are insanely impeccable from the first verse of the first single, Love Me Do. And all of the A sides of the singles are incredibly well written pop songs, which is why they all went to number one.
But the songs are in very primitive stereo and so the vocals are in one speaker and the band is in the other. As Pete Townshend infamously said in a 1965 interview in the movie The Kids Are Alright, “If you listen to the Beatles backing tracks without the vocals, they are actually pretty lousy.” I think he’s right. Fix the balance on your stereo so you can’t hear the vocals on She’s A Woman. Lennon is all over the place rhythmically, and hits quite a few clams too. It’s actually nice to hear them be so human…
However, the latter half of disc one and all of disc two is really what we buy this set for. Here is where you get the hits like Day Tripper, We Can Work It Out, Rain, Paperback Writer, Hey Jude, Revolution, Lady Madonna, Don’t Let Me Down and The Ballad of John and Yoko. And here is where the remasters once again make the hair stand up on end. This is where McCartney started honing his super melodic bass style and the band pushed the envelope in the studio with distortion, backwards vocals etc. The band is tight and confident with all the time in the world to get it right, where the first CD songs were recorded under record company pressure to get the next single out.
As with the White Album, Lennon’s rhythm guitar really shows through. He had a killer, chunky tone and style that I am only now starting to really appreciate, now that I can hear it so clearly – check Get Back to see what I am talking about. All that chunky playing and those little counter-fills in the chorus is Lennon, as are the solos. Harrison does very little on the song – you can see that on the video from the rooftop concert where this was recorded.
Also, Lennon and Harrison (but I think it was mostly Lennon) had the grungiest rhythm guitar tone on the block, in songs like Revolution and Day Tripper.
I always knew McCartney was (is) one of the best bass player alive. Hearing him this clearly is a pure joy. Just check out Paperback Writer and Rain. Chunky guitars and pumping bass, with those incredible Beatles riffs and vocal harmonies. And I am not sure I have ever even heard the bass part in Lady Madonna. Wow.
Also, as with the White Album, I hear all sorts of stuff that the grooves of vinyl and/or the shitty 80s CDs hide, like little noises on the vocals mics in the beginning of the singalong in Hey Jude, or the band screwing up the words in the overdubbed lyrics to From Me To You and I’ll Get You. I love shit like this.
Bonus? You also get the very funny You Know My Name (Look Up The Number) that sounds just like a Monty Python skit set to music. If you have the album ‘1,’ you already have a lot of these songs. But if you don’t, it’s a great addition to the collection.
Lots of people think that John Lennon's Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds is about acid. The first letters of some of the song's title are an anagram for "LSD," for goodness sakes!
But this was debunked right off the bat by Lennon who said the title was something four year old Julian Lennon named a drawing he brought home from school. Lennon thought it was a beautiful title and used it for the Beatles song.
I have known that story for years but didn't know until today that Lucy was a real person. Makes sense. Little kids draw pictures of their friends at school all the time.
And the sad caveat is how I found out. Lucy Vodden passed away of Lupus at age 46 in London. She was visited by Julian Lennon, who reignited his childhood friendship with her once her illness became serious. Turns out she was not a big fan of the song!
She told BBC Radio in 2007:
"I remember Julian and I both doing pictures on a double-sided easel, throwing paint at each other, much to the horror of the classroom attendant. Julian had painted a picture and on that particular day his father turned up with the chauffeur to pick him up from school."
Thanks to Don for passing this on after seeing my While My Guitar Gently Weeps post. The below video shows each of the four tracks that make up the song Sgt Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band. Each of the four original master tracks is isolated and shown in a different color in the video.
Yes, Sgt Pepper was recorded on a four track tape machine. The whole album...
Below is how they took four tracks and via bouncing some of them to another tape machine were able to record nine tracks of audio.
*******
Recorder (B) -- The "BOUNCE" tape. This is what we're hearing in the video:
Trk 1 [GREEN ].. From A, Tracks 1+2 (drums, guitars, and bass)
Trk 2 [ BLUE ].. Horns and punched-in lead guitar
Trk 3 [ RED ].. From A, Tracks 3+4 (all vocals)
Trk 4 [YELLOW].. Sound effects
Everyone has heard this song a million times. George Harrison's excellent White Album cut, While My Guitar Gently Weeps. It's been a radio staple ever since I can remember...
During the recording of the White Albumin 1968, tensions between the Beatles had been building, and Ringo had even walked out during the sessions. So to try and cut the tension a bit, Harrison invited Eric Clapton to sit in. He contributed the now famous solo part that gives While My Guitar Gently Weeps its eerie mood. And it was also the first time a famous outside player had played on a Beatles song.
Last week while listening to the White Album remaster on headphones, I did something different. I turned off the left speaker, which is where Clapton's part can be heard. What was left was acoustic guitar, drums, vocals and the coolest bass line. Now of course I had heard this bass part before, but without the 'distraction' of Clapton's solo, I was totally blown away by its chunky, funky tone, and was once again reminded how damn good McCartney is at playing the bass.
I used Garageband and iMovie to put this on YouTube - check it out and let me know if you think this is a cool as I do! It gets really good at about 45 seconds into it.
So, I couldn't wait. Was at the store two days ago and picked up the White Album remaster. Very nice packaging. They duplicated the poster that used to come in the original LP, and included a pretty cool book that didn't tell me anything new about the recordings but had some very high quality photos I had never seen before and of course all of the lyrics.
But the real anticipation was, how does this sound? I popped it into the car CD player and the screeching airplane that intro's Back In The USSR came on. Hmmm. Then Dear Prudence. OK. It sounded good but not sure if it was any kind of improvement. I was expecting the big emotional whoosh I got when I heard the remixed Yellow Submarine or insane mashup of Love.
But of course that is not what this is. This is Apple taking advantage of modern day technology to put the master mixes onto CD properly, so they sound fresh and vibrant. You shouldn't really hear new guitar parts not on the original albums or anything like that. It should just sound better in general. But I wasn't sure I was hearing anything all that different sonically.
But then something happened. While My Guitar Gently Weeps came on and all of a sudden it sounded EPIC. The piano intro was biting, Clapton's solos were right there in my face and it sounded like Harrison was playing acoustic next to me in the passenger seat.
And it went on - The horn and string parts in Martha My Dear, the bell in Everybody's Got Something to Hide... They were crisp, clear and loud. And the White Album's quiet songs always seemed to be sort of muffled to my ears. But now, songs like Julia, I Will, Blackbird, Long Long Long and Mother Nature's Son sound like they were pulled off of Revolver or Rubber Soul, which I always felt sounded crisper.
In fact the bird sounds in Blackbird were so clear and present that they were almost distracting, as was the bell in Monkey. And Yoko's warbling "Hey Bungarow Birwl" was also more audible (a good thing?).
McCartney said in a statement that these CDs are now as close to what it sounded like being there when the songs were recorded and I believe him.
There are 'making of' videos on each new CD but I haven't watched the White Album one yet.
I am actually going to kick on Revolution 9 and get into the groove (not). But I bet Good Night sounds excellent!
Not sure if I will eventually replace my whole Beatles collection with these but if the White Album is any indication, I just might.
If you read this blog, you are likely a music fan. And if you have not been under a rock the last week or so, you have been blowing in the wind of hype around The Beatles catalog being released today in remastered format on CD.
I heard a few songs on the radio and they did sound great. My birthday is coming up, so I am waiting patiently for a few to arrive as gifts. I will certainly post something after I give them a listen.
In the meantime, here is a PDF of an interview CNN did with the engineers who were given the master mix tapes to make this happen. This was not a remix a la the Yellow Submarine, Let It Be...Naked, and Love CDs from the last few years. All they did was to take the master mixes that came out of the studio in the 60s and apply modern day technology to transfer them to digital and apply EQ to clean up the sound.
But given the fact that technology has come a long way since the 80s, when The Beatles first showed up on CD, this process alone is enough to make those master tapes sound like you are sitting in the studio with the boys themselves.
Anyway, it's an interesting read. Especially the discussion about mono in the 60s and how up to about 1968, stereo was an afterthought, only afforded by the elite!
With all the celeb deaths in the last two weeks - Farrah Fawcett, The Gloved One, Billy Mays, Karl Malden, Steve McNair etc, a pretty big one got glossed over - Allen Klein.
Klein was the famous New York businessman who managed business affairs for the Rolling Stones and later The Beatles - hosing both groups in the end.
He is one of the many reasons for the rift between Paul McCartney and the other Beatles that hastened the band's end. Later, the other three Beatles said Paul was right and they never should have signed on with Klein. Oh well...
Read the Wikipedia entry for the gory details of all his various business noodlings, but for now, dig the take on Klein from the Beatles parody movie The Rutles. Klein is played by John Belushi and his two henchmen are SNL writers Tom Davis and Minnesota Senator Al Franken (whaaaa?):
Here is the first look trailer of the Beatles Rock Band game, due on Sept 9, as unveiled today by Paul and Ringo at Microshit's E3 conference. It looks pretty flipping epic.
According to an article on PaidContent.org, "The 45 tracks bundled in The Beatles: Rock Band include I Saw Her Standing There, Day Tripper and I Want To Hold Your Hand; players will be able to download other songs on Xbox Live, of course, including the entire Abbey Road album. There’s even a charity angle: all sales of the track All You Need Is Love will be donated to Doctors Without Borders."
Fellow blogger Seano posted a list of five albums that took him a while to latch onto but once he did, they became seminal listening. He challenged his readers to post their own lists in the comments. Instead, I thought I would hijack his idea and make my own list here. Thanks, Seano!
So here we go:
August and Everything After - The Counting Crows I know why I didn’t like this album when it came out. Too much initial hype. Too much whiny singing. And NO guitar solos. The horror. But after many years and faded memories of all the magazine cover stories, these songs hold up very well. They paint great stories and the band supports the songs – imagine that. We don’t NEED a guitar solo here, folks. It’s about the song. My favorite Counting Crows tune though is a cover that is not on this album. It’s their version of Friend of the Devil. Seek it out. It’ll move you.
Born Again - Black Sabbath In high school, my buddies and I originally liked this album because it was so bad. I mean the cover itself was enough shock value for us to want to consume this album if it was good or not. Turns out that there are some great moments on it, despite it being a weird release in a dark time for the band. The title track is very stony and who can argue that the riff for Zero the Hero is as pummeling as anything Iommi and crew ever cooked up? Hell, Guns and Roses stole it for Paradise City, so there ya go!
Black and Blue - The Rolling Stones Sandwiched between the Stones’ more fruitful, Mick Taylor era and the rebirth of the band with Some Girls, Black and Blue was kind of a throwaway. The band itself called the album the ‘guitar audition album’ because they had not hired Ronnie Wood yet and there are a ton of guitar players sitting in on this release. But over the years I have come to realize there is not a bad track on it. Crazy Mama is as rocking as the Stones get, Hand of Fate is a keeper and two of my favorite Stones tunes are on it – Fool to Cry and Memory Motel. Enough said.
Pre-Help! Beatles I had pretty much written off the Beatles' early stuff as pop pap, with the exception of standout hits like I Saw Her Standing There. But candy-assed tunes like She Loves You always made me think that whole period was not very deep. But checking out the band’s first four albums showed me a couple of things. 1) Lennon was totally in charge of that band, as he sings almost all the songs, and 2) he is much more bluesy and ballsy out of the gate than I had recalled. Songs like All I’ve Got to Do, You’ve Really Got A Hold On Me and You Can’t Do That totally kick ass. This Boy is incredibly bluesy and shows how well these guys could harmonize. Finally, check out their take on Please Mr. Postman. It’s as raw as some of Lennon’s later stuff.
Atom Heart Mother - Pink Floyd Even the guys in Pink Floyd hate this album. I got it in high school and liked If and Fat Old Sun but that was about it. My perception turned when it came out on CD and it seemed…well, louder. I think they mastered it louder. And it sounded pretty good. The Atom Heart Mother side-long suite is dodgy in spots for sure but has some great moments. The notion of Floyd working with orchestrator/artist Ron Geesin must have seemed like a good idea. But remember that he also did an album with Waters that was nothing but songs made up of body noises. Rick Wright’s sub-par song on side two benefits from killer horn breaks thanks to Geesin. I think Gilmour’s latest work leans back towards Fat Old Sun much more than anything Floyd did in the late 70s or 80s. The album has a kind of dreamy quality and little of the intensity of something like Careful With That Axe Eugene or One of These Days. The night Wright died, for some reason I put this one on and it did the job.
That’s my five. So what else? Three bands I am trying to get into but it just ain’t clicking for me yet are The Foo Fighters, The Decemberists and Wilco. I mean, I like what I hear but maybe they’ll make the next list.
Seano, for your next roundup, how about guilty pleasure albums? Ones we like but probably shouldn’t? I’d be happy to take first crack, and then you can swipe MY idea!
09/09/09 – mark your calendar. That is when The Beatles' entire catalog will be reissued in remastered, re-engineered format. Something that has been wanted by fans for years.
According to the New York Times:
Apple Corps Ltd. and EMI Music announced Tuesday morning that the Fab Four’s entire album catalog has been digitally remastered, and would be re-released on CD on Sept. 9. In a news release, Apple Corps and EMI said that the remastering effort, conducted at EMI’s Abbey Road Studios in London, took four years to complete, using a combination of modern-day recording technology and vintage studio equipment. The new CD releases, which include the 12 Beatles studio albums (the British versions) in stereo, as well as “Magical Mystery Tour” and “Past Masters Vol. I and II” (which have been combined into a single title) will feature the original UK album art, as well as original and newly written liner notes.
On Sept. 9 (the same day that the video game The Beatles: Rock Band arrives in stores), Apple Corps and EMI said that two new Beatles boxed CD collections of the material would also be released, one comprising all 14 CDs plus a DVD documentary collection, the other consisting of 10 albums’ original mono mixes plus two additional CDs of mono masters. In a statement, the two companies added: “Discussions regarding the digital distribution of the catalogue will continue. There is no further information available at this time.”
I bought all The Beatles’ albums when I was a kid – on vinyl. I bought some of them again when I became a pseudo-collector and tried to find original Apple labels etc. Then I bought them again on CD in 1987 when they were first moved to that format. I have bought a few of them again for my kids so they could have their own copies. Will I buy these new remasters? I am not sure yet. I may get a couple and if I think the quality is noticeably better, then probably.
I did notice a HUGE difference in the sound quality when I bought the Love and Yellow Submarine discs over the last few years. Those CDs sound miles away in sound quality from the 1987 CDs, so you never know.
I am actually most interested in the mono mixes, as Geoff Emerick wrote in his book Here, There and Everywhere: My Life Recording the Music of the Beatles that the mono mixes had the most care behind them, and the stereo mixes were actually throw-away quickie jobs to appease fans of the ‘new’ stereo format.
One funny aside – the Stones are doing the same thing. They are rolling out their post-1971 catalog in stages, starting with Sticky Fingers, Goats Head Soup, It’s Only Rock’n’Roll and Black And Blue in May. In the 60s, the Beatles and Stones used to communicate well, and the bands never issues new albums or singles at the same time, to avoid diluting the market and sales. Guess they didn’t get each others’ memos this time…
The buzz today in Beatles-land is that an unreleased 1967 song called "Carnival of Light" may be finally released, if McCartney can get Ringo and the Lennon/Harrison widows to buy off on the idea.
But don't expect Penny Lane part two. According to the Associated Press, this is a 14-minute experimental song containing distorted guitar and gargling sounds -- and even includes McCartney and Lennon shouting "Barcelona!" and "Are you all right?"
McCartney says that while recording, he told his bandmates to "just wander round all of the stuff and bang it, shout, play it. It doesn't need to make any sense."
So, fans of What's the New Mary Jane and Revolution 9, you may just get your companion piece!
The Beatles will put out a video game that allows players to play along with the band's music a la Rock Band, but it won't be a part of that game or Guitar Hero, according to many stories in the press over the weekend.
Apple Corps chief executive Jeff Jones would say that the game will encompass the band's entire career and that the tracks used in the game will be based on the British releases of their albums. Separately, Jones said Apple Corps is still in negotiations to release The Beatles' catalog for digital download, but no date has been set.
Giles Martin, who handled music production of The Beatles' "Love" project with his father George Martin, said that idea will be central to the game. "We are trying to keep to, as much as possible, people playing the songs as though they're playing the originals," Martin said. "It's more of a way for them to interact with what they know very well as opposed to us remixing."
Developers weren't releasing details of the game, which is still in development and won't be available until the holiday season next year. So it's still unclear whether players get to become virtual John Lennon and perform their favorite songs next to virtual Paul McCartney, backed by virtual George Harrison and virtual Ringo Starr.
I play guitar for various Portland bands (colorfield, Flat Stanley, The Floydian Slips). Find out more about me on my Facebook page at http://on.fb.me/mULCrf
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I got the book Paul McCartney – A Life, by Peter Ames Carlin for Christmas and just finished it last night. It’s a comprehensive book that looks at McCartney’s entire life and career up to present day. Carlin interviewed scores of people – old bandmates, employees, friends etc. The only people not interviewed are members of McCartney’s family, or any of the former Beatles/their families. Maybe he tried and they said no.
My music listening has been focused on three bands for the past couple of weeks: Porcupine Tree (last four studio albums), Ace Frehley (latest album, Anomaly) and The Beatles (all the remastered CDs starting with Rubber Soul). Yeah it’s a weird mix but it keeps by brain moving. Today, I wanted to post some thoughts on The Beatles Past Masters double CD.
So, I couldn't wait. Was at the store two days ago and picked up the White Album remaster. Very nice packaging. They duplicated the poster that used to come in the original LP, and included a pretty cool book that didn't tell me anything new about the recordings but had some very high quality photos I had never seen before and of course all of the lyrics.
09/09/09 – mark your calendar. That is when The Beatles' entire catalog will be reissued in remastered, re-engineered format. Something that has been wanted by fans for years.
The buzz today in Beatles-land is that an unreleased 1967 song called "Carnival of Light" may be finally released, if McCartney can get Ringo and the Lennon/Harrison widows to buy off on the idea.
The Beatles will put out a video game that allows players to play along with the band's music a la Rock Band, but it won't be a part of that game or Guitar Hero, according to many stories in the press over the weekend.
