Be Excellent To Each Other

Are you getting any of the remasters or even the whole box set tomorrow? If so how do they sound? Can Abbey Road really sound any better?

P.S. Think The Beatles are shit with only three good tracks? Good for you.

Pitchfork said nice things about them.

Three?

I have the white Album on pre-order, but I might suggest to she-who-spends-all-the-money around these parts that the box set would be a suitable Christmas present.

So long as they haven't done a George Lucas type remastering, I think I'll be happy

Nope, I think the Beatles are average with about six or seven fairly decent tracks.

George Martin did his best work with The Goons, mind you - always hated his production on the Beatles stuff.

And McCartney's a cunt.

And it was with one statement online that Government Yard revealed his (or should I say her) true identity. Step forward Heather Mills!

Well do let me know how it sounds to your ears.

One leg good!

Two legs bad!

When Heather Mills was on the American version of Strictly come dancing, I enquired with William Hill on what odds they would give me on her leg NOT falling off during a dance.

They seemed less than willing to take my money.

Pft. Wrong. They're jolly good with two top album's worth. Revolver is almost completely awesome. Beatles were great.

But not great enough to justify music magazines spunking all over them for the last decade, though. I used to buy Uncut, until they print a promise from the editor that they'll never run another Beatles article again, that's it for me. I suggest the world forgets about them and looks to bright, sunlit uplands or something.

Has anyone heard anything yet, then? I'm rather intrigued to hear what they sound like.

wasn't 'love' remastered into stereo?

i've just realised. It's 'beat'les... As in the musical beat. That's clever.

I'll wager that to my ears at least they'll sound precisely the same, unless they've been remixed by Jive Bunny and the Mastermixers or something.

I don't like them and think that they are overrated.

I suppose like them but I never purposely listen to them. I don't need to as I've heard them so much since being born. They're just 'there' and ubiquitous, like paper clips or toilet roll.

Tracks 9 to 16 ('You never give me your money' through to 'Her Majesty') of Abbey Road is one of the most imaginative and innovative medleys of music ever concieved by man. Anyone who disagrees is bereft of Ears that Work.

Seriously?

What's yellow and lives off dead Beatles?

I only recently worked out 'Bill Haley and the Comets'.

News just in, the ER on post boxes relates to the queen, and not the american chicago based hospital drama.

The next Beatles album is being produced by Goldie.

It's going to be Drum and Bass.

Paul & Ringo are promoting the remastered versions by performing several songs in Myps anus. A spokesman said the guys are really looking forward to playing in The Cavern again.

What would it take to reunite the Beatles?

I like Revolution 9 by the Beatles. Pretty much everything else I've heard by them has been fairly pleasant pop but nothing I particularly want to listen to.

I think they tend to sound a lot better when covered by other people.

see



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More top Beatles covers

Also I'm just listening to some Beatles remasters and they're really annoying. REALLY annoying. It's just nonsense like having the drums panned to the left and the guitar to the right. It would sound a lot better in mono.

Are you sure that's not how they sounded originally?

It is for most of them. I'm sure that only three Beatles albums were originally recorded in mono.

I must admit I'm not sure how it sounded originally as this is the first time I'm listening to them properly. I was curious to see if the Beatles had done any good tracks. So far it's pretty much no.

Honestly.. It's not just about how good the tracks were, it's all about the time they were about and what they were doing.. and clearly how talented they were.

Give me the Beatles over anything around nowadays!

If the new stereo mixes bother you, why not get the remastered mono set: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Beatles-Mono/dp ... 558&sr=8-2

Upload one, man! One everyone knows, like Twist and Shout* or Help!.

Much as I enjoy this song, it is perhaps guilty of the worst drumming ever

Remember The Dave Clark Five?

I heard some in HMV yesterday. The guitar was so far removed from the rest of the mix that, when a lead part came in, I thought it was someone's phone going off in the shop. I'm all for stereo image, but that was ridiculous. Walking into the shop made me sad. Not just because they're still trying to flog CDs for £16, but because the main display was all Beatles. It was like the last 40 years didn't happen.

***

As for the band themselves; they were fine. I don't rate them as performers, but some of their songs were really good. So I find myself liking covers of their stuff, or listening to 'Beatlesy' bands. Can't stand their voices. Al Green doing 'I Wanna Hold Your Hand' is infinitely preferable. In terms of 60s stuff, I much prefer the Beach Boys, Captain Beefheart and Jimi Hendrix. And Perrey-Kingsley. And the 13th Floor Elevators.

I like the Beatles, but this blind cannonisation annoys me, and particularily enrages me when cynical tired music magazines trot out article after article, usually alongside handy reissues, that spout the same incredibly boring 'new insight' into the band members. I do still maintain that anyone who can't see the excellence in Revolver is clearly lacking any sense at all, but if you were to put my fave Beatles tracks up against say, my fave Arcade Fire or British Sea Power tracks, the latter would win.

I do get annoyed with places like HMV and magazines conspiring to make them 'must have' collectors items. Remastering doesn't add anything, indeed for me it takes away from it. So what if you can hear them whispering in the background, or if everything leaps out in startling clarity? The more removed they get from the pleasing earthy rough familiar originals, the more antiseptic, purist and arsehole orientated they get. The band had an electric energy because they basically rocket charged music into a collective aural backdrop for a nation's population, and became the first non war-mongering non-religious media deities. Now all that we are left with is Fray Bentos Pie-lid face McCartney chuntering on between fending off determined and relentless boogie-woogie jamming requests from Jools Holland, and Ringo Starr looking increasingly odd.

The best thing the Beatles ever achieved was clearly that bit in the film A Hard Day's Night, where Ringo goes into a rough bar on his own and with forlorn bafflement inadvertantly destroys everything around him with perfectly timed modest slapstick.

Either that or 'And Your Bird Can Sing'. That's one of the best songs ever.

Again, are you sure this is part of the remaster? Because I always recall the Beatles splitting their music across the stereo channels (as stereo was 'new' then).

I don't think vinyl's stereo image is sufficiently wide to create the effect this one had. I can believe it was an existing effect that was exaggerated for the remaster, certainly. Either way, it wasn't good.

i agree with Grim. It used to like that. When i listened to my mum's vinyl years ago

The reissues have not been remixed just re-mastered, thus any separation that existed previously exists now. The stereo mixes have always had what we would consider today to be extreme panning. This was necessary in the 1960s when the majority of record buyers had all in one stereos where the speakers would be, at the most, only a few feet apart. My family had an old HMV gramophone which was typical of the time and any subtlety would be lost on such a unit. It's fairly easy to find this stuff out if one can be bothered to look.

As for the remasters it is my understanding that they are an attempt to return to the sound of the original LPs rather than an attempt to modify the recordings to sound as though they were recorded in a modern studio. Having listened to The White Album remaster, there certainly isn't the leap in sound quality one experiences when comparing the Let It Be album tracks to their Anthology counterparts for example. There is however a noticeable increase in the bass's prominence and definition, a sortcoming which the 1987 CD issues have been criticised for. If the original 1960's issue were this bass heavy then I can understand why people would notice the difference. No doubt the onerous 'shits and giggles' brigade will site this as McCartney warping the catalogue to his own evil agenda. Ho hum.

The other main things I noticed where greater run out times on tracks. They certainly take longer to fade out or don't fade out at all which means there is essentially 'new music' to hear. I only gave it a few listens but the quieter more acoustic tracks also seemed much improved. Harrison's 'Long Long Long' sounded far more intimate, the acoustic guitars on 'Revolution 1' more distinct and livelier. Isolated vocals and vocal harmonies were noticeably more audible. The 'Beach Boys' style harmonies on 'Back in the USSR' where once swamped but can now be heard.

For some one with only a passing interest in the band the remasters don't seem (on the White Album anyway) to be any incentive to increase that interest. However what you do get is a fantastically packaged and polished album for a very reasonable price. They put the incredibly basic 1987 versions to shame. Personally I'll think I'll buy the stereo CDs individually as I come across them and then perhaps purchase the Mono box set as a treat sometime in the future. The Mono packages seem far more important in regards to hearing the music as it was heard in the 1960s and perhaps as the band intended it to be heard.

I own no Beatles CDs, we have some LPs, it would be nice to have them on CD. So, I might look at getting them at some point.

Malc

The Pitchfork article Lewie linked to seems to say that they recorded all their music (or most of it) in Mono, and that the conversion to Stereo was often done later, after the band has buggered off. As such, the Mono box set is perhaps considered to be the 'proper' one.

Also, Beatles = excellent. Sure, they did a lot of crappy pop stuff, but they also did some awesome pop stuff, and a lot of other awesome songs.

I've only ever listened to the Beatles on cassette tape. The panning is, as you say, pretty noticeable especially if you've got headphones on.

I really like some Beatles songs. I really hate some Beatles songs. Many I don't care about either way. Many I haven't heard.

I may have a look at getting the Mono boxset. My mum gave me her stereo LP of Sgt Pepper from 1967 and the stereo effect is indeed horrendous when listening with headphones, so I'm pretty sure the stereo effect on these remasters is nothing new.

I always thought that and then when I had a phase of listening to them when I was younger I realised I'd already heard every last one, but had no idea when.

Hey maaaaaan if you remember the Beatles you weren't really there maaaaaaaan.