They were released just yesterday - picked up The White Album and Revolver. Both are really good.
Interesting anecdote - up until yesterday (I kid you not) I had never listened to a Beatles album in entirety. Never. Not once. I had never heard an entire Beatles album. Isn’t that weird? They’ve always been one of those bands that had me thinkin’ : yeah I’ll get around to them one of these days. To be honest, they don’t really do much for me…and that McCartney fella needs a good slap in the cakehole.
But I tell you, now that I have listened…jiminy crickets if the first half of disc one of The White Album isn’t SO damn good!!!
I’ve never listened to them as entire albums either, but they were long before my time, so whatever.
I did look at the CDs in a store today, and I was disappointed that the packaging seems to be all paper, no plastic. Paper CD sleeves are a bit of a pet peeve to me.
Yup, digipacks suck they wear and tear to easily, fucking annoying.
I grew up listening to The Beatles, they’ve been hit or miss with me though. Abby Road though is a fucking masterpiece I play that shit at least once a day, songs like Because and Oh Darling are among my favorites of all-time. ‘Because’ gives off a nice slow dark vibe, a true fucking classic a must have for any classic rock fan.
I downloaded these the other day off a rapid forum (I figure Paul and Ringo aren’t hurting for cash THAT badly) and played Revolver. From what I could tell off of a 192kpbs mp3 the remastering sounded great, really brought out the dynamics much better than the old direct-transfer CD’s.
I grew up listening to my parents Beatles records and went through a stage where I really liked them and another stage when I got older when I thought they were completely overrated. These days I like some of their material much better than others, but respect the ground they broke in terms of advancing studio recording and popular music in general. And although I agree that I’d like to pop Paul in the kisser every now and then (especially after Wings and the solo career), he and Lennon were undeniably a great songwriting team, and the chemistry between the four of them is undeniable.
yeah paul hate is understandable, he did some fugly albums, true. but who didn’t? i can’t stand a good half of bowie albums, for example. same can be said about lennon, his idea of “records must have messages and made quckly” resulted in shit quality sound, and he ended up recording a homey-lovey album, the thing macca was doing all along.
they both were great, but being ego-maniacs, they were/are somewhat annoying
remasters are good, but - i don’t like hard-panning stereo mixes of the old days, besides, they used to bounce down tracks which degraded quality somewhat. also the original mono versions sounds more “ballsy” but you can hear some “sand”/grain in the sound (result of the compressors used at that time); stereo sounds much clearer but the mixing decisions are weird, hard to listen in headphones.
the 87 CD releases were made from vinyl masters which means less bass; the remasters restores that. in fact the remasters sound a tad better than all the vinyl rips i donwloaded from the net, and no surface noise!!
but having tasted yellow submarine songtrack and “love” (2006 megamix), remasters are not that of a revelation. more like a way to release original mixes for purists once and for all.
The White Album is more or less essential listening and essential to any half decent record collection, unless of course you have an extreme Beatles aversion. It’s quite possibly the greatest double album of all time along with Physical Graffiti and Zappa’s ‘Freak Out’.
Revolver is more or less a runner up with Rubber Soul a close third. Never quite saw the ‘genius’ in Sgt Peppers (there’s an awful lot of sentimentality and saccarine to sift through) but it’s still worth a listen.
I’ll be picking up a few of these rematers in the coming days.
While it’s great that they finally re-released these does anybody else think they are WAY late to the party with this shit? I mean the cd format is apparently dying and what 's the point of the guitar hero/rock band beatles game besides a blatent cash in?
I don’t know a band like the beatles seemed to represent revolution and change. But more or less all they are is a brand with the heads sitting atop different mountains and to get their approval for anything and messages to cross it seems to take forever and a day. Imagine if guitar hero began as a beatles game? Would that kind of innovation ever come from these people again? Granted musically there isn’t much that can be done, but other media, movies electronics, games… that’s where the innovation is happening. Steve Jobs is more of a rock star with an effect on the culture than anybody off MTV of touring the stadiums. Did you guys hear of the new ipods he just announced?
Heard about the new Ipods, didn’t give a shit about them as with any “I” device.
People with Iphones try to show me how great they are all the time, I really don’t get the appeal. OooooooOOOohh I can use my finger to swipe the screen, and it has an accelerometer! Whoop.
I dont know why I have such a dislike for their Ipods/Phones… maybe because something like an Ipod nano (or whatever the tiny no frills ones are) cost 3x as much as a much better Mp3 player from some other company.
Meh…suppose I just don’t see how being able to scroll through my MP3s quicker than usual, or having thumbnails of album covers will replace the CD format - what about the liner notes, other artwork etc…
Not that I pay that much attention to it these days, but it’s still there and I appreciate that [laugh]. I always thumb through the books when I get a new disc.
Oh I dont know suppose I just don’t want to believe that CDs are on their way out… suppose as legal downloading increases that may just be the case…
Add me to the list of those who’ve never heard a Beatles album in its entirety. Actually not even close. Heard bits and pieces, but nothing that’s come close to grabbing my attention. Probably partly becasue anything they actually broke ground doing has been copied so many times since, partly because they’ve been hyped up and whored out so much since they broke up, partly because everything seems so poppy, partly becasue of the peace/love are the answer themes. I guess I can see what they were trying to get at, but everything seems so syrupy and naive in retrospect. I guess I just can’t get past my cynical viewpoint enough to enjoy that kind of thing. It’s definitely not that I’m scared of older music. But give me something like The Man Who Sold The World over the Beatles anyday.
I guess I can see what they were trying to get at, but everything seems so syrupy and naive in retrospect. I guess I just can’t get past my cynical viewpoint enough to enjoy that kind of thing.
I spent at least 15 years being cynical and thumbing my nose at the ‘classics’ like Led Zeppelin and The Beatles - only to wake up and realise that I’d been snubbing some high quality music.
Not all of it is sickly sweet and syrupy. Try The White Album - it’ll take you to some pretty harrowing places. Even the cute, upbeat numbers have dark undertones. All in all, it’s a pretty messed up, schizophrenic masterpiece. A million miles from the tacky ‘Love Me Do’ boy band shit.
The White album remains to me the best album of all time. I am astonished as to how it was made, recorded, whatever - those guys truly hated to be in the same room with each other at that point. I love the experimentations on it - the weird segue at the end of “long long long”, the entirety of “revolution 9”…the energy put into the alternate cut of “revolution 1” and jesus christ… HELTER SKELTER…
I just love it. I will definitely buy it, as longas I see an analysis of the waveforms. I just hope they didn’t just “louden” the levels and clipped the fuck out of it. I doubt they did, but you know how it is these days.
The first seven or eight tracks are heaven. Dear Prudence could be the most gloriously beautiful ballad EVER written…and The Continuing Saga Of Bungalow Bill gives me the creeps in a major way. It seems like such a sinister children’s nursery rhyme. I remember listening to it as a 15 year old, when I was given the album as a present, and being quite disturbed.
There are a couple of duds (Savoy Truffle, Julia, Why Don’t We Do It…) which lessen the impact somewhat, but in a way that ‘warts and all’ quality and the fact that they didn’t trim it down to a single album (so sick of people complaining about this) really works to its favor. It’s uneven and gritty and imperfect.
And did they REALLY hate each other during the making or is that just an exaggeration?? I’ve seen footage of the making of the album and they’re all laughing and joking and getting along famously.
Hell yeah, I’ll buy the remaster - I only have The White Album on vinyl and don’t like playing it because of its worth. I want to keep it in pristine condition. I don’t have an original pressing (it’s a repressing from 1988 I think) but it would still fetch a bit.
It was certainly the beginning of the end. If you ever watch the Let It Be dvd you’d see some obvious friction there. Plus, Ringo had left for a brief stint during the making of the White Album, where Paul ended up drumming on a couple tracks. It certainly began falling apart there.
