Beatles' Day is Upon Us!

So, it's finally here: the entire catalog, all twelve albums plus Past Masters, remastered in (I'm told) pristine quality. Allan Kozinn in the Times says that "this music has dimension and detail that it never had before, and the new packaging reflects each album’s musical and cultural importance. Over all, the new discs sound substantially better than the Beatles’ original CDs, which EMI issued in 1987. The most striking and consistent improvements are a heftier, rounded, three-dimensional bass sound, and drums that now sound like drums, rather than something in the distance being hit." Joy!

I don't want to get back into how Apple Corps. and EMI dropped the ball in waiting this long. I'm far too busy spending all my energy on not impulsively buying the entire box set (leaning towards mono so that I can pore over all the nuances) from Amazon.

Looking, for some reason, for more Beatles' coverage? Check out Pitchfork's reviews of the albums, both individually and as a collection. These at first seemed like a silly joke ("great, I finally know that Sgt. Pepper is a 10/10") but turns out, they're a really well written analysis of records that, if you're like me, course through your veins.

Finally, if you want to read Chuck Klosterman beat a dead horse of a joke, check out his "review" over at the Onion. It gets old fast, but it's got some pretty great zingers.

How are you celebrating Beatles Day?

Long and Winding Road, Repaved [nytimes]
The Beatles, reviewed [pitchfork]
Chuck Klosterman Repeats the Beatles [the onion]

Finally: The Beatles' Remasters

Maura Johnston over at Idolator has a post today regarding the Beatles' reissues, something I've clamored for quite a bit and am pretty happy will be making it to the masses this September. I don't think that McCartney and company should be patting each other on the back, since it took them decades to do something that should have been at the top of their list from the beginning days of the CD format. But better late than never, I would say. I have faith that these albums are going to sound better than we've ever imagined, or at least better than they have on digital formats before (nothing beats my copy of Abbey Road on vinyl, "STEVE FISHNER" dymotape still intact). But Johnston isn't so sure that the project will perform very well:

[...]There was one question that was nagging at me every time I passed through another breathless announcement of the release. And that question is: Who, exactly, is going to buy these CDs?

Johnston makes the point that there aren't that many places to even buy CDs anymore, even if people wanted to, which more and more they don't. This is true, and Johnston is right about almost everything (especially "the way the music industry is hell-bent on shooting itself in the foot with dopey ideas like the ringle and Musicpass") save for one thing: people buy the Beatles' material no matter what. She claims that they've "fallen out of the habit," but I don't know that I'd go that far. This is anecdotal but I can pretty much guarantee that my dad, who I think is probably the target here, will pick up this remastered release. No, he doesn't buy CDs with the frequency he once did. In fact, he buys a lot more music via iTunes than he does from brick and mortar sources. But he bought The Beatles' 1, he bought Love, he bought Let It Be Naked, he bought the Capital Albums reissues, and if he bought all those superfluous releases, then he's probably going to buy the remastered catalog. Time will tell, but you should never underestimate the commercial power of the biggest band in the history of the world. As sometime Idolator Michaelangelo Matos points out in the comments to the post, the Beatles are recession-proof.

The Beatles' Remasters: Are They Really That Big A Deal in the Post-CD Era? [Idolator]
Earlier- Dropping the Ball: The Beatles [2DOS]

Top Five: Reasons I'm Not That Mad At The Beatles

In the interest of Not Whining Too Much, and in light of my last post about the Beatles, I thought I'd run down five things that don't suck about the Beatles.

5) Ringo Starr has discovered YouTube:



...although he appears to be using it for evil, not good. No, I don't know what the story with this is either. Moving on...

4) The films A Hard Day's Night and Help! released in very nice double-disc sets. It's nice to see these again; I watched them a lot when I was little. A Hard Day's Night really holds up, though while Help! was certainly fun to revisit, it didn't have the energy or cultural cache of its predecessor. Don't get me started on the most overhyped rock movie of all time.

3) The Beatles Anthology, both the documentary and the companion albums. The DVD is a pretty comprehensive, if at times biased, look at the complete history of the band. Sure, it smoothes over some of the rough edges of the story, but it also lets us see how much of a dick Paul can be. Exhibit A: what kind of schmuck would think it a good idea to record his documentary testimony from the steering wheel of his yacht? The soundtracks, six discs in total, gives us maybe our only glimpse so far of the wonders that lie waiting in Apple Corps' archives, if they'd just open them up.

2) The Capitol Albums rereleases. These box sets packaged the first eight Beatles albums as they were originally released in the United States. They're shorter, and they sound different: much more trebly, with the vocals higher up in the mix. Why exactly they were altered is something I'm not going to get into (for that, I urge you to pick up a copy of Dave Marsh's The Beatles' Second Album, which tells the story contextually and compellingly as a war between rock 'n' roll and the status quo of pre-Beatlemania America). Sure, they prey on the nostalgia of those who grew up with these versions, and they are overpriced and underpackaged (the box looks kind of cheap and rushed). No, these are not the albums the Beatles intended to release. But who cares? These are the records my parents lost their minds to and I can feel them in my blood, even if I never heard them until this set came out a few years ago.

1) The albums. Sure, the sound quality could be better. But regardless of that fact, there is no stronger catalog in the history of popular music than that of the Beatles. The crappiest 8th-generation blank tape copy of a poorly compiled Beatles best-of would STILL be one of the crowning achievements of rock music. Abbey Road? Revolver? Meet the Beatles? Sgt. Pepper's? Even the aforementioned Beatles' Second Album, clocking in at just under 30 minutes with only 4 original tunes (the rest are covers) is completely unfuckwithable in every way.* I'd love to have remastered versions, really I would, but I'm not rushing to burn these copies anytime soon.

*It's one of my favorite albums of all time, despite the naysayers.

Dropping the Ball: The Beatles

Great. Harmonix and its parent company, MTV, announced that they are working on a game similar to Rock Band (but not quite the same thing, somehow) based on the Beatles' catalog and Apple Corps is on board with the original master recordings of the songs. Great! Too bad I can't buy them online, or even in record stores. Great?

I'm not some kind of purist who believes that the Beatles' music has no place in such a project. In fact, it sounds alright to me--certainly better than a commercial for PCs or dick medication. No, Rock Band: Beatles or whatever its called actually sounds like fun to me (pop pills to stay pepped up through stage shows in Hamburg! Don't let George Martin see you smoking cigarettes! Erect a bed in the studio before Paul wigs out on you!). My issue is with Apple Records' handling of the Beatles' catalog.

Did you know that the Beatles' catalog has not been remastered since... ever? That's right. The Rolling Stones, the Beach Boys, Led Zeppelin, you name the classic artist and they've seen their catalog get overhauled. As for the band that started it all, we have a smattering of projects that run the gamut from masturbatory--see Paul tell his favorite stories of the Beatles from the driver's seat of his yacht!--to what borders on revisionist history. In the most glaring of these, Let It Be...Naked, Paul McCartney tries to make us forget that the group were in such a shambles on the completion of that album that no one wanted to stick around to do it themselves (If you know where George Martin was at this point, please post in the comments. I've always wondered about that). That's why Phil Spector was hired. Did Spector butcher it with his wall of sound? Maybe. But that's how it happened, Paul. You can't change it by trying to make us buy Let It Be for the 18th time. Just like you can't decide that certain songs in the Lennon/McCartney catalog are "McCartney/Lennon" songs. I don't care if you wrote "Yesterday" and John wrote "Revolution." Even being one of the chief songwriters in the most influential band in the history of pop music does not mean that you can change history. Coming soon: Revolver with George Harrison's solos completely erased! New cut of A Hard Day's Night where Paul plays every role!

Not all of these projects are so terrible, though. Okay, well, one of them isn't: The Beatles' Love album, a surprisingly great byproduct of the Cirque du Soleil's show of the same name, running now in Las Vegas. This album, often referred to as a "Beatles mashup" was produced by George Martin and son Giles (skilled producer in his own right), merges a veritable shitload of Beatles classics into one glorious, lush soundscape. Sound cheesy? Yeah, I know, but check it: this was the first project ever where Apple cracked open its vault and let out some of the rich sounds contained within. The audio quality on this record will blow you away if you've been listening to the CDs, which were mastered in 1987, when CD mastering was still a bit of an experiment. 1987! Two decades and counting. The freaking Monkees have been remastered since then. More than once. Compared with their remastered versions on Love, songs like "Lady Madonna" and "Good Night," to name just a few, sound harsh and cheap on the original CDs.

Love gave us hope that Apple might be finally working on a remastered set, and last year Macca himself even announced that they were (of course this was during the publicity run-up to his latest album, so who knows how much credence should be lent). Certainly they'd sell a ton of copies without doing very much of anything. If Apple Records has the time and money to strip the production off of Let It Be or create a video game, why can't they get this remastering project off the ground? I'm at a loss. Leave your conspiracy theories in the comments.

The Beatles Stay Alone from Rock Band [idolator]
McCartney: Beatles Should Go Digital Next Year [billboard]