Purple Chick Beatles Remasters

[Hot Ptah]

Indestructible: no way, u really listened to the whole A/B set? r u for reals, dawg? how long did it take you? did you go crazy by the end?

Yeah, I listened to the whole thing. Every second of it. It was a few years ago, so I don't remember exactly how long it took to do it (a month maybe?). And yes, I did go crazy by the end of it... like I said, it turned me off of the Beatles for a bit!

Still, I'm glad I did it!

If I had the time and the inclination (and I don't!), I'd cull that 83 CD set down to maybe 15 CDs of just the highlights.

Cheers,

Shane

And I thought that the 5 CD set of Bob Dylan's "The Basement Tapes" was a lot to wade through!

I have the complete Basement Tapes and with a few exceptions, I find it a delight almost from beginning to end. I think the big difference between the Let It Be sessions and the BT sessions that Dylan and the Band were having FUN. They were delighting themselves and each other, which makes it equally fun to listen to. By contrast, the Beatles were in the process of breaking up while recording what eventually became "Let It Be." For that reason, the documentary is hard to watch. I can imagine that listening to the tapes would be equally hard to do...

Actually, on my nine CD set of Let It Be sessions (on Vig O Tone), I hear very little in the way of fighting or arguing among the Beatles. They seem to be having fun most of the time. The sessions are boring though. They get little productive work done, and waste a lot of time goofing around with short fragments of old rock and roll songs, and their own earlier songs, sung and played very poorly.

Still, there are some interesting aspects to the sessions. I had not known that the Beatles worked on songs for years sometimes before recording them in their final version. On the Let It Be sessions, they perform All Things Must Pass, The Back Seat of My Car, Jealous Guy (titled "Child of Nature"), Mean Mr. Mustard, She Came In Through the Bathroom Window, Octopus' Garden, Another Day, Give Me Some Truth. (Child of Nature also appears on the early acoustic demos for the White Album).

It seems that All Things Must Pass, Mean Mr. Mustard, and She Came In Through The Bathroom Window, were serious contenders for the Let It Be album, as they worked on them repeatedly.

Mean Mr. Mustard was often sung by Lennon together with a song of his titled Madman, which is short but catchy. Too bad he did not finish it and record it at some point.

Two of Us was much more of a rousing rockabilly number at first. Get Back was more of a hard driving rocker in its early rehearsals too. But the earlier takes are so rough and full of mistakes that they could not even be edited into shape for release. It's too bad that the vitality of these songs was somewhat lost by the time they got a decent take on tape.

I cannot imagine what it is like to listen to 83 CDs of these sessions. Nine CDs was boring enough.