The Beatles - US Albums

[David]

I like the earlier stuff better, too. My personal favorite albums are Please Please Me & A Hard Day's Night. But I might argue on an objective level that the White Album is their greatest work, warts and all.

White Album seconded here.

I'm too young to have experienced the Beatles first-hand; my first exposure to them was during the early 90's, and am part of the grunge generation (Pearl Jam's Ten and Nirvana's Nevermind were the "Beatles" of my youth).

Wasn't keen on their early stuff, but even at that age and at that time, recognized something special about the White Album, especially "While My Guitar . . . ," which remains my favorite Beatles song.

Since then, Revolver has worked its way up to being on par with the White Album, but for me, the White Album will always be my favorite.

And Jim is right about two things: 1) both the mono and stereo versions are well worth acquiring if you are a fan, and 2) Revolution #9 is not worthy of the rest of the album. One advantage of our digital world is that I can save a White Album playlist that simply skips that track.

[Scott Dolan]

If they had pared The Beatles down to a single album it could have easily been their best. The problem with it is that there is simply too much filler, IMO.

Edited January 23, 2014 by Scott Dolan

[Leeway]

First Beatles album I bought: "Beatles 65." Still like it, although I rarely play The Beatles anymore. But when I do (says the Dos Equis man), I play "Beatles 65," "Rubber Soul" and "Revolver." BTW, I was 11 when The Beatles came to the States, so you can do the math.

Can anyone explain the PR statement in Brad's post at the beginning of this thread from the record label saying that the new release was "mastered for iTunes." What exactly does that mean?

[Scott Dolan]

I've always wondered about that one myself. You see it all the time, though.

[J.A.W.]

I'm old enough to have experienced the Beatles (and the Rolling Stones, for that matter) when their first Parlophone 45 ("Love Me Do") hit the charts in the U.K. in 1962. I didn't really warm to them in the beginning (the Stones were my favourites, as a 1940s/1950s R&B fan I thought they were more "authentic") but gradually I began to appreciate their output, from Beatles for Sale onwards.

I got the mono set when it came out in 2009 and like most of it, although the first two albums (U.K. versions, of course), Please, Please Me and With the Beatles, still don't quite do it for me - neither do The Beatles (AKA The White Album), Let It Be and Abbey Road, by the way; to my ears those are albums of a group in decline.

Edited January 23, 2014 by J.A.W.

[Scott Dolan]

Leeway, check this out.

http://www.npr.org/blogs/therecord/2012/02/24/147379760/what-mastered-for-itunes-really-means

Most important passage:

[["In Apple's calculation, mastering a song or album "for iTunes" means that it'll sound better while remaining just as portable as the encoded files we're accustomed to packing by the thousands onto our phones and mobile devices. For Bob Ludwig, a mastering engineer who remastered Coldplay's latest album, Mylo Xyloto, for the new "Mastered for iTunes" store, this makes sense. "From a technical viewpoint, there are cases where the lossy 24-bit AAC file would be superior to the lossless CD," Ludwig wrote in an email. "I did an early demonstration for some engineer friends of mine and the difference between the 'Mastered for iTunes' file I created and the one that was ripped from a 16-bit CD was easily heard on the little speakers on my MacBook Pro."

I listened to the two versions of Coldplay's single, "Every Teardrop Is A Waterfall," to test the difference. (I can't post audio samples of the two versions of the track here because the encoding process a file goes through in any audio editor obscures those subtle differences, but if you have a CD version of any of the albums in the "Mastered for iTunes" section of the store, you can compare easily by ripping the tracks at "iTunes Plus" quality.) Played overdecent headphones, I could hear subtle differences, especially where the mix was denser and more complicated. Ludwig's "Mastered for iTunes" version sounds slightly less crowded, with clearer distinctions between similar tones in acoustic guitar and piano and sharper, less distorted drums.]]

Edited January 23, 2014 by Scott Dolan

[Leeway]

Thanks Scott. Good article, but I take comfort in the fact that the author too needed to go back and fix the article since this is a bit tricky.

This is great for iTunes but the question for archaic CD lovers is, does it improve the listening experience on CD?

[Scott Dolan]

I would assume it doesn't since it still has to be mixed down to 16/44.1

But, I don't know...

[Jim R]

I prefer the earlier stuff too, but not straight across the board. There are some early things that I don't love at all, but they tend to be in the minority. I basically love the more "innocent" period, the melodies, the harmony vocals, and just the nostalgia of it. The songs that weren't overplayed quite so much are the ones I tend to appreciate the most these days.

I also love a lot of the mid-period stuff, and some of the later stuff, but my batting average is highest with the earlier stuff in general. I and my brothers bought every LP as they were released, and the early stuff (what I consider the best of it, that is) still hits me to this day. The "Hard Days Night" soundtrack may be my favorite album, although "And Your Bird Can Sing" is probably my favorite individual song. Hard to generalize. I don't care nearly as much for the more psychedelic stuff, the India-influenced stuff, etc.

[JSngry]

Raga-Rock was ok by me!

[Scott Dolan]

And yet played live, as by that orchestra in that clip, it becomes very musical, conservative, actually, much more than the record, I think. I was surprised as anybody, but in a world of Stockhausen, Penderecki, Berio, etc., this fits right in. On a rock record, maybe not so much (and it was only years later that I learned of those other musics), but the Lennonos would go there for a while, hardly ever (one might posit never) with good results, but with age and knowledge of what they were referencing, at least now I have a context for the ambition instead of thinking they were just lost in space koo-koos or some such.

Speaking of surprises...

This thing is a worm that eats through your skull and eats your brain into a new place from which there is no retreat. In a good way.

Sounds like it would have been a great fit for the Love soundtrack. An album that horrified me when I first heard of it, but after I finally broke down and bought a copy was pleasantly shocked at how much fun it was to listen to.

Not to mention it was a GREAT preview as to what the remastered albums were going to sound like.

[JSngry]

HAven't gotten around to Love yet, but if you are interested in all kinds of digital-wonkery done on known-quantity catalog, there's a thing called Beatles Remixers Group that's been at it for a good long while now, long before Love. With a little cyber-digging, they can be can be found and enjoyed. Their hit-to-miss ratio is mixed at best, but it's all free, and the good stuff is really, really good. Some of it is as simple as doing a remix of a song from the isolated surround-sound tracks that came out on...something...maybe the Anthology DVDs? some of it is mashups, some of it is real DJ-ology, extracting/reconstructing samples into a whole new piece. And some of it indeed very fresh and startling, like hearing this music with a fresh perspective for the first time in decades, and some of it is indeed total crap of the most amateur variety. But again, it's all free, so you got nothing to lose.

This type of thing is not for everybody, for sure. A lot of people don't want to hear stuff like this, and I can understand why not. Me, I enjoy it (at least when it works), because if the only Beatlemusic I had to hear for the rest of my life was the known-quantity catalog, I don't know how often I would bother. I mean, I love the stuff, I imprinted on it from the night of the first Sullivan show, it's a much a part of me as much as anything else, but after a point...it's in there, I know it's in there, and let's leave it at that, move on, get some other stuff in there as well. I got no problem with that, don't really need to hear any of that ever again (or hardly ever again). But these manipulations-type things, those are a kick. I can't tell you how guy-punched I felt the first time hearling "I Long To Hold Tall Sally", it was like, wait, this is not anything that ever happened, so why is it happening, how did this happen, how do the Beatles sound like this, I know how the Beatles sound and they cannot sound like this. Yet here they are, so I guess they can. A total mindfuck, not from the novelty aspect of it, from from the deeper sensation of having everything I knew about everything involved totally destroyed in less than 180 seconds. This will need to be put back together, but you know, it'll never be put back together like it was, and that's something to be thankful for. Like music used to be all the time, right?

That, to me, is what you should do, creatively, with known-quantity repertoire, find a way to make it into something new, twist it around, turn it back on/inward against itself, find new dogs in that old fur instead of putting that old fur on new dogs. Of course, sure, revisiting the original material is still valid, ti always will be, but a little of that goes a long way for me, after a point (a point long ago reached).

[Scott Dolan]

Awesome, thanks Jim! I'm going to check those out.

Here are two of my favorites from Love. It's hard to listen to them out of the sequence of the album because of the way everything segues, but you'll still get the idea.

[Scott Dolan]

OK, just one more. I love this one for the jarring transition.

[JSngry]

Yeah, I like the notion of doing that, just because. Results vary wildly, to put it mildly, but I like that people are thinking like that as an alternative to more or less relying on societal conditioning to "hear" music.

The BRG's output is not exactly "legal", but there's been 7 volumes so far, released (strictly online and free, at least as far as I know about) under titles "Tuned To A Natural E Volume (x)". I say that to neither condone or encourage the pursuit of such material, but rather to simply keep the historical record as accurate as possible....

[Scott Dolan]

May you one day hire an editor.

[JSngry]

[Brad]

Thanks for the feedback. I have the mono set and was happy with that. I grew up overseas and so had the UK versions, which always had more songs than a US version. However, I did have a couple of US versions and they didn't sync. For example, I had the UK version of the Stones' Between the Buttons (one of my favorite Stones albums) and when I saw the US version, my reaction was that they dropped a couple of songs.

As far as favorite albums, The White Album is a group that can't get along. Not really an album. Don't think they made it together. However, does have some interesting sons. They were at the top with Rubber Soul, Revolver and Sgt. Peppers. Having said that I love all the albums. It's like saying which Rembrandt you like the most and least. Can't go wrong.

[Brad]

I've heard the Drive My Car version before from the Love videos above but the others are new to me and prefer the original. These don't do much for me. Like 'em the way I heard them.

[Scott Dolan]

I like both. I think Martin and his son did a wonderful job with the Love soundtrack. I once described it as an album of all new songs that you know by heart. I can understand a more traditionalist stance, but I'm a fan of mash ups when done correct.

One of the first ones I ever heard was Blondie's Rapture and Riders On The Storm. I thought it was brilliant.

[Guy Berger]

I like most of the early Beatles stuff A LOT. Please Please Me is a bit hit and miss, but the next four are great, and the non-album tracks from this period are generally fantastic. And I say this as some who thinks Rubber Soul, Revolver and Abbey Road are the pinnacle of their output.

However, the fascination with the inferior American LPs is weird to me. I guess nostalgia has a powerful pull.

[Scott Dolan]

I always thought From Me To You was a vastly underrated tune. John really sings his ass off on that one.

[felser]

"There's A Place" is my favorite Beatles song ever. Love it both muscially and lyrically. And it didn't even make the (unnecessary) cut from 'Introducing The Beatles' to 'The Early Beatles'.

[mjzee]

Watching "Good Ol' Freda" now.

[Scott Dolan]

Any good?