The Beatles on Capitol vinyl a second time?

 

The week was one that so far has involved some "could it be's" from Donald Trumps "they're eating your dogs, cats, you pets" rant at immigrants with no evidence which really makes little sense whatever your politics to something else that there are a good number of posts dotted about.

"Not more records!" I hear you cry but briefly a series of web pages and even a eight second teasing video were accessible via Universal Music and Apple's websites that related to six original American Capitol Records albums suggesting these were to be issued again on vinyl, in mono from November 22nd.

It also implied they'd be available individually or as part of a seven lp set that had exclusively the mainly talk based The Beatles Story double lp.

They appear to be issued in period advertising inner sleeves and feature the iconic rainbow rim capitol label design like the originals.

Needless to say the respective pages have been set to private to keep preying eyes out but screen shots were taken so are they actually going to restore these albums deleted in mid 1991 for a limited edition mono only release?

And just where is the much talked about Superdeluxe Rubber Soul featuring a remixed stereo version given we've had half of the album remixed for better stereo since last years three lp/extended two cd 1962-1966 compilation?

We shall see....

Revisiting the 2012 era Beatles remastered lps

 There have been countless re-issues of the Beatles studio albums since there first issues mono with the much acclaimed 2014 Beatles In Mono series which you could buy disc by disc as I did or as a box set and the stereo series which can be divided between those cut prior to 1987 using analogue tape to the cutting lathe and those after that used digital files of which the last whole set was issued in 2012.

That last series was based upon the digital re-masters that were issued with much fanfare on September 9th 2009 where the overall sound was shaped, clicks and the like removed and on the cd and usb stick versions a "small" amount of limiting applied.

When the record counterparts were announced audiophiles were not too happy that what was used to make the cds was going to play a big part of them rather than cutting and mastering from tape.

The ensuing row lead to the mono records being cut from tape.

Back in 2012 I was torn around this vinyl as I had by that point good sounding British stereo records collected over time from the 70's and 80's and apart from the Past Masters compilation of singles, an extended play record and two german language singles what could it offer me?

I bought the Magical Mystery Tour album as the 1976 UK edition had its issues like three songs in fake stereo which was pretty decent but three others did put me off.

Revolver and the White Album were altered on the cds, revolver losing some high notes not least on She Said She said and both to my ears seemed to have excessive bass and that carried over the record edition.

In some respects the oddest was Abbey Road where while many contend it was tinkered with a very clear cd seemed to loose a bagful of detail and top on the European Pressing.

I did accidentally get a US pressed version which sounded much better despite the odd minor pressing defect.

"What gives? " was very much my thought which brings up something which is a person can cut a lacquer but the plating can affect the sound too and with last example something went badly wrong on the German pressed editions.

A thought lingering for many years as I put any notion of buying any others on hold was could it be the others *might* of been capable of more than I heard because of this.

Because what you have may be good doesn't mean it is perfect and that is quite true of their first album, Please Please Me  which had the first single Love Me Do and it's b side in fake stereo which does not sound good at all while the 2009 cd series restored the album on cd to stereo but had those two tracks in mono.

Recently I did get a copy of the 2012 lp and on balance feel being a bit more dynamic, having a bit more bass and putting those two track in their original mono makes for better listen.

Another I tried was part of short lived magazine with a record series devoted to the beatles from around 2017 where the album was recut at Abbey Road studios by Sean Magee but plated and pressed by MPO in France.

It comes with all the extras, a booklet with the original 1987 notes on the album and cut outs.

The only minor irritant is the Italian SAIE tax sticker on the bottom right of the rear jacket.

This cut is a bit louder, using more of the vinyl area than the ones used in 2012 being a complete recut and it does miss off the 15khz dog whistle and jibberish on side two's end like North American originals like my Canadian Capitol did unlike British copies.

It does sound really good, smoother with deeper bass and even a bit more detail at the start of A Day In The Life compared to my mid 70's UK copy.

For just £24 delivered it's a great bargain.

How do I conclude this?

The 2009 cd series were a mixed bag, better booklets, sometimes bloated bass and questionable choices all impacted to varying degrees by that decision to apply limiting that in the case of the cd of Sgt Pepper does take away the power of the crescendo and coda decaying.

The best discs of that series such as Beatles For Sale, Please Please Me and With The Beatles in the remastered lp series transferred to great sounding lps that are rewarding.

Sgt Pepper which on cd sounded smoother gained from losing all the limiting making for a fantastic new lp that had extras no original did.

I would not recommend White Album  A Hard Day's Night and Revolver as the base mastering on the cd is flawed and Help and Rubber Soul use remixes that are too modern and obvious with their echo.

There are people who did like the MPO 2017 Abbey Road and that may be worth exploring but certainly using digital mastering doesn't mean a lp has to be bad and some of these are among my most impressive buys.

Making a tape or two

Here at That Boarding School Girl apart from being annoyed but not surprised at the Bear Pit that was Wednesday's activity in the House of Commons, I am unwell with a rotten  cold and cough so haven't been out on Thursday, not feeling up to much at all. 

Anyway continuing on a bit from last weeks post, the point behind having the cassette deck wired in was not just to play any old cassettes either pre-recorded on older ones of mine but to also to make new ones.

 As you will see in this picture, I have a portable cassette player aka a "Walkman" although that strictly speaking is a Sony term that while only playing in one direction before the tape stops and you turn it over, does feature Dolby B noise reduction for tapes made with it, a five band equalizer that acts like tone controls  to alter the sound to your tastes and a tape selector for tapes made to play in "Normal" or "Chrome/Metal" positions.

Around it are three tapes I made, one an original and the two Beatles ones I did this week on the Technics cassette deck.

One thing that those not brought up in the tape era won't realize is while a tape has a set playing time that time is not only halved across two sides equally but doesn't necessarily easily fit an album because either one side is longer than the tape's side or as with the Beatles 1962-1966 it is an album that runs for sixty-three minutes which would be too short for a seventy-four or ninety minute tape with lots of minutes of blank tape to get through before the second side and slightly too long for a sixty minute tape.

I decided with that one to remove a couple of songs that were not necessary and move one song to the second side to get it to neatly fit on a that sixty minute tape.

Likewise to get the forty nine minutes per side of the matching 1967-1970 album to a ninety minute tape I deleted a track from each side which left only a minute of blank tape from each of the tape which was very neat!

From Japan and back

It was what some may say an important day in the year last week and I had some interesting cds which I'll spend a few worms on discussing.

In the weird corporate World of Japan few things are more revered than the super limited edition gone to it's gone and put back out in slightly different form product and somebody at Apple and Universal Japan decided it was those Moptops time for this treatment on December 14, 2014 when all the UK stereo studio album titles and the 2010 versions of the evergreen RED and BLUE compilations got issued in the latest wonder cd material SHM.
It's meant to produce less errors and so sound better.
Cue a howl from zeroes and ones are same regardless from digital theory purists and "Oh yes it does" from others on certain sites.

But anyway, I much much prefer the Mini lp style packaging these cds come in anyway replicating far better the feel of the parent lp records than the 2009 tri-fold digipak remasters we had and they match my much my much loved cd The Beatles in Mono box with its 11 mini lp mono cds
The covers are much nicer, a booklet with a potted history of the album in English are tuck in the rea of the acid free plastic wallet the cover is in and there's another booklet in Japanese with English lyrics to every song so we can song along to Polythene Pam

Plus the Let It Be, the album recorded before Abbey Road as both albums were the only Beatles studio albums mixed and mastered only to stereo and generally speaking I prefer the others in their  mono mixes.
Having played them through my all Rotel system they do sound a bit more open and less edgy compared to my European 2009 copies.
Meanwhile in Cat in the Hat land...

I got finally the 2013 two cd deluxe re-issues of the first three albums by England's great Jazz/funkers, Jamiroquai that mixes the original albums with a second disc of single 'b' sides and unreleased material.

I only had these albums on that Japanese centric MiniDisc format as I was in loved with it in the 90's and the older commerical downloads I heard sounded well, rough compared to them even though the discs didn't use  the later better sounding version of that formats encoding.
Thankfully these cds are  part of a rare breed of cd remasters that really do sound better than the originals and I was able to get them for a great price, cheaper actually than 'lossy' commercial downloads of them. 

This excellent album shows the packaging well with the tri-fold and disc holders and my home made copies for my Fiio X3 digital audio player sound superb outperforming my MiniDisc originals.
I'd strongly recommend these re-issues to an Jamiroquai fans for the extra material and sound quality.

The Abbey Road merry-go-round

Christmas is over so we have the first post of the New Year.
Sometimes you like an album that much you spend quite a bit in the pursuit of what may appear to be the best sounding lp version and so you from time to time compare them and that was the years first major activity.

This is an album I love and it's one probably you do, Abbey Road by the Beatles and in the decades I've had a number copies go through my hands.
The one I've had for a good while was a late 70's UK analogue cut copy (a -4/3HTM set of stampers), a copy many do like the sound of but there are a few clicks on the first side of my copy and this tends to be one album it can be hard to find a copy that plays mint no matter how the surfaces may look.
I did get around September a European pressed digitally cut copy based on the 2009 cd remasters and issued in 2012.
That cd was pretty good although like the whole series there was a extra bit of limiting the sound compared to the originals as well as a bit of bass boost I wasn't so keen on.
The lp when it arrived proved to be a disappointment for while it was dead quiet (tm), it sounded dead with very little high frequency content especially on side one, with a few of us saying it sounded nothing like the cd.
I remembered a much hyped US digitally cut copy from 1995 that some at a infamous music forum liked and ordered up what I thought was a copy but it transpired to be the US pressed version of the 2012 lp.
My heart sank.
When I finally got around to opening the shrink wrapping and playing though this surprisingly sounded much more better and research into it suggested part of the process used to make the stampers, the plating, had been done by RTI in the States so they didn't just use the European parts.
While this does lack a few of the subtitles of a UK analogue cut original it is very good indeed.
Just for interest I also acquired a Japanese pressing from 1976 (EAS80650) which was the quietest of the bunch for background noise but the tape it used to cut it from clearly were inferior to the UK or even that US digital version and also had a very noticeable rise in high notes that jarred and I can't recommend it.
Of course the real answer to this search will come when a new analogue sourced from the tapes version is cut and pressed in the way the Beatles In Mono and RED and BLUE stereo compilations last year have. They sounded fantastic.
If you must have new for the silence and don't wish to pony up a lot for a really mint new copy, it's the current US pressed copy you want.
If your prepared to take a chance for the current best ever a  used -4/-3HTM or 2-/-2 UK set of stamped copies are what you need

Love Me Do

Well in October 1962 before I was born, a group with a local and German port following issued a bluesy 45 following their first ever UK recording sesson at Abbey Road, London.
Nobody knew if this group would really take of or just remain one of several provincial groups just selling a few copies to fans.
This Group was of course, the Beatles and that single reached number 17 on the UK charts although it was to go top five in the States in 1964 in an era off unprecedented adoration.

Although it's been released several times before being only deleted briefly during the late 60's and very early 70's with a famous 20th anniversary issue in 1982 where it climbed to number 5 in the UK charts that I bought in high school, this week it comes out in a retro label design complete with company inner bag.
I've ordered a copy for my collection as I believe they *may* use the original singles version for this that was switched in early 1963 to the now familiar version featured on the Please Please Me album.

NEWSFLASH:
Somebody goofed big time.
http://wogew.blogspot.ca/2012/10/lov...ry-mix-up.html

Quote:

Word is that EMI have recalled all the stock of the 50th anniversary edition of the Love Me Do 7" vinyl single , because the version on the single is incorrect. Under strict instructions from Apple the stock is to be destroyed.
The single version as you probably know featured Ringo, and the album version featured Andy White with Ringo on the tambourine. The mistake is that they have supposedly put the album version on the new 7 inch.
At the moment EMI have no plans to replace it with the correct version.
This information came from one of the retailers who had already shipped their pre-orders, so there will be a number of lucky owners of this rarity when the post arrives tomorrow....
Coming soon is the much waited for stereo  vinyl issues of September 2009's album remasters. One hopes the three year and two months wait is worth it.

The Best of George Harrison

This was always a favourite album of mine during the 70's and early 80's having gone through tape and record editions ever since having and playing it back in boarding school so beyond just the music I felt the need to have this as psychologically it takes me back to that period I feel at ease with.
Here's a bit of time capsule:
In late 1967 the Beatles establish "Apple" a 'do anything we think is groovy' company and one of its' first divisions is records from late 1968 onward their releases are on their very own label. In time they add a variety of other artists usually people they encountered professionally and after the demise of the Beatles as a recording group, the individual beatles issue sole recordings all on Apple.
Fast forward to late 1975 and the Apple is winding down with most of the labels acts resigned to other more mainstream labels and the surviving Beatles have lost their interest in the label.
Ringo establishes his own label with its own distribution arrangements, John Lennon decided he wants to spend time outside music becoming a house-husband, George has established Dark Horse records and Paul has signed to Capitol/Parlophone directly.
In this closing down process Apple decided to issue compilations by John, George and Ringo around 1975 thru '76.
John and Ringo's were fairly straight forward collections of singles and the odd album track but George's was very different.
Maybe it was marketing getting cold feet but for this the Best of George Harrison issued in 1976 somebody decided they need a sides-worth of Beatle tracks to sell it, something ruffled George and his fans no end.
Be that is it may, what that side actually does is show the lyrical, philosophical and musical developmental of George who in the understandable fascination with Lennon and McCartney sometimes gets overlooked for his contributions.
In Something and If I Needed Someone he examines the depth of relationships, Think For Yourself is a rallying call for free thought and in While my Guitar Gently Weeps remains a classy blues number.
The second side may of been a disappointment quantity-wise, but it has some of my favourites 45's from the early 70's such as My Sweet Lord, Bangladesh-the band aid style single if its day - Give Me Love and What Is Life from the acclaimed All Things Must Pass triple album.
I used to own the Parlophone first issue lp as cut by NickW but recently picked up this later reissue with a different sleeve - the US sleeve showed a more 'Cosmic' George - cut by Harry Moss on one side (-3' HTM' side 1 -2 Side 2) that sounds so much better.

The Beatles CD EP collection

I remember buying this must of been 2007 but actually I had owed on vinyl a number of these titles such as Yesterday which I got in December 1979 and Extracts from the film "A Hard Day's Night" in March of 1980 as I loved the covers and the mono mixes.

This is collection is a little dear but is strongly recommended for it's sound quality.
Basically it comprises of 13 original EP's re-issued on CD and the 1981 bonus disc from that years vinyl EP collection.
Because nearly all the EP's were only issued in mono that's how most of the EP's are presented.
For a variety of reasons including tape head misalignment, use of stereo tape equipment to play mono tapes and primitive analogue to digital mastering equipment, the 1987 CD versions of Please Please Me, With The Beatles, A Hard day's Night and Beatles for Sale had very poor sounding mono sound (and no stereo).
This set contains 12 of the 14 tracks from the UK Please Please Me album including Misery and There's A Place in high quality mono.
From With The Beatles only Money and All My Loving are featured.
8 out of the 13 songs from A Hard Day's Night are featured on two dedicated CD's as are 8 of the 14 from Beatles For Sale.
This set is currently only one of two only official sources of Yesterday, Act Naturally, It's Only Love, You Like Me Too Much, Nowhere Man, Michelle and two other tracks from the UK Rubber soul and Help albums in mono (the other being the 2009 limited edition "The Beatles in Mono" box set which is a lot more expensive).
This EP set contains Magical Mystery Tour, which originally was only issued as a double EP set on vinyl in mono and stereo.
The stereo version has different mixes compared to the 1971 mix done for the German market which was issued in 1987 on CD all around the world.
I would have to say it sounds very good with lots of presence and is to be preferred over the '87 CD.
It has the original mono versions which otherwise are not available and has the 24 page booklet which the CD issue dispensed with too. Grrr!
The bonus stereo CD: The stereo version of She's A Woman has the “one, two three four” count in missed out on the version on the Past Masters 1 CD, This Boy sounds a lot fuller and Baby You're A Rich Man from Magical Mystery Tour album sounds much better.
I'd recommend this set to anybody looking for good mono sound and the best Magical Mystery Tour you can get.

*Text updated Sept 2009 by Caro

Beatles Capitol Albums on cd

I remember when I first got this as it was a Christmas present in 2004 from my folks.
Capitol Albums Volume One was a box set containing four original US albums complete with a booklet and were given first class mastering by Ted Jensen. Each disc contains the stereo and mono version of each album in individual cardboard sleeves.

Meet the albums:

Meet The Beatles!


The Beatles' Second Album


Something New


Beatles '65.

Link: Amazon.com: The Capitol Albums Vol. 1: Music: The Beatles

Meet The Beatles is With (or for Canadians Beatlemania with...) The Beatles for Americans featuring All My Loving, I Wanna Be Your Man and I Want To Hold Your Hand.
Second Album features the only instance of Thank You Girl in stereo and exclusive US stereo mixes of I Call Your Name and Long Tall Sally.
Something New features many of the songs from the UK album A Hard Day's Night but for contractual reasons at the time does not include A Hard Day's Night and Can't Buy Me Love that can be found in stereo on the 1962-1966 (Red) compilation.
Beatles '65 can be regarded in many ways as the Beatles For Sale album for North Americans taking in I'm A Loser, Honey Don't, I'll Follow The Sun and I Feel Fine.

Until the recent remasters this was the only means of getting the earlier material in Stereo and it is hard to beat the two volumes of the box set, The Capitol Albums Volumes One and Two for the spread. Even now following the UK series of remasters (9/2009) the sets hold up for the different recorded versions and indeed some even feel the transfer of the program on A Hard Day's Night (stereo) isn't quite as good as Something New.

Fast forward to the Spring of 2006 and Volume Two came out containing these albums:

Beatles VI


Help! Original Motion Picture Soundtrack


The Early Beatles


Rubber Soul:

Amazon.com: The Capitol Albums Vol. 2 (Longbox): Music: The Beatles

Starting with The Early Years, this comprises of 11 of the 14 tracks from the UK Please Please Me album some tracks such as Twist and Shout were rebalanced compared to the UK versions.

The track I Saw Her Standing There being the 'B' side of the (US) single I Want To Hold Your Hand is on Meet The Beatles. Misery and There's A Place were not issued on a Capitol album in the US until 1980's Rarities.

Beatles VI is a fine selection draw from the Beatles For Sale and Help sessions taking in the #1 smash 45 Eight Days A Week, Dizzy Miss Lizzie and the Buddy Holly cover Words Of Love.

Help! Is actually the Soundtrack album with the seven film songs plus Ken Thorne's instrumentals featured in the film.

The current UK CD of this title was extensively re-mixed by George Martin OBE and has digital echo as well where this issue is his original 1965 mix which most of us grew up with.

Rubber Soul:

This was the first album issued in the US to bear the same title as it's UK counterpart but is different in that It kicks of with I've Just Seen A Face and also features It's Only Love which came out in the UK on the Help! Album.

The US version has more of a folk-rock feel to it and is actually preferred in some circles to the UK for that.

As with Help the UK current CD was remixed but this goes back to the original mixes and from that point of view is valuable even if you keep your UK CD for Drive My Car, Nowhere Man, What Goes On and If I Needed Someone as they were not issued on the US version.