I guess I'd call myself a Beatle fan. I mean, if forced to compile my 20 favorite albums certainly both "Revolver" and "Rubber Soul" would be included. Probably "Sgt. Pepper's," too. It's just that my Beatles knowledge pretty much begins with "Help!" I only know their pretty voluminous 1963-64 output from listening to my parents' old vinyl as a kid. I mean it's all skiffle laden with pronouns, right? Or is it? With that in mind I picked up the new Capitol reissues boxset today.
On a very quick listen to two of the albums, I'm both blown away and scratching my head. First of all, the clarity is pretty damn impressive. These weren't remastered, per se, but were mastered from "the original U.S. masters." I'm not entirely sure what that means, but I do know that they sound much better than the old 33 1/3rds. What's puzzling to me is the stereo separation. It's pretty much, well, fake. It's so heavily separated that it's pretty much laughable. It sounds good but by no means is it "real." The mono mixes are also included so I'll have to compare. At the very least they'll fill in a nice gap in my collection.
What's most troubling, though, is the packaging. I'm at a loss to explain it. Here. Allmusic does a better job...
It's good to have the American LPs on CD - and if the title of Capitol Albums, Vol. 1 is to be believed, the rest will follow in the near future - but it's hard not to wish that the packaging was a little classier. The box set is smaller than a book-sized box and it holds a small cardboard box creased in the middle that's the size of a CD when folded in two, but it always pops open and there's no writing on the spine of the box or on the mini-LP jackets for the four individual CDs, so it can't be put on the shelf (and, frankly, if it was on the shelf, there's nowhere to put the box).
I'll only add that keeping the four albums in the box is pretty much pointless. They continously fall out.
Also purchased today, Neko Case's "The Tigers Have Spoken" and a Steve Earle DVD of an old show from Austin City Limits.
Posted by mikewolf at November 16, 2004 06:52 PMBetter to get the original British releases on CD. The American Capital releases were heavily butchered. And they made stereo separations? Ugh.
Posted by: Frankenstein on November 16, 2004 08:00 PMYeah, these also have the original mono mixes but in the "restored" the US running order. So I've got the contents of the original UK releases (in a twisted sense) but with the US stereo mixes tacked on.
I was sort of hoping that these would be worth it for a) the reduced price point (Beatles discs literally never go on sale) b) improved sonic quality. Both were marginally true so I'm not too disappointed.
The packaging, though...
Posted by: mrw on November 16, 2004 08:09 PMI picked up the Neko Case CD as well. Pretty much had to since I was at one of the Lee's Palace shows from which this set was recorded. It's a nice set, though it sounds a bit like a radio broadcast or something. Maybe it's the reverb. They were filming it as well, so I was expecting a simultaneous DVD release. Maybe that's still to come.
Posted by: Jim on November 16, 2004 09:18 PMI love my big, thick, beautiful, vinyl UK version re-releases, in their near perfect sleeve recreations. Mono where it is supposed to be, running at 33.3333 rpm. I'm no vinyl freek, but for Los Beatles, it is as nature intended.
Check out the documentary sometime, on Tom Dowd, Atlantic Records recording engineer extraordinaire - The Language of Music. He's pretty amusing, raving about the recording technology gap between the US and UK at the time. At Atlantic, he'd been using 8 track for 10 years, before Abbey Road got their first 4 tracker.
The Fabs were going to have to sell LPs to play on all those big US Hi Fidelity Stereo consoles, now used to playing gorgeously recorded John Coltrane & Ray Charles sides. What else could Capitol do except screw up a prefectly fine Mono mix, just so they could put 'Stereo' on the sleeve?
Blame Tom Dowd for the Beatle stereo mixes!
Posted by: deano on November 17, 2004 06:08 PM