Remastered Beatles - stereo, mono or both?

[innerSpaceman]

oh, le sigh.



Let's just say .... my roommate's gonna hate me.

[Kevy Baby]

Originally Posted by innerSpaceman

But I guess I'm actually the type of "rapid" Beatles fan who just types really quickly without spellchecking, and not the rabid type that might fall for this insane bit of marketing ploy.

See... I thought you had intended to say you were a vapid fan

[Ghoulish Delight]

I jus listebed to a really interesting piece from NPR's All Songs Cnsidered about this, an interview with someone involved in the profuction.

listen here

He starts with a discussion of what remastering is, what source material they used, and the things they decided to "fix" without ruining the integrity of the recordings. He played a shirt clip to demonstrate how they took an obvious recording error (backing vocal track dropping out for a moment) and fixed it the way the Beatles certainly would have if they had the capability. To be honest I listened 3 times and couldn really make out the difference. Such audio quality things are clearly lost on my ears.

More interesting to me was the discussion of the difference between the mono and stereo mixes. He focused on Sgt. Peppers which probably represents the biggest difference between the 2 sibce the Beatles themselves oversaw the mono mix while they left the stereo mix entirely to George Martin. The guy in the interview made a case for the mono mix being his preferred, and I'll say he was pretty persuasive. At the very least it certainly justifies the existence of both box sets from a completeness standpoint.

Well worth the 20 minute or so listen.

[innerSpaceman]

It's too bad it's not the monos that are released as single items. I'd be interested in picking up 2 or 3 of them, especially Sgt. Pepper.

[mousepod]

I think the White Album is one of the most listenable of the mono records. But I love the White Album.

[innerSpaceman]

I should have splurged on the mono set as well. True, I would have listened to them only once, but the same can be said of watching many DVDs I buy.


That NPR interview GD linked to brought up some strong memories. We must have had the mono Sgt. Pepper when I was a kid, and I haven't heard some of that stuff since 1967. I particularly recall She's Leaving Home at the different tempo and key. It released a flood of memory, and I'm really keen to listen to the mono mixes of these LPs. A pox on them for not selling them separately.

[lindyhop]

I've read and heard several enthusiastic reviews of these reissues so I think I'm going to have splurge on a boxed set. I should anyway, just to re-establish my Beatlemaniac cred. I never bought more than a few CDs so I can't play much of my favorite music. Time to fix that.

[innerSpaceman]

Isaac and I have such similar tastes in music, so I'm amazed he doesn't like the Beatles at all. He can stand perhaps 3 or 4 of their songs, and that's about as many as I don't like in their entire catalog.

He just doesn't get it. Fortunately, I don't feel the need to explain or justify when the release of their music and availability on a hit video game causes a media storm 40 years after they broke up. Isaac's clearly missing something.


I don't mean to imply that his taste is wrong ... but, well, it is.

[Cadaverous Pallor]

Yeah....kind of hard to give Isaac the benefit of the doubt...when there is no doubt

[flippyshark]

Flippyshark reviews the remastered

MAGICAL MYSTERY TOUR

Okay, I can't afford any box sets, and the mono set is now officially hard to find. So, I'll be purchasing the separate releases two or three at a time and hope that the mono box comes my way for Christmas or further down the road.

I made my first new Beatles purchase a few days ago, picking up Abbey Road and Magical Mystery Tour, along with a free 5 dollar Target gift card. (Yes, my subsequent purchases will also happen at Target.) Abbey Road I've been listening to endlessly for years now. It's my favorite album from anyone ever, and I know it's every quiver and quaver. I never tire of it.

On the other hand, I hadn't actually listened to Tour for a very long time. When I was probably six years old, living briefly in Orlando (this was 1971, the year WDW opened, and to save you the math, yes I'm 44 as of this writing), my oldest brother Jeff was going through an avid Beatles phase. When he brought home the Magical Mystery Tour lp, I was drawn to it by the weird animal suits on the cover, and the comic strip style cartoons of the booklet within. And wow, when I heard the record itself, I wasn't just hooked, I was captivated, overwhelmed, equal parts delighted and terrified. This was one of the first "grown up" records I ever really listened to, and I'm not kidding when I tell you that the experience of hearing it was just as profound and transporting as any of the rides at the Magic Kingdom that I was so very obsessed with at that very same time.

That said, and given that I heard the lp no doubt hundreds of times as a kid, I didn't ever purchase it in my adult years, though it was always somewhere in the "got to get around to that" file. I figured I could run through the music in my brain with considerable accuracy, so no rush adding it to my collection.

So, now I have this cd, and I've just revisited the album (three times in the space of two days), and I'm gobsmacked. This wasn't just an experience of nostalgia, it was a vivid, intense hit of emotion and sensation.

First of all, it sounds fantastic, and in the case of this particularly psychedelic and complex songlist, I'm glad I have the stereo mix, as it helps to single out the various elements. Paul's bass comes through especially well, and the vocals, though occasionally flanged and processed, still have a nice "Oh, John is right over there by my cat" feel to them.

So, a few song-specific notes:

Title Song: This is a fun, upbeat song, and I know it really drew me in as a lad. I was expecting some sort of story from the album the first time I put it on. (The booklet also gives this impression, though a reading of the cartoon strip text does not deliver anything like an actual narrative. Of course, neither does the freeform home movie to which half of this album is the soundtrack.) It's easy to see now how this opening is similar to Sgt. Pepper, in that it sets up the illusion of a unifying concept to the rest of the tracks. Also, there is a great big stereophonic WHOOSH early on that made me giggle way back when.

Fool On The Hill: I kind of forgot about this song for a few decades. Now I remember how sad it used to make me. Specifically, the line "nobody seems to like him," so simple and direct, made my heart ache for whoever this "man with a thousand voices" might be. I took it personally back then, and this tune felt like my own, especially in those moments (frequent) when I felt like an outsider. Inevitably, my revisit with the song left me sniffly and blubbery.

Your Mother Should Know: Side one was always a journey, with the emotional Fool followed on by the instrumental Flying and the trippy Blue Jay Way. By the time I reached track four, I was always ready for a lift, and Your Mother Should Know was a perfect tonic for the somewhat unsettling if fascinating soundscape of those two tracks. It was a dose of musical comfort food that I welcomed, even though I knew that as soon as it was over, I had to face the (to me) spooky excesses of ...

I Am The Walrus: Really, this whole album may have been a little bit too much for such an easily over-stimulated kid as yours truly, but THIS song, Good Lord but it bent my brain. It scared me, but in such a compelling way that I kept returning to it, over and over again. I didn't understand a word of it (how could I have?), but it struck me as some kind of unearthly incantation. I used to jump at the HO HO HO, HEE HEE HEE, HA HA HA in the middle of the song (I did NOT want to meet that Joker that was apparently laughing at me) - and as the chanting at the end of the track began, I used to picture the busload of people (seen in the booklet) turning into monsters of various shapes and sizes, a bit like the spirits in Fantasia's Bald Mountain sequence. When the radio voices from Hamlet started up, I imagined they were figures from the Haunted Mansion's grave yard, especially the tea-drinking mummy and his long-bearded deaf companion, commenting from the sidelines about the bizarre monster-bus spectacle. I used to be exhausted by the time this track, and Side One of the album, were over.

So, that was wild to revisit.

Strawberry Fields Forever: On the whole, Side Two was a picnic compared to the sensory roller-coaster of Side One. But, this flipside contained a moment of such pure terror, it haunted my dreams. I speak, of course, about the legendary "I Buried Paul" lurking in the outro of Strawberry Fields. Naturally, my older brother told me about this "hidden message" and the rumors of Paul's demise. He assured me that Paul was very much alive. That didn't matter. I found it perverse and horrifying that at the end of this lovely song, after it seemed to have faded out, this strange fluttery flute and chugging drum would show up, and there, in the background, a low, slow voice saying what sounded for all the world like "I Buried Paul." My mental picture, a shaggy green Swamp-Thing-like monster standing in my bedroom doorway at midnight, holding a dirt-covered shovel in his hand, and delivering this dire piece of news. Of course, I knew that truth - that beast had buried Paul all right - BURIED HIM ALIVE. So, I would listen to the song through that first fade out, and then BOY did I dive for the volume knob, or sometimes I would just lift the needle and carefully try to drop it over to the welcome sunshine of Penny Lane.

Duly noted: On the new cd, it is abundantly clear that the voice is actually saying Cranberry Sauce, just like John always said. So, now I'm stuck with a big shaggy monster with a shovel showing up at my bedroom door and saying "Cranberry Sauce." Not quite so sinister, I guess.

One last note - in spite of the rumors, I simply cannot hear the supposed "rich fag Jew" slur against Brian Epstein in Baby You're A Rich Man. It's crystal clear that they are singing "rich man too" every time.

Oh, and Abby Road sounds wonderful as well.

(Soon, I will get to write about the other two Beatles songs that gave me shivers - Revolution Number Nine, and A Day In The Life.)