Beatles reissues: is there a point, or...?
 

I'm just curious. I mean I guess they're "remastered" (oooh) or whatever. But none of this shiz was out of print or anything. I'm just curious why everyone is acting like this is some huge deal or something? I mean is it? Am I missing something?

Oh and sidenote to Pitchfork: Yeah, no kidding The White Album and SGT PEPPERS are 10/10's. We've all been aware of that for some time, so can you just review the new Jay-Z and Raekwon albums instead? Thanks.

I listened to the White album yesterday. It still continues to entirely baffle me what the fuss is about this band. Is it just that they're scallies singing in American accents? Or is it that the only half-decent songs are the wartime-pop pastiches? Wouldn't you all just be happier with Acker Bilk or something?

You must spread some Reputation around before giving it to Glice again.

I hear ya. Out of their entire body of work, I actually enjoy 2, maybe 3 songs. Hell ... percentage-wise, even Third Eye Blind fares better than that.

There's a lot of Beatles I love. I'm just talking about the reissues. What's the point?

I didn't know about the packaging. I have yet to see these reissues.

It's a digital remaster. Which means, among other things, a CD version of
Sgt. Peppers with a sound worthy of the songs.

meh. I'll stick with the ones I already have. They sound okay to me.

I gots the original british Mono ones LP. yeah

Listen to the old ones and the new ones back to back. You'll see the difference. The other ones are from 1987, when CD was a relatively new format, and as a result they were terribly mastered.

Here's the three versions of "She's Leaving Home":

1987 CD
Stereo Remaster
Mono Remaster

I just bought the remastered Sgt Pepper's earlier today. I've listened to it once so far. Definitely an improvement on the original CD but nothing too dramatic. Just a 'bigger' more 'open' sound. I've not yet looked at the 'making of' documentary that comes with it.

The packaging is the now usual cardboard gatefold thingy that's bound to rip sooner rather than later and which I'm convinced isn't the safest way to store discs.

I never bought the remastered version of Ciccone's WHITEY ALBUM either. Which is something I'd be MORE prone to purchasing, as I love love love that album. But again, I couldn't help but wonder... what's the point? Is it worth it in anyway? In the case of Ciccone I don't think there was even any expanded art or anything.

That was a really interesting comparison. The difference between the stereo remaster and the orig CD mix really is quite subtle I think. Apart from the inevitable increase in volume on the remasters I'm not sure many people would notice a difference. There's more definition in the bass area and an overall sense of better instrument seperation but not something that'd be readily evident on a casual listen. The mono remaster is obviously far more dramatic - almost like an entirely different take - and appears to be about 7 seconds shorter than either stereo version!

Necrophiliac Equine Flagellation

And look who makes money out of these re-releases - The 2 shittest Beatles, The Jackson family, and Sony.

And for those reasons - I'm out.

There's a point to getting the new remasters if you're more than a casual fan and you want to hear these songs in the best quality possible.

With the remasters, you can now hear their first four albums in stereo for the first time, and there's now great quality mono versions on cd of everything up through the White Album, the way the band intended the songs to be heard. The differences are more dramatic on some songs and albums compared with others. The biggest differences for me come when comparing the mono mixes to the stereo ones, which as mentioned above, often almost sound like entirely different takes.

blah blah woof woof.

the beatles are like Bob Dylan to me.. they wrote some good tunes true, but they themselves could not perform them for SHIT! I enjoy more Beatles' covers than originals.. I think early beatles is nonsense and I detest the artificial 'psychedelic' era of their tunes as blatant commercialism, like all those crappy bands riding the grunge wave.. if anything it is a sell-out period for them, they went 'psychedelic' to sell albums, not because they were genuince or sincere psychedelic or jam band musicians..

not liking the beatles is one thing, talking utter nonsense about them is quite another.

yeah I like the Beatles a lot. Dylan too. Whatever it's not about that. I guess I've just never been into the whole audiophile hi-def remaster blah blah thing.

It's like someone who dislikes Sonic Youth claiming it's all noise, no song
structure, no talent, and they're all trust fund babies anyway.

Also, here's a review of Blueprint 3: Mediocre. You're in trouble when the best beat is done by Swizz Beatz. I like much of his stuff for other artists, but he should never be the best producer on any album.

Cuban Linx 2: Incredible. GZA destroys "We Will Rob You." Amazing beats throughout, save the Dre ones.

Yeah. Guitar music is so 90's.

there is always a reason. Making MONEY

plus it makes new fans, younger kids who never bought the shit, but will do so now, or get their parents to buy it for them as gifts and shit.

I just put on my old vinyls and turn that shit up to 11

cashgrab in the hay, y'all

Yes, it seems to play a bit faster (it sounds higher pitched).

That would definitely account for the shorter length; there doesn't seem to be any difference in terms of the actual structure of the song.

With technology being so different in the past 22 years (and not a single Beatles reissue within that span) and the first official release of their pre-Abbey Road albums in mono on compact disc, how is not sort of a big deal?

Being 21 and never having access to the original LPs of this stuff (my mom had them all at one point, but threw them out when vinyl started becoming "useless junk") AND probably having to forkload a good chunk of money for a crisp LP version of Sgt. Pepper's, this is a big deal to me. I grew up with the poorly-transferred '87 CDs, and over time, my ears have become pretty discerning to a point where I simply couldn't go back to them after hearing various needledrop bootlegs of the original LPs. I feel these remasters are much more true to the original sound than anything we're ever going to get in digital format. Fuck, even Ebbetts decided to quit doing Beatles material after these batch of remasters came out. There isn't very much to be perfected on.

Call it a "cash-grab" or whatever (and perhaps it is with the added Beatles Rock Band and the seperate boxes for stereo and mono when they can all be in one box); I'm just really glad to be able to hear something like Tomorrow Never Knows or Being for the Benefit of Mr. Kite cranked up in glorious mono. I'm falling in love with one of my favorite bands all over again.

Elanor Rigby rules.

The rest can fuck off. Shit band, imo.

I've never liked the Beatles. I've even tried to like them. I've heard most (if not all) the albums and I don't see the appeal at all. The White Album is probably the most overrated album of all time, hands down, if only for the reason that it came out almost 2 years after The Velvet Underground and Nico, which, for me, is the defining album of pre-1980s music.

hahaha. Yeah. Well. VU&Nico certainly is AMAZING. But it's ballsy to classify music as either pre- or post-1980.

That wasn't totally my intention. Example: someone asks me about "old" music and I know they're well-versed in everything post-1980, the first album I ask if they've heard is VU and Nico. Not any Dylan, not Cream, not Hendrix or Zeppelin or Sex Pistols or Clash, etc etc. However, if someone I knew who was well-versed in all of those asked me about post-1980 music, I'd take about 15 minutes to gather my thoughts and recommend a dozen albums by about 10 different artists.

haha. Alright cool, man. I gotcha. Whatever, VU&NICO does fuckign rule

There isn't a point. There is certainly not a point in finding The Beatles the most important band ever in 2009, what with their naive attitude towards spirituality, their approximation of a psychedelic musicality, their ultimately ego-based (something that Sonic youth I think did a good job at deflating) vision of being in a band?

Wurd! .....beat me to it.

Weren't they just some fucked-up assholes who spent a lot of time in the studio?

When you consider that Captain Beefheart (true rock innovator) and White Noise - An Electrical Storm (a beautiful, brilliant, multi-layered, insane studio production) existed around the same time (as well as countless others, obviously), it makes the Beatles look... not very important.. in comparison. They were able to reinvent themselves and so on, but come on, that doesn't make them geniuses. They just made a lot of money, farted around in the studio, and John Lennon liked El Topo and he made cool noise records, so he's the only one I respect.

So, bye.

The remasters I think are essential in the sense it sounds the way they were meant to be played. After hearing the new reissues compared to the old ones, I hear a huge difference. Granted, I'm buying them slowly when they go down in price, since right now there's way too many other things on my list of records that need my listening.

How people can shit on The Beatles is a mystery to me. They are one of the best pop bands ever; They've written more catchy melodies than most bands have written songs. Sure, say what you will about other bands from the timeline, but the Beatles allowed people to really care about music and go about tracking it down inside of just hoping for that song they like to be on the radio. It's similar to Nirvana; Yeah, they get a lot of credit when there were better bands then and before, but at the same time they made a good majority of their fans think, "Hmmm, these Nirvana guys sure do talk about so and so a lot... I wonder if I would like them too?", and it allowed so and so bands to make more records and gain more fans, not to mention get more exposure (Which admittedly did hurt some bands).

To each their own but I think most Beatles haters are just trying to be cool.

~Jeremy~

Or maybe they actually don't like the Beatles' music as much as you do.

Yeah, their music just does absolutely nothing for me. To be able to take some interesting, even occasionally avant-garde techniques that other musicians did better, and put them in a popular-music context is pretty cool, but meh. Lousy songs, most of 'em.

"Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da" is one particularly terrible song.

I think, aside from "Elanor Rigby", their best song is probably "And Your Bird Can Sing", which John descibed as a throwaway song that was just to fill out the album. But yeah.

I think "Hey Jude" is probably the worst song I've heard in my life.

The Beets were better. See: "Killer Tofu", "Shout Your Lungs Out", and "Where's My Sock".

Seriously

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JFO_rfzFas0

Killer Tofu is better than the entire Beatles catalogue...

Eleanor Rigby, A Day In The Life, and Helter Skelter. That's it. Admittedly, though, I never cared for their albums enough to remember them so there might be a few tracks here or there that I might be a few less popular songs that I might like but not worth the hassle.

And The Beets give me too many nostalgia vibes.