Beatles US Album Box Due 1/20/14

13 CD US Beatles Albums Box set due out 1/21/14 in US, 1/20/14 in rest of world.



http://www.latimes.com/entertainmen...ox-set-20131212,0,2907449.story#axzz2o91Us1Ia

Were any cigarettes airbrushed out of that picture? I'd guess yes. Paul's hands appear to be holding an invisible cigarette. I'd like to see the original picture. I'm sure it's around somewhere.

Interesting that the mini-albums have inner sleeves.

I read on another forum that the duophonic that was on the originals was replaced by regular stereo. So these aren't really the same as what were released way back then, and won't match what was on the two Capitol boxes that came out a few years ago.

Of course they do. How else can they plug those OOP Jackie Gleason and his Orchestra LP's.

cupboy said:

Were any cigarettes airbrushed out of that picture?

Interesting that the mini-albums have inner sleeves.

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Quad Linda said:

Of course they do. How else can they plug those OOP Jackie Gleason and his Orchestra LP's.

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You can't do that on this...

If anyone is considering selling off their previous Capital Albums box sets and buying this as a replacement, hold off. It has been announced that unless a song has a mix unique to the American albums, what you'll get in each case is the 2009 remastered version. This means that all the tracks with reverb/EQ/compression added by Capital will be replaced with the dry British counterpart. For those who have the earlier Capital Albums box sets, the only thing essential in this new box is "Yesterday and Today," which has a few U.S.-only mixes, and this will be sold separately. The "Hard Days Night" soundtrack will also be sold separately as well for anyone dying to have those instrumentals on CD. "The Beatles Story" will *not* be sold separately, but that's not exactly an album to be played over and over, so I'm not too concerned about that.

If *I* were in charge of things, I'd release the following songs as an iTunes album (this is too weird a collection to sell as a CD):

Day Tripper (U.S. Stereo Mix)
We Can Work It Out (U.S. Stereo Mix)
I'm Only Sleeping (U.S. Stereo and Mono Mixes)
Dr. Robert (U.S Stereo and Mono Mixes)
And Your Bird Can Sing (U.S. Mono Mix)
Tomorrow Never Knows (First Pressing UK mono mix)
Penny Lane (U.S. promo 45 mono mix)
Strawberry Fields Forever (U.S. Stereo Mix)
I Am The Walrus (U.S. 45 Mono mix)
*Perhaps* the duophonic mixes of I'm Only Sleeping, Dr. Robert and And Your Bird Can Sing for completeists.
And though it would stick out in this collection, I might include the stereo mix of "I Want to Hold Your Hand" released by mistake on an Australian single in 1976.

With this collection, every version of every song that The Beatles released would be readily available. There's no need for this new box set.

J. D.

Thanks J.D.

I have the 2 US Boxes, and while I played them when I first got them, I rarely go back to them. It's just "nice to have them there". I think I'll stick with those and get the "Y&T" single disc release.

Funny thing about all of this Beatles stuff, the market shrinks every year, yet they delay releasing it. Soon, no one will care but historians.

Doesn't that Y&T single disc release come in non-butcher only? I'm tempted to get the box just to get the butcher and a few other things.

... and maybe so I complain about the box too

I also have both Capitol Album boxes, as well as a promo sampler disc.

The failure to include "mixes" faithful to the US LP's is a huge disappointment. I once had a UK blue LP box. Although I got rid of the LP's when I was comped the MoFi 1/2 speed box, I kept the blue box itself and its rarities disc. When the LP's originally went OOP, I bought all the LP titles which were different from the UK releases. I store them in the blue box.

If these are reassembled from the UK "mixes," it's very doubtful that I'll buy this new box.

BBC 2 and this box are being released because EMI/Capitol has new owners. Milk that catalog for all it's worth. I'd expect that we'll see Shea (er, make that Hollywood Bowl), US Rarities, Collection of Beatle Oldies, Love Songs and Rock and Roll Music on official CD's in the next year or two. Although I consider myself complete on Beatles (many times over, I might add), I own only Shea and US Rarities off that list.

I Feel Fine is radically different in US & UK mixes. The UK mix has a very "dry" intro by comparison.

There should have been a volume three of the US releases since there were differences between British and American albums through MMT. And they should have included "The Beatles Story" too. It is a piece of US Beatles history.

I absolutely hate the way they muck around with things these days, mixing and remixing, releasing and re-releasing things in different forms to get the public to rebuy material. I don't go for it.

And if this latest box doesn't have the exact US mixes/versions of Beatles material but has different or later versions, it's BS.

EDIT: And I hope, Linda, you don't feel my little rant is, in any way, meant as an attack on your announcement. I certainly don't mean it as such.

Doug

Quad Linda said:

I also have both Capitol Album boxes, as well as a promo sampler disc.

The failure to include "mixes" faithful to the US LP's is a huge disappointment. I once had a UK blue LP box. Although I got rid of the LP's when I was comped the MoFi 1/2 speed box, I kept the blue box itself and its rarities disc. When the LP's originally went OOP, I bought all the LP titles which were different from the UK releases. I store them in the blue box.

If these are reassembled from the UK "mixes," it's very doubtful that I'll buy this new box.

BBC 2 and this box are being released because EMI/Capitol has new owners. Milk that catalog for all it's worth. I'd expect that we'll see Shea, US Rarities, Collection of Beatle Oldies, Love Songs and Rock and Roll Music on official CD's in the next year or two. Although I consider myself complete on Beatles (many times over, I might add), I own only Shea and US Rarities off that list.

I Feel Fine is radically different in US & UK mixes. The UK mix has a very "dry" intro by comparison.

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I think it's Hollywood Bowl not Shea

Yes and if anyone wants to find out what Beatlemania was really all about, they just need to listen to the Hollywood Bowl album. You can hear and sense the on-the-verge-of-panic at those concerts.

Doug

You are correct. It was a senior moment.

ChristopherLees said:

I think it's Hollywood Bowl not Shea

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Masochist that I am--and make no mistake, most collectors are!--I bought a bunch of similarly packaged (ahem) 'unauthorized' stereo editions of some of the US albums years before Capitol belatedly issued its mono/stereo versions. Can't say either was better/worse, since the boots actually sounded pretty good. And it seems pointless to me to issue something like this with altered, updated sonics, since part of the charm of those old albums is that, as kids, we didn't really care about sound, it was having the music that mattered, however clunky Capitol frigged around with some of 'em.

Then again, in a perverse way, THE BEATLES' STORY was a major label, sanctioned ripoff of its own kind, perpetrated with the kind of cynicism only adults running record labels back then could have concocted, knowing we were a bunch of suckers who would by anything, however useless, if it said 'Beatles' (true enough, eh?)

As for HOLLYWOOD BOWL, that should have been issued on the third-box-that-never-was; it's a flawed yet essential time capsule of a time when one could at least try to be innocent, kind of a "Call Me Maybe" of the mid-'60s: brainless, vital, exuberant.

ED

I have the last Capitol releases Vol. 1 and Vol. 2 (the first pressing that they f***ed up on and they released a fixed version that contained the correct mono version on two of the discs). I'm not sure why there wasn't a Vol. 3 version either.

I've always liked the US version track listing of "Rubber Soul" and "A Hard Days Night" better and really like "Beatles 65". The cover art gets me every time.

winopener said:

You can't do that on this...

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Indeed...and of course the stereo edition of this particular album is a later stereo rerecording, rather than some of the other early Gleason albums, which were altered to stereo using the dreadful 'duophonic' approach. Not that it much matters now, though this would make for an interesting listen at some future rave.....

ED

btw, I'm glad they're using the 2009 remasters where appropriate. Listening to those original Duophonic recordings are very hard on the ears with our current playback equipment. I only played those capitol discs a couple of times after I purchased them.

Ed Bishop said:

As for HOLLYWOOD BOWL, that should have been issued on the third-box-that-never-was; it's a flawed yet essential time capsule of a time when one could at least try to be innocent, kind of a "Call Me Maybe" of the mid-'60s: brainless, vital, exuberant.

ED

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I didn't know this was available on CD, I'll have to have a look now. I remember being got up by my parents to watch it (live I think) when it was shown on TV in the UK, I think it was 1964. I was 7! The picture was 405 line Black-&-White, so very grainy.

Hollywood Bowl was never released on an OFFICIAL CD anywhere in the world, to my knowledge. LP and tape were the only official releases.

DuncanS said:

I didn't know this was available on CD, I'll have to have a look now. I remember being got up by my parents to watch it (live I think) when it was shown on TV in the UK, I think it was 1964. I was 7! The picture was 405 line Black-&-White, so very grainy.

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I just found this http://www.amazon.co.uk/THE-BEATLES-HOLLYWOOD-BOWL-JAPANESE/dp/B003GJUJJO

Thanks for that, Duncan. Reading the reviews is interesting as there is plenty of speculation as to whether it is an official Japanese release and one reviewer flat out states it is a bootleg.

Another reviewer agrees with me that this is an historic release and captures the essence of Beatlemania like no other recording. Also that the important thing was capturing the event rather than stressing the sound quality.

Many people miss that important distinction.

It also reveals what a kick as* band the Beatles were and what all the excitement was all about. Just listen to "She's a Woman" and "Dizzy Miss Lizzy". Rock and Roll like nothing on the studio albums. It makes you wonder if they were asked/told to "purify" their sound for the masses on the records.

Excuse me while I return to listening to my contemporary females screaming their lungs out on the LP.

Doug