I have had it up to here waiting for the Beatles catalogue to be remastered

this was also happening in late 1974, which i believe was near the end of the Lost Weekend period, which might explain a lot

I love There's A Place. The lyric stands apart from the Lennon/McCartney songbook of the time: too "There's a place where I can go … and it's my mind". I don't want to overstate things and say it's one step from Tomorrow Never Knows or something, but that inward focus has always stuck out for me.

DId he happen to say anything about Harry Nilsson?

A few months later, Brian Wilson would record In My Room, a sort of cousin.

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There's a place where I can go … and it's my mind".

Yep. A lyric replete with casual wisdom.

DId he happen to say anything about Harry Nilsson?

― Farewell to Evening in Paradise (James Redd and the Blecchs),

"Pass me another brandy sour, Harry."

Yeah, "There's a Place" is similar in content to "In My Room," I guess. I like the singing on it, kind of harsh-sounding harmonies, the kind John Cale was hearing after he did his daily drone and sat down to listen to Tony Conrad's Everly Brothers records.
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There's a scene in Bob Balaban's 1989 Parents in which a smiling and completely scary-looking Randy Quaid tells his young sleepless child that the only dark place he should be scared of is his mind, which is what this discussion just made me think of.

A few months later, Brian Wilson would record In My Room, a sort of cousin.

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― Alba

ha, i read your first post, calling out the lyric, and thought the same thing! did some quick wikipedia confirming about the timing of the recording sessions and was very excited to come back and here and say exactly what you said :)

however, one additional thing i did learn on wikipedia is that "there's a place" was the first song recorded for the session (the fucking LEGENDARY session in my book), at 10am, while lennon was recovering from a cold with throat lozenges

it strikes me as the most modern sounding track on the album. it might be that harmonica serving as the denouement for each section, it's just perfect.

DId he happen to say anything about Harry Nilsson?

Lennon, Schmennon

while lennon was recovering from a cold with throat lozenges

a smiling and completely scary-looking Randy Quaid tells his young sleepless child that the only dark place he should be scared of is his mind

something Randy Quaid has since terrifyingly demonstrated with the rest of his life

there are quite a few run throughs of 'there's a place' floating around, probably easiest to find on that bootleg-beating copyright dump release from several years ago

Ha, akm, I was trying to thing of how to say that but gave up so thanks for nailing it.

Yeah, had a few of them on those "Ultra Rare Tracks" CDs from back in the corblimey days

A few months later, Brian Wilson would record In My Room, a sort of cousin.

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― Alba, Wednesday, January 11, 2023 11:59 AM (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

But "There's A Place" wasn't released in the US until July 22, 1963, on Introducing The Beatles. "In My Room" was recorded on July 16. It's technically possible that Wilson could have heard an import copy of Please Please Me, but 1) import records were pretty hard to obtain in the US in the early '60s, and b) how would Wilson have heard of them in the spring or summer of 1963? (the latter not meant rhetorically -- did he know people who'd hipped him to the Beatles? It likely wouldn't have been anyone at Capitol, since the guy in charge, Dave Dexter, hated the Beatles.)

Oh yeah I didn't mean to say it was influenced by it.

yeah, i probably was the one who seemed to suggest that, because i was talking about the timing of the recording dates. at the time i was thinking more of "who did it first?", "it" being including a melancholy kind of introspective statement in a pop song. when you read beach boys biogs there's always a section about "in my room" and how groundbreaking it was for that reason. but i'm sure a million other artists did that before both the beatles and the beach boys. i'm not a sinatra-head but i imagine he sang about something similar many times

but the beach boys were the first to do it while then whip-snapping back to an earnest singalong about how amazing surfing is

The Prof Stoned guy that someone linked to upthread has now got to Help! and Rubber Soul on his remixing project. I'm on a bit of a Beatles break at the moment so haven't listened to them much, but if you can't wait for Giles Martin to give us a stereo Michelle that isn't hard panned, here you go:

http://www.profstoned.com/search/label/The%20Beatles

Paul McCartney says artificial intelligence has enabled a 'final' Beatles song

Ah, why not.

Slightly stretching it to call this sort of digital clean-up work "AI" but imo there is absolutely no way that we don't get future 'Beatles' songs with deep-faked voices, possibly themselves written by AI. It might not happen in the next 5 or even 10 years but it will happen. I reckon most of the huge, bankable stars of the 20th century will get this treatment. Their grandchildren and great-great grandchildren won't be able to resist. New Elvis songs. New Abba songs. etc

Not just bands that existed, but bands that didn't. If we'll have new "Beatles" songs, there's no reason not to have implausible supergroups with, like, Janis Joplin on vocals and Scott Joplin on piano, feat. Tupac.

In the future portrayed in Margaret Atwood's Oryx and Crake, one could generate deepfake p0rn with, say, Abraham Lincoln and Mae West... that book was published 20 years ago.

Slightly stretching it to call this sort of digital clean-up work "AI" but imo there is absolutely no way that we don't get future 'Beatles' songs with deep-faked voice

yeah that is going to suck, most likely; but AI-aided restoration and cleanup is a very good application of this technology (likewise for video cleanup/upscaling). I was fairly confident this song would wind up seeing the light of day at some point.

Love it when JPM is all, "I wanted to do it, but George wouldn't let me."

that stuff is pretty legit - someone used it to clean up a Genesis concert circa 1973 or so and it looked and sounded amazing.

as far as AI creating "new" Beatles songs or whatever I think it's pretty inevitable, in fact what I'm pretty sure will happen is someone will generate 500 of them and a couple will actually be pretty good and then a band like Pomplamoose will "cover" the AI-generated song in a way that's lavish and expensive and it will maybe even become a hit the same way those Paul Oakenfold remixed Elvis songs were, there will be a lot of handwringing about royalties and the future of music but ultimately I don't see it becoming a regular mainstream thing.

I wonder if by the time we get to the point of everyone on the planet with internet access being able to make any kind of insane art/music/photography/film/animation by typing 'make this thing...' into a laptop, we'll be past the point that anyone will be looking/listening/caring and the 60th Anniversary Vinyl and 8 Track cartridge of The White Album will be about ready to roll out.

Love it when JPM is all, "I wanted to do it, but George wouldn't let me."

― pplains, Tuesday, June 13, 2023 10:08 AM (fourteen minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

That was the thing, if any one member of the Beatles didn't want to do something, then they didn't do it. The first time they went ahead despite a 3-1 vote was when they voted in favor of hiring Allen Klein instead of Lee Eastman to sort out their management.

When they initially tried recording "Now and Then," George was the one who cut the session short, and he hadn't been too keen on the other "new" songs as it was. Now that he's no longer around to have a say, it's kind of a dick move by Paul to "finish" it anyway.

(And if Paul's gonna release stuff George had vetoed, maybe he should finally release "Carnival of Light.")

The first time they went ahead despite a 3-1 vote was when they voted in favor of hiring Allen Klein instead of Lee Eastman to sort out their management.

now and then is a love song to paul so fuck what the dead old man thought about it exit thread

then a band like Pomplamoose will "cover" the AI-generated song in a way that's lavish and expensive

Get my favorite band's name out of your mouth, frogbs

paul's lyrics already sound like they were written by AI, TS: "wonderful christmastime" vs. "The best Christmas present in the world is a blessing"

Wasn't George kind of strong-armed into going on tour with Jimmie Nicol instead of cancelling it?

― Alba, Tuesday, June 13, 2023 10:58 AM (one hour ago) bookmarkflaglink

None of the Beatles wanted to tour without Ringo, but yes, especially George ("If Ringo's not going, then neither am I. You can find two replacements.") It wasn't that George was outvoted by the others (and I assume Ringo's vote would have been "no"), but that Epstein and George Martin (who chose Nicol, having worked with him) pressured them to do it -- it would only be a few shows (a total of eight out of 30 performances), and they couldn't postpone the tour on one day's notice, Ringo having been hospitalized the day before the first show.

(Fun fact: Nicol's last show with them was 59 years ago today.)

That anecdote about having John, Paul, and George take turns sharing a room with Ringo for the sake of sealing their friendship always touched me.

Just a bad idea all around, especially given the negative reception for the previous two "new" recordings. The "Now and Then" demo is even drearier than "Free As A Bird."

yeah but they will likely clean up both of those other tracks with a remix. I'm fine with this; people have been begging for this track for years. And if they can use some tech to better clean up Lennon's vocals on the other songs, fine.

But can AI de-gate the Jeff Lynne snare?

that stuff is pretty legit - someone used it to clean up a Genesis concert circa 1973 or so and it looked and sounded amazing.

Yeah that one blew my mind when I saw it. I think restoration and "cleaning" up old footage that might otherwise be lost to time is one good use case, but not sure it alone counterbalances all the horrifying shit coming our way in the next decade.

think about all the grainy, low-quality Can footage out there though

Yeah that one blew my mind when I saw it. I think restoration and "cleaning" up old footage that might otherwise be lost to time is one good use case, but not sure it alone counterbalances all the horrifying shit coming our way in the next decade.

― Maxmillion D. Boosted (jon /via/ chi 2.0)

it's always weird to me when people try to erase the horrific consequences of technology by pointing out the good things that have come out of it!

Yeah I was more just noting that frogbs' use case was actually one of the very few that I'd put in the "pro" column, a use I didn't really think about. But on the balance, I'm just fine with nipping AI in the bud right now even if it means grainy Genesis vids lol.

i deserve to see Game 6 of the 1986 ALCS in 4K dammit

"Carnival of Light" when

More like “Carnival of Shite,” innit?

Being for the Benefit of Mister Shite

guys it's out already

The 56-year wait is over.
On the 20th May 2023, for the first time ever, the complete Carnival of Light session from The Beatles.
#TheBeatles #CarnivalofLight @johnlennon @PaulMcCartney @GeorgeHarrison @ringostarrmusic pic.twitter.com/wsVu5EClNT

— The Beatles (@TheBeatIesOffic) April 20, 2023

waiting for an ai that is capable of covering "carnival of light" based only on the descriptions that exist

Goddamnit you had me for a bit there

Holy shit me too, what are we like..