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

Pepperland sounds fucking amazing!

No but yeah but...

One thing re: these "remasters" - the bit in Eleanor Rigby where the voice switches channels mid-word would count as a technical cock-up, no? Because it is still on this remaster (leaked mp3s). I thought they had cleared up technical non-performance faults, so why not this? Or am I listening to some prank version?

Obviously I am a total cloth ears, but the only differences I think I have heard so far are louder/clearer drums and percussion/handclaps, possibly clearer voices, and... just about everything on Strawberry Fields, which could just be me never having listened properly before to what is basically The Magic Roundabout soundtrack (in my head).

Not that I really give a toss whether the Beatles ever reach the iTunes Store or not, but can anyone make sense of McCartney's comments quoted here:

So what's been the hold-up all this time? McCartney tells Observer Music Monthly: "We've been keen to do this for a while. I met Guy Hands on a plane once. His crew bought EMI. I refer to them as Terracotta but I believe it's Terra Firma. I said: 'What is the problem? I want to do it, we all want to do it.' And he explained that in the deal that we want, they feel exposed.

"If [digitised Beatles music] gets out, if one employee decides to take it home and wap it on to the internet, we would have the right to say, 'Now you recompense us for that.' And they're scared of that." We'll see …

Does he think the entire Beatles catlogue is somehow not on the internet already? What would this hypothetical employee leak?

CARNIVAL OF LIGHT!!!

Yeah, but they're talking about the existing catalogue, right?

Maybe McCartney finally ran out of memory.

LOL

Everyone's afraid of telling him that everything the Beatles ever did was on the internet over a decade ago because they don't want him to say "now you recompense us for that". It's like when Grandpa's computer won't work because he has adware all over it, and then you have to tell him that he needs to download some sort of program on there to clean up everything and he's mad because you want to put more stuff on the family computer. So instead of actually telling him the truth you just go see what grandma's doing instead.

Only in this case, grandpa's stoned all the time.

Actually maybe he doesn't want recompense so he doesn't have to pay his ex any more than necessary.

Good thing we can count on Ringo to come in and make some firm decisions

Yeah I had a fantasy the other day that the Beatles did these remasters and set up Beatle-approved torrents to make official digital copies of the albums completely free and they were instantly elevated to Music Gods of the 21st Century by the torrent set. "We have more money than God," Paul McCartney says to the press, "So we thought we'd just give out our entire catalog for free".

http://i234.photobucket.com/albums/ee303/MissBeatles/RIngo10.jpg

Hahah Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr don't know about MP3s. They can only be content with their hundreds millions of dollars and the knowledge that they were in the biggest band of all time.

Ringo invents emo.

listened to leaks of sporadic tracks and really wasn't feeling it and then just now I played PPM all the way through and by the time I hit "there's a place" I was like "FUCK". no music in my life has ever meant as much to me as the beatles music, it has been with me since I was a little kid, and I was a profound embarrassing beatlemaniac lunatic until I was 13 or so. I don't know that I've felt the music the same way since I was that young.

These are out tommorrow and I still can't decide which box set to get.

mono

Yeah, I was leaning toawrds buying the mono box + Abbey Road. But lately I've been thinking, the stereo box has all the albums, it's cheaper, and... does it really matter?

Man, even the Stereo box is sold out on Amazon now.

Do you think McCartney gets the money from these as an ongoing revenue stream, or does it all land in his bank account at once?

I heard that hundred dollar bills are delivered to his country manse and then fed directly into a wood chipper, and his gardeners use it for mulch.

I bet 90% of it goes to Sony/ATV, taking into account accounting practices and money won from suing downloaders. 10% of that is still tons of money tho.

Paul McCartney is still touring, so I'm putting that up as evidence.

Like most people, I was initially confused by EMI’s decision to release remastered versions of all 13 albums by the Liverpool pop group Beatles, a 1960s band so obscure that their music is not even available on iTunes. The entire proposition seems like a boondoggle. I mean, who is interested in old music? And who would want to listen to anything so inconveniently delivered on massive four-inch metal discs with sharp, dangerous edges? The answer: no one. When the box arrived in the mail, I briefly considered smashing the entire unopened collection with a ball-peen hammer and throwing it into the mouth of a lion. But then, against my better judgment, I arbitrarily decided to give this hippie shit an informal listen. And I gotta admit—I’m impressed. This band was mad prolific.

http://www.avclub.com/articles/chuck-klosterman-repeats-the-beatles,32560/

that guy

seriously

The photos of the packaging in that review are making me want to buy.

It’s akin to a combination of Badfinger, Oasis, Corner Shop, and everyother rock band that’s ever existed.

Corner Shop?? Does he mean "Brimful of Asha" Cornershop, or some other Corner Shop?

Oh wait, because of the sitar? Good grief.

I think Kloster Man has his tongue firmly in cheek here

Yeah there's something CRLS-lite about this.

wait, pitchfork's entire review section today is tom ewing on the beatles? huuuuh

Sounds good to me!

(Tom taking over the review section, that is.)

Cambridge Rindge and Latin School?

Liking these pitchfork write-ups!

So what do we think regular retail price will end up on these things? B3st Buy's special "sale" price is $12.99 for all of them besides White Album which will be $16.99. I can't justify splurging on the box right away, so I'd prefer picking these up slowly over time. But I'm afraid they'll be like $18 after a couple weeks.

i betcha they'll be wayyyy cheaper than that in a year or so. . .

I dunno, back when I used to buy things in shops I was always waiting for their regular CDs to come down to mid-price or below like every other band on the planet, but they never seemed to have any trouble maintaining full price for the things.

didn't Marcello once say on a diff thread that both the Beatles and Pink Floyd have it down that they wont ever go to mid-price ?

I pre-ordered from Amazon and was pleasantly surprised to find the single-disc CDs at $12.99 each.

in the UK, you can pick up pretty much any Floyd album for a fiver all the time. xpost.

The Beatles do have it in their contract that they will never be mid-price, yes. At least that is what I heard somewhere once long ago.

From the NY Times review: "Now EMI should consider moving the catalog to a truly high-definition format, like Blu-ray DVD, adding newly remixed Surround versions like those on “The Beatles Anthology.” With the 50th anniversary of the Beatles’ first hit coming in 2012, there isn’t much time to waste."
Do you think they'll actually do this? I guess it seems likely at some point. But a little bit nuts.

The surround sound is on"Love"

How does that work? What do you play it on? Does that mean I have to wait another ten years to buy the box set?

oh yes surround mixes, the quadraphonic sound of the new century!

some day, man ... some day ...
http://home.pacbell.net/fmillera/SQS4_bw.jpg

zaireeka? i hardly knew her!

The remastered catalogue, not available online, could relieve a slide in the popularity of CDs, which has dragged US album sales down 14.5 per cent for the year to date, or 31.1 per cent below 2007 levels.

By holding out from online stores such as Apple’s iTunes, EMI will ensure that sales of full albums are not undermined by hits such as “Hey Jude” or “Let It Be” being made available individually.

Just got done listening to Please, Please Me and oh man, what a rediscovery. The guitars snap, twang, and bite. The bass kicks like a mule on Love Me Do and Ringo's back beat holds everything in place, but what impressed me the most are those superb harmonies. Like a lot of people, I'd forgotten how good this early stuff was. I guess I'm going to have to blow a shed load of money, but I want...