by admin on January 18, 2010
Paul McCartney and Ringo made an appearance at the E3 video game trade conference in Los Angeles recently. They were at the convention to champion the anticipated release of the Beatles Rock Band video game. The Beatles Game will be out on 09 09 09. It will obviously be the must-have Beatles Christmas Gift of 2009. It may be hard to find around Christmas, so plan ahead and put in your order today. The Limited Edition Guitar Controllers will probably be extra difficult to find near Christmas. You can pre-order Rock Band here. . . Beatles GiftsAt the game conference, Paul McCartney kidded, “Whoever thought we’d end up as androids?” His bandmate Ringo added “The Game is good, the graphics are very good, and we look great. ” McCartney and Starr robotically parodied how their game characters walked without getting any laughs from the game industry audience. Looks like the video game industry take their video games very serious. Beatle family members Yoko Ono and Olivia and Dhani Harrison, and George Martin’s Son also made brief appearances at the conference. The Beatles Rock Band video game will allow people to step into the lives of the Beatles and perform hits such as I Saw Her Standing There, I Feel Fine, Day Tripper, Back in the USSR, Octopus’ Garden, and Get Back. You can hold controllers that are replicas of the Beatle’s instruments including an optional limited edition Rickenbacker and Gretsch guitars. With downloadable remastered songs, the game is going to be the Beatles first jump into distributing their catalog digitally having denied the release of their catalog as MP3s to iTunes and other online sites. On the same day as the game release, the Band will re-issue their CDs as brand new remixed songs. If they’re as good as the remixed Let it Be and Yellow Submarine, you’re in for a great time. Giles Martin remixed the songs and publicized the remastered Beatles song catalog release at the E3 Video Game Convention. Star and McCartney Played at a New York benefit in April, but appearances together have been uncommon since the breakup. I’m hoping that Ringo will make an appearance at McCartney’s Citi Field concert. It will be the first concert in the Mets new baseball stadium. In a historic concert, the Beatles were the first to play the NY Mets original Shea Stadium. Visit Beatles Gifts . com
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by admin on January 3, 2010
It was 22 years ago (in 1987) that the Beatles albums first came out in the CD format. As vinyl and tape sales slowed significantly, CD became the standard way of listening to music and these versions of The Beatles albums have become those that people listen to. Unfortunately these versions of The Beatles albums aren’t actually the best they could be. The mastering job on that original CD release was less than perfect. And the packaging was pretty lame too!
On 9/9/9 all of that changes! Why? Because that’s the day that the newly remastered Beatles CDs become the new standard for The Beatles albums and from all reports these newly remastered Beatles albums sound amazing. There is new clarity and detail in the songs and nobody has reported any issues with over compression or a lack of warmth. On top of that, the packaging is a lot better too! Now the CDs will available in “vinyl replica” packaging which is a lot cooler than the old plastic cases that the CDs have been in.
The best way to buy all of these newly remastered Beatles CDs is with the new Beatles CD box sets. There’s a stereo box set which includes all 13 of The Beatles UK albums (yes, that includes Magical Mystery Tour even though it’s not really a real Beatles album) and the Past Masters set of non-album tracks so that it includes a newly remastered stereo version of every song The Beatles originally released from 1962 through 1970.
There’s also a mono box set which has the original mono mixes of The Beatles first 10 albums (along with the Mono Masters set which has mono mixes of all of their non-album songs) along with the original stereo mixes of Help! and Rubber Soul. This is the first time that these mixes have been available on CD.
Yellow Submarine, Abbey Road, & Let It Be are not included in this mono box set because they were never mixed in mono. By 1969 mono was dead and stereo was the standard.
But prior to the switchover to stereo, mono was the standard. Most people listened to mono versions of the Beatles albums through most of the ’60s. And because of that the band and their producers spent almost all of their time and energy on mixing the mono mixes. In comparison the stereo mixes were not given significant thought. Stereo was thought by some at the time to be a “fad” or just an “experimental” thing. I know that seems crazy to us now, but that’s what people thought back then.
What this means is that these original mono mixes were really how the band intended their music to be heard and that’s why it’s so significant from a historical standpoint that these mixes are finally easily available on CD. Prior to this new CD release the only way to legally listen to these mono mixes would be to track down an original Beatles mono vinyl LP. As you can imagine that could be difficult & expensive to do. Plus you’d need a record player and most people don’t have one of those anymore.
You may think that these mono mixes are something only “Beatles historians” should be interested in but there are many people who claim that the mono albums are more than just “the way the albums were meant to be hard” but also flat out better sounding. John Lennon was known to say that he thought the mono Sgt. Pepper was vastly superior to the stereo Sgt. Pepper.
In many cases the mono versions of The Beatles song are significantly different sounding. It should be very interesting to hear those differences for Beatles fans.
While the new stereo Beatles CDs are available as a part of the stereo box set and individually (they will be the new standard Beatles albums available everywhere) the new mono CDs are only available as a part of the mono box set.
Click Here to find out how you can hear the new remastered versions of The Beatles songs to decide if you want to buy them or not. Both the Beatles Remastered Stereo Box Set and the Beatles Mono CD Box Set are recommended for serious Beatles fans.
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by admin on October 11, 2009
I am a big fan of the Beatles and wrote many articles about how The Beatles are great. I have written about their greatest albums (The White Album, Revolver, Abbey Road, Sgt Pepper, etc.) but today I decided to do something a little different. What about The Beatles' worst album! I decided to consider only their official UK studio albums to make it more difficult (or I could choose a compilation made by the terrible record company at one time or another).
# 1 Yellow Submarine
The Yellow Submarine album contained only six songs of the Beatles true Instrumentals (the rest was rather boring created by their producer George Martin.) And these two songs ( "Yellow Submarine" and "All You Need Is Love") had already been released. This means that there were only four new songs on the album.
Two of these were songs by George Harrison ( "It's All Too Much" and "Only A Northern Song.") One was by Paul McCartney ( "All Together Now") and one by John Lennon ( " ; Hey Bulldog. ") I actually think" Hey Bulldog "and" It's All Too Much "to rescue the album from being a total loss of time. These are two of the coolest and least known songs of the Beatles. "All Together Now" and "Only A Northern Song" is a bit subpar standards Beatles, I suppose, but I like them.
Usually I classify this album so low because he has so little new to him, not that new hardware is not good (even if it is not as great as it was normally.) What is cool is that even with the worst Beatles album there were gems that deserve to be listened to (at least before it reaches those who are instrumental a bit of a snooze fest.)
# 2 With The Beatles
The second Beatles album lacks the energy and punch of their first album, Please Me Please. It is much too heavy on the covers (and for the most part, the blankets are not particularly well done) and new songs are not particularly fantastic (except for "All My Loving" of course.) That said, I 'still love the album pretty well. I like their cover of "You've Really Got A Hold On Me" by Smokey Robinson. This album is actually ranked # 420 on the magazine Rolling Stone's 500 best albums of all time, which is either proof of the greatness The Beatles were even when they were not so important or evidence that may may be they are a bit overrated.
# 3 Please Please Me
The first Beatles album was among the worst in my opinion. Historically, it is obviously very important and I'm listening to it for these reasons. It also includes a start of some great songs like "Please Please Me" and "I Saw Her Standing There" with one of their greatest covers "Twist & Shout".
But Rolling Stone this class as the best album of all time as the 39th and big fan of the Beatles as I am, I must say that is ridiculous. They rank above actually Night A Hard Day's? They rank above Let it Be? They rank above Magical Mystery Tour? And your help!? I'm not really a serious manner. I'd love listening instead to one of these albums as I Please Please. Yes, it was their first album and yes it has an energy "certain" to him as 10 of the 14 songs were recorded in one day (the other 4 had already been released on singles), but it's just not very good.
Dishonorable mention: Beatles For Sale. You probably expect to see Beatles For Sale on this list because it is probably the most maligned on this side of the Beatles album Yellow Submarine and if I had a 4th slot, I would have understood there. But I find most pleasing to hear that one of these three albums. Songs like "I'll Follow The Sun", "I" m A Loser, "&" Every Little Thing "certainly do makeup for me and for the covers (I do not want about 75 % of early Beatles cover songs.)
Matthew Yoho recommends the purchase of your next online guitar amp. You can also find great deals on electric guitars and acoustic guitar online.
Tagged as:
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Producer George Martin,
Revolver,
Sgt Pepper,
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