Beatles USB Tues. + MP3 Lawsuit

Let's take a look at what we know about those ace remasters, shall we?

By Fred Mills

Beatles completists have begun to queue in anticipation of tomorrow's (Dec. 8) release of the remastered Beatles back catalog in digital format, as an Apple-shaped USB device, although there's a good chance that if you didn't preorder it you're out of luck for now: the limited edition (30,000 units worldwide) is currently showing as being on back order at most online retailers, such as Amazon, which indicates customers can "sign up to be notified" when it becomes available.

So we thought this was a good opportunity to revisit those remasters via Blurt editor A.D. Amorosi's September overview, which is republished below. Happy holiday shopping!

Meanwhile, it was reported late last week that a small, maverick minded website called BlueBeat.com has been selling Beatles MP3s despite the fact that Apple has not licensed individual tracks for sale on iTunes, Amazon or other digital music portals. As a result, EMI has filed for copyright infringement against BlueBeat's partent company, Media Rights Technologies. Read the background story here.

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THE BEATLES REMASTERS

BY A.D. AMOROSI

The Beatles thing is a lot to get through if you let it; the televised network interviews you knew would come (who knew Mary Hart was so close to them in the day?); the utter creepiness of the The Beatles: Rock Band video game (what happened to Ringo's nose?) and its ad campaign (a digitally enhanced furriness added to Lennon's beard that you'd never expect); the rush of good feelings warranted and unwarranted.

There's the technology of engineers at EMI's Abbey Road Studios sitting down for four years with vintage studio equipment, 24 bit 192 kHz resolution via a Prism A-D converters and the ideas behind what would stay (bum notes, microphone vocal pops) and what would be cleaned up (bad edits) so to keep the original dynamics of the original analog recordings.  

After that though, the 12 Beatles albums in stereo, the Magical Mystery Tour LP and the Past Masters Vol. I and II combined as one title (along with each CD's enhanced content (save on Past Masters) featuring documentaries, photos and related album art; all compiled onto a single DVD if you purchase the stereo box), is what I sat down with.

Before that, though, is where the process starts- remembering as much of the music as you could before THE BOX.

The crackle and pop of vinyl albums and singles, the din of lousily mastered first pressing CDs: I checked these things for myself. At that point in the listening (months ago, when THE BOX became, finally, THE REALITY) is where the joy started: this is how we know these songs for however long we've been here. And radio - don't forget AM (if you're over 30) and FM. And television. It keeps going. It does. You can't avoid that you know "Norwegian Wood," "Every Little Thing," or "Helter Skelter" beyond the past week or so.

These songs were the personal soundtrack to sex, violence, laughs and so many more occurrences, you'd had to have felt them a first time (or hundred) to feel them anew now.

That said, there's not one aspect - save for the real time memories connected with the originals - of hearing every new track from every new CD from the heavy kinda-Velcro-ed BOX that isn't a more dubious, depth defying sonic experience.

From Please Please Me, not only does Lennon's infamous first-take-last take on "Twist and Shout" reveal every polyp scratching breath; the entirety of the production now feels as urgent and teen-incendiary as it was in 1963 (not that I'd know), from the kick of "I Saw Her Standing There" to the bossa's bounce of "P.S. I Love You." The same can be said of the covers-laden With The Beatles for sure, but the punch-and-rush away of a re-mastered "I Wanna Be Your Man" and it descending chords' crunch can't be overstated.

A Hard Day's Night, truly my first fave of the Fab Four, pulled me in in a fashion I can't quite comprehend. "I Should Have Known Better"'s newly heard Lennon seems more pulsating than the past, his voice more yearning for me to get to him.  Meanwhile, the folk-ish "I'll Cry Instead" portrays a rougher past (musically, personally) than Merseybeat might have and the heavy blues in McCartney's voice on "Can't Buy Me Love" isn't so far away anymore; not something you knew would happen because you have the later albums in hands.

The transition and sophistication of songwriting, singing and playing - to say nothing of arranging - can be more richly realized in re-hearing Help and Rubber Soul. Though the previous effort pops while Paul does "The Night Before" and "Another Girl," - a deepness in his voice that rumbles more at present - the latter CD reveals the leaping harmonies of "You Won't See Me," the rhythmic heft of "Drive My Car" and Harrison's Byrds-ian jangle for if "If I Needed Someone" finally to its fullest effect. "Taxman" sounds greasier and more galling. Starr's sticks on "Good Day Sunshine" seem to tap dance. There's a riff-and-rhythm roughness to "I Want To Tell You" only vaguely hinted at on the original. The brass on "Got to Get You into My Life" has balls and "Tomorrow Never Knows" is as succulent a stoner symphony as you knew it could be.

Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band and Magical Mystery Tour?

You can sense the Mellotron-tracked whistle and innovation that went into "Strawberry Fields Forever" - the jazz of its drumming, the lope of its bass. It's sexier than I remember it. So is the ballad-that-bloops "The Fool on the Hill." Though its carnival environ comes first, this hilly goofball has needs and a plaintive Paul's yearning ache comes across greater with this master. Even the nasty "I Am The Walrus" sounds more kitten-ish than nasty now.

Is THE BOX getting me horny after this many hours listening?

Sgt. Pepper, for all its magic, always sounded as if had thudded on CD; flat-lined in its hope for the grandeur. Yet, from the slap of its title song to the bludgeoning slam and echoing hollow of "A Day in the Life" and all the sinewy orchestration in between: I could write as much as I have already on the innovation of this remaster. Leave it at this: Sgt. Pepper sounds fresh, new, now. If Justin Timberlake or MGMT or King of Leon or Maxwell or Calvin Harris did these songs it wouldn't sound newer.

The Beatles - or rather The White Album - was my true test. Would one of my five favorite rock albums of all time prove better than the vinyl version (the CDs are trebly, terrible and thin, so...)? The answer is yes. But not as effortlessly as Sgt. Pepper. Every voice sounds realer here - the high squeaking Lennon on "Dear Prudence" and his more ruminatively insular "Julia"; the playful yodel-y Paul of "I Will" and his screechy deep "Back in the U.S.S.R"; the glistening nasal Harrison of "While My Guitar Gently Weeps." This master shows and sounds off the Beatles' solo vocal prowess like nothing else. No wonder these guys went off on their own. They could make a goldmine.

The same can be heard within the silken degrees of Abbey Road and the more natural parts of Let It Be. The shunt-dun-din-delin-din of "Come Together"'s guitar is the glue that binds its bass line to the voice. You may think the Lennon-McCartney vocal teaming is great. But it's here that you feel the harmony, get what being a band is all about without having to see it in a video game. "Here Comes The Sun" is fresh and airy, as is the rush of harmonies of "You Never Give Me Your Money." Let It Be? Paul's hopeful haunted vocals throughout and his interplay with the piano is rich and effortless. This is the blues I mentioned earlier - "I've Got a Feeling" - with a crushing guitar ascension that could've made these guys into Cream before Cream barely got of the ground if they'd bothered. You finally hear the progression from 1963 to 1969. You get why he pushed for this recording even if bringing in Spector (not his idea) made these songs unnecessarily sweeter.

The Past Masters' mish-mash finally, in this realm, sounds connected with the background voices on the dear and playful "Love Me Do" - it's nearly worth buying the entire box for, were these CDs not sold separately. 

Worth every penny just for re-lightening the memory banks.

Worth double for making bright the darkness cast upon the reed-thin original CDs.

Worth triple for anyone who never got what the Beatles meant to their generation and every one that followed.