The other collaboration project Paul McCartney has been involved with is with Kanye West (see his team up with Rihanna, too).
West has released a video to accompany the song ‘Only One’. It’s a Spike Jonze-directed home video of the rapper and his daughter, North, walking around a misty field:
Read more at junkee.com
Singer Rihanna has made a short behind the scenes video of the filming of her ‘FourFiveSeconds’ music clip, featuring Kanye West and Paul McCartney.
‘FourFiveSeconds’ is the first single from Rihanna’s still to be named upcoming album.
Read more at Rolling Stone.
UPDATE: And here is the full video – just uploaded to YouTube:
In our last post we featured the two Best Buy editions of the recent Venus and Mars and Wings at the Speed of Sound Paul McCartney Archive Collection reissues.
Darienzo has pointed out that the photo montages of the band on the back of the 2014 reissued Speed Of Sound are not the same as those used for the original sleeve in 1976.
Here’s the original rear cover for the Wings at the Speed of Sound LP:
And here’s the 2014 Speed of Sound Archive Edition LP:
Not really sure why they felt the need to re-do all those photos…..
By the way, Mojo magazine last year had a very interesting article about the photo shoot for that rear cover, including these original images (by photographer Clive Arrowsmith) which were used to create the striking over-layed look of the five band members: 
P.S. It was Clive Arrowsmith who took the famous Band on the Run front cover image:
It’s taken a while to feature these latest Paul McCartney and Wings items because of the convoluted process involved in securing copies for the collection.
These are the Best Buy limited editions of the latest Paul McCartney Archive series of CDs. The CD’s themselves are the standard US triple gatefold two-disc sets consisting of the remastered album on one CD, plus a Bonus Audio CD of rare tracks. Here’s Venus and Mars:
And here’s Wings at the Speed of Sound:
But as you can see by the stickers on the front of each – these were sold with a voucher inside to receive a bonus, limited edition 7″ 45 single – one from each album. The difficult (and time consuming part) for collectors living outside the USA was that these singles (reportedly limited to 5,000 copies each) were only available to customers of the Best Buy chain who were US residents. The process is that you mail back the voucher with a small postage and handling fee included, and Best Buy then mails you a picture cover replica of an original vinyl single from either album. Residents outside the States had to find an accomodating Ebay seller who would do this – and then post the whole lot to you…..hence the delay in being able to show these items on this blog…..ours have finally arrived.
For Venus and Mars the vinyl single is ‘Letting Go’/’You Gave Me the Answer’ (not ‘Venus and Mars/’Rock Show’ as original advertised by Best Buy back in October last year):
And from Wings at the Speed of Sound its ‘Let ‘Em In’/’Beware My Love’: 
Both these vinyl singles have front covers which are replicas of the originals, but the rear covers are dedicated to promoting the 2014 reissues of the Archive Collection CDs. And as you can see in the photos (if you look closely) there’s a sticker on the rear of each saying “Made in Germany”. It appears that subsequent to the Best Buy deal these singles were also made available in limited numbers to some independent record stores in Europe and the UK.
As with previous releases in this series, inside both CDs is a small paper insert advertising what could be the next two releases in the Archive Series Tug of War and Pipes of Peace:
The other thing to note is that both the Venus and Mars and the Wings at the Speed of Sound Best Buy CDs have stickers pasted over the originals with different barcode/UPC numbers to the usual releases. These are 88072 36382 3 and 88072 36383 0 respectively. The non-Best Buy discs are 88072 35650 4 and 888072 35671 9.
For a video of how Venus and Mars and Wings At the Speed of Sound are packaged, the booklets, etc. have look at these YouTube clips prepared by Jose Miguel Grey:
In case you missed this – just before Christmas Paul McCartney uploaded a “behind the scenes”, making-of video for his new single ‘Hope for the Future’:
And here’s the finished result:
paulmccartney.com has confirmed that the new single will be released in physical form on 180-gram, 12″ vinyl next week. Yay! Would much rather have this than just the download….
The song – taken from the video game Destiny – includes the original version of ‘Hope For The Future’ alongside four special mixes. The vinyl will also come with a download card featuring all five tracks. You can find full details here.
For those of us who remember the days of visiting good old “bricks and mortar” record stores to browse and buy the latest vinyl……this amazing footage of the legendary Tower Records on Sunset Strip in West Hollywood in 1970 will take you back (and possibly take your breath away if you’re a vinyl nut!)
In it we spotted literally hundreds of plastic sealed copies of George Harrison’s then new box set All Things Must Pass being put out on display……a fleeting glimpse of Lennon’s Plastic Ono Band in the arms of a female customer…..stacks of McCartney’s McCartney LP…..Badfinger’s No Dice……a copy of the Beatles Yellow Submarine….and from footage taken outside, a big John Lennon billboard.
Scenes from this great archival film were used to illustrate this spoken word advertisement for Tower Records voiced by John Lennon himself (possibly from 1973) – then promoting his latest LP Mind Games:
Another visit to Audiomania, the eclectic second-hand record store not far from our local area, and another Ringo Starr record find….
Audiomania is a quirky shop located in a run-down, semi-industrial area. It only opens two days a week (Thursdays and Saturdays), and then for only four hours at a time. One side of the premises contains blue crates full of good quality vinyl (pop, rock, and blues, as well as lots of jazz and reggae). On the other side they sell used hi-fi, restored motor cycles….and artworks made out of old motorcycle and hi fi parts.
Like we said, it’s an unusual place:
After a thorough trawl here last Saturday we ended up with two items.
The first find was a nice clean German pressing of Ringo Starr’s 1970 solo release Beaucoups of Blues. This one is on the Hörzu/Apple label, making it quite interesting:
Starting in the 1960s Hörzu (principally a radio and TV listing magazine) began producing and releasing records as a subsidiary of the Electrola company. Electrola had the rights to release EMI product (including the Beatles) in Germany.
Like we said in the previous post, we seem to moving from not having much Ringo as a solo artist on vinyl to now having quite a few of his releases.
Vinyl is the specialty of Audiomania, but while at the store we found a couple of small crates with some CDs. In there we turned up an original 1986 UK copy of Paul McCartney’s Press to Play: 
This is the disc without the bonus tracks (which were added for the 1993 re-issues called The Paul McCartney Collection). The lovely lady who runs the store gave this one to us for free!
We just received an email from paulmccartney.com letting us know that the extended EP of Paul McCartney’s ‘Hope for the Future‘ is now available for download from iTunes.
There will also be a physical release in the form of a 12″ vinyl single. No track listings for that are available as yet, but it will come out on January 12 in the UK, and January 13 in the US.
Spincds.com in the UK and the Amazon US store have place-holders for the vinyl release and it can be pre-ordered now.
And there’s an official video to accompany the song where a holographic Paul McCartney sings the song in the world of Destiny:
Also check out this exclusive in Wired magazine.
paulmccartney.com has confirmed a December 8 global release for Paul McCartney’s song ‘Hope for the Future’.
It will be a digital download only, and the original version of the track (which is taken from the best-selling ‘Destiny’ video game credits) will be made available alongside four other special mixes of the song:
1) ‘Hope For The Future’ (Main)
2) ‘Hope For The Future’ (Thrash)
3) ‘Hope For The Future’ (Beatsession Mix)
4) ‘Hope For The Future’ (Jaded Mix)
5) ‘Hope For The Future’ (Mirwais Mix)
Don’t know if there’s anything particularly new here – but Paul McCartney is in good form, open and relaxed in a video uploaded this week to YouTube. (It has subsequently been taken down).
McCartney was appearing at a small gathering in London, answering questions and being interviewed by British model, actor and activist Lily Cole for a global campaign called impossible.
paulmaccartney.com called for musicians to submit their wishes to Cole’s impossible website in order to win seats to the strictly limited-entry event. There are photos and info here. Their conversation event centred around Cole asking Sir Paul about his song ‘Hope For the Future’, part of the soundtrack to the new video game Destiny. You can read a transcript of what they talked about here.
What is impossible? It’s described as a global community who help each other out. People share their time, skills and objects. Everything is always given or loaned for free.
For more on Cole see Lily Cole: From Vogue to the impossible
Cole is one of the many celebrity cameo’s in Paul’s ‘Queenie Eye’ video (you can see here and Johnny Depp pictured below):
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