As noted in a previous post, the only digital release of the entire Beatles catalogue remastered will be a specially designed USB stick. It comes out this week on December 8, and there are some photos of the packaging to be used emerging:
The Apple USB Box
It’s in keeping with the black-and-white theme used for the stereo Remasters box set. This next pic gives you an idea of the size of the packaging – the USB is obviously a similar size to other USB devices so clearly the booklet that accompanies it is about the size of a standard CD booklet:
The USB, box and booklet
Here’s a closer look at the Apple USB:
The Beatles USB Apple - due December 8
(Thanks to Selectism for posting these pics!)
The set, which will include art and expanded liner notes, is a 16-gigabyte USB with audio and visual contents in FLAC 44.1 Khz 24 bit and MP3 320 Kbps format for PC and Mac. Only 30,000 of these USBs will be produced.
Regarding my previous post about the new Beatles radio special distributed to radio stations around the world, the Beatles official site today announced they are streaming Part One from their own site.
Click here to read more about the series and to hear Part One, which is called “Meet the Beatles!” , streamed in full.
The Beatles site will start streaming Part Two (which is called “Ask Me Why”) the week beginning December 7th, and Part Three (which is called “The Beatles on the Record”) the week beginning December 15th.
Just to keep you ahead of the game, here’s a short preview extract from Part Two – “Ask Me Why”:
Coming soon to a radio station near you – a new radio special about the Beatles as a musical phenomenon.
Officially sanctioned and distributed to radio stations by Apple and EMI Music, The Beatles: Here, There and Everywhere is a three-part radio special featuring exclusive new interviews with a variety of artists and producers talking about the influence of the The Beatles on their individual careers. Brian Wilson, Tom Petty, Dave Grohl, Jeff Lynne, Anne and Nancy Wilson, Peter Asher, Jackson Browne, Bob Seger, T-Bone Burnett, Cameron Crowe and Rick Rubin all take part. The series is narrated by veteran British presenter and music writer Paul Gambaccini.
Written and produced by Beatles historian Kevin Howlett (he researched and wrote all the liner notes for the new Remastered CDs), the three 48 minute installments each take a different thematic approach. The website eil.com has this summary of each episode:
Part One: Meet The Beatles!
The interviewees recorded exclusively for this series reveal the impact made upon them by The Beatles’ records from throughout their career. We hear Brian Wilson of The Beach Boys, Tom Petty, film director Cameron Crowe and Ann & Nancy Wilson (of Heart) talking about their first-hand experience of The Beatles’ phenomenal 1964 breakthrough in the United States. Dave Grohl, Mark Ronson and Slash discuss the enduring influence of albums such as Rubber Soul, Revolver and Abbey Road.
Part Two: Ask Me Why
The interviewees focus on the various elements within the group that combined to make The Beatles so musically powerful: their strengths as performers – both instrumentally and vocally – plus the brilliance of John Lennon, Paul McCartney and George Harrison as songwriters.
Part Three: The Beatles On The Record
We hear how The Beatles’ music was captured on record with the help of innovative arrangements and adventurous production by George Martin. Some of today’s leading record producers – Peter Asher, Joe Boyd, T-Bone Burnett, Jeff Lynne, Mark Ronson and Rick Rubin – marvel at the dazzling creativity evident in recordings made more than 40 years ago.
If you didn’t get to hear it over the Thanksgiving holiday, or its still to come to a radio station nearby, here is a short extract from the opening sequence from Part One:
“Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band” is the second full album available as a download in its entirety for The Beatles Rock Band since the video game’s launch on 09.09.09.
Last month Apple released “Abbey Road” as the first full downloadable album for use in the game.
“All You Need Is Love,” the first downloadable track available for the game, has had more than 100,000 downloads to date, with all proceeds benefiting Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF).
With “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band,” “With A Little Help From My Friends,” “Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds,” “Getting Better,” and “Good Morning Good Morning” already included on The Beatles Rock Band game disc, players will now be able to complete the entire Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band album.
The download is available for Xbox 360 and Wii from Nov. 17 and for PlayStation 3 from Nov. 19.
Individual Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band singles: “Fixing A Hole,” “She’s Leaving Home,” “Being For The Benefit of Mr. Kite!,” “Within You Without You,” “When I’m Sixty – Four,” “Lovely Rita,” “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band (Reprise)” and “A Day In The Life” are down-loadable as individual tracks.
“Rubber Soul” (1965) will be released as downloadable content in December.
For the full details and to see a short video featuring songs available in the download visit The Beatles official site.
Its either a cynical marketing exercise in the lead up to Christmas, or a really helpful move for those who can’t afford the steep asking price of the full Remastered boxed sets…
EMI in Europe has announced it is issuing (on 7 December) a limited edition boxed set of four of the new stereo remasters called The Beatles Christmas Pack.
The Beatles "Christmas Pack: Limited Edition"
The set will contain“Rubber Soul”, “Revolver”, “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band” and “Abbey Road”.
Each album will include the bonus “Making Of” video that uses exclusive original footage from the Beatles’ own archive plus other rare footage and voice-overs by the Beatles and George Martin.
OK. Another fairly difficult-to-find McCartney CD single has come into the collection this week.
When Paul’s alter ego The Fireman (being Paul McCartney and long-time collaborator/producer Youth) released his third album last year (2008) there were three collectable promotional releases associated with the project.
The first was the full album – but with a different cover – that was only sent to reviewers and radio stations. (More on this in a forthcoming post…).
The second was a promo-only CD single containing the song “Sing the Changes”. The numbers of these floating around for sale on Ebay, etc. were a fair bit higher – so there were obviously more of these pressed than third item on the list – another promo-only CD single containing the track “Dance ’til We’re High”. These were far harder to find, and pretty costly on Ebay as a result.
The CD is a digipack gate-fold cardboard sleeve featuring photographs inside and out from the same sessions as the photos from the official album release cover and booklet. The two other promotional items mentioned above also have similar photos – so if you have them all they sit together nicely thematically with a very similar look and feel.
I have included a scan of the front cover of “Dance ’til We’re High” below, as well as a scan of the printing on the disc itself which has the words “For Promotional Use Only” on it.
If you’d like to see and read about another hard-to-find Paul McCartney CD single click here.
I’ll post some info and images of the other Fireman-related promo CD’s soon.
Well, my last post just a day or so ago was about some new Beatles-related releases planned or rumored…..but they seem pretty minor now in the light of this one – which is official, is actual Beatles, and really takes the cake!
Apple/EMI have today announced that every stereo remastered Beatles album will be available on a specially-designed USB stick. So much for waiting around for iTunes digital downloads. Apple seems to have taken things in a completely new direction…
No need to write too much more because the Beatles’ official site has pretty much all the info we know so far. It’s limited to 30,000 world-wide and is released on December 8.
Time to detail a couple of new releases expected very soon…some definite, some pure speculation, and one that’s already out.
Paul McCartney this month will release a new CD and vinyl in a variety of editions.
It’s called “Good Evening New York City” and is a live set recorded at the newly-opened CitiField venue in New York on July 17, 18 and 21 this year. The concert was symbolic because CitiField is built on the site of the famous Shea Stadium where the Beatles played way back in 1965.
“Good Evening New York City” will be available in three formats: a 3-disc (2 CD + 1 DVD) standard edition and a 4-disc (2 CD + 2 DVD) deluxe version featuring expanded packaging and a bonus DVD including McCartney’s July 15 live street performance on the David Letterman Late Show. The set will also be released on vinyl LP. Collectors get ready to dig deep into those pockets again…
It comes out 17 November (US) and 23 November (UK).
You can see a very short teaser for the album on Paul’s official YouTube site. And here is a cover image:
Good Evening New York City
Another release that’s supposedly pending is a special 40th Anniversary box set vinyl edition of the Beatles “Abbey Road”. No one is sure if this is to be the newly remastered version of the disc or the previous mix. You can find out a bit more here, and the Record Store Day site says that the box set will include the vinyl album, a t-shirt, and a poster. The limited edition deluxe package will, according to them, be released on November 7th in the US and will be limited to 5000 copies worldwide. Intriguingly, Amazon has a holding place for the record here. Someone has produced this cover image, so I’m not sure if this release is really happening or not:
Abbey Road 40th Anniversary Deluxe Box Set?
Speaking of vinyl, rumors persist that there is to be a full box set of ALL the Beatles Remastered albums made available in Mono and Stereo on vinyl. The respected Mojo magazine carried this article on its website yesterday saying that the box sets are on the way, but there are no firm release dates just yet. Watch this space….
And finally Beatles’ long-time friend and sometime collaborator Klaus Voormann has a new album out now. Its called “A Sideman’s Journey”, and features appearances by Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr. Voormann has known the Beatles since the Hamburg days and is an artist and bass player. He drew the cover of “Revolver”, and has played on numerous tracks for Beatles solo projects (including, amongst many others, Lennon’s “Walls and Bridges” and “Imagine” and Harrison’s “All Things Must Pass” and “Concert for Bangladesh”). See his biog entry in Wikipedia here.
His new CD is made up of newly recorded covers of some of the songs he helped make famous with the Beatles and others over the years.
In an earlier post I included an audio extract from a US National Public Radio podcast featuring Beatles historian and writer Kevin Howlett. He was talking about some of the fascinating differences between the Stereo and Mono versionsof the Beatles Remastered CDs.
Then the other day I stumbled across this website where a guy called Jake Brown has gone to a lot of trouble to detail a lot more. He’s spent time cutting together actual audio examples and palcing them side-by-side so we can all quickly hear what differences are. He’s also detailed in text form some other variations. Have a read and a listen. Thanks Jake!
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