New Jazz Interpretations of the Band You’ve Known For All These Years

Posted on May 5, 2016 by beatlesblogger

This is an interesting project that’s been released just this week.

It’s way out there, but cool at the same time. How do new interpretations of the Beatles for a jazz big band sound? Well, we very much like what we’ve heard so far.

Kaleidoscope Eyes: The Music of the Beatles is a new CD from US trumpeter, arranger and band leader, John Daversa:

“A while ago, a good friend of mine asked me to write a “Daversafied” arrangement of a classic Beatles tune. I thought to myself, “wow, what a monumental challenge!” How do you take such classic material, remain reverent to the original intention and spirit of The Beatles, create a fresh vision with new twists and turns–and make it identifiably your own? The challenge intrigued me so much that I decided to create a full-length album for the big band. Let’s go!”

“I’ve since delved deep into the immensely rich Beatles catalog and fallen in love–as so many music lovers have. I’ve “reimagined” the music for the JD Big Band personalities and expanded the instrumentation to include tuba, bassoon, oboe, alto flute, piano, string section, a chorus of singers, and more—truly an expanded Large Jazz Ensemble! Vocalist Renee Olstead and spoken word artist, Katisse Buckingham will also join us on the album.”

As one YouTuber put it, “This is not your typical Beatles tribute!”:

Rare Beatle Footage Discovered in Australia

Posted on April 27, 2016 by beatlesblogger

On the 1st of November, 1965 The Beatles were in the Granada Television make-up room in Manchester in the UK.

They were there for a television show being taped in their honour called The Music of Lennon & McCartney. One of the make-up ladies, Australian dancer and make-up artist Dawn Swane, happened to have with her a small Super 8 movie camera. She took it out to shoot a personal memento of the band backstage. Of course The Beatles got into it, taking charge of the camera themselves to shoot their own scenes. In short, mucking around and vamping it up for the camera.

That short piece of footage has sat in moldering in a drawer – until now. It has just been donated to the Australian National Film and Sound Archive. You can view the footage on their site.

As 702 ABC Sydney breakfast radio presenter Robbie Buck said when introducing an interview with Dawn Swane’s daughter, Melinda Doring, it’s so rare these days to find previously unseen footage of such an iconic band:

You can see the opening credits and beginning of The Music of Lennon & McCartney TV program the Beatles were preparing for here:

The Detail Behind the Mysterious McCartney 12-inch

Posted on April 25, 2016 by beatlesblogger

This article courtesy of the very informative Super Deluxe Edition page:

The full story behind how the mysterious white label, 12-inch 45 release featuring two remixes of Paul McCartney’s Band on the Run album track ‘Nineteen Hundred and Eighty-Five’ came about in the lead-up to Record Store Day, and who was responsible for it, has been revealed…

As reported in a detailed interview with Billboard magazine, it turns out that German DJ/remixer Timo Maas and Canadian producer James Teej were responsible for the release, with Maas having done some work on the McCartney multi-tracks as far back as 2009. The German wasn’t really satisfied with his work at that time: “we never fully succeeded in working the parts to a point where I really felt the end result was worth passing along,” he told Billboard, and so the music lay dormant on his computer until last year, when James Teej came to visit and heard it.

Enthused, the pair then set back to work on creating the two remixes. They were sent to Paul McCartney who gave them his seal of approval.

“We secretly sneaked it [only 300 copies were made apparently] into two vinyl stores in the UK and Germany in order to test the waters and understand how people would react to the music on face value. The response was a little hard to believe,” says Maas, adding, “Phonica’s London store’s phone was ringing off the hook like crazy for copies, and it went to No. 1 on their charts overnight. All of that got picked up first by i-D magazine, and made it all the way to the UK tabloids who speculated that Kanye West might be behind it.”

It’s interesting to learn how this release came about; especially to note the fact that it wasn’t McCartney’s MPL company which put out the white label, rather Maas and his management.

And that now copies are selling on eBay for around the US$200-300 mark….

There was also a limited edition 7″ (a radio edit version) issue on Record Store Day in a run of 100 copies, also through the Phonica store.

Beatles Anthology CDs – In Thin Jewel Boxes

Posted on April 18, 2016 by beatlesblogger

As we said in a previous post, our purchase history of late has been a little quiet but we couldn’t resist buying these two CD sets.

They are the Beatles Anthology 1 and Anthology 3 – but presented in 2 CD “thin” jewel cases, not the “fat box” doubles that you usually see.

Here’s the more common “fat box”:

And here’s what we found:

These have “Made in Holland” printed on the discs, and they have the exact same catalogue numbers and copyright information on them, only they are double CDs with the CD’s mounted back-to-back on a flip-out drawer inside a regular jewel case:The booklets in both sets are the same as those which come in the “fat box” editions.

We got Anthology 1 in this format:And Anthology 3:Now, of course, we’re on the hunt for a copy of Anthology 2! If anyone has any information on these odd re-issues please let us know.

Three Single Finds at the Glebe Record Fair

Posted on April 15, 2016 by beatlesblogger

It has been distinctly quite on the purchase history front – not much out there recently that we’ve wanted to add to the collection. That changed last Saturday with a visit to one of Sydney’s biggest record fairs held in the suburb of Glebe, which is very close to the downtown area. The Glebe fair is always a pretty big deal and every year lots of people who love vinyl, books and CDs turn up to crate dig for a couple of hours to their hearts content:

And that’s just some of the crowd. The room is actually about three times bigger than what you can see here. When you first walk in there’s an amazing – some would say daunting and overpowering – number of stalls to check out and make your choices.

We really tried to be disciplined and not go crazy and so walked away with just three vinyl 45’s that, until now, were not in the collection. They’re all Australian pressings, two from John Lennon, and one from George Harrison:

It’s good to have the original Apple Records custom labels for George Harrison’s “Dark Horse”, from 1974. (It’s wife Olivia’s eyes on the B side).

Each of these came in their original Apple paper sleeves too:

Here are some links to previous Glebe record fair visits and what we found: (i) 2012, (ii) 2012, (iii) 2012, (iv) 2013, and (v) 2015.

McCartney. Here They Are

Posted on April 8, 2016 by beatlesblogger

McCartney. An Announcement Made

Posted on April 1, 2016 by beatlesblogger

The mystery surrounding the last two days of audio and visual teasers has been revealed.

Paul McCartney is releasing another retrospective of his solo, Wings and Fireman work called Pure McCartney.

It will be available on June 10, and will be issued as a 2CD set (with 39 tracks), a 4CD set and book (with 67 tracks), a 4LP vinyl version (with 41 tracks), and digitally. All the songs have previously been released.

Pure McCartney is like Paul’s own personal favourites, strung together randomly in a playlist. Writing on his official website McCartney said “Me and my team came up with the idea of putting together a collection of my recordings with nothing else in mind other than having something fun to listen to. Maybe it’s to be enjoyed on a long car journey, or an evening at home, or at a party with friends? So we got our heads together and came up with these diverse playlists from various periods of my long and winding career.”

McCartney. A Second Clue

Posted on March 31, 2016 by beatlesblogger

The Paul McCartney official YouTube is now running this:

Word is that this is a teaser for a new “Best Of” compilation. Glass Onion has gone through the video slowly and listed some 67 tracks in all:
Maybe I’m Amazed (McCartney)
Heart of the Country (RAM)
Jet (Band on the Run)
Warm and Beautiful (Wings at the Speed of Sound)
Silly Love Songs (Wings at the Speed of Sound)
Listen to What The Man Said (Venus and Mars)
Dear Boy (RAM)
The Song We Were Singing (Flaming Pie)
Uncle Albert/Admiral Halsey (RAM)
Early Days (New)
Big Barn Red (Red Rose Speedway)
Another Day (non-album single)
Flaming Pie (Flaming Pie)
Jenny Wren (Chaos and Creation in the Back Yard)
Too Many People (RAM)
Let Me Roll It (Band on the Run)
New (New)
Live and Let Die (non-album single)
English Tea (Chaos and Creation in the Back Yard)
Mull of Kintyre (non album single)
Save Us (New)
My Love (Red Rose Speedway)
Bip Bop (Wild Life)
Let ‘Em In (Wings at the Speed of Sound)
Nineteen Hundred and Eighty Five (Band on the Run)
Calico Skies (Flaming Pie)
Hi Hi Hi (non-album single)
Waterfalls (McCartney II)
Band on the Run (Band on the Run)
Appreciate (New)
Sing The Changes (The Fireman – Electric Arguments)
Arrow Through Me (Back To The Egg)
Every Night (McCartney)
Junior’s Farm (non-album single)
Mrs Vandebilt (Band on the Run)
Say Say Say (2015 remix) (Pipes of Peace)
My Valentine (Kisses on the Bottom)
Pipes of Peace (Pipes of Peace)
The World Tonight (Flaming Pie)
Dance Tonight (Memory Almost Full)
Souvenir (Flaming Pie)
Ebony and Ivory (Tug of War)
Fine Line (Chaos and Creation in the Back Yard)
Here Today (Tug of War)
Press (Press to Play)
Wanderlust (Tug of War)
Winedark Open Sea (Off The Ground)
Beautiful Night (Flaming Pie)
Girlfriend (London Town)
Queenie Eye (New)
We All Stand Together (non-album single)
Coming Up (McCartney II)
Too Much Rain (Chaos and Creation in the Back Yard)
Good Times Coming / Feel The Sun (Press to Play)
Goodnight Tonight (non-album single)
Baby’s Request (Back to the Egg or Kisses on the Bottom)
With A Little Luck (London Town)
Little Willow (Flaming Pie)
Only Mama Knows (Memory Almost Full)
Don’t Let It Bring You Down (London Town)
The Back Seat of My Car (RAM)
No More Lonely Nights (Give My Regards to Broad Street)
Temporary Secretary (McCartney II)
Great Day (Flaming Pie)
Venus and Mars/Rock Show (Venus and Mars)
Hope For The Future (non-album single)
Junk (McCartney)

Meanwhile, WogBlog has a cover image and says it will be called “Pure McCartney”. It will come in either a 2CD or 4 CD Deluxe set:

Beatles Record Sold for £77,500 at Auction

Posted on March 23, 2016 by beatlesblogger

The BBC is reporting that one of the Beatles’ rarest records ever has sold for £77,500 (that’s US$111,721 or AU$147,115) at auction. That was more than seven times the estimated selling price.

The record, a 10″ 78rpm single with “Hello Little Girl” on one side and “Till There Was You” on the other, was made at the HMV store in London and is a one-off.

It was sold at auction after being locked away for more than fifty years at the home of Les Maguire, the former keyboardist with Gerry and The Pacemakers. He was given the disc in 1963 by the Beatles’ then manager Brian Epstein. Maguire put it away and never thought about it again. Until now.

Let’s hope his granddaughter is able to buy a house with the proceeds.

The record was purchased by “an anonymous British collector”. Wonder if it was Sir Paul McCartney?

Beatles sale. File photo dated 21/02/16 of an 78RPM Beatles acetate, considered to be the record that launched the Beatles, and one of the rarest and most collectable of all Beatles records, which was sold by Omega Auctions to a UK collector for £77500 against an estimate of £10000. Issue date: Tuesday March 22, 2016. Photo credit should read: Peter Byrne/PA Wire URN:25895790

Beatle LEGO Kits?

Posted on February 17, 2016 by beatlesblogger

How cool would it be to have some official Beatle LEGO?

You can go online now and purchase un-official kits, but so far the LEGO company hasn’t made any formally available. That’s not for the want of trying. Some fans are determined and have applied through LEGO’s “Ideas” page process.

The “Ideas” page invites submissions and then there’s a voting process. If you can get 10,000 votes your idea is then properly considered by LEGO as to whether it could/should go into production.

We’ve been contacted by Beatle and LEGO fan JoeMT who writes:

“I am an avid LEGO builder and mutual Beatles fan. I am on a site called LEGO Ideas where you can post an idea for a LEGO set. If the project receives 10,000 votes, it has a chance at being produced by LEGO. I need as many people as possible to vote for The Beatles Cavern Club. Thanks! Joe”

Joe’s idea is for an early Beatles scene at the Cavern Club:

If you like Joe’s idea then why not vote, or share the link and help him along?

There’s one other Beatle design on the “Ideas” page that’s already garnered the required 10,000 votes and is now well on its way to further consideration – a Beatles LEGO Yellow Submarine:

I think I’d buy both these ideas!

Beatles Blog

Adventures in collecting Beatles music

Tag Archives: Beatles Collecting

Beatles Anthology CDs – In Thin Jewel Boxes

Three Single Finds at the Glebe Record Fair

McCartney. Here They Are

McCartney. An Announcement Made

McCartney. A Second Clue

Beatles Record Sold for £77,500 at Auction

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