Warman’s “Beatles Field Guide” Book

Posted on May 2, 2015 by beatlesblogger

We found a cute little Beatle book the other day. It’s called Warman’s Beatles Field Guide. Published in 2005 it is a small (but thick at 512 pages), pocket-sized book listing prices and descriptions for a wide range of Beatle collectables.

Inside you’ll find articles on “Why the Beatles Still Matter” and “Ranking the Beatles” as well as commentary and information on their post-break-up and solo careers.

But the biggest and most interesting chapters are the sections on “Memorabilia” – which is a comprehensively illustrated price guide (in 2005 US$ of course!):

The “Singles” (again lavishly illustrated and with indicative prices):

And then a lengthy section detailing each of the “Albums”:

These sections are all based around the US releases only – but it’s a great ‘ready-reference’ style book with a huge number of photos, background information and examples for each of the entries. A really worthwhile little book to have.

New John Lennon Vinyl Box Set Coming

Posted on April 25, 2015 by beatlesblogger

Whenever new Beatle or Beatle-related vinyl is mentioned we get interested.

Yes, like most collectors we have these albums already (in some cases many times over….) but the completist in us has to have the latest. And the latest announcement is that a new box set of eight John Lennon LPs is due for release on June 8. For all the details go to johnlennonmusic.com – but in a nutshell these will be faithful reproductions on 180-gram vinyl of John Lennon/Plastic Ono Band; Imagine; Some Time in New York City; Mind Games; Walls and Bridges; Rock ‘n’ Roll; Double Fantasy and Milk and Honey:

All artwork, including inner bags, posters, postcards and original labels will be reproduced:

Looks like the LPs come in a white box with the same design cues as the John Lennon Signature Box from back in October, 2011:

That set contains the same titles – only on CD – plus it has two bonus discs of non-album tracks, studio outtakes and home recordings:

Of course there’s been a previous incarnation of a John Lennon , 8 LP vinyl box set.

Record Store Day 2015 – An Epic Fail….

Posted on April 18, 2015 by beatlesblogger

Record Store Day is already well under way here in Australia and we were very keen to secure a copy of the Paul McCartney soundtrack to the film The Family Way:

So we schlepped all they way in to the city to one of the biggest and best record shops in Sydney – Red Eye Records. They always get good stocks in of most Record Store Day releases and were opening at 9.00am. We got there about 20 minutes before hand expecting to see a small queue. Turns out that was an over-ambitious expectation. There was already a very long queue well down the block. So long that you couldn’t actually see the Red Eye store:

We dutifully took our place and after an hour slowly shuffled toward the entry. They were basically letting one person in as one person left, so it was taking quite some time:

We eventually got to within about 20 people from the sales counter and at this point an employee came out and was helpfully going down the line (which was still snaking its way down the block behind us) asking what people were looking for and advising them if they still had stock. “Any copies of Paul McCartney’s The Family Way left?”. “No”, came the answer. “We only got one copy of that and it went ages ago”. Damn……

The guy standing behind me said he thought Record Store Day caused more disappointment than joy. Maybe he’s right. 😦

McCartney/Rihanna/Kanye ‘FourFiveSeconds’ CD Single

Posted on April 13, 2015 by beatlesblogger

This just arrived from Amazon.

It’s the CD single of Rihanna, Kanye West and Paul McCartney singing ‘FourFiveSeconds‘:

There’s just the one song, plus another track with the official video:

Have to say we really like the song.

One of the most interesting things about now having a physical copy of this release is the packaging – especially the detail contained in the prolific small print on the inside sleeve:

As you can see, for just one song, there is certainly a LOT of small print……

Turns out ‘FourFiveSeconds’ was indeed written by McCartney and Kanye West – but we learn they did it with (wait for it) seven other people. That’s a total of nine composers listed:(Click on the image above to see a larger version)

The rights to the song are administered by thirteen listed companies. And the song was recorded in New York, Santa Monica….and Mexico. Paul McCartney played acoustic guitar, but bass was provided by multi-instrumentalist and hip hop producer Mike Dean.

Oh, and apparently that Braille-like writing on the front cover is in fact Braille and it reads “four five seconds”.

Four Beatles-related Finds at Record Fair

Posted on April 11, 2015 by beatlesblogger

We’ve just returned from the annual Glebe Record Fair – one of the biggest of the year – held in the Sydney suburb of Glebe:

The two photos below were taken just after opening time at 9.00 am. This was before the venue really became absolutely packed with patrons hungrily seeking out vinyl, books and CDs. As you can see it’s already very crowded:

And the crowds just got bigger and bigger. In the melee that ensued we were lucky to discover four interesting little 45 singles. First up, a US white-label pressing of George Harrison’s ‘This Song’ from 1976 on his Dark Horse label, complete in its original outer sleeve. First pressings of this came with these white labels, while later issues have the traditional colour label:

At the same vendor’s stall we also discovered this unusual New Zealand pressing of Paul McCartney and Wings controversial ‘Give Ireland Back to the Irish’, dating from 1972. As was the case in most of the rest of the world this is on a custom Apple label:

A little later in another pile of 45s we spied this nice US pressing (and original picture sleeve) of Mary Hopkin singing ‘Goodbye’:

By this time we were feeling pretty weary, and the crowds had built considerably. We were just about to leave and doing one final trawl through some singles at another table when out popped this rare little gem:

It’s a 1986 UK pressing with re-mixes of the Suzy and the Red Stripes song ‘Seaside Woman‘ (a.k.a Linda McCartney and husband Paul). This was originally released on the A&M label back in 1980 with this cover:

Four Recent Ebay Purchases

Posted on March 31, 2015 by beatlesblogger

We got an email from PayPal the other day saying we’d earned a $10.00 credit that could be used on any Ebay purchase, and so we delved into the collection to uncover some items that were missing.

Turns out we’re drastically under-represented when it comes to early Ringo Starr Apple singles. For some reason or other these were a blind spot in the collection and so these three items have now been added:

These 7″ 45 rpm singles are all Australian Apple Records releases.

“Beaucoups of Blues” is taken from the 1970 album of the same name.

“It Don’t Come Easy” is a 1971 non-album single produced by George Harrison, and “Back Off Boogalooo” (also produced by Harrison) came out in March, 1972.

The same seller also had a Wings single we didn’t have and hadn’t previously been aware of:

“Arrow Through Me” is b/w “Old Siam, Sir”, and both songs come from the 1979 album Back to the Egg.

The Rutles – LP

Posted on March 29, 2015 by beatlesblogger

As their website says:

The Rutles are a legend. A living legend. A legend that will live long after other living legends have died. This is the semi-legendary story of the Prefab Four who made the sixties what they are today!

For such a huge cultural phenomenon the Beatles have attracted surprisingly few parodies and send-ups over the years. That is until The Rutles came along…..

We’ve just scored a nice vinyl copy of their 1978 LP The Rutles:

Created by Eric Idle and Neil Innes for British television, The Rutles first appeared in 1975 as a sketch on the BBC TV comedy series called Rutland Weekend Television. The sketch presented a mini-documentary about the 1960s band “The Rutles”, and featured Innes singing “I Must Be In Love”, a pastiche of a 1964 Lennon-McCartney tune.

The Rutles gained more fame after their 1978 mockumentary television film, All You Need Is Cash (in which George Harrison actually appears). The Rutles LP is the soundtrack album from that film and it contains 14 of the film’s 20 songs.

The Rutles comes with a gatefold cover and pasted inside is a lavish 16-page, full colour book containing text and images detailing the history and (imaginary) releases of the band. Here’s a selection:

And there’s an inner sleeve containing more band parodies, too:

What we have here is the US pressing. Released on the Warner Brothers label in 1978.

If you’d like a taste of what The Rutles are about:

Two Beatle-related Second-hand Finds

Posted on March 15, 2015 by beatlesblogger

A couple of weeks back we got the chance to re-visit the harbour city of Newcastle in New South Wales. We’ve previously scored some Beatle goodness there (click here, and here) and this time was no different.

The first item came from Rices Bookshop on Hunter Street:

The Long and Winding Road – An Intimate Guide to the Beatles is a soft cover book (124 pages) by Ted Greenwald*. Published in 1995 in the USA, it details the history of the band from different perspectives. There are biographies, discographies, details of major stage appearances, films, significant books, as well as details about Beatle family and friends. As you can see, the layout inside is rudimentary, but there is a lot of information here:

The book is mostly chronological and there are lots of Beatle photographs, record cover images, and examples of memorabilia inside:

Just up the road from Rices is the Indigo Bookshop. They usually only sell second-hand books, but this visit they also had some boxes of used LP’s on display which we’d not seen before. In one box we found this little Beatle-related rarity:

As you can see this example has some water damage to the cover (which looks worse in the photo than in reality), but the vinyl itself is in mint condition. Denny Laine of course was a long-time McCartney collaborator and member of Wings. It’s no surprise then that Paul and Linda McCartney feature on a number of tracks of this 1984 solo album by Laine. Also represented are fellow ex-Wings members Steve Holly, Denny Seiwell, Lawrence Juber and Henry McCullough.

The song ‘Send Me the Heart’ was co-written by Laine and McCartney in 1974 and has Paul on bass. It was recorded during the same Nashville Wings sessions for ‘Junior’s Farm’.

‘I Would Only Smile’ was made at the same time as the sessions for the McCartney/Wings release Red Rose Speedway (1972). Similarly ‘Weep for Love’ was an out-take from the recording sessions for the Wings 1979 LP Back to the Egg. It features backing vocals by Paul and Linda.

So, once again the second-hand stores of Newcastle come up trumps!

* Ted Greenwald is also the author of The Beatles Companion – The Fab Four in Film, Performance, Recording and Print, published in 1992:

Ringo’s “Postcards From Paradise” Lyric Video

Posted on March 7, 2015 by beatlesblogger

Lots of Beatle song references here…..

Of course it’s not the first time Ringo has featured the Beatles and postcards.

Ringo Starr’s new album Postcards From Paradise will be released March 31. Sounding good!

The Beatles in the News

Posted on February 21, 2015 by beatlesblogger

Stumbled across a blog site that takes an interesting approach to Beatle history.

The Beatles in the News is just that – a site where multiple, random articles from across the decades and from all over the world are aggregated and re-published daily.

There are newspaper and magazine articles, concert reviews, TV news, and advertisements. It’s not only about the Beatles as a group but also as solo artists. Around 500 items from the past are uploaded every month.

One of the posts from January 23 this year caught our attention. It features – in full – a special colour supplement produced by the iconic Australian Women’s Weekly magazine in March, 1964 at the very height of Beatlemania:Of course, being a “women’s magazine” from the day meant you had to have a section dedicated to what to cook for that special Beatles party:

Just love those mop-top muffins with the chocolate hairdo’s! And also how to dress in Beatle fashion:

Fantastic stuff.

With this site you never know from day-to-day just what gems might pop up.

For anyone interested in the Beatles The Beatles in the News is well worth visiting regularly. You never know what you might find.

Beatles Blog

Adventures in collecting Beatles music

Tag Archives: Beatles Collecting

Warman’s “Beatles Field Guide” Book

New John Lennon Vinyl Box Set Coming

Record Store Day 2015 – An Epic Fail….

McCartney/Rihanna/Kanye ‘FourFiveSeconds’ CD Single

Four Recent Ebay Purchases

Two Beatle-related Second-hand Finds

Ringo’s “Postcards From Paradise” Lyric Video

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