Tag Archives: Beatles Remastered

Pics of Packaging for the Beatles “Apple” USB

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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.

New Beatles Radio Special – Update

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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”:

New Beatles “Christmas Pack” of 4 Remasters

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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.

Beatles USB

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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.

Details here: http://www.thebeatles.com and here.

Beatles USBThe Beatles USB - Partly OpenThe Beatles USB - Open

New Releases – Coming Up or Out Now

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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

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:

418453424510 550

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.

Stereo/Mono Remastered – Revisited

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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 versions of 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!

Abbey Road – Full Download in Rock Band

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Hi, today I got this in an email from the official Beatles site:

The Beatles

Abbey Road is launched as the first Beatles album to be available for purchase and playable as downloadable content in The Beatles: Rock Band Music Store.

With Come Together, Something, Octopus’s Garden, I Want You (She’s So Heavy), Here Comes The Sun and The End already included on The Beatles: Rock Band game disc, players will now be able to play songs from and complete the entire Abbey Road album.

Available for Xbox 360 (Oct.20) and PlayStation 3 System (Oct.22):

Individual Abbey Road singles: Maxwell’s Silver Hammer, Oh! Darling and Because. Price: $1.99 USD, £0.99 UK, €1.49 EU (160 Microsoft Points for Xbox 360) per each individual track.

Additionally, the following songs from Abbey Road can also be played as 1-to-3-song sets, based on how they were recorded/composed: You Never Give Me Your Money, Sun King/Mean Mr. Mustard, Polythene Pam/She Came in Through the Bathroom Window, Golden Slumbers/Carry That Weight”, The End/Her Majesty. Price: $16.99 USD, £10.46 UK, €11.37 EU (1360 Microsoft Points for Xbox 360) for “Complete The Album Pack”

The “Complete The Album Pack” features: Abbey Road singles: Maxwell’s Silver Hammer, Oh! Darling, and Because. The entire Abbey Road B-side 16 minute medley that includes: You Never Give Me Your Money, Sun King, Mean Mr. Mustard, Polythene Pam, She Came in Through the Bathroom Window, Golden Slumbers, Carry That Weight and The End

Available for Wii (Oct. 20):

Individual Abbey Road singles: Maxwell’s Silver Hammer, Oh! Darling, Because and You Never Give Me Your Money/Her Majesty. Price: $2.00 USD (200 Wii Points) per each individual track. Price: $1.00 USD (100 Wii Points) for Her Majesty

Multi-track sets: Sun King/Mean Mr. Mustard, Polythene Pam/She Came in Through the Bathroom Window, Golden Slumbers/Carry That Weight/The End. Price: $3.50 USD (350 Wii Points) per 2-Pack/No additional cost for 3rd song “The End” as it is already included on game disc.

Additional Beatles albums that have been announced as upcoming downloadable content include Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band (1967) in November and Rubber Soul (1965) in December.

The Beatles: Rock Band downloadable content will be available for purchase on the XboxLIVE Marketplace for Xbox360, PlayStation Network and via the in-game The Beatles: Rock Band Music Store for Wii‚ using Wii points purchased through the Wii Shop Channel.

For more on The Beatles: Rock Band visit the official Beatles store at TheBeatles.com

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Its definitely a brave new world…..I don’t have The Beatles Rock Band game, or even a device to play it on if I did. I reckon US$16.99 for the rest of Abbey Road is pretty pricey, but I guess it integrates into the game and there is animation and other effects with it….there’d want to be!

Beatles Remastering Process & Mono v Stereo – Discussion

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In my last post I was bemoaning the fact that the official Beatles radio special released to promote the new Remastered discs didn’t go into very much detail at all about the actual process of remastering, nor the differences between the Stereo and the Mono box versions.

Well, just after that I discovered the sort of detail I was looking for in a podcast from America.

It’s a weekly show called All Songs Considered. Produced by the National Public Radio network (NPR), the program looks at all aspects of newly released music – and they have over the last few weeks (perhaps understandably) run a couple of shows about the latest Beatles releases.

One of them features a lengthy (22 mins 32 secs) and very interesting interview with Beatles historian and writer Kevin Howlett.

Howlett is the man responsible for all the words in the new booklets that accompany the new remastered stereo discs, and he wrote the essay that appears in the booklet that can be found in the Mono box set.

So, he’s an insider who knows what he’s talking about!  The All Songs Considered podcast goes into quite a lot of detail and gives frequent audio examples of the remastering process AND the difference between the stereo and mono versions.

Here’s Kevin Howlett talking specifically about the differences between mono and stereo in Sgt Pepper – an album he says was made to be heard in MONO:

Beatles historian Kevin Howlett there talking to NPR’s Bob Boilen.

If you’d like to hear the whole NPR podcast click here.


Beatles Radio Special – The Beatles Remastered

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A mate in the music business this week sent me a burn of an official Apple/EMI radio special produced for distribution to radio stations to promote the new Beatles Remastered box sets.

Its pretty interesting and is narrated by a cockney-accented Gary Crowley whom, from what I can gather from the web, usually works as a DJ and interviewer at the BBC Radio in London. The program runs 1 hour and 48 minutes in total, and is split into 6 segments. Crowley works his way though each official album release chronologically and the program uses interviews with John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison, Ringo Starr and George Martin to  paint a picture of how each record came about and in particular how the Beatles music changed and matured with each release.

Here’s how Gary Crowley opens the radio special, and the band talks about the early days, recording their first outing “Please Please Me”:

While there’s a lot of good stuff, the two main disappointments for me are that the program just looks at the albums, and doesn’t go into the singles that can be found on the “Past Masters” discs.  It also doesn’t go into any detail about the remastering process itself or how the whole 4 year project of painstakingly remastering each disc was run – which is a pity because I for one would have liked to have heard a bit about this aspect from those involved.

Anyway, its still a good addition to the collection and contains some really great interview extracts. One very interesting thing is that some of the music tracks are preceded by original studio banter by the band that I can only presume comes from the The Beatles Rock Band game, also released on 09.09.09.  I don’t have the game, but I’ve read that they use previously unreleased studio chat and out-takes extensively to make the experience of playing it more realistic. The makers had ready access to all the original master tapes and lifted off quite a lot of unique material. Some short grabs of that are used here I think.

Well, I guess if you are a mad keen collector you’d like to hear something else from the show.

This second extract brings us up to the “The White Album”, and the song “Helter Skelter”:

Beatles Mono Box – Unboxing Pix

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Well, as promised in an earlier post, here are some photographs of my “un-boxing” of the remastered Beatles In Mono. It’s a white box that holds 10 CDs – that is each original mono album released by the group, plus a 2 CD set called “Mono Masters”. This is like the “Past Masters” double that is available either individually or in the stereo remastered box set. However, “Mono Masters” has a slightly different track list with four different songs unique to this package. These are from “Yellow Submarine” and have never previously been issued in mono on CD: “Only A Northern Song”, “All Together Now”, “Hey Bulldog” and “It’s All Too Much”.

The box also contains a 44 page booklet with lots of great photos and text by Beatles aficionado Kevin Howlett.

Interestingly the small print on the removable promotional flyer that is tucked into the shrink wrap on the outside of the box says “Made in Japan” – so I guess EMI commissioned their Japanese pressing plant to produce these sets. It was reported that only 10,000 box sets were made. Such was the demand though that EMI quickly moved to create more. I read that another 3,000 were being produced, though this is unconfirmed. I know these box sets are expensive but given the interest, another 3,000 doesn’t seem enough for the whole world. If you have any more details on this let me know.

The packaging for the individual CDs in this set is different to the newly-designed stereo remaster covers, recreating down to the finest detail how the original UK LP record covers would have looked back in they day had you purchased them when they were first released. This includes the paper inner sleeve for the disc, all original inserts and cover art. Even how the cover was glued together is authentic. There’s also a resealable plastic outer sleeve for the cover and a small, protective plastic sleeve for the disc itself – just like those you get on LPs (at least in Australia!). You can see examples of these in photos below. Notice also that the CD labels printed on the CD echo what the original LP labels would have looked like (in the photo of “Please Please Me” below check out the very early Parlophone label).

The “Help!” and “Rubber Soul” CDs here also contain the original 1965 stereo mixes of these albums (which are different to the 1987 George Martin stereo remixes done for the first round of CD issues of the Beatles catalogue.  So, now we have three different versions to compare!)

Beatles In Mono

Label:  Apple      Cat.No:   5 099969 945120

JAPAN/2009/11CDs/book/boxed set/all original covers and inserts

I like to keep the shrink-wrap on to help protect the box and so a razor blade is required to carefully cut an opening

I like to keep the shrink-wrap on to help protect the box and so a razor blade is required to carefully cut an opening

The box slides out to reveal 11 CDs (in their plastic covers) and the 44 page booklet

The box slides out to reveal 11 CDs and the 44 page booklet

The Mono set revealed

The Mono set (in their plastic covers) revealed

All the original inserts are included - like the Sgt Pepper cut-out card and the "psychodelic" pink-coloured inner-sleeve

All the original inserts are included - like the famous "Sgt Pepper" cut-out card and the "psychedelic" pink-coloured inner-sleeve. You can also see the little plastic sleeve to help protect the CD

Detail of how they have strived to recreate the original covers. The old-fashioned fold-over tabs on the outside and even the original paper inner sleeves. Note the old PArlophone label printed on the CD

Detail of how they've striven to recreate the original covers. The old-fashioned fold-over tabs and even the original paper inner sleeves. Note the old Parlophone label printed on the CD