More on The Beatles: Live at the Hollywood Bowl

Posted on July 21, 2016 by beatlesblogger

Apple and Universal Music have now officially announced details of the expanded and newly remixed version of The Beatles’ 1977 live album At The Hollywood Bowl.

The new release will be known as The Beatles: Live At The Hollywood Bowl, and it is directly sourced from the original three track tapes of the concerts. Producer Giles Martin and engineer Sam Okell have remixed and mastered the recordings at Abbey Road Studios. The album will include the thirteen tracks from the original album produced by George Martin, plus four bonus tracks – 3 of which are previously unreleased recordings from the concerts. Those tracks are: ‘You Can’t Do That’ and ‘I Wanna Hold Your Hand’ (both from 23 August, 1964) and ‘Everybody’s Trying To Be My Baby’ and ‘Baby’s in Black’ (both from 30 August, 1965).

Giles Martin gave this background:

“A few years ago Capitol Studios called saying they’d discovered some Hollywood Bowl three track tapes in their archive. We transferred them and noticed an improvement over the tapes we’ve kept in the London archive. Alongside this I’d been working for some time with a team headed by technical engineer James Clarke on demix technology, the ability to remove and separate sounds from a single track.

With Sam Okell, I started work on remixing the Hollywood Bowl tapes. Technology has moved on since my father worked on the material all those years ago. Now there’s improved clarity, and so the immediacy and visceral excitement can be heard like never before. What we hear now is the raw energy of four lads playing together to a crowd that loved them. This is the closest you can get to being at the Hollywood Bowl at the height of Beatlemania. We hope you enjoy the show…”

Live at the Hollywood Bowl will include a 24-page booklet with an essay by music journalist David Fricke, and will be issued on CD on 9 September and as a gatefold double vinyl LP on 18 November 2016.

Read more at Rolling Stone and Billboard magazines.

Beatles “Live at the Hollywood Bowl” to be Re-issued

Posted on July 19, 2016 by beatlesblogger

Looks like the Beatles At the Hollywood Bowl is to be re-issued as part of the release program surrounding the new Ron Howard film Eight Days A Week: The Touring Years, due out in September.

One change from the original is the title. It becomes Live at the Hollywood Bowl, and rumour has it that there will be four additional tracks included, though it’s not clear exactly what these will be. Two of the songs will most likely be ‘Baby’s in Black’, which has previously been issued as the b-side of the 1996 ‘Real Love’ single, and ‘I Want to Hold Your Hand’, part of which appears in Love, the Cirque du Soleil Beatles stage production and which appears on the 2006 Love album.

The US Amazon site has the CD only (so far) listed for pre-order, saying the release date is September 9. No images of the packaging are available yet. This will be the first time this album has been officially issued on CD.

UPDATE: Amazon have now added an image. If this is the actual item it is disappointing. While this artwork works as a movie poster, it’s not a classic Beatle album cover by any means.

They’ve also added info about a vinyl release too. It’s due on November 18.

Looking at the cover it seems to indicate that a Hollywood Bowl reissue may be the only release that will be associated with the new film, which is also disappointing if that’s the case. We await further news.

Making of ‘While My Guitar Gently Weeps’ Video (Love version)

Posted on June 30, 2016 by beatlesblogger

With the 10th anniversary of The Beatles/Cirque du Soleil Love album and stage show coming up on July 14, the official Beatle YouTube site has uploaded a “making of” style video for the George Harrison song ‘While My Guitar Gently Weeps’.

It includes a tribute to the late George Martin and information on how elements of the Las Vegas show are being tweaked and updated with fantastic new graphical elements for 2016:

The official Beatles site also has the song in full – complete with the fancy new graphics – all part of the 10th anniversary revamp:

Pure McCartney TV Ad

Posted on June 30, 2016 by beatlesblogger

Featuring a range of vintage and sometimes strange play-back formats – check out the cool robot-inspired 8-Track Cartridge player. It all ends with a current and very nice British-made turntable, a white Rega Planar RP1.

An Unusual Beatles “1” CD

Posted on June 6, 2016 by beatlesblogger

We were at a record fair the other day and picked up The Beatles 1 compilation CD from 2000. The front cover looks familiar:

As does the rear:

That is, until you look more closely at the fine print – just below the barcode:

There it says quite clearly, in bolded letters, “Not resale in the EU“. Never seen that before. Then there’s the disc itself:

Looks rather standard, but it too has the words “Not resale in the EU. LC 0299” in the small print around the perimeter:

Anyone seen this one before, or know what it means?

Beatle Vinyl Collector Books for Spanish, French and Japanese Releases

Posted on May 5, 2016 by beatlesblogger

We received an intriguing email the other day from a marketing company called IM Digital alerting us to the publication of three new Beatle books for collectors. They are written by musician and collector Juan Carlos Irigoyen Pérez, and they detail across three separate volumes, every Beatle release in Spain, France and Japan respectively:

As you can see from the covers, these are Beatles discographies with full-colour illustrations of every release (single and LP) on the Odeon or Apple labels for Spain (between 1963-1972); for France (between 1963-1970); and Japan (between 1964-1970).

There appear to be both English and Spanish editions available, and the books are for sale on Amazon worldwide, both in paperback and e-book form.

Amazon has a “Look Inside” feature giving a peek at a few pages. You can see inside Spain here, France here, and Japan here.

Juan Carlos Irigoyen Pérez has also posted three youTube videos with more info:

HULU Wins Streaming Rights to New Beatle Film

Posted on May 5, 2016 by beatlesblogger

The Beatles official site has just posted a press release about the new Ron Howard directed feature-length documentary film, The Beatles: Eight Days A Week.

Hulu Launches Hulu Documentary Films with Highly-Anticipated Documentary The Beatles: Eight Days A Week from Director Ron Howard.

Hulu has secured the exclusive US streaming video on-demand rights to Academy Award Winner Ron Howard’s feature documentary The Beatles: Eight Days A Week (working title). The film is produced with the full cooperation of Paul McCartney, Ringo Starr, Yoko Ono Lennon and Olivia Harrison.

Debuting in theaters and on Hulu this fall, The Beatles: Eight Days A Week is based on the first part of The Beatles’ career (1962-1966) – the period in which they toured and captured the world’s acclaim. Ron Howard’s film will explore how John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison and Ringo Starr came together to become this extraordinary phenomenon, “The Beatles.” It will explore their inner workings – how they made decisions, created their music and built their collective career together – all the while, exploring The Beatles’ extraordinary and unique musical gifts and their remarkable, complementary personalities. The film will focus on the time period from the early Beatles’ journey in the days of The Cavern Club in Liverpool to their last concert at Candlestick Park in San Francisco in 1966. The Beatles: Eight Days A Week also includes rare and exclusive footage.

The Beatles: Eight Days A Week marks the first documentary feature to premiere exclusively on Hulu following its theatrical run. The film comes to Hulu in the company’s first-ever licensing deal with Apple Corps Ltd. The film will be the first to launch under the new Hulu Documentary Films arm, which will serve as a new home for premium original and exclusive documentary film titles coming to Hulu.

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!”:

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.