The Beatles 01/XX/69 London (get back / winter)

Decades after there being an actual band of the name, the Beatles quite recently appeared once again across the official networks of consciousness. Last September marked, almost certainly, the very last time that their catalog of recordings will be remastered as individual discs to be made available as physical items on a store shelf. (The most interesting aspect of the reissue, for golden ear, audiophile types, was a USB drive version, which includes FLAC files that were recorded/playback at 24 bit resolution: for some of the material, a sharper digital image than anything made so far- I don't think there was any DVDA/SVCD type releases in the past...) The bigger event for the marketing blitz, was that the band's music has finally arrived for the wildly popular Rock Band.

I've played Guitar Hero. At first you thought it was going to be a hula hoop/Rubik's cube type thing: but the bigger picture is that: Bands are out; games are in- as far as large amounts of money changing hands is concerned...

From International Business Times: Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 has been successful in crossing the coveted $1 billion mark (£625 million) in global revenues according to its publisher, Activision Blizzard Inc. and is the latter's third "billion dollar-plus" franchise after Guitar Hero and World of Warcraft...Among entertainment franchises, the only ones ahead of it are Titanic which earned $1.8 billion, Avatar, which has raked in $1.3 billion, The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King which made $1.12 billion and Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest which earned $1.07 billion.

A billion dollars = 15 million disks, a long time has passed since a stereo audio recording has been taken to the register that many times....

Hard to say what the total revenue has been for five decades of the Beatles "franchise" What IS evident is that it is being forced to alter its form into a franchise in order to wrest people's attentions from the franchises which threaten to eclipse it.

For those who hardly know anything of the band. Let me introduce these discs by saying that the Beatles were to break up in September of 70...The period covered in the material of these discs captures their attempt to reconcile their differences by retreating from the method of each member recording each their own music in the studio, apart from all the others, and returning to an ensemble recording of the songs together in one take as a group. The material that resulted from this, the songs that were recorded and a movie- were not immediately satisfactory to them. The material was released as a LP and into theaters only after they disbanded.

Obviously, Wikipedia is there to flesh this out...Moving on to address those who know all of it: What is the material on these discs? To give you an informed review I would have had to have seen "Let It Be", the movie (which is itself only available as a bootleg as of this writing) and I would have had to have seen the Anthology documentary. Then, I would be able to situate what's presented here with a little more context. Unfortunately, I haven't done that for you.

There are three things on these discs: The stereo mix, outtakes, and promos/extras. The stereo mix is: If you like the group, and you like the songs from this period, you're definitely going to want this material: it's the rooftop concert plus full takes of other songs

The outtakes are a different story, while quality somewhat varies, by bootleg standards they are pristine...They mostly seem to be black and white prints of film that was shot for a potential theatrical release. They have been matched up to the actual studio recordings and the sound quality is very high. The problem is that they are too fragmentary...There will be 45 seconds from one camera- The same 45 seconds from another camera- and then no more of the material, kind of tedious. And random cut-ins into fly-on-the-wall with banal, distracted attempts at getting everyone to the same moment for accomplishing something...Lighting cigarettes or mentioning anecdotes in a small-talk-no specific message sort of way...It is kind of peculiar watching the everyday people moments which subsequently had to be edited away from ones that would be iconic and contribute to their considerable fame.
Along the way, there are glimpses of them actively working out the arrangements to the music. Just out of respect for how ubiquitous these songs became, I'd imagine anyone who has ever played an instrument would feel a spark of curiosity watching the conditions of their origin.


The Promos consist of some of this material printed to color stock for various purposes, like the Let It Be Naked thing. It makes you wonder what physical material all the masters of Beatles stuff is on...how it is safeguarded and preserved. Eventually, digital necromancy will be employed upon all of it, as evidenced by the Anthology John Lennon collaborations long after the fact. Witness Avatar's Cameron talking about how a young Clint Eastwood will be appearing in movies soon. Likewise, once everything in Apple's vault is scanned, perhaps the Beatles will come out with some new 21st century tunes, virtual Idoru style

If the tracklisting in the cover photo is interesting and you're looking for a more in depth description of the material, it's here in the BootlegZone, a site which makes a gesture towards rock bootlegs generally, but which is primarily concerned with exchanging unofficial Beatle information. The scholar, and the obsessed, have hundreds of hours of Beatles audio studio material that they could wade through. Some boffin named John C. Winn has published some books on the subject, and at least one long lived fanzine is devoted to the minutiae.

How to address the monumental popularity of the Beatles...and monumental popularity in general? I already adopted the Debord front for the Michael Jackson and Elvis entries, so it's time to let it rest. I was reading an Aquarius Records review (some very accomplished writing throughout this site, though often a little too generous and enthusiastic) of the Nirvana Box set where they come out and say : "See, everyone loves Nirvana. Everyone. Those of you who say you don't are just trying to be 'cool'. Sort of like the people who talk about how the Beatles suck. The Beatles did not suck. They wrote more perfect pop songs than any band in the history of rock and roll...It's not cool to pretend you don't like Nirvana. Not at all. In fact, it's unbelievably UNCOOL..." and it goes on with an intelligent author speaking as simply as possible to communicate a gut level candor. I can't address that directly (other than mentioning that any Aquarius record of the week is more interesting than the Beatles)- , but I can start by saying that I've heard these songs more than enough times...There's so much else that's so very great that the Beatles popularity, to radios and supermarkets, at least, is inordinate with their talent. Further than that, the tedium of the same damn songs is now the soundtrack for tedium- for what is unimaginative and normal in life...You can also take aim at the tyranny of the Beatles' legacy by imaging RockStar lives that you would rather have lived- playing along with the whole vicarious wish fulfillment nature of the whole pop star edifice...


Audiences have grown with population size, the spread of western communication technologies and the globalization/standardization of everyday life: Mccdonalds, X-Box. The Beatles...The Beatles rode in on the emergence of all this and now it threatens to be the ocean that supersedes them- though in some sense it never will. Because rock music, like portrait painting and theater, is no longer Pop- no longer some novel thing that people look to as NOW, as what's new and happening...It is dead. Programs...Games...Networks of people communicating via computers...are today.

As for Rock Band, will it ever, in and of itself, contribute to the existence of sounds that are worth listening to? DJ Little Steven chimed in with how it might be the savior for the oldies AKA rock and roll...Combined sales of GH and RB top $2.3 bill...Aerosmith Rock Band has reportedly earned the group more money than the sale of anyone of their single LPs...More interestingly, one could hope that it might dovetail into networks upon which people are actually making music. In the Harmonix foundation story, the guy relates how once he got rid of the improvisation idea- just had people trying to accurately follow along, the doors of success were flung open. Perhaps they can backpedal from there and implement some new forum for creativity. I haven't scrutinized their new Rock Band Network initiative, but Kirn over @ Create Digital Music has, which suggests that there is some possible emerging novel avenue for creativity to the whole thing.