The Beatles Alphabessential (2022)

The Beatles So much has been said and written about the Beatles – and their story is so mythic in its sweep – that it's difficult to summarize their career without restating clichés that have already been digested by tens of millions of rock fans. To start with the obvious, they were the greatest and most influential act of the rock era, and they introduced more innovations into popular music than any other group of their time. Moreover, they were among the few artists of any discipline who were simultaneously the best at what they did and the most popular at what they did. Relentlessly imaginative and experimental, the Beatles grabbed hold of the international mass consciousness in 1964 and didn't let go for the next six years, always staying ahead of the pack in terms of creativity and never losing the ability to communicate their increasingly sophisticated ideas to a mass audience.

A superb-sounding double CD of alternate mixes and (just a few) actual alternate takes, named after the late Abbey Road engineer John Barrett, who catalogued and copied many Beatles vault tapes in the early '80s. At first glance, this appears to be a goldmine of unreleased Beatles goodies, spanning "From Me to You" to the Let It Be sessions, but read the fine print carefully. Most of the takes are in fact stereo and mono mixes that happen to be rare or commercially unavailable, not performances that are commercially unavailable. To some fans, these different mixes are revelations; to many, however, they are barely or completely indistinguishable from the familiar versions on official Beatles albums.

Not For Sale was a Beatles bootleg CD released in 1989 on Condor Records, allegedly pressed in Australia but the CD said it was made in Korea. This was one of the first boot CD's I bought way back then and while it did look like professionally made compact discs, if you looked at the CD through a light, there were a few pinholes through the metal within the disc itself. It had been said that this shows the inferiority of bootleg discs but it was just a disc that was not made as well as companies who had a bigger budget to use better material. Nonetheless, when it was possible to rip CD's, this was also one of the first I saved, in fear of the CD deteriorating.

Alternates mixes, Rockband Mixes, Fake Mixes. This set brings together 2CDs of excellent quality Revolver Studio Outtakes and Mixes, some previously unreleased before this date - including some isolated track elements. The set is also the first to include Rockband Mixes as part of a Revolver Sessions compilation.

The Let It Be album has been newly mixed by producer Giles Martin and engineer Sam Okell. All the new Let It Be releases feature the new stereo mix of the album as guided by the original "reproduced for disc" version by Phil Spector and sourced directly from the original session and rooftop performance eight-track tapes. The Special Edition Deluxe 2CD also includes a disc of outtake highlights and a 40-page booklet.

The Beatles’ revolver has become a new era album that uniquely identifies what it was. The music nature of the Beatles that extended the Oldies of the 50’s left the residue up to around “BEATLES FOR SALE”, the treatment of the world is idle, and actually “HELP” has “four people The idol “is given to the title. But the high artistic glimpse of that “HELP” was deepened with “RUBBER SOUL”, indicating that the Beatles were becoming an existence that does not fit within the idol category of one. Until then, I had been doing a tour in parallel with recording, but after stopping the tour in 1966, I will combine the styling of studio work and make ‘Sargent Peppers’. This album gets a high reputation both inside and outside, but it seems that “revolver” was the reason for its production. Indeed there are also reasons for time, but there are many songs that are difficult to reproduce on the stage with the technology at the time, without having played one song from the “revolver” at the stage. The “Paperback · Writer” which was the same period recording that was only released as a single was only played on the 1966 tour, “Rain” on the reverse side uses reverse rotation of the tape It was impossible. The Beatles must have perceived the real pleasure and entertainment of studio production with ‘revolver’. It should have thought that if it takes more time it will be able to create a more dense album. That was connected to Sargent Pepper’s discontinuance of the tour activity afterwards.

On February 7, 1964, The Beatles arrived at New York’s John F. Kennedy Airport, greeted by scores of screaming, swooning fans who rushed the gate to catch a glimpse of John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison and Ringo Starr as they took their first steps on American soil. Two nights later, on Sunday, February 9, 73 million viewers in the U.S. and millions more in Canada tuned in to CBS to watch The Beatles make their American television debut on ‘The Ed Sullivan Show.’ In what remains one of the world’s top-viewed television events of all time, The Beatles performed five songs on the live broadcast and ‘Beatlemania,’ already in full, feverish bloom in The Beatles’ native U.K., was unleashed with blissful fervor across America and around the world. The British Invasion had begun. The new 13 CD box set THE U.S. ALBUMS commemorates the 50th anniversary of these history-making events, spanning 1964’s MEET THE BEATLES! to 1970’s HEY JUDE.

This 2CD set contains the never before released 1,2,3,4! Tape, this includes unique edits of 'Besame Mucho' and 'How Do You Do It?' and is a brand new tape source for this famous compilation. Also included are the definitive versions of the 'Boardroom Tape' from tape source, and also the 'Sessions' album. All have been remastered including pitch and phase correction for the very first time.

Some can argue that "Strawberry Fields Forever" is the most important rock song ever written. It is certainly one of the most influential, breaking the boundaries of what a pop song can achieve going past even what The Beatles achieved on Revolver. We have been blessed, going back to the days of vinyl, to have working takes from EMI studios to track the progression of the development of the song. They surfaced on vinyl on Ultra Rare Trax Vol. 1 on Swinging Pig (TSP 001) and have been featured on countless compact disc reissues including Ultra Rare Trax Vol. 1 on The Swingin' Pig (TSP-CD-001), Ultra Rare Trax Vol. 4 on The Swingin' Pig (TSP-CD-026), Unsurpassed Masters Vol. 3 on Yellow Dog (YD003.). In 1999 Vigotone released the John Barrett tapes on Turn Me On Dead Man (VIGO-178/179). In 1997 It's Not Too Bad was released by Pegboy (1008) which revealed twenty additional mintues of "Strawberry Fields Forever" outtakes dating from its initial conception in Spain in 1966 and Lennon's Kenwood home before going into the studio.

A sometimes sensational compilation of Australian artists covering the Beatles. Beatlemania was most intense downunder and for the band's mid-sixties tour 350000 people greeted them at the Adelaide airport; (a third of the city's entire population). This collection starts with the biggest band to score a place, with a relatively small song - the Bee Gees doing a squeaky clean take on From Me To You. Gold chains and hairy chests are nowhere to be seen yet. Then the Seekers ease us into the album with a torch-song version of Yesterday which shows off Judith Durham's great voice. Followed by a role-call of groovy Oz talent including Masters Apprentices giving a bluesy, garage version of I Feel Fine and the Hoodoo Gurus doing a more recent run through of A Hard Day's Night. Their rendition stays true with a note-perfect guitar solo!