Orel Family

Beatles for Sale

I was about to call this one, The Beatles are Coming!!, but considering the prices involved, "Sale" seemed so much more appropriate. The links below show some -- not all -- of the major releases of Beatles stuff today. (Yes, the links all work, please use 'em to buy your Beatles stuff from Amazon!!). There are also various combinations involving t-shirts and even "collector's crate" editions (I linked one of them, just for laughs).

Of course, with the depressed state of the current CD market, the Beatles releases are utterly dominating Amazon right now, occupying 10 out of the top 11 positions (only Susan Boyle at #6 spoils a clean sweep of the top 10). All 16 new music releases are in the top 21. And this may well be the first time ever that the top two positions at Amazon are both multi-hundred dollar box sets. And, of course, the Wii and Xbox versions of "Rock Band" have the top 2 positions in the Video Games chart.

So... yes, I broke down and ordered the mono box today. YES, IT IS OVERPRICED! And, yes, it means some other indulgences that won't be had this year. But it is also a bit of a holy grail of sorts. Mono was how The Beatles intended. Not that it was so apparent to me growing up, when it seemed so cool to have that German pressing of "With the Beatles" with the "true" stereo of "Money" to close it out. When the original CDs came out in 1987, and the first 4 were mono only, it was a big disappointment. So much so that when a bootleg called "Ultra Rare Trax" showed up not too long thereafter, I quickly snapped it up in substantial part just to get its sizzling stereo version (yes, with the voices on one side and the instruments on the other side) of "I Saw Her Standing There."

It wasn't until about 3 years ago, when reviewing notes for Dave Marsh's book The Beatles' Second Album (Rock of Ages) and listening to playbacks, that I fell for the mono versions. I listened to that same song, "Money." The stereo version was nice, but... not all that. The fakish stereo by then available from the Capitol record on The Capitol Albums Vol. 1 was a nice enough curiosity. But the mono... when John screams out "I WANT TO BE FREE!!!" and John and George trill away in response, it smacked right between the eyes. Even with the dead sound of the original "With the Beatles" CD. So I wanted to have it fresh. And I want -- finally -- to have "Revolver" and "Rubber Soul" as the band intended. As some old ad copy once said, a splendid time is guaranteed for all... but Mr. Kite isn't topping the bill.

Labels: amazon, The Beatles

posted by Matt Orel @ 7:46 PM