The Beatles In Mono - vinyl box set

[axel]

"Blue Jay Way" is Harrison's toilet flushing opus,
Easily his worst penned effort let alone one of the lousiest Beatle tunes.
It is boring, the chorus is beyond tedious and repeated far too many times. Let alone the hokey phasing technique.

Very different from my perception. The acid is dripping from it in a constant flow.
I always liked how people tried not only to simulate the acid experience in the music, but to even try to provoke it in the listener. That song is coming quite close to achieving that.

 

[axel]

"Revolution #9" is interesting for the first couple of listens, otherwise it wears and grates heavily like a novelty recording. "Flight Reaction" by Calico Wall is a far, far better psychedelic pastiche of images set to music.
Calico Wall 1, Beatles 0

Flight Reaction IS music. #9 is a collage. It's like a movie. How often can you watch the same movie...?

 

[axel]

No Love for "Only a Northern Song" (recorded during Sgt Pepper) and "It's All Too Much" (recorded just after Sgt Pepper) into the Sgt Pepper / later Beatles action?

Reading liners of the Anthology 2 triple album, which is nice to have if you're into psychedelic Beatles, I saw it was recorded between "Fixing A Hole" and "Benefit Of Mr.Kite". What a stupid decision to not have it on the album. Replace "When I'm 64" with that and you have a good album right there.
I tell you something: that decision was probably the beginning of the end of the Beatles. That was when George Harrison started thinking: what the fuck am I doing here? Working hard on exceptional stuff and that guy comes up with lame-ass old-timey shit and throws my song out. Sorry, just speculating, I know.

Anyway, the new mono masters of those two songs are OUTSTANDING and far better than anything before. Listening to them again I realized there is no way in not getting the box set. Those two are a special case, because they have never been released in mono, but the mastering is suberb, and I'm sure a lot of the rest benefits from it as well.

 

[bosshoss]

Only A Northern Song bugs me for 2 reasons. One, musically it's a re-write of 50% "If I Needed Someone" and 50% "I Want To Tell You". Lyrically it sucks, because they lyrics merely state "It doesn't matter what rubbish I churn out, because I'm not getting paid enough royalties for it anyway". A poor premise for writing a song, and certainly a completely unpsychedelic sentiment.

Throw in some corny "far-out" sound effects, and you have Pure Filler, wisely left off Sgt. Peppers in my opinion.

Despite not liking certain songs, I'm still completely in awe of the Beatles. But they did get away with murder on some of the later material, because of their overall awesome-ness.

 

[axel]

Only A Northern Song bugs me for 2 reasons. One, musically it's a re-write of 50% "If I Needed Someone" and 50% "I Want To Tell You". Lyrically it sucks, because they lyrics merely state "It doesn't matter what rubbish I churn out, because I'm not getting the royalties for it anyway". A poor premise for writing a song, and certainly completely unpsychedelic sentiment.
Pure filler.

I just re-read the lyrics. I didn't really get the sarcasm about Northern Songs Ltd., I must confess. Or maybe I didn't take it too seriously. If that is the meaning it would be a different matter. More in the vein of Taxman. Typical Harrison sarcasm. Which would also arise the question: is it a reasonable decision to fuck around with the own publishing company?
But that is only one side. Still there is this statement: "You may think the chords are wrong, but they're not, he just wrote it like that." On an earlier take he sings: "I just wrote it like that." What have wrong chords (which they are actually not, they are just sounding strange; did you ever hear a wrong chord in a Beatles song?) to do with bad songs = rubbish?
The point being: Harrison uses strange chords. It's kind of his trademark compared to the perfection of the Lennon/McCartney songs. Lennon uses a lot of strange chords , too, he's somewhere in between. The more psychedelic it gets the stranger the chords get. It's part of the musical invention under the influence. And "Only A Northern Song" is right in the middle of that whole process of chords getting stranger and stranger.
So from my point of view it's anything else than an unpsychedelic sentiment. But a reflection about psychedelic songwriting. And about George Harrison's personal style of songwriting.
I can't really see that in connection to Northern Songs Ltd.. I'd say it's two different perspectives in one song, which to me, at the moment, makes it even more interesting.

Hey, and 50% of "If I Needed Someone" and 50% of "I Want To Tell You" doesn't make for a bad song. If you think of what some garage bands made out of 100 % of some song.
And that's the next point: it's all about arrangement. The arrangement of "Only A Northern Song" is totally killer!!!!

 

[axel]

And besides: Harrison is not Lennon. He is not McCartney. But most other songwriters, and that even gives them personality and even quality, write songs that all sound more or less the same. And NONE of them writes songs like George Harrison! And there are way to few to just recklessly dump them.

 

[Andreas]

22 years ago when I was 10 years old I wanted to get my classmate to like the Beatles. I had been getting into them lately, first by listening to Abbey Road and then Sgt. Pepper sealed the deal. We were not close friends (yet), he was heavily into Michael Jackson and Metallica at the time, but somehow I sensed that he had potential, both as a friend and as a Beatles fan. He was sceptical but I convinced him to have a listen. I chose to play "When I'm 64" to him, having a feeling that he'd appreciate the humor in it. He did. Then I played him "Sgt. Pepper Reprise" because it was the closest thing to being heavy on it. He went nuts. Then we listened to the whole of Pepper and the rest is history. We became best of friends and continued to turn each other on to different music. We are not as close today but we still see each other a couple of times a year.

So you see why cannot hate "64" and I do certainly not dislike Pepper as an LP. Not only for personal nostalgic reasons or as a cultural significant piece of work, but for its musical content. It's supposed to be listened to in mono, btw.

 

[buckeyebeat]

Even though I brought up Northern Song I'm not big on it because of the lyrics, which was Harrison trying to throw some crap as if to dare them to publish it. The music track is alright. I do really like "Its All Too Much" even at 6 minutes, I think its in the top 25% of post Pepper Beatles songs.

I really liked Sgt Pepper when I was a kid (we are talking about 8 years old and 1969 here), mainly because it presented such a wide variety of styles and made music seem like it had infinite possibilities. Probably many of the same reasons the teens liked it at the time. Like seemingly everyone else I know, the jury rests that Rubber Soul and Revolver are the untouchable masterpieces.

 

[bosshoss]

These soundtracks demonstrate the incredible quality of the late '60s Beatles vocal harmonies.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wL3-iAayios
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ATbvvMY14GQ

 

[Frantic]

I was living in Mt. Adams in Cincinnati in 1980 and on December 8th 1980 I was laying on the couch listening to the Beatles Rubber Soul and In My Life was playing. I had the TV on in the background with the sound off, when John's face appeared on the screen with 1940-1980 superimposed over his body. I kid you not. Spooky. One of those moments that stays with you forever.

 

[beccabear67]

Maybe a dumb place to ask but... does anyone remember what show John & Yoko were on promoting Double fantasy just a day or two before he was shot? I had gotten the record and liked it and could swear it was Saturday Night Live but I don't think it could have been now. There was some rival show called friday, maybe I tuned into it thinking it was Saturday Night Live or something? They were interviewed seemingly live in a recording studio is all I remember.

I still think he kicked Stu in the head in Hamburg but he was a genuine human being.

I was transferring some old off air tapes for someone and some of it was reports of John Lennon's shooting and people calling in, some of which was unintentionally funny to hear now as people requested Yesterday. I also found some John Bonham announcements, and among my Dad's old tape there was Ira Louvin and his wife's car crash announced back in 1965 or something! Yodel Sweet Molly was played over and over as they were both on that.

 

[axel]

ordered, received & greatly enjoying it!!

Those mastering engineers did an amazing job. Kudos!!! I was afraid it might sound too clean, too lame or something. It sounds great!!! Really good mono sound, as good as you wish. The guitars, vocals and drums sound rough and powerful. The louder you crank it up it the better it gets. This is the way to listen to the Beatles, especially the pre-1966 stuff.

 

[Outside_Lookin_in]

I’ve just taken the time to read this thread (instead of doing the work I should be). Some good points made here, but I’ll just add my bit to the for / against arguments.

The Beatles were way overplayed on the radio through the late seventies, eighties, and nineties. For me, familiarity breeds contempt. If I was happy listening to the same dozen songs over and over again, I wouldn’t have spent the last 40 years seeking out thousands of new songs. A big part of the charm of sixties garage for me was the discovery of something completely new to my ears, but ultimately it was the honesty, the rawness, the expressiveness, the teen angst, and above all, the inexplicable nostalgia which finally got me addicted to garage. This brings me to the second point: that garage by definition is the opposite of commercial, and bands didn’t come more commercial than the Beatles.

I stress that I do like the Beatles, but I just heard them too much growing up. My favourite song by them is a George Harrison composition “Don’t Bother Me”: it is the most garagey of their output, and I’ve never heard it played on radio (as if to underscore that fact). But far more than for the music itself, I have a huge respect for the influence they and their music had on other bands. I don’t believe the mid-sixties garage revolution would have happened without the Beatles, or it would at least have been greatly diminished in extent and quality. I believe the Beatles were the backbone of the garage scene, but other essential core elements of it were the influences wrought by The Kinks, The Rolling Stones, The Who, The Zombies, and The Yardbirds. This is an oversimplification, but I think it makes my point.

Not to get too carried away with eulogising the Beatles, I need to add that I also hold them responsible for destroying the beat revolution with their release of Sgt. Peppers’.

 

[axel]

garage by definition is the opposite of commercial, and bands didn’t come more commercial than the Beatles.

It looks that way, but historically it's wrong. Commercial music in the sixties was just much better than ever since. The usual set of songs played at concerts by the great majority of so called "garage" bands were mostly top 40 songs. The sound of those bands was maybe different, because they didn't have the same means of production. No doubt that makes them very appealing, especially in retrospect. But they were not anti-commercial.

 

[axel]

I need to add that I also hold them responsible for destroying the beat revolution with their release of Sgt. Peppers’.

If there was one artist being responsible for the destruction of the beat movement it has to be Jimi Hendrix. I just spoke to someone who saw his first concert in Germany in 1966, here in Munich, and said the audience was totally blown away. As was the audience at the Monterrey Pop Festival and everywhere else. Suddenly the solos were more important than the songs. That changed a lot.
As I said before, I don't consider Sgt. Pepper's being radically different from Revolver. It has the same variety of songs, just one year later and a couple of trips more.

 

[Outside_Lookin_in]

Okay, I'll accept both the Beatles & Jimi Hendrix were culpable.

 

[Outside_Lookin_in]

It looks that way, but historically it's wrong. Commercial music in the sixties was just much better than ever since. The usual set of songs played at concerts by the great majority of so called "garage" bands were mostly top 40 songs. The sound of those bands was maybe different, because they didn't have the same means of production. No doubt that makes them very appealing, especially in retrospect. But they were not anti-commercial.

I agree to some extent, but the sound of the garage band was - in part - different because they didn't have the big money for equipment, or the strong management "guidance", or the major recording studios behind them. That is partly what made the garage / popular distinction. I do accept that as a large part of what defined garage. The other part is the punk attitude which comes through in the music: whether it is as a result of being anti-establishment, or just a complete failure at trying to be popular.

 

[axel]

Yeah, that's true. Many US garage records have lots of attitude that can justifiably be called "punk". I guess they were trying to push stuff like "(I Can't Get No) Satisfaction" or "I'm Not Like Everybody Else" to further extremes, not bothering about commercial aspects. Or maybe they thought that if they'd outdo their predecessors they'd get more attention. Or maybe they were really just screaming out their feelings, unfiltered. I'm glad they did. And I'm glad there were so many who did it.

 

[axel]

Okay, I'll accept both the Beatles & Jimi Hendrix were culpable.

And "Pet Sounds" which was a major influence for Sgt.Peppers and definitely not rock'n'roll.

 

[Outside_Lookin_in]

Yes, I can hear the bubble gum connection there.