Posts Tagged ‘The Beatles’

2010’s Best Christmas Gift Ideas

Holiday shopping can be quite difficult sometimes because it can be difficult to think of anything to buy for some people. And that’s why I am writing this article, to give you five ideas for Christmas gifts in 2010 that you might not have thought of yet.

Jewelry: For any lady handmade jewelry is a wonderful gift. The neat thing about purchasing handmade jewelry as a Christmas gift is every single piece is really unique which means that no matter what you order you can be sure that the woman you are buying it for doesn’t already have it! Handmade jewelry especially appeals to more intelligent women.

The Beatles In Stereo Box Set: This box set includes every single song The Beatles released from 1962 through ‘70. It’s a great gift for anyone into classic rock as you can’t be a real classic rock aficionado if you don’t know every Beatles album.

Kindle 3G Reading Device: This is an awesome gift for any reader in your family. And it’s really the coolest gift for someone who loves reading and also loves the latest gadgets. Kindles keep getting better and better. The latest has so many fantastic features that I couldn’t begin to list them all here. Plus it’s much cheaper than it used to be!

Lost Complete Series: Among the greatest shows of all time. This makes a great present for anybody who is already a fan or for anyone who hasn’t seen the show yet. Actually it’s probably an even better gift for people who haven’t seen Lost yet because you’re truly giving them a spellbinding journey to take. I’d love to be able to see the show for the first time again. It is just amazingly great!

http://www.myallnaturalweightloss.com/insanity-gowear-fit-weekend-activity/1084/: This is a super cool gadget for anyone who is into getting fit. It counts the calories you burn each day. It can be very motivating to see how many more calories you burn when you are active.

The Beatles Are In ITunes

After the many years of lawsuits between Apple Corps. and Apple Computer were finally settled in 2007, it seemed like only a matter of time before The Beatles were finally available on iTunes and on Tuesday, November 16, 2010 that time came! The Beatles Are In iTunes.

Before I tell you the details of what Beatles stuff is available in iTunes, I think I should tell you a bit more about the back story of why it has taken a decade for The Beatles to join this most popular online music store.

In 1968 The Beatles started up a new company called Apple Corps (pronounced “Apple Core”) which is still operating in 2010. Apple Corps began as a rather grand idea of a company that would be in all kinds of businesses but today it exists almost entirely for The Beatles music. In 1976 a computer company called Apple Computer started and in 1978 Apple Corps sued Apple Computer over the Apple trademark. There were two more lawsuits before the dispute was settled for good in 2007.

So what Beatles material is available to buy at the iTunes music store? Their entire remastered stereo catalog! It can be purchased all at once (like The Beatles Remastered Stereo Box Set) or album by album or track by track (this is the first time that every single Beatles track has been available to purchase individually.)

What is not available to buy at iTunes? The remastered mono mixes. The mono mixes are only available to be purchased as a part of The Beatles Remastered Mono CD Box Set. I believe the idea is that most casual Beatles fans will prefer the stereo versions so it’s better not to confuse these iTunes shoppers by having the mono versions available too.

As a cool bonus iTunes is also letting people stream The Beatles first US concert (February 11, 1964 in DC) in its entirety. Even as a rather enormous fan of the band I hadn’t yet seen this, and what’s really cool is that it’s absolutely free.

John Lennon’s First Solo Album

Plastic Ono Band, John Lennon’s first solo album after leaving The Beatles, is also his best in my opinion. This great album features Lennon’s most intense music. This is not to say that Lennon didn’t release more great songs after this album, but I do think the rest of his solo career is a bit of a let down when compared to this fantastic debut album.

The album opens up with “Mother.” You can really hear Lennon working through the issues of his childhood in this song. For those of you who don’t know his life story that means singing about his parents leaving him to make it through his childhood with his aunt. And when he was a teenager his mom was killed by an off duty drunk police officer. The depressing closer, “My Mummy’s Dead,” is also about the pain of losing his mother.

“Hold On” is a simple song that could be seen as “filler” especially with the silly “cookie!” that you can hear at around one minute into it But I personally really love the song.

This album contains some of Lennon’s most heavy songs including “I Found Out” which has a great dirty guitar riff and some fantastic lyrics and “Well Well Well” which showcases the “primal scream” method he learned about in therapy.

The guitar part of “Look at Me” sounds a lot like “Julia” from The White Album but that’s never stopped me from enjoying it. It’s just such a lovely song. What really makes the album work so wonderfully is the fantastic contrast between the sweet tunes like “Look at Me,” “Love,” and “Hold On” and the very intense tracks such as “Working Class Hero,” “I Found Out,” and “Well Well Well.” And then there’s “God” which isn’t that great musically but which has some of his most interesting lyrics.

Plastic Ono Band is one of 8 Lennon solo albums contained in the new John Lennon “Signature” Box Set. This Lennon solo box is following in the path made by the extremely successful The Beatles Remastered Stereo CD Box Set and Beatles Mono Box Set released in September of ‘09.

John Lennon Signature Box

With the big success (both commercially and critically) of The Beatles Remastered Box Sets in 2009, there are high expectations for the new John Lennon Signature Box Set which includes all eight of his solo albums remastered digitally from the original mixes for the very first time. The box set also contains a disc with all of Lennon’s non-album songs and another CD with previously unreleased home demos and studio takes.

While I certainly do not think Lennon’s solo material matched up to the incredible stuff he recorded while a part of The Beatles, that isn’t meant as any kind of slight against his career as a solo artist which did include a lot of great stuff. It’s just that The Beatles legendary albums are a pretty difficult accomplishment to match.

I’m quite hopeful that the Lennon Signature Box’s sound quality is as good as the sound quality of the discs in The Beatles in Stereo Box Set last year. I am very impressed by the job they did with those in keeping the original analog warmth and most of the dynamics that help make the songs such classics.

What follows are the 8 Lennon solo studio albums included in the box set:

1970 – Plastic Ono Band

1971 – Imagine

1972 – Somewhere in NYC

1973 – Mind Games

1974 – Walls and Bridges

1975 – Rock n Roll (covers album)

1980 – Double Fantasy (with Yoko)

1984 – Milk and Honey (posthumous album)

As I already mentioned the box set will also include a disc with non-album singles like “Cold Turkey,” “Instant Karma! (We All Shine On),” and “Give Peace A Chance.”

Possibly most exciting to serious fans fans who already own all of these songs (although not in their newly remastered form) is the disc which features previously unreleased recordings of tunes such as “Mother,” “One Of The Boys,” “I Found Out,” and “Beautiful Boy.”

Early Beatles Songwriting: 8 Lennon/McCartney Originals On Please Please Me

A huge part of what really set The Beatles apart from other bands early ’60s was that they were not only performers, they were songwriters too. In fact, 8 of the 14 songs on their debut 1963 album, Please Please Me were written by Paul McCartney and John Lennon. In this article you can find a track by track look at those eight originals.

“I Saw Her Standing There” – This was the first song on The Beatles debut LP. This track was written and sung by Paul but John did help McCartney out with the lyrics by replacing the line “never been a beauty queen” with “you know what I mean.” It’s “one, two, three, four” intro was later referenced in 1966 with the intro of “Taxman” (same words, with a very different feeling.)

“Misery” – This was actually the last original Beatles song recorded for Please Please Me, but it was the second one on Pleas Please Me’s tracklisting. It was written by John & Paul to be sang by Helen Shapiro but it was turned down so they recorded it for their debut album.

“Ask Me Why” – This John original was initially released as the b-side to the “Please Please Me” single which was their first big hit in England.

“Please Please Me” – Their debut album’s namesake is also considered to be the best song on Please Please Me by most critics. This song is the one that really made the band huge stars in in the UK. Over a year later “I Want to Hold Your Hand” would perform the same function in in America.

“Love Me Do” – This song is undoubtedly historically important as The Beatles first single. That being said, I think “Love Me Do” is actually among their worst and I think it gets far more attention than it deserves.

“P.S. I Love You” – The b-side to “Love Me Do.” In some ways I prefer it, but that’s probably because I haven’t heard it nearly as many times.

“Do You Want To Know A Secret?” – Certainly this song is way too “cute” but that doesn’t stop it from being extremely memorable.

“There’s A Place” – I think this song stands out on the debut because of it’s introspective lyrics. It is an early hint that The Beatles would not always write lyrics about how much they loved some young woman.

With the release of the new The Beatles Remastered Stereo & Mono Box Sets all of these tracks and many more can be heard in deliciously remastered mono and stereo versions.

There are quite a few Beatle freaks who claim that the mono mixes are more “pure” or the only way to really listen to The Beatles because mono is how these songs were intended to be listened to originally, but I say hogwash to opinion. The mono versions are interesting to listen to, but in most cases I actually prefer listening to the stereo mixes. I like being able to listen closely to each element of the music and that is far more easy to do when listening to stereo.

The Beatles Final Five Albums

The Beatles last five albums were 1967’s Magical Mystery Tour, 1968’s The White Album, 1969’s Yellow Submarine and Abbey Road, and 1970’s Let It Be. Below you will find short overviews of each of these albums.

All of these albums are included in the Beatles Remastered Stereo Box Set and Magical Mystery Tour and The White Album are contained in the Beatles Mono Box Set.

Magical Mystery Tour (1967) – I would argue this is the band’s most underrated album and that’s probably because it’s not really an album from a purist’s POV so people have a difficult time giving it real respect for the excellent songs it contains. Magical Mystery Tour is The Beatles at their most purposefully psychedelic before they started to pull back the experimentation a little bit and as someone who loves psychedelia, that makes it an obvious favorite of mine.

The White Album (1968) – I’ve probably listened to this album more times than any other in my life. It does not flow as well as Abbey Road or Sgt. Pepper and you could certainly argue that it’s not as consistently great as Revolver or Rubber Soul but I love it because of the great variety of styles that it brings to my ears. This 30 song album is a real sprawling work of art.

Yellow Submarine (1969) – This “album” isn’t really a Fab Four album as it contains only four new songss that weren’t previously released on other albums. Yet “Hey Bulldog” and “It’s All Too Much” alone make it worth listening to.

Abbey Road (1969) – This 17 track album is the favorite of lots of Beatles fans and for many very good reasons. The most obvious is the wonderful “suite” of side two put together by Paul McCartney and George Martin. And of course there’s the classic songs like “Something,” “Come Together,” and “Oh! Darling.” This album is also the most smooth and most “modern” sound of their career.

Let It Be (1970) – The last Beatles album released but Abbey Road was actually the last album that was recorded. It’s a tad uneven by their very high standards but it still contains some legendary tracks like “Let It Be” and “Across The Universe.”