 "A fresh listen !" | 2009-10-21 |
| - Reviewed By bernier_moureaux |
I was raised with the British versions of the beatles albums. They are tremendous of course. I recently bought the capitol boxes (Vol.1 and 2) and I was surprised how great the US albums were. Meet the beatles is easily as good as its Brit counterpart With the beatles, and it's nice to have the track This boy on an album. The Beatles US second album has a great and unique rock'n roll feel. The US Help soundtrack is funny and enjoyable, much more a soundtrack for the better and the worse. The US version of Rubber Soul is more folky and that's good for me. The sequencing of the Early beatles US album is better than the Please please me one, with Love me do and Twist and shout as track one and two.
My advice would be to buy the capitol Vol. 1 and 2, even if you already own the new remastered box of the UK albums. It's a fresh listen ! |
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| "A fresh listen ! As good as the 09 09 09 remasters !" | 2009-10-21 |
| - Reviewed By bernier_moureaux |
I was raised with the British versions of the beatles albums. They are tremendous of course. I recently bought the capitol boxes (Vol.1 and 2) and I was surprised how great the US albums were. Meet the beatles is easily as good as its Brit counterpart With the beatles, and it's nice to have the track This boy on an album. The Beatles US second album has a great and unique rock'n roll feel. The US Help soundtrack is funny and enjoyable, much more a soundtrack for the better and the worse. The US version of Rubber Soul is more folky and that's good for me. The sequencing of the Early beatles US album is better than the Please please me one, with Love me do and Twist and shout as track one and two.
My advice would be to buy the capitol Vol. 1 and 2, even if you already own the new remastered box of the UK albums. It's a fresh listen ! |
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| "Classic" | 2009-10-18 |
| - Reviewed By wrn |
This little box seems quaint given the massive Beatles reissue that has just taken place, be it the officals or Dr. Ebbits. But from the 1980s until this came out in 2004, Americans could not get the albums they grew up hearing, as the English versions were issued, not the American. Can you imagine going into a shop, asking for a Beatle album, and hearing "it's out of print."? I'd beleive little green jazz players from Neptune making love in my bed--when I am in it--before that. But it happened, for 20 years. With this and the second volume, you get everything up to Revolver in both mono and stereo, and yes, the stereo versions ARE the albums you grew up with.
When the Beatles took over in 1964, the BBC did not have a lot of rock, and the Beatles releasded clean, folk, rockabiliy blues albums in England. American had AM top 40 stations and a less traditional, more consumer oritented youth. Capitol added eccho and bottom to the British albums so they could thrust out of AM transister radios, America's 1964 model of the I-pod. These radios ware not stereo-the record were- and it didn't sound good, but it did compete with the booming voices of top 40 DJ's, and almost fifty years on, we are still lapping it up with outstreched puppy tounges.
Now if you are a progressive rock and jazz guy like me, the mistaken tendancy is to always listen to the Beatles from Revolver-maybe Rubber Soul-up. But buy these sets--or the new reissues if you are REALLY ready to go back to school-- and you'll realize for the 1546th time just how good these good these guys were from day negative one. Even the first records blast fouth with what was then hard rock--remember Frankie Avalon and Fabian--but hard rock with clean hollow body guitars, harmonicas, maraccas, melodic drumming, loping bass, bell clear riffs--well, I only have 10,000 words here and I am already running over budget--which always happens when I review the Beatles. Let's just say all the reasons we started listening as babies and still listen as middle age men and women are right here, gleeming on the discs in this little box.
The boxes also have the albums in mono, and personally, I like this better. You hear more of the clear nuances of this clean music. The whole idea of the early work was to strip rock back to essentials, and when you hear the guitars and drums and voices sans the electronic sheen Capitol placed on the albums in 1964-65, you are more aware of the magic the fab four are working with their playing, and reminded how crisp, fresh and genuine all this must have sounded in 1964, when pretty boys, strings and harps were being used to, well, let's face the ugly truth--make rock more White.
Fortunately, these four lads were not about to let the buggers get away with THAT!
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| "Now this is how I remember The Beatles!" | 2009-09-17 |
| - Reviewed By dfregede |
I'm only in my early 30's but, growing up in the 80's, I frequently heard The Beatles through my dad's HUGE record player. I mean it was like a piece of furniture. He had all these albums on LP. When I got a CD player in the early 90's I picked up some of the early Beatle CD's. One's like With the Beatles and A Hard Day's Night. I looked at these and thought "What's With the Beatles and why does A Hard Day's Night have more songs on it?" Well, I soon found out that this was the way that their albums were released in the UK. They made less albums and had more songs on each album. Also, until much later they did not put singles on their albums. Which meant no singles like "I Wanna Hold Your Hand" or "She Loves You" on a UK album until later with the Past Master's Collection. None of that was really a big deal to me. What was a big deal was how these songs sounded on the UK albums. First of all, most of The Beatles CD's made in the late 80's sound tinny and lacked weight compared to their LP's that I was used to listening to. Second, they were missing that "echo" or reverb that the Capitol LP's had which, for me, really added something to their music. I know that The Beatles did not intend for their songs to have those extra background effects but this was what I grew up with. My father cannot stand the UK versions. He told me that they sounded too "clean" and "sterile."
This past year I decided to finally pick up this box set to see if these were the versions that my father and I remember. First, about the packaging. Yea, it's pretty cheap. My bootleg Beatles at the Hollywood Bowl has nicer packaging. The CD's do fall out easily. I took them out of the box and put them in seperate plastic holders. The booklet is nice though featuring some pictures I've not seen before and some interesting info.
As soon as I popped in Meet the Beatles I knew this was the way I rembered them. Capitol did right by simply remastering (not remixing) the albums and leaving in all that reverb. There is no comparison to the late 80's UK CD's. These one's blow them away. They're much more dynamic have that "weight" that some of the UK CD's were missing. They also have much more bass than the old ones. Capitol also included the mono versions too. Unlike the new re-masters which make you buy an overpriced Mono Box Set to get them. Meaning each CD has the stereo mixes first followed by the original mono versions. This is really nice since I do like the mono versions of some of their songs. In a few (mostly Meet the Beatles) of the stereo mixes the vocals are sent to the right channel with reverb coming through the left. This is cool on some of their songs but others I prefer the vocals to be front and center.
Keep in mind that A Hard Days Night is not on here because the US version was contolled by United Artists who have the rights to the film. But many of the songs ("And I Love Her", "If I Fell", "I'll Cry Instead", "Tell Me Why", and "I'm Happy Just To Dance With You" among a few others) from that movie are on Something New. I did get the re-mastered UK A Hard Day's Night this past week because I wanted a "good" version of "I Should Have Known Better." I also wanted to do some comparison's between the versions on Something New and the one's on the re-mastered UK version of A Hard Days Night. I simply liked the versions on Something New better. I like that extra reverb and the music just has more "authority" on the Capitol versions. My advice is if you like the Capitol albums buy the two box sets for their older albums and get the UK one's for their later (Rubber Soul onward) ones. If you want to do some comparisons take the Beatles 65' versions of "I Feel Fine" and "She's A Woman" and listen to them after the versions that are on Past Masters. Wow! You may hate the US versions or like them. Me. I love them because that's how I remember The Beatles. |
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 "VERY GOOD!!!!! BUT, COULD HAVE BEEN MUCH BETTER!!!" | 2009-07-04 |
| - Reviewed By User: A2DQNO3JNE2YD7 |
I have been a Beatles fan since I first heard of them in the late 70's as a young boy. My first beatles albums were the American Capitol versions, but I did not own all of them. Much later as an adult I purchased the whole UK catalog on CD. I think that the Capitol remasters for the most part is an improvement. The music sounds richer and vocals sound clearer. But, on some of these the music is buried under a wash of reverb and echo that detracts from the listening experience. Where Meet the Beatles sounds ok! The Second Album suffers from too much reverb in STEREO. The MONO version is much better to listen to. On the other hand Something new and Beatles 65' sound astounding except for 2 songs on 65' She's a woman and I feel fine are just horrible sounding. Although the MONO version of She's a woman sounds great, the MONO version of I feel fine sounds a bit funny. Is this what the original capitol vinyl mixes sounded like? If so it should have been remixed without all that reverb!
On the vol.2 edition The Early Beatles album sounds fine! I have read reviews here where it is not true STEREO but MOCK STEREO. But at least it doesn't suffer from too much reverb as on the Second Album. Because of these inconsistencies Capitol records misses the mark in my book. |
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 "poor packaging" | 2008-10-02 |
| - Reviewed By User: ABBHS4TDVN5LQ |
| the music of course is what i expected. but for the dollar that i paid for this you would have expected better packaging instead of paper sleeves basically. |
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