The Esher Demos

Today we're looking at the Esher/Kinfauns Demos, these demos are from May 1968 and includes a number of The White Album's songs.

The demos are from a session at George Harrison's house Kinfauns surrey in the town of Esher, hence the name. This album includes 23 tracks, pretty much all of them appears on The White Album, we have, just to name a few: Ob La Di Ob La Da, Piggies, Julia, an acoustic go of Back In The USSR, Cry Baby Cry, Mother Nature's Son and Honey Pie.

Apart from The White Album stuff we got a couple of tracks that'll eventually appear on some of The Beatles member's solo albums.
We see Junk, which makes it to McCartney's first solo album Paul McCartney. Child Of Nature, a Lennon song, later found with a bit different lyrics as Jealous Guy on his 1971 Imagine album. Circles is a Harrison composed song, found some fourteen years later on his Gone Troppo album.
What's The News Mary Jane, a track which had been surrounded by a bit of mystic until the Anthology Album of the 1995, is also found here.

Anyway, check it out, here's the download link: http://www.mediafire.com/?vex4ux3wo99r3gc

Outtake Medley

Hey guys, after all the talk about medleys in last post it got me tthinking of this little track I've had for some time, it's an interesting little piece called Outtake medley, and it is... well a medley of outtakes and mistakes while recording.

It's a funny little piece, nothing spectacular, but I guess it gives a little bit of insight in the recording sessions, but well, it's just fun.

There are small bits of sound from pretty much every album, including the German version of She Loves You. The track is ended with a pretty cool, but short, version of The End.

Give it a listen, here's the download link: http://www.mediafire.com/?rqeay22xs3nq6yb

Catch you guys later.

Abbey Road Demos

Hey guys, today we're looking at a recording called Abbey Road Nw 8 #3, which must referee to the location of the Abbey Road studios.

This record consists of, I assume, demos and outtakes from the sessions prior to the Abbey Road album, so we must be somewhere in the first half of 1969, even though some of the pieces in the medleys are from the let it be/get back session and even from  the time around The White album (1968)

I will mainly discuss a bit about the two medleys, which are found on this track.

Medley #1 consists of these following songs: You Never Give Me Your Money, Sun King, Mean Mr. Mustard, Her Majesty, Polythene Pam and She Came In Through The Bathroom Window. 

Medley #2 consists of Golden slumbers, Carry that weight, The End (without vocals)

These two medleys are what makes up for the epic b side of the Abbey Road album. I've always kinda seen it as two medleys because while You Never Give Me Your Money, Sun King, Mean Mr. Mustard, Polythene Pam and She Came In Through The Bathroom Window smoothly falls into one another, there's always been kind of a break between She Came In... and Golden Slumbers till The End, dividing the medley in two parts (like these tracks).

In this cut we see Her Majesty in the middle of the first medley, which is interesting, because on the final cut we have Her Majesty a couple of seconds after The End finishes, let me explain why.
The Beatles were a little concerned about Her Majesty, where to stick it, when we listen to it here, it kinda slows down the whole medley and cuts it into another little medley starting with You Never Give... til Her Majesty [medley 1, in my book], Polythene Pam till She Came In... [medley 2] and finally Golden Slumbers till The End [medley 3].
The Beatles must have thought something similar, because they removed Her Majesty. This is how I remember reading somewhere:  there were some studio engineer who added it on some demo of the complete album, it was added twenty seconds after the ending of the complete album, and when they heard it, they really liked it and kept it that way, which is why Her Majesty is placed where it is today.

                                                 This is apparently suppose to be the cover...

Another version of Her Majesty is found, this one sound much alike the one on the final cut (except it holds "the missing chord"), followed by Golden Slumbers (in same cut), perhaps they were trying to fit it there, who knows?

Two tracks with some rather funny/silly lyrics are found, Heather and How Do You Do, we have an isolated version of Carry That Weight, it's pretty funny to listen to, because you are kinda used to hearing that start chord of The End right after it.

Blackbird is found as well, followed by a fun little chat where McCartney is joking about Diana Ross taking offense when he played it for her (protip: Bird can mean girl, in the UK)

I can highly recommend downloading this piece, there are numerous interesting  tracks ,so yeah, thanks for reading and enjoy this.

Download link: http://www.mediafire.com/?z3tz74o70sfsror

Pretty cool Sgt. Pepper reprise cover

Hey guys, haven't been updating in a while. I promise I'll get some real posts out in the coming week.

Until then, enjoy yourself with this pretty cool little ukulele cover of Sgt. Pepper's reprise.




Cheers!

I'm proud

Hello guys, today I want to share a story from my life. My brother plays bass in the local schools musical band and this year's musical is Across The Universe, which for those who don't know, contains like 20 or so Beatles songs.
So as I was driving him to the rehearsal night, I was just telling him about some stuff which could be cool to do. I suggested that they could start Harrison's Something with the ukulele, as he mentioned some dude in the band had a uke. After that I suggested that they should end the whole show with Sgt Pepper Reprise/The End (as seen in McCartney's live shows) or just The End.
Both of these fine suggestions were turned down with a simple "I don't think so, my friend".

Fast forward two hours, I'm just chilling, reading Brave New World as my brother comes home and tells me how he had told the music teacher both of these ideas and the teacher had found both ideas "pretty cool and fun"
Well bro, guess that's why I have a beatles blog and you don't. :)

Cheers

Let It Be Rehersals - The Complete Rooftop concert

Hey guys. I haven't updated this blog in a while, so I figured I should pull myself together and update it, so here we go.
Today we're checking out some more stuff from the let it be/get back session, we saw Kum Back in an earlier post.
The name of the album we're checking out today is Let It Be Rehearsals vol. 1 (The Complete Rooftop Concert) and it contains the full rooftop concert (what a surprise!) and some other stuff from the let it be session.

Now let me just get one thing clear here, why is it called the complete rooftop concert? Well, you see, in the Let It Be film we see the rooftop concert, what is left out from the film is one more performance of Don't Let Me Down and I've Got A Feeling, plus another go on Get Back, which is played in the very end of the film, when the cops arrive to shut down the show, as far as I remember we don't see the whole last Get Back performance.
So, we have the rooftop concert from the film plus 1x I've Got A Feeling, 1x Get back and 1x Don't Let Me Down. This makes up the first nine tracks of the album.

Furthermore, we have the full recording of The Walk, which we saw a small part of on Kum Back. A take of Oh! Darling, apparently before it was an awesome track, and we see Maxwell's Silver Hammer, which sounds pretty identical to the clip of it we see in the Let It Be film. These two tracks will, obviously, later appear on the Abbey Road album. Another Abbey Road track we see are She Came In Through The Bathroom window.

Two Of Us appear in the rocking-style, as seen in the Let It Be film, before it was turned acoustic.

Hope you will enjoy this, the rooftop concert is obviously awesome and two of us sounds kinda neat in the rocker version, so I highly recommend that you give this a download.

http://www.mediafire.com/?2xyf2aklz9nevqq

Cheers

Rarities

Hey, today we're looking at Rarities. Rarities is a British compilation album featuring a selection of songs by The Beatles. The album was originally released as part of The Beatles Collection, a box set featuring all other Beatles records, but was later released individually. The album has not been released on CD, but all of the tracks are available on the double CD compilation Past Masters.

The album contains some really nice tracks, the first Harrison single "The Inner Light" (which was released as the B-side of the Lady Madonna single).  You Know My Name (Look up the number), a pretty cool track, which was released on the B-side of the 1970 Let It Be single.

The awesome "I'm Down" track, which consists of Paul screaming out the lyrics, very rock n' roll. A track which The Beatles used a lot at live shows, as far as I know. I'm Down is, ironically, followed by Long Tall Sally, which is pretty much the same as I'm Down, some even calls I'm Down "Beatles' rewriting of Long Tall Sally) 

Two funny pieces are the German versions of I Wanna Hold Your Hand and She Loves You, Komm Gib Mir Deine Hand and Sie Liebt Dich, respectively.

Full track list:
Across The Universe
Yes It Is
This Boy
The Inner Light
I'll Get You
Thank You Girl
Komm, Gib Mir Deine Hand
You Know My Name (Look Up The Number)
Sie Liebt Dich
Rain
She's a Woman
Matchbox
I Call Your Name
Bad Boy
Slow Down
I'm Down
Long Tall Sally

Have fun with that one!

Download link: http://letitbit.net/download/1525508/f9c711818727/The-Beatles-Rarities-Album1978.rar.html

Cheers!

A day and a half in the life

Hello. Today we're not looking at an album, and yet we are. I have a couple of bootleg recordings downloaded, and I'll be sharing them as soon as possible, but I'm trying to dig up some info about these albums instead of just posting them.
I have some Let It Be, Rubber Soul and Revolver related stuff coming up, but not today. Today we're checking out an amazing video; a Sgt. Pepper medley including all the songs from the Sgt. Pepper album, which itself is impressive, but the arrangement of this is just really stylish and awesome.

So, yeah, enjoy this piece.




Cheers.

We'd Like To Carry On

Hello guys, today we're checking out an interesting piece. It contains some, in rather harsh quality sound-wise, live recordings, but mainly interviews and cuts from radio shows. All of this seems to be from 1964. I guess this won't really qualify as a total bootleg album, but is contains some interesting stuff.

The first couple of tracks seems to be recorded from some concerts in Holland, and there are some voiceover in Dutch, well you can hardly hear the music over the screams anyway.

The most interesting and entertaining part, is the radio/TV-show part, in which some guy is in the San Francisco airport just before The Beatles' plane lands. Now this is at the very hight of the Beatlemania, and you can clearly hear this in the recordings.
After that we have a few three tracks recorded at the concert in San Francisco (I think it is), well you can hardly hear the music over the thousands of girls screaming on the top of their lungs. The speaker announces how all kind of signs is being waved, girls screaming, fainting and being carried away be medical personal.
The speaker describes the scene after the show is over, how girls are going to the stage to get hold of jelly beans, which had been thrown at, and later stepped on by, The Beatles, the more sane persons just touch the stage.

Basically the songs on this is pretty much impossible to listen to, but the interviews, which mostly are with fans (some more fanatic than other), there are some parts with The Beatles too, are somewhat entertaining.
So, half of this record is just girls screaming, but if you check out some of the interview parts, and skip the rest, then you'll be al right :)

Download link: http://www.megaupload.com/?d=B4GZ9WDL

Cheers, and I'll like to carry on as well!
 

A Toot and a Snore in '74

Hey guys, today we're looking of the only known recording of Lennon and McCartney performing together after the Beatles-breakup. It is the recording of a jam session from 1974 where John was on his Lost Weekend, his period in which John was separated from Yoko. The thing is recorded in Los Angeles
The session includes the two ex-Beatles, Stevie Wonder, Harry Nillson, Jesse Ed Davis and Bobby Keyes.

The record starting with John asking Stevie: "You wanna snort, Steve? A toot? It's goin' round", the are obviously doing cocaine.
Anyway, they start to jam a bit, and later do some pretty interesting versions of Stand By Me. Lennon keeps complaining about how his headphones aren't working and whatnot.

While this is one of the lesser interesting bootleg recordings, in my opinion, it is in some way pretty cool and kinda historic, I guess. Since it is, as mentioned earlier, the only known recording of Lennon and McCartney jamming together after the breakup.

Here's the download: http://www.mediafire.com/?o4lt13kbt9ryh1y

Enjoy, and stay tuned for more.


Source

Happy birthday John Lennon, on the behalf of the internet

DHello ladies and gentlemen, today, on October the ninth, we're celebrating the 70th birthday of John Lennon, so I figured a couple of songs would suit the occasion.

Imagine if Lennon still were here with us, I'm sure he and Paul would do some pretty kick-ass concerts together. Speaking of Paul, let's start with Paul's ode to John, from McCartney's 1982 album Tug Of War, I bring you Here Today:




Don't be fooled by the title, it is not Lennon-co-written song, it is a song McCartney wrote after he learned of Lennon's cruel fate.
But hey, we are here to wish John happy birthday, so let's do it in George Harrison fashion with It's Johnny's Birthday, from George's massive 1970 album All Things Must Pass:



You might be thinking "well, aren't we going to listen to some of John's music? Well absolutely! Let's look at two major Lennon songs, Strawberry Fields Forever and Imagine:



Found a pretty sweet live video of John preforming Imagine.



So yea, that's all for me for now. Hope you'll join me again for some more celebration of the great and unreleased Beatles music.

On behalf of the whole internet, I wish you a happy birthday, Mr. Lennon

Hamburg and The Beatles: Live! At The Star Club

Hello guys. We previously looked at the Decca Audition, and we're staying at this early stage of The Beatles. Today we're looking at the Hamburg period, which was essential to The Beatles development in terms of their scene show, as this was mastered during this period.

The Beatles preformed on several strip-clubish joints in Hamburg, and I'm not going to go into great details about these clubs, but you know, just gonna try to give a little overview.
I've read somewhere that they played like two hours, one hour break and then another two hours, every night of the week. So you can imagine the amount of concerts they had under their belt, when they finally got their record contract in 1962.

The clubs, on which The Beatles played, were pretty much all located in the St. Pauli area, located on the Reeperbahn, which is kinda the Hamburg version of the Red Light district, with lots of strip-clubs, bars, sex-shops and so on.
Now, I was at Paul McCartney's Good Evening Europe Tour gig in Hamburg, December 2009, so I'm going to post some of these pictures as well, as we went to see some of these clubs before the show.

Roughly translated to: "On the 17th of August 1960, The Beatles took the stage of  the Indra. It was their first Show in Germany, and the start of a great career."

My buddies, in front of the Indra

In August 1960, The Silver Beatles (as they were named back then) were booked to play on The Indra Club in Hamburg on Große Freiheit 64, this was their first performance in Hamburg and is thus kind of historic. So remember the 17th of August 1960, you might need it in trivial pursuit or whatever, this was the date for their first Hamburg gig.

October 1960, The Beatles are prohibited to play on the Indra, because they play to loud, and we're moved to preform at the Kaiserkeller, where they preform alongside the band Roy Storm and The Hurricanes, in which Ringo Starr were the drummer.
The Beatles returns to Liverpool during December 1960 and perform in England, until April 1961, when they return to Hamburg to play at the Top Ten Club on Reepherbahn 136. They played on the Top Ten Club till July 1961.

 In front Große Freiheit 36 (Kaisserkeller) and 39 (The Star Club)

We jump another year forward, to 1962 where The Beatles are booked on several occasions to play at The Star Club, which is located on Große Freiheit 39. They played The Star Club in April-May 1962 and December 1962. The December gigs are the last Beatles Hamburg gigs, for a little while at least.

It is some of these last gigs we are looking at today, we are looking at The Beatles Live! at the Star Club In Hamburg, Germany, 1962. A recording of a few concerts from The Star Club, the sound is pretty harsh, but it is still interesting to hear these. 

Lets look at the track list:

We see a number of tracks, which are to be included on their later albums: Kansas City (Or Kansas stad, as it is presented here), I Saw Her Standing There, Mr. Moonlight, Twist and Shout and the list just goes on.

I really dig this album with it's harsh sound of late 50's/early 60's rock n' roll, and the fact that the sound quality is a bit bad, well it just makes it even more enjoyable, in my book.

So yea, enjoy it, here is the download link: http://www.megaupload.com/?d=2S8M08CR
(The file might be unavailable, since I just finished uploading it, so check the link later for the download, if it doesn't work.)
 

And to round it all off, here's another picture from my trip to Hamburg, taken on Beatles Platz. A little spot where the two streets Reeperbahn and Gross Freiheit meets each other. Where some kind of monument has been placed to remember The Beatles

Hope you'll enjoy the album and that you enjoyed reading.

Cheers

 

The Decca Tapes

Hey guys, today we're looking at The Decca Tapes, these are from The Beatles' audition, at the Decca record company, of January first,1962.

The Beatles preformed a number of 1950's tracks, a couple of early 1960's tracks and a few Lennon/McCartney tracks. However, Decca rejected The Beatles with the famous quote "We don't like their sound, and electric guitars are on the way out".
Lots of people obviously poke fun of that in retrospective, as it would have been a great deal to have The Beatles in your record company, but this audition hardly showed their true potential. Plus the repertoire were kinda silly with George doing Sheik of Araby and Paul doing Besame Mucho.
It would take another year before The Beatles got their record contract with Parlophone for the Please Please Me album.

Anyway, for the tracks on The Decca Tapes:

1. Like Dreamers Do" (Lennon/McCartney)
2. "Money (That's What I Want)" (Gordy/Bradford)
3. "Till There Was You" (Meredith Wilson)
4. "The Sheik of Araby" (Smith/Wheeler/Snyder)
5. "To Know Her Is to Love Her" (Phil Spector)
6. "Take Good Care of My Baby" (King/Goffin) (not released)
7. "Memphis, Tennessee" (Chuck Berry) (not released)
8. "Sure to Fall (In Love with You)" (Cantrell/Claunch/Perkins) (not released)
9. "Hello Little Girl" (Lennon/McCartney)
10. "Three Cool Cats" (Leiber/Stoller)
11. "Crying, Waiting, Hoping" (Buddy Holly) (not released)
12. "Love of the Loved" (Lennon/McCartney) (not released)
13. "September in the Rain" (Warren/Dubin) (not released)
14. "Bésame Mucho" (Consuelo Velázquez)
15.  "Searchin'" (Leiber/Stoller)

Source 

Here's the download link: http://www.filestube.com/42a9d694dd5d75c903e9/go.html

Enjoy these

Cheers

Chaos and Outtakes in the Backyard

Hey guys, we're jumping five years back in time for these recordings, these are some songs that didn't made it to Paul McCartney's 2005 album Chaos and Creation in the Backyard.

We have seven tracks in here, and they are as follows:
Comfort Of Love
We Were Growing
She Is So Beautiful
Good Taste (The Summer of '59)
I Wanna Be You
This Loving Game
Instrumental

To talk a bit about the tracks, Comfort Of Love, We Were Growing and Good Taste are a bit like McCartney looking back on what it is/was like to be young. Good Taste describes the style, the people and the feeling of the summer of '59. Comfort Of Love is a song which tells us the story of a materialistic guy, perhaps himself, who seems to think that all he needs is a car, a house and so on, but in the end he learns that he needs the comfort of love.

I Wanna Be You is a song which starts with some psychedelic elements, in a slow tempo, the tempo is increased a ends up in some kind of big finale. Really cool song.

What I really like, and what really impresses me, about these songs is how they actually fit the style and sound of the Chaos and Creation in the Backyard album. So have fun with that one.

On a related note, if you like the Chaos and Creation album, then you should check out Chaos and Creation at Abbey Road. It is an intimate concert in the Studio 2 of Abbey Road, where most of The Beatles' songs were recorded, the concert includes Paul talking about Beatles stuff and his music in general.
If you haven't already seen it, check it out on Youtube, click here for part 1.

Now for the Chaos and Creation out-takes:

Download: http://www.mediafire.com/?rqi00zb7azv9q5z

Cheers

Recapping the last couple of posts

Hey guys, today we're recapping the last couple of posts, click on the album title to get to my previous post about it, click here if you missed the introduction post of bootleg recordings.
So far we've looked at five bootleg albums or collections, they are as follows:


First we looked at the Primal Colours album, this album includes early takes of what would later become The Beatles (The White Album)
The Kum Back album from 1969, which included recordings from the Get Back/Let It Be sessions.
My next post included a huge collection of home recordings, by The Beatles. In this we found lots of acoustic and early versions of pretty a lot of songs. The earliest of these recordings date back to 1958.
After the home recordings, we looked at another great collection of songs, we checked The Acoustic Submarine out. This included mainly acoustic pieces in early versions of, well, mainly their bigger hits. I really enjoyed listening to the acoustic version of Back In The USSR.
Yesterday we checked the Revolution: Take...Your Knickers Off album out. In this post we mainly looked at the different versions of the song Revolution, and looked at whatever other goods were to be found on that album.


So much for what we already have. My next posts will jump a small step back in time, and a huge step back in time. We will be looking at some outtakes from Paul McCartney's 2005 album, Chaos and Creation In The Backyard. And after that, we'll look at the Decca recordings from 1958.


So stay tuned, because there are lots more to come for.

Revolution: Take... your knickers off! Including Revolution 1 take 20

Hello guys, today we're looking at a bootleg album which got a lot of attention when it surfaced around a year ago, in 2009. It is the bootleg album Revolution: Take... Your knickers off, the title is a quote from Lennon on the first track of the album.

 

 
The most significant track on this album is Revolution 1 take 20, now let's take a little look at the Revolution song before we carry on.


We have three distinct songs here, two are very alike:
Revolution: This is the hard-rock song with two very distortion-sounded guitars, it was released on the B-side of the "Hey Jude" single, in late August 1968.
Revolution 1: Is the more blues-styled version of Revolution, this piece was featured on The White Album, which was released in November 1968.
Splitting of Revolution 1 (take 20) and Revolution 9: The first minutes of Revolution 1 take 20 is pretty much the same as the one released on The White Album, even though it lacks the electric guitar and horn overdubs of the final version, and adds a distorted siren-like tone that is faded in and out at various times throughout the song. 


Beyond the point where the album version fades out, the basic instrumental backing keeps repeating while the vocals and overdubs become increasingly chaotic, including distorted screams from Lennon, feedback, and sound effects. Paul McCartney and Harrison repeatedly sing "Dada, Mama" in a childlike register. As the music concludes, Ono quietly says "maybe... it's not that" followed by Harrison emphatically stating "It is that!" Lennon then mumbles "Gonna be alright" a few times, and Ono's prose is heard among other sounds during the final portion.


Lennon soon decided to split the song into two parts, the Beatles styled Revolution 1 and a psychedelic avant-garde sound collage, Revolution 9. Lennon used the last six minutes of Revolution 1 take 20 as his starting point and added numerous sound effects, overdubs and whatnot, ending with the Revolution 9 we have on The White Album.
To make a long story short, Revolution 1 take 20 is some sort of bridge between Revolution 1 and 9.


Anyway, take your knickers off and let's go! There are a lot more stuff on these albums, here's the track list:

Disc one holds an early take of the Revolution single version, Julia, Across the Universe and Dear Prudence. And features quite a few takes of Step Inside Love.



Step Inside Love is a song written by Paul McCartney (credited as "Lennon/McCartney") for Cilla Black in 1967 as a theme for her TV series Cilla, which first aired in the beginning of 1968. Her version was released as a single on 8 March 1968. It reached number eight in the British charts. The recording was also featured on Black's third solo studio album Sher-oo!

As for Come And Get It. The original demo of Come were completely done by Paul, these are the Badfinger sessions for the recording of their version of Come And Get It. And maybe, we’re not sure, this is the first time it’s revealed that Paul was in the studio with Badfinger “directing” the sessions, which explains why Badfinger’s version is identical to Paul’s.

No Escaping Your Love is an Iveys/Badfinger song, being sung by Tommy Evans

Some of these tracks are pretty interesting, but if you aren't a huge Beatles fan, then I guess you could skip this download, or just stick to the first disc. However, I highly recommend that you check these recordings out. 

Cheers

Downloads:

Disc 1: http://www.mediafire.com/?85313nd5y5snjx7

Disc 2: http://www.mediafire.com/?k794bq4q4rkxd1m

Sources:
http://bigozine2.com/roio/?p=149
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revolution_%28song%29

Acoustic submarine - Bootleg album of greatest hits caliber

Today we're checking out a great bootleg album called The Acoustic Submarine. It is a set of unreleased outtakes from some of the Beatles biggest hits, from 1964-1969. You can look at it a is an addition to the official Anthology discs. Some of theses takes are, in my opinion, even better than the official releases :)

I managed to find some album art related to this album at BootlegZone, and these will be uploaded as well. The picture above seems to be the two options for the cover, as you can fold it on the middle.
 

I really enjoy hearing these less studio-filled recordings, a little more raw, but still in great audio quality. So it combines the best of two worlds: the raw sound of bootleg recordings and the good audio quality of, I guess, official recordings.

The tracks are spread out on two discs, and the track-list is as following:

Disc 1

01 Do You Want to Know a Secret
02 And I Love Her
03 I'm a Loser
04 Help!
05 Yesterday
06 yes It Is
07 Norwegian Wood
08 I'm Looking Through You
09 We Can Work It Out
10 I'm Only Sleeping
11 Yellow Submarine
12 A Day in the Life
13 The Fool on the Hill
14 Christmas Time is Here Again
15 The Happy Rishikesh Song
16 Jubilee
17 Child of Nature
18 Goodbye
19 Everyone Had a Hard Year
20 What's the New May Jane

Disc 2

21 Heather
22 Back in the USSR
23 Dear Prudence
24 Ob-la-di Ob-la-da
25 While My Guitar Gently Weeps
26 Blackbird
27 Rocky Raccoon
28 Julia
29 Mother Nature's Son
30 Hey Jude
31 Because
32 I Lost My Little Girl
33 Teddy Boy
34 Mama, You've Been on My Mind
35 For You Blue
36 Two of Us
37 Across the Universe
38 I Me Mine
39 Maggie Mae

Note: the file I found has a little messed up part, as the three first tracks of disc 1 aren't the ones listed there, but the rest is right.

Download link Acoustic Submarine: http://www.mediafire.com/?38lmg02278f3e5u

Album art: http://www.mediafire.com/?ovuphp8a668apdm

Have fun with these great tracks.

Cheers

Huge collection of Beatles home recordings

Today we're looking at an awesome collection of demos/early versions/home recordings, call them whatever you want.

Basically this is a huge ZIP-file, I stumbled on at BootlegZone's forum, which contains a lot of recordings from The Beatles' jam sessions at their homes.
The tracks are divided in six folders, which all covers a number of years, going back to 1958 to their later stuff from 1969.

The folders contains, aside from the tracks, some cool pictures with are cover and track lists for every "album" or in this case, folder.


The sound quality varies from quite poor to pretty good. I haven't listened to all of it, but it seems to me that the earlier recordings are worse quality than the later recordings, guess the equipment used for recording got better along the way? I dunno.

The ZIP-file is a two part file, available on Megaupload:
Part 1: http://www.megaupload.com/?d=VC37IGCI
Part 2: http://www.megaupload.com/?d=R59JHGSM

(If megaupload says "The file you are trying to access is temporarily unavailable." error, just try again a few minutes later)

The tracks are in .flac format, so you'll need a media player which support this format (Windows media player doesn't seems to do), I highly recommend using VLC-player, which can be downloaded free of charge if you don't already have it.

There are some really interesting pieces in here, so I highly recommend that you guys check this out.

Cheers

Kum Back: Bootleg Beatles album from 1969

Hey guys! Today we’re looking at a rather interesting bootleg album, by The Beatles. This album, Kum Back, appeared in September 1969, and contains recordings from the Get Back sessions, which took place in January 1969.

It is the first ever Beatles bootleg album, and apparently the second bootleg album ever (The first one being Bob Dylan’s Great White Wonder, which appeared in July 1968). 

This album was, according to the grapevine, an early mix of the Let It Be album, and is rumored to have been spread by Lennon, who apparently brought this early mix to America, on one of his visits in 1969, and traded it for some unreleased recordings. 

Kum Back includes early takes of Get Back, Two of Us, I’ve Got a Feeling, Don’t let Me down, The Long and Winding Road, For You Blue and I Dig a Phony, these tracks are all found on the Let It Be album. The second track is The Beatles’ version of Jimmy McCracklin’s “the walk”, from 1957. The third track on Kum Back is “Teddy Boy”, a really McCartneyish song (I’m sure Lennon would classify it as a case of “Paul’s Granny shit”). This song would later be included on the b-side on McCartney’s first solo album, titled McCartney, released in 1970.

Back cover/track list, funny thing is that some of the tracks are identified wrong,

Back cover/track list, one small correction: The second track is The Walk, not Can You Dig It, which this cover states.


Download link: http://www.megaupload.com/?d=EB80TUT6


Cheers

Primal Colours, unreleased album from 1968.

I recently started listening to bootleg recordings. You might ask, what are those? Well it is unreleased tracks or recordings from various sessions, and some of these bootleg tracks are rather interesting. I'll try to make a few more posts about it as I learn more about this whole bootleg thing and the community around it.

We are checking out an unreleased album called Primal Colours, today. This is a fascinating piece. An intended album release from 1968, which was pulled at the last minute, even tough some of the tracks sound like they still needed a little more editing.
Primal Colours contains some classic cuts. Many of these tracks would, later see the light of day, in slightly different form, in the wonderful White Album released later in 1968.

In May 1968, John Lennon, Paul McCartney, and George Harrison assembled at Kinfauns, George Harrison’s home in Esher, and demoed 23 songs. The majority of these songs were conceived during the group's visit to Rishikesh, India in the spring of 1968, where they undertook a transcendental meditation course with Maharishi Mahesh Yogi.

Each of the Beatles left Rishikesh before the end of the course for various reasons, with Ringo Starr and then Paul McCartney departing first, and Lennon and George Harrison departing together later.

If you can't make out the track list from the picture above, here it is:

1. Brian Epstein Blues
2. Back In The U.S.S.R.
3. A Case of The Blues
4. Blackbird
5. Piggies
6. Birthday
7. Yer Blues
8. Mother Natures Son
9. Everybody's Got Something To Hide Except Me And My Monkey
10. Child Of Nature
11. Helter Skelter
12. Junk
13. Honey Pie
14. Old Brown Shoe

Download link here: http://www.mediafire.com/?sdxk8edocvk2l9q


Hope you guys will enjoy these as much as I did. :)

Cheers

My new interest: Bootleg recordings

So, lately I've been more and more interested in bootleg recordings particially from The Beatles. Now you might "well, bootleg recordings? what are those?" And that is exactly what this short post is going to explain.

A bootleg recording is an audio and or video recording of a performance that was not officially released by the artist, or under other legal authority. Meaning these things are there for the taking. 
I think it is very interesting to listen to some of the earlier takes and bits of popular songs, be it Beatles songs or just other well known songs, and apparently a lot of other people does as well, so there is a lot of bootlegging material around, which is great!
 
As for The Beatles, a LOT of bootleg material is available, let's take a look at some of the officially released bootleg material (as in, you can't pirate these!).
During the timespan of 1994-1996 the Anthology albums were released, a 6 disc set with early recordings and takes of many of the more popular songs. Another release was Live at the BBC, recordings from some performances at the radio.
 
Bootlegging has been taking place way before that, the decca audition tapes were around in the late 70's, a bootleg album containing songs from the Get Back sessions(The sessions, which provided the material for the Let It Be album) were circulating in 1969, before the actual Let It Be album was released (8th of May 1970).
 
A lot of bootleg material has surfaced the last couple of years, and have been spread all over the internet. So my next few posts will be about some of these bootleg albums and will possibly include means of getting hand on these recordings. 

Stay tuned for more.
Cheers!

Beatles on the ukulele

It is no secret that my favourite instrument is the ukulele, and The Beatles is obviously my favourite band, so combining these two was pretty sweet for me.


For a little kind of brief history lesson, Harrison was a good ukulele player and he loved to play the uke. He and Paul used to jam together, and Paul played Harrison's Something on the ukulele, Harrison wasn't impressed (according to McCartney), but McCartney thought it sounded pretty good.

George passed away in 2001 (All things must pass, eh?), and on the one year anniversary of his death day there was this memorial concert, in Alberts Hall, called Concert For George. During this concert Paul McCartney took the stage with his ukulele, which he had gotten from George, and played Something.
Paul is, later in the song, joined by Marc Mann, Eric Clapton and Ringo Starr's drums eventually.

Something and Paul's ukulele has been a successful part of Paul's live shows in the past few years, and I think this is some of the reason for the rise in popularity which the ukulele has gotten in the last couple of years.

                           "I want you to play the ukulele!"

Anyway, the point of this post is to give you a good start, if you are considering to play the ukulele or in particular playing some Beatlish on your ukulele.

For some pretty basic stuff you should visit: 
http://www.youtube.com/user/yourukesage

This channel is basically ukulele lesson for the very beginner, really helpful lessons, nicely explained, and the guy has a pretty cool e-book about ukulele and basic music theory, which is worth checking out as well.

For Beatles ukulele tutorials you should visit:
http://www.youtube.com/user/BeatlesUkuleleMike

Most likely THE best channel on youtube for Beatles songs for the ukulele. You can see the chords, the lyrics and it will be told, most of the time at least, which strum-pattern is the recommended. 
While you are there, you might as well check out Mike's other channels, some of the best ukulele tutorials you will find :)


My last site is awesome and annoying at the same time:
http://beatlesite.info/


It is a site which contains the chords for around 60 Beatles songs. The site shows a ukulele and shows you how to take the chords, in real time! Which is awesome. The non-awesome thing, is that you cannot view the full chord diagram for the whole song, which can be pretty annoying at times :)
Nice site anyhow, most definitely worth checking out.


As the grand finale of this post, here's Paul McCartney on his ukulele at the memorial concert:





Cheers!

Monday morning blog

Monday morning sucks, doesn't it? Yea it does, so I figured, if we started the week with one hell of an energy kick, well that would just be great, right? Therefore, I bring to you, Paul McCartney and his band rocking the living shit out of the Russians at the Red Square.


The energy from both the audience and the band is reaching extraordinary high levels in this video. The video quality isn't that great, but the sound quality is sweet, so crack the volume up, and have a blast with the Russians!









And if there is anybody, reading this, who has birthday today, well happy birthday!


Cheers!

Band on The Run: Remastered

It has recently been announced that Paul McCartney & Wings’ most successful album, Band on the Run, is going to be remastered and rereleased on November 1st in the United Kingdom and November 2nd in the United States.
The remastering work was done at Abbey Road using the same team who recently remastered the complete Beatles’ catalog.

The relauch of the album will, according to McCartney’s official website, be available in different formats (all digitally remastered, obviously):

The essential 9-track standard edition. Contains the original nine tracks, digitally remastered.

The 3 disc (2CD, 1 DVD) special edition features nine bonus audio tracks (including “Helen Wheels”), rare footage of the McCartneys in Lagos and behind-the-scenes at the famous album cover shoot, original Band on the Run promotional video clips, the One Hand Clapping television special (highlighted by studio performances filmed at Abbey Road in 1974) all with beautifully enhanced packaging.

The 4 disc (3CD, 1 DVD) deluxe edition which adds an extraordinary 120-page hard bound book containing many unseen and unpublished photos by Linda McCartney and Clive Arrowsmith, album and single artwork, downloadable hi-res audio versions of the remastered album and bonus audio tracks, a full history of the album complete with a new interview with Paul and expanded track by track information for all four discs. The deluxe edition also includes a special Band on the Run audio documentary (originally produced for the 25th Anniversary edition.)

The original remastered album and bonus audio content will also be issued in a 2 disc 180gm audiophile vinyl edition that comes with an MP3 download of all 18 tracks. Lastly, the standard and deluxe versions of Band on the Run will be available digitally worldwide.”

The deluxe and special edition pack would surely be really interesting to get a hold on, seeing as they apparently will be containing a lot of extra features.
I’m thrilled to listen to the 9 bonus audio tracks. I guess some of them also are to be found on the 25th Anniversary Edition, and include Country Dreamer and Helen Wheels (these two were released as singles prior to the release of Band on the run, and was included on the 25th Anniversary Edition)

Cheers!

Source: http://www.paulmccartney.com/news.php#/2008/2010-09

Elvis Costello preforms Penny Lane @ the White House

This video is from the Library of Congress, where Paul McCartney received the Gershwin Prize for Popular Songs. A lot of great musicians gathered to celebrate this with President Obama and Paul McCartney, the artist include: Stevie Wonder, the Jonas Brothers, Faith Hill, Emmylou Harris, Lang Lang, Herbie Hancock, Elvis Costello, Jack White, Corinne Bailey Rae, David Grohl, and Jerry Seinfeld (for a pretty entertaining speech).


This video is of Elvis Costello and McCartney's band (consisting of Rusty Anderson, Brian Ray, Paul "Wix" Wickens and Abe Laboriel, Jr.) preforms Penny Lane, helped by Master Sgt. Matthew Harding and his awesome piccolo trumpet solo.

You will most definitely enjoy this.



Cheers

More Beatles walls

A few more Beatles wallpapers, in my opinion not as cool as the other I posted earlier, but they are still pretty good.

Cheers

Is this how The Beatles will be remembered?

Hey guys, today your in for a really entertaining video. The guys from Cracked.com gives us their guess of how The Beatles will be remembered, in a documentary film from the year 3000.



Cheers.

Two older gentlemen rock it Beatles style

I'm here to share one of the most amazing covers I've seen in a long time. These two guys have, according to the youtube page, been covering this for a good thirty years.
There are a lot of great Two of Us covers on youtube, but this is most definitive one of, if not, the best. Enjoy this one




Cheers!

Five Beatles Wallpapers

Hey guys, I decided to hunt down some Beatles wallpaper to post. I avoided to post the Sgt. Peppers, Abbey Road and other covers on purpose, and tried to look for some interesting walls, hope you like them.

Hope you like them, because I sure do :)

Cheers!