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!

Impressionist Stevie Riks impersonates Lennon and McCartney

Found these cool videos of Stevie Riks, a British actor who takes on the role of Paul McCartney and John Lennon.






There are lots of other great videos on his youtube at: www.youtube.com/MrSTEVIERIKS

Hope you like it.

Cheers!

Franz Ferdinand covers It Won't Be Long

Hello guys, here's a pretty cool cover of The Beatles' It Wont Be Long, by Franz Ferdinand. It is, in my opinion, a really good cover because Franz Ferdinand managed to make it their own, and still kept it Beatlish.




What do you guys think? Good or bad?

Cheers
 

For No One

Hey guys, I decided to write a little bit about a Beatles song, but how does one decide which song to write about, when there are so many great songs to pick from? Well I turned on my IPod, opened The Beatles, shuffle all, and clicked next song six times (Because it is the sixth of September) and ended on For No One. I’m just going to walk a bit over some facts related to the song, so yea, here goes.

For No One is a McCartney song (Credited to Lennon/McCartney, of course), it is the tenth track (or third on the b-side) on the 1966 album Revolver.

McCartney wrote the song in March 1966, on a skiing holiday, with his girlfriend Jane Asher, in the Swiss Alps. The song is melancholic song about a breakup, with the original title “Why Did It Die?” It is very likely that an argument between Paul and Jane was the inspiration for this song.

The recording sessions for the song took place during the first half of May, 1966. Paul and Ringo recorded it on their own, with Paul playing bass, clavichord and piano, Ringo on drums and tambourine.

The horn solo of the song is what makes for the most interesting part of this story, as well as gives the song the perfect feel. George Martin asked Paul to hum out the melody, Martin writing out the score. When it was finished, Martin pointed out that the higher notes were beyond the range of the horn, but remarked that “these good players, they can play above the range”, so they gave it a shot.
Dennis Brian, the best horn player in all of Britain, was originally assigned for the task. However he died, unfortunately, in a car crash before the session and was replaced by Alan Civil.
George excitingly joining them in the studio, for the day of horn session. Before they started, Alan Civil looked skeptically at Paul and George and asked “Eh, George? I think there's a mistake here - you've got a high F written down”, they just smiled back and replied “yeah” and he knew what they were up to and played it.

After Civil had played it, Paul didn't realized how brilliant it was and asked him if he could do it better, Civil nearly exploded in rage, because it was the best he could do and it is how it sounds today.

Thank you for reading, stay tuned for more.

Cheers.

References:
Miles, Barry: Many Years From Now (1998) pp. 288-289
Macdonald, Ian: Revolution In the Head (2002) p. 195
http://www.beatlesbible.com/songs/for-no-one/

Fun facts about The Beatles

Hey guys, some fun facts about The Beatles and some of their songs.

First one: Both John and Paul wrote stuff for the bible!

Just kidding, here we go:

Paul McCartney's song 'Yesterday', which was recently voted the most popular song of the century by a BBC poll, had music written before the lyrics. Paul used the working words 'scrambled eggs' before coming up with 'yesterday' while composing this song.

The song 'strawberry fields forever' is actually two versions of the song mixed together by George Martin. One was a half-tone higher and slightly faster. When it was slowed down it somehow fit together with the other version perfectly. The Beatles liked both versions and couldn't decide on one and asked Martin if he could put them together somehow. When he tried it - it worked!

The Beatles featured two left handed members, Paul, whom everyone saw holding his Hoffner bass left handed, and Ringo, whose left handedness is at least partially to blame for his 'original' drumming style.

Paul McCartney wrote the song Lovely Rita, Meter Maid for the album Sergeant Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band after getting a parking ticket from a female warden in Abbey Road.

The Beatles, with Pete Best on drums, made the group's TV debut performing Roy Orbison's 'Dream Baby' on the BBC show 'Teenager's Turn' in 1962.

'Hey Jude' was written by Paul in his car. Paul was on his way to visit Julian, John Lennon's son, who was disturbed by his parents' divorce. Paul wrote this song to cheer him up.

The Beatles got their name from a line in the movie 'The Wild Ones'. Lee Marvin's character said the motocycle gang wanted Marlon Brando's charcter back, even the beetles (he was referring to the women in the gang). They changed the 'ee' to 'ea' so it was like the musical term 'beat'.

The Beatles song "Dear Prudence" was written about Mia Farrow's sister, Prudence, when she wouldn't come out and play with Mia and the Beatles at a religious retreat in India.

In a contest held by Mersyside Newspaper to see who was the biggest band in Liverpool, 1962, one of the main reasons that The Beatles won was because they called in posing as different people voting for themselves.

'We don't like their sound, and guitar music is on the way out.'
Decca Recording Co. rejecting the Beatles, 1962.

Last fact for now:

Source

Cheers

Is there anybody going to listen to my story...?

Welcome to With The Blogs, you might be thinking "what the hell is this site about?" Well let me tell you, this blog is about one of the most successful bands in history, the fab four, The Beatles!


I will post about various Beatles related topics, such as news related to The Beatles, anniversaries for Beatles related events, such as album releases or historic concerts. Furthermore, song of the week, Beatles picture of the week and general just posting my thoughts on various topics related to The Beatles.

Cheers!