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