Friday 22 October 2010

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!

Thursday 21 October 2010

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.

Tuesday 19 October 2010

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!
 

Tuesday 12 October 2010

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

Saturday 9 October 2010

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

Wednesday 6 October 2010

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

 

Tuesday 5 October 2010

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

Sunday 3 October 2010

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