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

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!