Wednesday, September 09, 2009

We love you - yeh, yeh, yeh

Pam and I, like many of our generation, were brought up on the Beatles. Right from the first album to the last we loved them. Their music and words were meaningful to us and represented our feelings at the time.

Neither of us actually saw the “fab four” live even though Pam lived just over the water from the ‘Pool. I personally don’t regret that because my brother and I went to see the Stones live in the early 60s and didn’t enjoy the concert as much as we had hoped. All you could hear was girls screaming from the moment Mick and the boys came on stage until well after they left. Beatles concerts were apparently much the same. Yorkshiremen don’t pay good money just to hear girls screaming.

Pam had some of the Beatles’ albums, I had others but together we didn’t own the complete set. As students we simply could not afford every record the lads produced.

Jemma has our old LPs stored at her house in Wolverhampton. Most of the Beatles’ ones are scratchy and worn from being overplayed. We did consider buying some of our favourite Beatles’ albums on CD to replace them but in comparison with the original vinyl they sounded flat and lifeless. What we did buy though was the Beatles Live at the BBC compilation - live performances at their very best. However, there are many of our favourite songs missing from that set.

Now though, it is possible for us to relive those heady days of the sixties because the whole Beatles’ back catalogue has been skilfully re-mastered in both mono and stereo (remember the early albums were recorded in mono). By all accounts the painstaking work has brought the collection of songs back to life.

The Beatles in Mono (£199.99) and The Beatles Box Set – Remastered in Stereo (£169.99) are released today. I just wish I was indulgent enough to afford at least one of them - probably the mono set.

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