September 1:
♫ OK, so none of you have actually had a
chance to see last week’s news because the site isn’t up yet, but it will be
soon, so be patient and you can be reading all kinds of goodies soon (101 to be
exact) [why have I just told you that? Presumably we must get this site online
at some point or you wouldn’t be reading this now!] What we have established
this week, however, is an alan’s album archive group on facebook. If you’re a
member go and look us up. If you’re not a member, well, there isn’t much on our
facebook group that isn’t up on this site yet so don’t worry about it, but if
superpoking your friend and painting his virtual trainers green whilst taking
quizzes to find out which Pink Floyd member your character most resembles (mine
is Roger Waters, alarmingly) and sending care bears to your old friends from
high school is your kind of thing, get joining now!
♫ Beatles: Lots of news this
week, mainly courtesy of Mojo Magazine. First up, EMI either have clairvoyant
staff or they have been thinking on the
same lines as yours truly as, weeks before this website gets printed condemning
the old Beatles CD masters of, gulp,1987 (where did that time go?) EMI have
just announced that they will be re-issuing all the original Beatles albums
plus the two Past Masters single/EP tracks/ Rarities sets and the Yellow
Submarine ‘songtrack’ album in new 5.1 transfers and—reading between the
lines—in both stereo and mono formats (plus, so it’s rumoured, an additional
extra of the complete 1987 ’fake stereo’ instruments-in-the-left-speaker,
vocals-in-the-right-speaker mixes of the earliest albums as well as an all-new
stereo mix). There don’t seem to be any bonus tracks a la Anthology on these
new sets (due for release in mid 2009) as we suggested but, hey, you can’t have
anything and 2009 looks set to see a new generation of Beatlemania all over
again! Other news: sadly the DVD release of final Beatles film Let It Be
has been officially scrapped about four years after first being announced and
going strangely quiet again (the concept dates way back to 2004’s Let It be
Naked CD remix when it was mooted to be the next project in line until the
‘Love’ remix album turned up). Rumour was this release was to have been a
deluxe set filled with oodles of out-takes from the filming of the band studio
rehearsals and some extra camera angles of the ’Rooftop’ gig, which would have
been great for the truly Monkeynuts collectors like us (Let It Be is, after
all, the only Beatles film with ’out-takes’ still intact anywhere, aside from
the ’Hey Bulldog’ clip excised from some cinema and video copies of Yellow
Submarine—the others all got ‘thrown away’ once the film’s shelf life expired).
However, Ringo and Paul—the two Beatles who probably hated the project most—say
they don’t want to sanction the release of a DVD linked to a period that caused
them so much misery and don’t think they should dredge up the past all over
again (If that’s the case, why oh why did Let It Be Naked sneak out as a
remixed CD? Wouldn’t both projects ‘set the record straight’ to use the Beats’
own words from a few years back? Contrary to popular belief the sessions
weren’t all doom and gloom—well, a third of them weren’t at any rate!) Finally,
its news to me, but apparently EMI are either missing a master-tape or a copy
of a master-tape (the reports I’ve read are unclear which) of a half-hour
session dating from the Beatles For Sale sessions (late 1964) and including
hitherto unheard and possibly un-catalogued recordings of I’ll Follow The Sun,
I Feel Fine and She’s A Woman. The tape seems to have passed into the hands of
a private collector and it was sold for auction this month. And before anyone
asks, no I don’t have a copy!
♫ Oasis: Well, there I sat
last week, a can of vimto on my knee and a TV remote in each hand, riveted for
the first verse of new Oasis promo ‘Shock Of The Lightning’ (the first hearing
of the first release from new album ‘Dig Out Your Soul’ due for release in
October) - the first new Oasis song in, ooh, ages. Marvellous — the guitars
chime as in days of old, Liam sounds youthful all over again, Oasis have
finally given up filming up promos in the dark and swapped their camera for a
technicolour one (what was with all those monochrome documentaries we kept getting
during the making of their last album?) and there was even a reference to a
‘(Magical) Mystery Tour’, just like those Beatles-filled days of old. In short,
it was just like 1994 all over again for those, err, ‘magical’ first 30
seconds. However, this being modern Oasis, the band take a great idea and
aren’t quite sure what to do with it after a while so they just repeat it again
and again and again and again and again for much of the song. A shame, but this
is still a promising first new single from a band who still seem to have much
to offer.
♫ Hollies/ 10cc/ Oasis:
All three bands are to be heavily featured on BBC4’s
Manchester Night’ on Friday September 5th, with
a long overdue look back at the North West’s equal second best musical town for
AAA recordings (that’s equal with Newcastle and after Liverpool; doubtless
someone will email in and tell me a town I’ve temporarily forgotten ands should
have added here!) and a long overdue repeat of the
excellent ’Rock Family Tree’s’ ‘Manchester’ programme (alas this site wasn’t up
when BBC4’s Liverpool repeat was on or I’d have plugged that too!) More on
these progs next week
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