Friday 16 October 2009

The Beatles – remastered box set – any good?

I’ve been offline for about three or four hundred years now, mainly because Sky are morons. Now, if you’re reading this and you work for Sky, please don’t take that as a personal affront – but Sky are morons. And if you’re one of the people I or Sarah spoke to trying to set our phone line up, you actually are a moron. Anyway – what better way to welcome myself back online, I thought, than a Beatles blog. And what more appropriate and topical Beatles blog could there be than a full scale epic review of the recently released re-mastered CDs. I bought mine in a giddy rush during a lunch break and proceeded to spend every journey to and from work for the next two weeks listening avidly back through the world’s most famous back-catalogue. And I thought there might be like-minded Beatles fans out there who are concerned about whether or not it would be worth it to buy these CDs when they already own every last thing the Beatles ever recorded, like I do.

There are a number of problems with reviewing something like this, and the main one is that Beatles fans can’t resist a good opportunity to eulogise the band, and I will try and avoid that – but at the same time I make no apologies whatsoever for the times that I do it. The Beatles are my favourite band, and while they occasionally curled out a steamer (see my earlier blog on that topic), and it’s arguably fair to say that they never made an album without a fairly rubbish song on it, when they were good, they were really very very good.

Another problem is that this is a re-mastering, not a remixing. The Love album from a couple of years ago was remixed, and it was (to my humble ears) a revelation. But this is just the exact same songs in the same order that they’ve always been. So there’s relatively little to say about it. It sounds loads better, and so you should buy it if you like the Beatles. But that wouldn’t do as a blog. So, let’s begin at the beginning.

1962 – 1970, The Beatles release studio albums and however many singles it was. Lots of people like them, swinging 60s, love and peace, drugs and psychedelia, bigger than Jesus, blah blah, good good. Oh, all albums are released on LPs. They think they can be businessmen and set up Apple. They fail miserably. They fall out a lot and get bored of each other, and split up so George can do meditation stuff, John can live with Yoko, Paul can live on a farm, and Ringo can go country, and mental.

1970 – 1980, everyone keeps asking the Beatles if they will reform, and they say no. They slag each other off in songs. All release at least one good album, and at least one stinker. McCartney forms Wings, has mental success. Lennon doesn’t really do anything consistently, Harrison meditates and runs out of material and Ringo goes country, then goes mental. Loads of Beatles compilation albums come out – they are largely rubbish.

1980 – John Lennon is murdered outside his home. People are sad.

1981 – 1987 – People miss John. Other Beatles respond to sad loss by being terrible at music, a lot.

1987 – The Beatles catalogue is mixed for Compact Disc, which is a new-fangled technology. People who bought the LPs are very cross, because the sound is a bit drudge, and they start bemoaning the lack of quality and “how dare they, this is the Beatles and blah blah” and all the rest.

1996 – Beatles Anthology is released. New songs are recorded. They are great. Albums of old out-takes are released, they’re mediocre. TV show is put together, it is rubbish – well, apart from the first episode. Harrison and McCartney pretend they like each other, it’s clear they don’t. Ringo talks in half Scouse, half American accent, McCartney bobbles his head, Harrison appears remarkably chirpy for someone who didn’t want to do it, Lennon’s absence is hugely conspicuous. Beatles fans rush out and buy it, and go “don’t they look young” at the old footage of the band in the cavern. They do.

1997 – 2008 – Everyone babbles on about the Beatles, swinging 60s, love and peace, drugs and psychedelia, bigger than Jesus, blah blah, good good. George Harrison dies, which is sad. He and McCartney make up which is nice. McCartney suddenly remembers how to be a brilliant songwriter and makes good albums again. Ringo randomly gets a monk on about signing memorabilia and posts a message online about peace and love while simultaneously showing neither to anyone.

2009 – The Beatles Rock Band is announced. Beatle fans can’t work out if this is selling out or not. Music critics decide John would not be happy. People who actually knew him say he would. This annoys most people, as it is mind-numbingly irrelevant. Giles Martin is son of George Martin, Beatles producing genius. Giles Martin realises that there have been 20 years of technological progress since the CDs last came out. Like a genius, decides to remaster the original tapes so they don’t sound gash. They are released, I buy them.

And here we are!

And so, onto my opinions about the CDs. Well, first of all, there isn’t much of a notable improvement in the early albums, but there was never going to be. Their first album was recorded in a day, using absolutely no studio techniques, so in terms of an adventurous sonic landscape, there’s not much to work with. Also, the songs aren’t really very good. Even George Martin admits that when he first met them, it was their attitude and energy that attracted him to the band, not the fact that they were any good at song-writing, because they weren’t. And all the remastering in the world can’t hide that fact. But of course, if you’re going to end up being lauded for the speed and dexterity of your songwriting development – you have to have a starting marker, and from Please Please Me, while it isn’t true that the only way was up, they certainly didn’t have to move mountains to improve. The quality is undoubtedly clearer than it was on the 87 issue, but really if you can tell the difference, then you’ve been listening to too much Beatles. I noticed the difference immediately. This is true for Please Please Me, With The Beatles AND A Hard Days Night – although those albums do showcase a genuinely meteoric rise in quality of songwriting, performance, studio knowhow, musicianship and delivery – they were still recorded on rubbish 4 track, and while the quality again is noticeable, there isn’t any kind of revelation in terms of what you can hear and how it’s been cleaned up.

But then along comes Beatles For Sale – and the difference suddenly becomes truly apparent. The murky quality of this tired and rushed album has been polished to a beautiful shine – and in fact, listening to Rock and Roll Music and Kansas City is like hearing new songs. The rest of the album is quite obviously better, and there are points when it feels like new material – and it’s fabulous. Not the best album originally, and not the best now either, but at the very least you can hear it as it was meant to be heard. Once you’ve dispensed with the first 4 albums, you get on to the most critically acclaimed period in the band’s history. Now, there was nothing wrong with Rubber Soul, Revolver and Sgt Pepper in 1987, but it is great to hear them sounding so sharp, with the instrumentation coming more to the fore. Ringo was oft maligned as a drummer, even by Lennon at one point (when asked if Starr was the best drummer in the world, Lennon famously replied that he wasn’t the best drummer in the Beatles) – and while that may have been hilarious and cheeky, people seem to have jumped atop that bandwagon with all the hurried enthusiasm of Daily Mail readers when they want to blame foreigners for something, complain about something they didn’t hear on the radio or lament the loss of Princess Diana. But listen to the way that drummers (or in fact anyone who understands music) talk about Ringo. Hushed tones, my friends – and on these albums we start to see why. The rhythm section that he formed with McCartney (who is another under-rated musician in my opinion) is remarkable, and it is brought right to the fore here. In a time before click tracks and Pro Tools, Ringo was the glue that held that group together, and you can hear his effectiveness as a drummer finally get the airing it deserves. Peace and Love.

That being said, Ringo also sings sometimes, and it’s no exaggeration to say that the only way you could remaster “What Goes On” and “Yellow Submarine” into listenable tracks is if you wiped the tape completely. And they haven’t. It’s too bad, because they were awful before, but now they’re crystal clear awful.

Sgt Pepper is disappointingly un-different. I don’t know quite what I was expecting, but it didn’t quite deliver. That being said, it’s a brilliant album which is suddenly much better to listen to, and you can’t argue too far with that.

The White Album was always a bit of a sprawling mess, and again, the remastering doesn’t help it much. The Beatles could be excused below-par material on their first album since it was their first album and nobody knew what below-par really meant for the band, but by 1968 they really should have known better. Not only are some of the songs absolutely awful, but actually the whole album resembles something that was recorded in a skip, with little or no effort paid to mixing, and in some cases, tuning. This isn’t solved by the remastering, and I suppose it’s right that it isn’t – after all, if you start messing too much with levels etc, you run the risk of remixing it, and while that wouldn’t necessarily be a bad idea, it isn’t the point here. BUT – for every Bungalow Bill, there is a Blackbird. If McCartney ever wrote a more endearing love song than “I Will”, I’d like someone to play it to me. Now it is as clear as the Indian day on which it was written, and can’t be flawed really. Helter Skelter retains its near violent hysteria and is all the meaner and more virulent now. The arrangement of “Good Night”, already lush, takes on new dimensions. Revolution 9 is still a bit of a mauling, but a bit of tape cleaner was never going to change that sad fact. This album was always one of the murkier in the Beatles canon – partly because the band were getting stroppy with each other, and so couldn’t be bothered, and George Martin left because he got sick of them fighting and so the production gang was effectively the youth team. But the best of a bad job has been made of the album and the sound is about as good as you could hope for – and it’s a relief for someone who has always been ambivalent about the White Album.

Yellow Submarine is a strange album to add to the canon – most of the songs on it had already been released, and the second side is entirely made up of instrumentals by George Martin – which are actually very nice to listen to, but still seem a bit odd. The songs that we hadn’t heard before should really have stayed that way. All Together Now, Only A Northern Song, and It’s All Too Much add nothing but a sense of atypical sloth in terms of songwriting and production. I suppose it all needs to be covered in the catalogue, but if you’re going through the albums, just listen to the second half of this one. I love the Beatles dearly, but little on God’s earth could entice me to listen to this album again. When you only made 13 albums, and are considered one of the greatest bands of all time, then a half-arsed selection like this shouldn’t be among your offerings.

Let It Be has already been remastered, and remixed into a new album – the fan-dividing-but-nevertheless-let’s-be-honest-now-it’s-absolutely-loads-better-than-the-original-except-for-maybe-I’ve-Got-A-Feeling-but-other-than-that-it-is Let it Be...Naked. So the only new things we really get to hear on this album are Maggie Mae and Dig It – and who cares about them anyway? They were terrible the first time and they’re terrible now. So, nothing wrong with it, but nothing amazing either. I was struck on re-listening to the album just how good the title track is. Just an aside there.

Abbey Road has always been a pleasant listening experience. In fact, I would probably have rated it as my favourite Beatles album before the remastering, and that opinion is only enforced by the updated version. I never hated Maxwell’s Silver Hammer as much as everyone else (including every Beatle that wasn’t McCartney) does – or Octopus’ Garden either for that matter, being as it is about three million times better than Starr’s other compositional credit, Don’t Pass Me By. As for the other songs, McCartney’s gravel on Oh Darling, Harrison’s tender guitar solo on Something, Lennon’s anguished cries on I Want You and the transcendent beauty of Because are glorious in their clarity – as are the drum fills of Here Comes The Sun, the harmonies on You Never Give Me Your Money and the scorching guitar solos of “The End”. Even Her Majesty sounds better. There was nothing wrong with this album, but they fixed it anyway, and for once, that tactic worked to perfection.

And finally the Past Masters CDs. Well, the same goes for them as went for all the other albums. The early songs sound very similar, and the later songs begin to take on a clarity that wasn’t available back in the mid to late 1960s when they were recorded. You Know My Name is still ridiculous, but is genuinely hilarious in parts, and a nice note on which to close the singles collection. The two German songs are still on there, sounding exactly the same as they always did – that is to say, nice novelty but actually a waste of two tracks on the CD, and other than that, the songs are brilliant and a timely reminder of a time when artists didn’t put their singles on their albums. The Beatles canon is already considered a masterpiece, what would we have thought had Sgt Pepper contained Penny Lane and Strawberry Fields? If Let It Be had been permitted the odd but wonderful Old Brown Shoe, if Rubber Soul had replaced What Goes On and Run for Your Life with Day Tripper and We Can Work It Out? How about Revolver not having Paperback Writer on it or the fact that I Want To Hold Your Hand and She Loves You never appeared on an album? Why were Lady Madonna, Hey Bulldog, The Inner Light and Hey Jude left off the White Album when Wild Honey Pie, Bungalow Bill, Revolution 9, and Don’t Pass Me By stayed on? Who can say – still, makes you think.

If you like the Beatles, then you will be glad you bought this. If you don’t like them then this isn’t going to change your mind. But for my twopenneth, I didn’t half have fun rediscovering the music I grew up to. God Bless those four lads and their cheeky mop-top/acid gobbling ways.

Tuesday 13 October 2009

England v Germany – a blog.

Since I mentioned it on the podcast, I’ve had a bit back about saying that Germany often beat us at football and how the rivalry is “just a game” – and let me tell you why I think that is. Apparently I need to stop being such a stuck-up ponce and just accept that if you fight a war against someone, and win, you’re entitled to rub it in to their faces for the rest of eternity. Well, let’s think about why that might be. It’s because England fans, and by that I mean your traditional clichéd England fans, who like a drink, have no brain and like to make up for their own limitations and shortcomings by fighting foreigners, can’t face the fact – and sadly it is a fact – that Germany have got us by the short and curlies in terms of international football. So here’s my football log blog giving you a brief, depressing, rundown of the footballing history between these two nations.

Other than going back to the first four games England ever played against Germany – and those 4 games were won by an aggregate margin of, wait for it, 38-4, so they don’t count – the rivalry began in earnest in 1966. Now, I know there were a couple of wars inbetween times, in which Germany were the “enemy” – but as I said before, using that as a reason to dislike a football team is stupid, so I don’t do it. The only concession to that I will make is that England beat Germany 3-0 at White Hart Lane in 1933 in a game that the Nazis were basically using as a showpiece for German supremacy. That’s pleasing, but it’s not a reflection on the Germans as a whole. Then we beat them 6-3 in Berlin, but since all the players were ordered by the foreign office to perform the Nazi salute before the game, I think it’s best if we just wipe that from existence, because it’s bad enough that those players had to live with that on their conscience without me going back over the various moral implications of the situation in which they found themselves. Incidentally just for the record, I don’t “blame” the players for having done it, but I wouldn’t want to have lived the rest of my life having been part of that team.

So, let’s get on to the meat and two veg of this most famous football rivalry. Why do I say that we ought to just shut up because Germany have battered us on aggregate over the years? Well, you’re about to find out. In our first competitive game against them, we beat them in the 1966 World Cup, so score one England. They then proceeded to beat us in 1970, and 1990, when they went on to win the World cup. This wasn’t the only tournament in which a good England side (and potential winners) faltered to the Germans. In our own back yard no less at Euro 96, England famously failed from 12 yards yet again – in what was my choice as most heartbreaking football moment of my life. In Euro 96, before the Germans beat us, the Daily Mirror - in an attempt to stir up some national “pride” - published the famous headline: "Achtung! Surrender! For You Fritz, ze Euro 96 Championship is over", which sickened me at the time, and certainly hasn’t lost its disgusting edge in the 14 or so years since it was published. The editor of the paper? Piers Morgan. Help, I have died of shock.

Following this, Germany won the final game at Wembley, which breaks my heart but is true. Yet again, that game was marred by sheer brain-dead idiocy. As Ian Ridley wrote in the Observer, “It was the last refuge of the inadequate. Half-time neared, England were a goal down and a sizeable section of the crowd sullied the ever-dampening occasion. 'Stand up if you won the War,' they sang". They should have picked every last one of them up and banned them from football, and if possible from society.

The times since the ‘66 final that we’ve beaten Germany have been effectively pointless. They are also few and far between. How many times between 1966 and 2000 did England beat Germany? Twice. How many were competitive games? That’s right folks, none. Yes, we beat them in Euro 2000, in a shockingly boring 1-0 game… but for what? We both got knocked out in the group stages so there was no benefit to us, and it’s staggeringly apparent that the German side in question was one of the weakest in living memory. Then, of course, we beat them 5-1 in Munich. Now, as a standalone result, that is obviously hugely pleasing – but the fact remains that all that happened in the aftermath of that game was that both teams went to the World Cup, so we didn’t really inconvenience them all that badly – we just humiliated them a little bit, and they then went on to go further than we did in the tournament anyway – so what the hell do they care if they got hammered in one qualifier? That 5-1 game was fun for 90 minutes but it was ultimately totally meaningless. It didn’t kickstart a great England turnaround and set us off on the road to being a world class team, it just seemed to galvanise the Germans even more who then went to Japan and got to the final while we wilted like petunias against an average-at-best Brazillian side. Oh, and incidentally after the 5-1 in Munich, the Sunday Mirror’s headline was “Blitzed” – yet again an insensitive and pointless reference to something that had nothing to do with football. Incidentally, I’m not saying that an epic war against another country doesn’t add a bit of something extra to games in the immediate aftermath. How could it not? I don’t think it should, but I won’t pretend to be so whiter than white that if I had played for England in 1946 against Germany some feelings would still have been running a bit high. But it ought to have subsided by 1966 and it really ought to have subsided by 1996.

Now, it upsets me greatly that we don’t have more in our locker against Germany – or in fact any other major side in Europe – but the facts quite clearly tell their own story, which is that when it comes to football, we have been in Germany’s pocket ever since the 1966 final and the sooner we accept that and actually try to do something about it rather than whinging and singing “Two World Wars and one World Cup”, the better. I think it says it all that the Germans don’t even see us as their main rivals. They have a stronger rivalry with the Dutch, and who can blame them? The Dutch have also traditionally been a much better team than we have, Euro 96 aside.

In the grand pantheon of England v Germany games, the stats speak for themselves. The countries have met 27 times. England have won 12, which isn’t bad but needs to be read in the context that 7 of those were before 1966, when England beat pretty much anyone who wasn’t Hungary. So, from 1966 onwards, we have played Germany 19 times. Germany have won 12, and 2 have been draws. Can’t argue with the facts now boys. Perhaps the words of the song should be changed to “one World Cup, a number of disappointing performances, and near-continuous footballing inadequacy ever since.” Not as catchy, I’ll grant you, but at least we could sing it and know we spoke the truth.

Sunday 4 October 2009

Oh, if only I could get online...

Hello all.

I can't get online at the moment.

I mean, I can right now, cos here I am...

but other than that, I am finding myself super-frustrated by Sky. They cannot install the internet in someone's house and it's 2009.

New blogs will arrive as soon as my gosh-darn internet connection does.

Word

Paul