Midpack
Give me a museum and I'll fill it. (Picasso) Give me a forum ...
I knew the "album" would include different versions/arrangements of previously released (production) songs, but I assumed there would also be some new songs. I just saw the track list on iTunes this morning, and it appears it's 59 tracks, all previously released songs, with lots and lots of duplicates ($40 if you want the whole "new" album). Guess the incomplete outtakes might be amusing to hear, but not enough so to buy. So it appears there's nothing new of value to this lifelong Beatles devotee, especially since I already have the earlier Live at the BBC and Past Masters sets.
Many of you probably already knew, but it's interesting to read about the reasons for this release, all centers around copyright laws evidently. So this "album release" is really a legal maneuver and little else?
Many of you probably already knew, but it's interesting to read about the reasons for this release, all centers around copyright laws evidently. So this "album release" is really a legal maneuver and little else?
Different link http://www.usatoday.com/story/life/...eatles-1963-bootlegs-go-up-on-itunes/4108361/Last month, music copyright was extended to 70 years. However, unreleased material only has 50 years of copyright protection. So anything recorded by the Beatles (and other artists) in 1963 and not yet in the public domain would automatically lose protection in 2014. By putting these old recordings out, however briefly and obscurely, Apple have now established copyright for the next 70 years. Which is probably about how long you will have to wait to hear them.
This exercise has not been about saving lost gems for future exploitation so much as protecting the Beatles brand. Without this little maneuver, a flood of cheap, sub-standard Beatles albums would have soon started appearing, with profits going to any enterprising salesman who could think of a catchy way to market the freely accessible songs. The tracks, already widely bootlegged and owned by real Beatles obsessives, are mainly alternative, lo-fidelity BBC recordings of songs available on the Beatles' At The BBC albums, and alternative takes from early studio sessions (there are three versions of There’s a Place, none substantially different to the version on Please Please Me).
There are only two songs worth hearing among the 59 and they have been so widely bootlegged in the past that they can easily be found on Youtube and other music sites. Bad to Me is a light acoustic demo of a song The Beatles gave to Billy J Kramer. It’s fun to hear it being sung by John Lennon with an innocent zest but it has never been officially released because the only extant copy is an acetate that hisses all the way through. I’m in Love is an even rougher demo of John Lennon playing piano and singing a song The Beatles gave to the Merseybeats. And that’s it.
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