worship the glitch
This is Eric Mortensen's blog. He works @ Blip and lives in Brooklyn.
Dhani Harrison (son of George), George Martin and Giles Martin (son of George) fiddle around with the mix of “Here Comes The Sun” when they discover George Harrison’s guitar solo, which was left off of the record and which nobody recalls hearing before.
The Beatles - Come Together/Something (Norwegian, Italian, Swedish, Dutch & French Cover Art)
(via sustainable-sam)
Rearranged (Original)
They’re his films. He can do what he wants with them. I’m actually intrigued by what he’s doing, even if I don’t actually want to watch the doctored work. The bummer is that he doesn’t make the originals available. The even bigger bummer is that technology moves quickly and devices capable of of playing the original video releases are quickly disappearing. On the bright side, we’ll eventually see some beautiful homebrew digital versions of the original films. Perhaps they already exist. The kids are usually the ones fucking with things. This time they’ll be protecting the sanctity of the original. An underground community has been doing something similar with Beatles records for over 25 years. They’ve preserved the original sound when digital presentations deliberately mucked it up. There are countless competing Beatles catalogs being traded via BitTorrent, Usenet and certain record stores around the world. Sometimes the community has to take matters into its own hands in order to preserve certain cultural touchstones. Of course, once a piece of art is ingrained in a culture for this long, its relationship with that culture ceases to be about the original work. It becomes a shared, and fluid, idea. Maybe Lucas is just actively participating in this fluidity instead of resigning himself to the sidelines as the mere creator of the work, as tradition dictates. If so, what he’s doing today might be just as groundbreaking as what he did in the 70’s.
Bed Peace (1969), a documentary about John & Yoko’s campaign for World Peace, directed by John & Yoko, and available online until Aug 21st.
The Beatles - Cry Baby Cry
from The Beatles [2k9 Mono Remaster]
The original mono mixes are not always better, even if they are the official versions. This one is clearly better. The stereo mix is one that places nearly everything on the hard left or hard right of the listener. And while this results in a slightly less muddled sound, the results are still more negative than postiive. The mono mix just sounds less artificial.
Of course, it’s particularly fun to listen to both.
The Magical Mystery Tour
“I’m not sure whose idea Magical Mystery Tour was. It could have been mine, but I’m not sure whether I want to take the blame for it! We were all in on it — but a lot of the material at that time could have been my idea.”
- Paul McCartney
“When it came out originally on British television, it was a colour film shown in black and white, because they didn’t have colour on BBC1 in those days. It looked awful and was a disaster.”
- George Martin
It’s not all bad. I wouldn’t post it here if it was. It is pretty weird, but all of the musical sequences are solid. It’s easy to see this as the blueprint for nearly every self-made music film ever produced. It’s crudely made, confusing and self-indulgent. But if you’re a fan, it’ll do nicely.
“I mean, the scene that to me that stands out is the one of John shoveling the spaghetti on the fat woman’s plate. I mean, that was the best bit of the movie for me.”
- George Harrison
“…and of course they showed it in black and white and so it was hated. Now they all had their chance then to say, ‘They’ve gone too far! Who do they think they are?! What does it all mean?’ So that was really slated, but of course, when people started seeing it in color, they realized that it was a lot of fun.”
- Ringo Star
“You know, looking back on it, it’s how you learn kind of thing, by your mistakes…but I think, you know, in the end it came out, I think it’s quite interesting now, looking back on it as a period piece. And people like Spielberg, I’ve read that people like him have sort of said, ‘When I was in school that was a film we really took notice of…’ like an art film, you know, rather than a proper film. But of course, we then released it and got it shown on the BBC on Boxing Day.”
- Paul McCartney
One more telling fact about the film:
It is not included in the Beatles catalog, nor is is mentioned on the band’s official site.
More Behind The Beatles posts.
eversonpoe replied to your photo: Mono! (Taken with instagram)
i’ve been wondering about the advantages of the mono box vs the stereo box. thoughts?
Most of the Beatles records were originally, definitively mixed in mono. The stereo mixes of everything up through the White Album were afterthoughts. The records were fully mixed and deemed complete by the band before the stereo mixes were even attempted. They weren’t around for the stereo mixes and didn’t particularly care for them. The stereo versions often run at different lengths and even contain different takes than the original mono recordings. Even worse, some of the stereo versions that are today considered the official versions were mixed in 1987! As a bonus, the mono set actually includes the otherwise unreleased original stereo versions of some records.
On top of all of this, the mono set is not heavily compressed like most other releases.
I see absolutely nothing wrong with releasing altered or improved versions of the catalog. I enjoy the Love mashup record. I’d love to see 5.1 channel remixes released. But I also want to hear the original recordings, as they were originally released.
