Beatlesnytt 163
The swedish magazine “Beatlesnytt” (“Beatles-news”) has a tradition for making “clever” covers and the current issue is no exception, being a parody of the World Records album boxed set from the early eighties. The swedish method is to have a chronological approach to news from the Beatles world, and it picks up where the previous issue left. The main focal point remains on new releases, and these are presented in detail after the chronological news. This time, they are the Beatles USB Apple stick, the “Contemporary Sound” bootleg, Ringo’s “Y Not“, Paul’s “(I Want To) Come Home“, “Good Evening New York City“, CD/DVD “Live at Knebworth”, “Live in Los Angeles” (Mail on Sunday), a bootleg DVD from the Roundhouse concert in 2007, and the grammy DVD presentation of “Live at Olympia” from that same year, the “Nowhere Boy” soundtrack, the DVD “It’s Gonna Be Alright” by Gerry and the Pacemakers and the books “Liddypool, Birthplace of the Beatles”, “Echoes of Liverpool” and “The McCartneys, In the town where they were born”. The colour inside covers are stills from “Nowhere Boy” and the back cover is a “Mad day out” studio photo. A few magazines have also been reviewed, among them the norwegian Tunes (see here and here).
Even though I try to keep on top of things happening in the Beatles world, “Beatlesnytt” can always be relied upon to bring me information I have missed out on. It had escaped me that Paul held a press conference at the “Roxy and Screen” in London on the 25th of November, answering questions from the press about his new release “Good Evening New York City”. He was asked why he was playing Lennon’s “Give Peace A Chance” in his concerts and replied by revealing that he would have loved it if Lennon was playing “Maybe I’m Amazed”. As a matter of fact, Lennon actually did do a McCartney tribute when he played the mostly McCartney-penned “I Saw Her Standing There” at his last live performance together with Elton John at Thanksgiving 1974 in Madison Square Garden.
One release that had gone under my radar was the Christmas Pack Limited Edition Box Set, four remastered Beatles CD albums packaged together in a special box for the Christmas sales.
Other interesting facts: it was Pink Floyd’s David Gilmour who rediscovered the lost original Julian Lennon drawing of “Lucy in the sky with diamonds”, Ringo’s movie costume for “Caveman” went under the hammer just before Christmas, the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame Annex in NYC closed for good in January, Capitol released a boxed set of John Lennon’s “Shaved Fish”, “Imagine” and “Rock’n’Roll” called “Instant Karma! John Lennon’s All Time Greatest Hits! in the USA in January, and a wine with a label from the “butcher cover” photo session as reimagined by Beatles artist Shannon was released in a limited edition of only 50 in February.
In their mention of the 3 disc vinyl single pack of John Lennon records for Record Store Day, “Beatlesnytt” identifies “Watching The Wheels”/”Yes, I’m Your Angel” as a new single release when it was actually released as a single in all major markets in 1981.
“Beatlesnytt” are also speculating about the future. 2010 will bring us the remastered George Harrison CD “Dark Horse” with extra material, there’ll be a new studio album from Paul McCartney and Tony Bramwell will publish a new book. For 2011, they predict that Paul will marry Nancy Shevell.
The review of the Apple USB stick concerns several flawed sticks with crc errors in some of the FLAC files, but concludes that once the errors were fixed, the Beatles albums sound much better in 24 bit sound than on CD. They are using the following analogy: If the remastered CD’s sounded like you were sitting in the control room of Abbey Road studios listening, the 24 bit versions sounds like you are in the studio itself along with the group.
“Beatlesnytt” is published in swedish only, and is a quarterly publication published by the swedish Beatles Information Center.
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