The Beatles Live and on the BBC

We're officially into the new year so we'll start from the end of last year where in the years since 2009, that's near enough ten years the Beatles on CD  as a collection has been reset from the early days of February 1987 when the very first Beatles cds came out some of which were rather 'meh' but they were all we had to the 2004 and Spring 2006 1964 and 1965 Capitol albums set allowed  a high proportion of vintage stereo mixes previously missing.

Then in 2009 we had newly mastered UK versions - a box of mono albums and singles the way they were meant to be heard and a complete set of stereo versions which generally added something  to the sound quality even if two stereo discs could of been better.

That was followed up the 2014 U.S. albums box that restored all the unique Capitol, United Artists and Apple albums in better quality even if four discs in their stereo portions had version flaws some of which I prefer as sound to the 'authorized' 2009 UK stereo catalogue titles for being mastered differently.

That simplified background capsule  takes us to the latest batch of new discs  issued so we'll start with one I remember from Christmas 1977 very well.

 

 In May of 1977 three sets of recordings from the Beatles historic concerts at Los Angeles's Hollywood Bowl in 1964 and 1965 used for classical and light popular performances  were issued after being copied from original three track tape were filtered, equalized and edited to a single lp.
That edition illustrated is the UK one as the tickets on the North American were Green and Red and the Text was embossed on the jacket.
This album "The Beatles At The Hollywood Bowl" came out in a period where there was much clamour for a Beatles Reunion but also far enough away for children of that generation to have missed what it 'felt' like just twelve years before and sold very well.
It was played all Xmas 1977.
For reasons best kept to themselves, the surviving Beatles and the Estates of John Lennon and George Harrison refused to allow this out on cd with many of us buying unauthorized versions when as by the early 1990's the lp and tape versions were allowed to become unavailable as new items.

With the movie documentary  Eight Day's a Week  looking at their touring years released in 2016 they kind of relented and allowed out it with entitled "The Beatles Live at The Hollywood Bowl" in that year which used fresh copies of the originals and the use of newer technologies to rein in the eternal screams of 17,000 young mainly female lungs and bring the band more to centre of the performances where the original was always on the edge of drowning in those piercing screams.
It also had four bonus tracks added and does sound better but the cover is simply awful.

 After issuing in 1987 all the UK studio albums, two compilations of singles with oddities and the Iconic Red and Blue double compilation albums on cd, Apple issued a very different disc in 1994.
From 1962 through 1965 the Beatles had  performed for a series of Radio Shows that were in those early days the best means of getting exposure and in 1988 "The Beeb's Lost beatles Tapes" was aired which i recorded back then on open reel tape.
Many of these were studio quality recordings made on stages from the archives but a few because tapes were either lost or reused back then came from mid-fi AM mono broadcasts made on inexpensive domestic tape recorders.
It was a selection of these historic recordings that had a good proportion of songs not issued commercially that came out in 1994 as "Live at the BBC" which was a 2 cd set.
Fast forward to 2013 and it was felt the good results in transferring these recordings to digital could be improved on using new techniques and this new edition is the one I had at Christmas this year.

In 1995 a EP entitled "Baby It's You" from the song was issued on record, cd and tape which was the form in bought it with three songs not in that "Live at the BBC" album and that was abit it.
In 2013 as part of the work on re-mastering the set it was decided to issue another containing these missing recordings plus many others complete with a series of four spoken word profiles from the Mid Sixties on each band member which hearing now strike me as very good indicators of how each of them understood themselves and how even then they were finding themselves as individuals.

For as far as I am personally concerned  not being so interested in remixes and outtakes from albums, this marks the conclusion both issuing the Beatles UK and US catalogue on cd in high quality form taking in two classic compilations, the Live album and two double cds of vintage radio performances.