The Beatles - Love (CD + Audio DVD)
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Free Music Notes for Love (CD + Audio DVD)
Free Music Review: Masterful Work by George and Giles Martin - A True Theatrical Experience
Hit: 5 Stars
The Beatles need no introduction when it comes to the elite of Rock/Pop music. When trying to "rank" the greatest artists of the Rock/Pop era, there is no doubt that the quartet from England ranks number one on just about every list. Going even further, the Beatles might be the top act in the history of modern music - among any genre. In recent years, there have been several projects that have been done around the Beatles. In 1995/1996, the Beatles released the three volume "Anthology" CD series (and corresponding television documentary). One of the main attractions of this project was that it would bring the three surviving Beatles together for the first time since the famous breakup. Paul McCartney, George Harrison, and Ringo Starr would collaborate together on two unfinished John Lennon songs: "Free as a Bird" and "Real Love" - creating a "virtual" reunion among the four band members. This three volume set would not be an ordinary greatest hits collection - it would provide a historical retrospective to the band through rare and unreleased material. In 2000 a collection of all of the Beatles U.S. and U.K. number one hits was released - simply titled "1". Both of these efforts were huge commercial successes and it proved the Beatles some three decades after their breakup were still very much in the thick of the pop music landscape. A few years later, Cirque (the group that produces the famed Cirque du Soleil series of circus-based stage performances) began to explore the possibility of using the music of the Beatles for one of their productions. This would result in the 2006 theatrical production, "Love". George Martin, the longtime producer of the Beatles along with his son Giles would spearhead the production. As a result, for all practical purposes, a corresponding soundtrack album was released. This album would simply be entitled "Love". This is no ordinary soundtrack or ordinary Beatles greatest hits album. It presents Beatles music remixed and assembled into a continuous medley - as never heard before.
While this consists of Beatles music, this is the result of the hard work between George and Giles Martin. The duo must have spent endless hours in the studio. To understand what was done here, one must make a distinction between a medley and a mix. A musical medley combines songs or parts of songs into a single piece of music. For "Love", the Martins assemble over 30 classic Beatles songs into a medley. A mix takes separate recordings and combines them into a single recording. Often an album is "mixed" by combining vocal tracks and the various instrumental tracks. A remix will often combine these separate recordings differently than the original mix. Sometimes a remix will bring in other (external) tracks for an added affect. For "Love", the Martins also utilize remixing - this is done by using studio tracks and unreleased demo tracks. There is also plenty of cases where the Martins utilize external sound effects (such as wildlife sounds on "Because" and the European Siren at the end of the "Eleanor Rigby/Julia" track). This is simply masterful.
What I am most amazed about is how the Martins use the remixing to build the medley. These remixed pieces provide the basis for many of the transitions in the medley The Martins find a way to provide near flawless transitions throughout the tracks of the "Love" compilation. The only place where I felt the transitions within the medley did not work was when transitioning from "Help!" to the "Blackbird/Yesterday" track and from the "Blackbird/Yesterday" track into the "Strawberry Fields Forever". Another thing worth mentioning is how the Martins build mini "sub-medleys" within the collection. These sub-medleys consist of a mini-medley of songs on a single track. "Love" showcases these sub-medleys in many places - such as: "Eleanor Rigby/Julia"; "Something/Blue Jay Way"; "Being For the Benefit of Mr. Kite/I Want You (She's So Heavy)/Helter Skelter"; "Blackbird/Yesterday"; "Within You Without You/Tomorrow Never Knows"; "Here Comes the Sun/The Inner Light"; "Come Together/Dear Prudence/Cry Baby Cry".
There are plenty of other examples of Beatles music "uncredited" on the tracks. When transitioning in the medley from "Because" to "Get Back", you can easily hear the opening guitar of "A Hard Day's Night" and the drums from "The End" (You can also hear drums from "Sgt Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band" and elements from "A Day in the Life". In the "Something/Blue Jay Way" sub-medley you can hear vocal elements from "Nowhere Man".
It is also worth noting the final sequence of "A Day in the Life", "Hey Jude", "Sgt Peppers Lonely Hearts Club Band (Reprise), and "All You Need is Love" is simply awesome.
What I really like about this collection is how it does a good cross-section of the Beatles material. It has some very popular tracks and some less common tracks. One can make an argument that many songs - such as "Michelle", "Birthday", "With a Little Help From My Friends", "She Loves You", and many, many more are missing. However who is to say that someday there won't be a "Love 2".
It is worth noting that this collection includes a DVD Audio as well as the CD. For the most part they are identical except for the fact that the DVD Audio includes extended versions of "Revolution" and "Back in the U.S.S.R.". Perhaps these songs were shortened on the CD so they could also sell this as a single CD.
There is a terrific booklet that includes write-ups from both George and Gilles Martin. The packaging is "Digipak format" - I would have preferred a jewel case, but this shouldn't detract you from getting this collection. The most important thing is that this collection has the feel of a theatrical collection. For a soundtrack, you want to capture the essence of the show - and "Love" clearly does. The Martins should be applauded for constructing a solid collection and keeping the Beatles legacy alive. Highly recommended.
Free Music Review: A Mash-Up Review (In the spirit of the Beatles' Love!)
Hit: 5 Stars
(Taken from reviews originally written in the 1960's by Tony Palmer, John Mendelsohn and William Mann)
Compiled, rearranged and enhanced by Me
"If there is still any doubt that Lennon and McCartney along with George Harrison are the greatest songwriters since Schubert, then today - with the publication of the Beatles new double LP- should surely see the last vestiges of cultural snobbery and bourgeois prejudice swept away in a deluge of joyful music making, which only the ignorant will not hear and only the deaf will not acknowledge. Called simply Love, it's wrapped in a bright yellow cover which is adorned with the song titles and those four red silhouettes, silhouettes which for some still represent the menace of long haired youth, for others the great hope of a cultural renaissance and for others the desperate, apparently endless struggle against cynical so-called betters.
"Come Together" is John Lennon very nearly at the peak of his form; twisted, freely-associative, punful lyrically, pinched and somehow a little smug vocally. Breathtakingly recorded (as is the whole album), with a perfect little high-hat-tom-tom run by Ringo providing a clever semi-colon to those eerie shooo-ta's, Timothy Leary's campaign song is placed near the end of the album in grand fashion indeed.
George's vocal, containing less adenoids and more grainy Paul tunefulness than ever before, is one of many highlights on his "Something," some of the others being more excellent drum work, a dead catchy guitar line, perfectly subdued strings, and an unusually nice melody. Both his and Joe Cocker's version will suffice nicely until Ray Charles gets around to it.
"Drive My Car/The Word/What You're Doing" lead us from there into a dreamy John number, "Gnik Nus," in which we find him singing for the Italian market, words like amore and felice giving us some clue as to the feel of this reminiscent-of-"In My Room" ballad sung backwards.
George Harrison's "Within You Without You/Tomorrow Never Knows" carries the manner of Indian music farther into pop than ever before though the tune of the song is recognizably mixolydian; there are hints of Indian atmosphere in some of the other songs (mostly by Lennon and McCartney.)
Psychedelia can be diagnosed in the fanciful lyric and intriguing asymmetrical music of "Lucy In The Sky," as well as in the sound effects of "Strawberry Fields Forever", and the hurricane glissandi of "A Day In The Life" which has been banned by the BBC for its ambivalent references to drug taking-though if anything on the record is going to encourage dope it is surely the "tangerine trees and marmalade skies" and the "girl with kaleidoscope eyes" in "Lucy In The Sky" which contains none of these woosh noises.
That the Beatles can unify seemingly countless musical fragments and lyrical doodlings into a uniformly wonderful suite, as they've done on side two, seems potent testimony that no, they've far from lost it, and no, they haven't stopped trying.
No, on the contrary, they've achieved here the closest thing yet to Beatles freeform, fusing more diverse intriguing musical and lyrical ideas into a piece that amounts to far more than the sum of those ideas. "Here Comes the Sun," for example, would come off as quite mediocre on its own, but just watch how John and especially Paul build on its mood of perky childlike wonder. Like here, in "Because," is this child, or someone with a child's innocence, having his mind blown by the most obvious natural phenomena, like the blueness of the sky. Amidst, mind you, beautiful and intricate harmonies, the like of which the Beatles have not attempted since "Free As A Bird."
Then, just for a moment, we're into Ringo's "Octopus's Garden," which seems like a daydream of an underwater fantasy. Allowed to remain pensive only for an instant, we're next transported, via Paul's "Lady Madonna" with boogie-woogie piano in this happy paean to the glories of motherhood: "Lady Madonna, Children at your feet, wonder how you manage to make ends meet..."
And then, before we know what's happened, we're into George's melancholy "While My Guitar Gently Weeps" a gentle ballad on par with the greatest of the Lennon/ McCartney songbook. A perfect epitaph for our visit to the world of Beatle daydreams: "I look at the world and I notice it turning..." And just for the record, John's going to inform us that "All You Need Is Love".
Any of these songs is more genuinely creative than anything currently to be heard on pop radio stations, but in relationship to what other groups have done lately LOVE is chiefly significant as constructive criticism, a sort of pop music master class examining trends and correcting or tidying up inconsistencies and undisciplined work, here and there suggesting a line worth following. The new exploration is the showband manner of "All You Need Is Love" and the "Sgt. Pepper's Reprise", and its interval song, "Being For The Benefit Of Mr. Kite." These three give a certain shape and integrity to the two sides, and if the unity is slightly specious the idea is, I think, new to pop song LPs, which are usually unconnected anthologies, and it is worth pursuing. Sooner or later some group will take the next logical step and produce an LP which is a pop-song -cycle, a Tin Pan Alley Dichterliebe. Whether or not the remains of Schumann and Heine turn in their graves at this description depends on the artistry of the compiler.
I'd hesitate to say anything's impossible for George and Giles Martin after listening to LOVE the first thousand times, and the others aren't far behind. To my mind, they're equatable, but still unsurpassed."
Free Music Review: George and Giles Martin: Genius
Hit: 5 Stars
This is long.
The following is a review of the new CD+DVD-Audio release of The Beatles "LOVE". The album was compiled as the soundtrack for the Cirque du Soliel program, "LOVE", at the Mirage Hotel and Casino, Las Vegas.
Hello!
What to say in the face of pure genius?
First there is the genius of the original material.
Then there is this new, amazing mix by George and Giles Martin. After listening all the way through several times in the 5.1 DTS mix, I BEG THEM to do a 5.1 mix on DVD for the full catalog. This leaves one final accounting of the material in today's state-of-the-art technology by its originating producer. Please, please, please! Our kids and grandkids need this even more than we.
Gentlemen, however did you keep track of this music, of each phrase, each effect? Your headaches at the end of each day must have been massive as you built each mix. How did you remember that the keys for such different pieces of music like "Goodnight" and "Octopus's Garden" matched so perfectly? How did you make me listen so closely again to music so firmly imprinted on my soul that I could sing it from a coma?
You have "Octopus's Garden" playing in three front speakers and the sound effects of "Yellow Submarine" playing in the two rear speakers-- and it works brilliantly. Of course they would see the Octopus's Garden from the Submarine!
Then there is the jarring sound of the ambulance going from left to right for Eleanor Rigby/Julia. And I cried because suddenly John Lennon's mother, Julia, died before my ears, having been run down while crossing the street.
Then there's the joy of hearing Henry the Horse dance the waltz AROUND ME in "Being for the Benefit of Mr. Kite", with "She's So Heavy" and "Helter Skelter" blended together to punctuate its end. It's so psychedelic I can see a Walrus singing "Goo Goo Ga-joob" to me in FULL SURROUND SOUND, and not that artificial stereo that comes 3/4s of the way through the original. "Blue Jay Way" mixed with "Nowhere Man", and the key is perfect. EREH SEMOC EHT NUS GNIK! Indeed!
Three songs were real treats for me.
The first was "Strawberry Fields Forever". It begins with Lennon and guitar, which I've heard before on bootleg tapes. Then the Martins add one instrument at a time until, finally, we hear the original. They show us instrument by instrument how the original sound image was built. Absolutely brilliant.
The second is the mix of "Within You, Without You/Tomorrow Never Knows". The rhythm track is from "Tomorrow", and the lyrics track and drum are from "Within". The Martins made me listen to this again for the first time -- really listen. And I realized that they are, indeed, the same song-- in key structure and meaning, coming from the same SOURCE, and that we need not fear death because we come from and will return to that SOURCE, too.
The third wiped me out emotionally (well, a few did, actually).
"While My Guitar Gently Weeps", may be the most beautiful cut on the album. I don't believe it is from a Beatles recording session, but may be wrong. It is far slower than the White Album cut, without Clapton's work. The strings are lush and a very somber Harrison sings a very edgy verse not on the original:
I look from the wings/
At the play your are staging/
While my guitar gently weeps/
As I'm sitting here/
Doing nothing but aging/
Still my guitar gently weeps.
And of course he doesn't age any longer. And when that thought flashed through my mind, I lost it. I'm still in mourning it seems.
I used to laugh, giggle, imitate, emulate, and do my best to figure out those bizarre eight-finger guitar chords from the music charts in that big black Beatles anthology book from the 1970s. And now I mourn. I cry to John Lennon singing harmony with himself on "Because", unaccompanied by anything but bird song., because... well, you know why. We will never hear new fruit from his soul's garden again until, one day, we transition too. The same for George, whose music I've come to love more and more as I, too, do nothing but age.
They framed my life's picture with their music until part of me died on December 8, 1980. Another part of me died on November 29, 2001, a few short weeks after, well, after you know.
From Johnny and the Moondogs; to the Silver Beatles and Stuart Sutcliffe's brain hemorrhage following the Hamburg beating; to Pete Best's firing from the band and Richard Starkey's hiring; to "My Bonnie" with Tony Sheridan; to Brian Epstein's amazing ear, persistence, and sexual infatuation with John; to Ed Sullivan and America; to Cyn being left behind at Paddington Station and a child's abandonment by his celebrity father; to Yoko; to Jane Asher's heave-ho and the Linda Eastman development; to Maureen's exit; to Patty leaving George for Eric; the breakup; rumors of reunion; to Barbara; to Olivia and Dhanni; to Ram; Band on the Run; Mind Games; The Greatest; All Things Must Pass; Bangladesh; Double Fantasy; to Mark David Chapman's gunshots on a mid-fall night in New York; to Michael Abram's knife running red; to Linda's death on a ranch in Arizona; to a new marriage and child; a cancer ending in ashes poured into the Ganges; and an ugly divorce, we come back to the one truth as valid today as when the great prophets preached it and the Beatles, and what is a prophet but a poet, sang it in 1967:
All You Need is Love!
It's a day in the life. And what a day!
Goodbye!
Free Music Review: Hey, at least it's something different
Hit: 5 Stars
Was I skeptical? No doubt. But I was interested, primarily because of the people involved - namely Sir George and Giles Martin. Also, the fact that they were releasing a 5.1 DVD Audio version intrigued me.
So, the result? Well, there is some mish-mosh that is pretty disorienting, but there are also some interesting mixes that point out what a good remix/remaster would do for the Beatles' catalog (will that EVER happen?).
At any rate, I think the 5.1 version is something special for true Beatles fans. To hear these revisions is exhilerating if sometimes disorienting. In fact, the opening is VERY disorienting. One hears the wildlife sounds from Across the Universe (I think)and then comes Because, which we've already heard in this vocals-only form, but which now disobeys meter to cast the lines out in a very disconnected fashion. I actually thought my DVD player was messing up. That's only the beginning. Get Back begins with the opening chord to A Hard Day's Night, then abruptly moves into the drum and guitar solo from The End, which finally segues into Get Back, albeit with extra drums.
I know they'll be endless commentary (and controversy) about tampering with the Beatles' songs in this manner. I just kept a positive attitude and enjoyed the aural soundscape. Only occasionally did it turn into a cacaphony, and even then I was challenged by identifying which track each of the different sounds originally came from. Some sounds are easy to identify, some are really difficult. Like the guessing game we played with the video for Free As A Bird, it can be fun, exasperating and certainly distracting.
My suggestion to any Beatle fan is to buy this, but absolutely buy the version with the 5.1 DVD Audio disc. The swirl of sound is so much more effective and aurally fun, and it's just easier to separate and identify all the disparate sounds.
There are some high points and low points worth mentioning.
First the wonderful separation on the songs. This is the first time I've heard the high octane twin-guitar attack on Revolution with the guitars separated out between the channels. WOW! Or how about the separation of bass and rhythm guitar on Back In The U.S.S.R? That song has always been a mess of a mix, but this brings out every instrument clear as a bell. The downside of both of those mixes, however, is the fact that both are edited; we don't get the complete version of either song.
Many of the songs receive serious edits, and I hate to hear that, but, on the other hand, we get to hear more songs with this treatment. I Am The Walrus is a real aural treat, and Strawberry Fields gets my vote as best edit. It's a brilliant job of fusing a demo tape, an early take and (part of) the finished master into a seamless whole that actually stands as a "song". Also the Within Without You/Tomorrow Never Knows pastiche is VERY interesting, particlulary how it segues into Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds. Bizarre, yes. Disorienting? Yes. Fascinating? You Bet!!!
If you are a skeptical Beatles fan, I don't blame you. We've had much to be skeptical about regarding the way the Beatles' catalog has been treated. But my advise is overcome your skepticism and give yourself a treat. There's not much Beatles music that is available in 5.1 (none, in fact, unless you put on your Yellow Submaring DVD and just listin to the music. I've actually done that, but the long passages of time without music and various sound effects that play as part of the soundtrack make it a tough audio-only experience). So, here you have a chance to receive a guided tour through some of the the Beatles' multi-track tapes, lovingly and well-meaningly put together by the guy that committed all those sounds to tape all those years ago. And he's smart enough to know his 80 year old ears needed help, so he brought in his son, which was obviously a good choice.
Ah, go on, treat yourself. It will, for a while, take your mind off the fact that we will pass another holiday season without the loving remastering that is due the Beatles entire catalog. Happy Christmas.
Free Music Review: Stop whining and LOVE it for what it is!
Hit: 5 Stars
LOVE, totally amazing, it's truly exiting to listen to, I quite literally can't believe my ears!
As stated in the cd's booklet, this was originally conceived of by George Harrison and Guy Lalibere for Cirque du Soleil. George Martin and his son Giles remixed a couple dozen songs for the show and it has now been put it out as an album. It's absolutely incredible, like listening to a totally new album. Song after song comes out with an energy and brilliance that doesn't quit all the way through.
I've been a Beatles fan since I was a baby, as my older brothers had their albums and I had the opportunity to grow up listening to them since I was born, and I've never heard their music like this before. Imagine listening to Sgt Pepper for the first time and you get the idea. The crispness of the instruments is startling, esspecially Revolution, which actually made me shout "WOW!" when I heard the distortion with clarity.
George Martin is an absolute genius and if there was ever any doubt before who the fifth Beatle was, there can be none any longer! Not that there ever was, but now it's written in stone.
It sounds so good and so fresh that I was completely blown away. You have to hear it to understand, the way they mixed the songs completely catches you by surprise, even with the song line-up in front of you. I kept wondering how they were going to transition from early songs to later ones and back, yet every time, it seemed completely natural, as if that's how it was meant to be.
If you consider that I have had dozens of bootlegs of Beatles music over the years, heard most of the material released on the Anthology albums years before it was officially available, and even made several mixes of their music for my own listening pleasure, you may realize that I am not just some off the wall, crazed Beatle fan who is happy to hear something new. In fact, it's not new, just the way it's mixed and presented is new. But it is done with such imagination, such creativity and expertise, I can't say enough about it. George Martin did add one thing that was not from the original Beatle recordings, he scored the acoustic version of "While My Guitar Gently Weeps", from Anthology, with a nice string arrangement that sounds like it could just have easily been done in 1968 had they chosen to use that version for the White Album. As a life-long, die-hard Beatles fan, I can honestly say that there isn't one second of this creation that offended me. The Beatles were the original experimentors in rock music and George Martin was responsible for a great deal of it. Just read a few books about the recording sessions and you will realize that there is nothing unusual about what has been done on this cd, except that we now have the technology to realize our dreams. Think back to what Martin did to create the original version of "Strawberry Fields" and it all follows suit. In fact, he did it again with the new mix of that very same sone, editing it with take 1 and combining them just as flawlessly as the original, but in a different spot. It goes on to include other song snippits, while maintaining the drum track and fits perfectly with "Hello Goodbye". Listen to the background of "Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds"; it knocked my socks off!
I wonder if those who have never heard most of the Beatles music will be able to appreciate just how different and refreshing it is to hear this mix is. I wonder if they will understand how much work had to be done, how meticulous the Martins had to be to get it the way it is. There is no question in my mind that the Martins will share the Producer of the Year award and this album will be at the very least nominated for album of the year, and it should win, though I have to admit I am not up on all the new albums these days. But knowing what I know, and having heard all of these songs many times over and over in my life, this cannot simply be written off as another "Best Of" collection of Beatles songs. It is completely different, completely new and one of the most enjoyable music listening experiences in many years. It is a magnificent work of art!
JJ