The Beatles - Sgt. Pepper's 50th Anniversary (Content, Sound Quality & Discussion Thread Only!)

Hey' I can dream.

 

I don't think that's accurate, tho, is it? When the Beatles mono and stereo sets were released in 2009, each sale of a box set counted as ONE unit sale on the Billboard charts -- not as 11 unit sales (mono set) or 14 unit sales (stereo).

For example, the Beatles Bible has the first week chart sales of the 2009 reissues and both the mono and stereo sets are counted separately, each set as ONE sale:

Anyone know for sure?

 

Something's coming...

 

I wish we'd gotten the remix on CD in the box set.

 

Back up above it was said that reviewers would not criticise Giles or the Sgt.Pepper remix (and therefore face the wrath of Beatles fans). I don't tend to think this is true as the reviews of the 1+ dvd / blu-ray sets a couple of years ago were very divided indeed, to say the least (quite rightly in my view as they botched up a lot of technical things such as de-interlacing etc.). I think the reviews for the Pepper remix this time were unanimous in their praise only because they recognised what a good job had been done overall. There was actually not a lot to complain about!

 

I can't access that Hey Bulldog clip on my phone here. Anyone care to say what it is? Is it a teaser of some kind? Thanks.

 

Unless I'm missing something it was just the normal clip, or one of the edits already available. Nothing to say that something is in the works.

 

I think most of us can say that "Pepper 50" especially with the big box set exceeded all expectations..................

 

Not to me. Pretty box and cool outtakes. But the remix is a fail imo.

 

Sorry, the site didn't work properly

 

I wonder if Pepper 50 is driving some of the interest in the back catalog. Have sales of Abbey Road gone up since the Pepper 50 hoopla? Or have they remained constant? I also wonder to what extent the previous fan releases drove continued interest in all things Beatles. Of course, any sales are good, they don't have to sell into perpetuity. It's just part of the ongoing business of monetizing intellectual property assets.

 

Especially since we weren't expecting it !

 

I don't know if Abbey Road got pulled up by Pepper. But I recently saw an article of top vinyl sellers this year and was surprised that Abbey Road was in the top 10.

 

Yes, that one had been my favorite Beatles "celebration set" until Pepper came along. Now they are both up at the top, side by side, just as they were in terms of release. It's definitely a cloud nine experience (pun unintended) having such beautiful and colorful sets devoted to these two projects. Oh wait, that feeling should be reserved for a Temptations box set...

 

To give a small current insight for the US:

Last week 'Pepper' still sold 7,100 copies, 'Abbey Road' did 1,707, '1' did 1,429, the rest unknown (too little to make the stats).
The week before respectively 8,555 copies, 1,990 copies, and the rest unknown.

And this is 6 weeks after release, so this difference was more, and will gradually be less.

A random snapshot from before the 'Pepper' announcement, February 2, 2017:

#153 - Abbey Road - 1,616
#198 - 1 - 1,344

And February 9, 2017:

#168 - Abbey Road - 1,636

So 'Pepper' wasn't selling this good by default before, and in this case the other album sales stayed constant.

The following is not very representative, since this is over the first 6 months of 2017 (so 5 months without 'Pepper' re-release, 1 month with), but for what it's worth, BuzzAngle Music reported the following:

Vinyl sales, #5 'Abbey Road' with 19,625, #8 'Sgt. Pepper' with 17,699.

#16 artist over total consumption (albums, singles, streams): 342,779 album sales, 802,132 song sales, 446,634,717 audio streams. The only defunct artists in the top 25, the last album with new music being from 1970, the next on the list Eminem with the last album being from 2013, rest of the list all from 2015-2017.

#8 in the list by album sales list with the earlier mentioned 342,779. The next on the list with no current album out Elvis Presley at #17 with 229,481 sales, and Michael Jackson at #18 with 228,243 units.

Source: http://www.buzzanglemusic.com/wp-content/uploads/BuzzAngle-Music-2017-Mid-Year-U.S.-Report.pdf (PDF-alert)

 

This is from 1+, no?

 

I also saw an article that Hey Bulldog was being played as naiseum on Sirius XM and "no one knew why."

Maybe they hired Geoff Baker back to do publicity?

 

Listen here, good folks of the "Steve Hoffman '...MY OPINION MATTERS..' Music Forums" [I understand the irony of that particular re-purposing; because I too will shortly express an opinion-- but the differentiation being that I'd not care if people would agree or disagree; because the natural inclination of members on this chat-board is to harbor sparse and deviated, but reasonable, conclusions, and then debate them... sometimes not always with rationality]. Some of our audiophilic-connoisseurs have concerned that these newer-remixes do not sound 'lifelike' and aren't representative of the original-recordings/performances; but that was itself an inadvertent intention when creating the remixes. To further these conclusions, and test its fundamental/underlying-logic; the original mono-mixes (which these newer-remixes were created from, almost as somewhat of a template) aren't 'lifelike' either. Would anyone in their right mind for once believe that Lennon (on the original mono-mix of "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds") had sung with a heavily treated and 'flanged' voice and excessive amounts of compression, reverb and delay over it, and that the mono-mix in question was meant to aurally reproduce what Lennon would've sounded like inside your room? Lennon himself had oftentimes wanted his voice to be heavily altered on Beatle-records, and not to sound 'lifelike.' I understand that the practice of recording music was to itself bring the actual performance to you in a tangible-form and reproduce it for your own or others' listening pleasures, but "Sergeant Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band" was an intentional contrast from that school-of-thought. From tape-speed alteration (remember the original mono-mixes of "She's Leaving Home," "When I'm Sixty Four," "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds"), overdubbing/overlaying/xenochrony/tape-bouncing, direct-injection, ADT, delay, compression, etc. the obvious goal from the very start was to create a 'studio-piece/performance."

 

But hasn't Abbey Road been in the top 10 vinyl sales pretty much since the vinyl comeback?
It seems like each year, I've seen some statement about Abbey Road vinyl continuing to be a strong seller.

 

Yes, this is exactly my point. No remixing required for that.

 

For what it's worth, Mr. Emerick had been interviewed by Variety Magazine; in which he stated that the engineers worked on the original stereo-mix as much as they did on the original mono-mix, calling the opposing-notion "disrespectful," and false.

 

Brilliant album. So the reissue has B-sides already released on Airbag/How Am I Driving? Ok Computer is so perfect I'm not sure I'd want to hear any outtakes. Perhaps if they are a finished product that is different to the released version.

 

Interesting.

Haven't checked this thread for ages - any update on the "Penny Lane" promo mix?

 

'Airbag/How Am I Driving' is a 'Must Buy'. I played it a lot after buying and bought a second copy as a backup(if ever needed). Those are Great B-Sides to 'OK Computer'. If you do not have them, you should also track down a few earlier B-Sides, 'Talk Show Host'(Guitar Version) and 'Bishop's Robes' from The Bends and 'Killer Cars' from 'Pablo Honey'. I do think that the B-Side, 'Down is the New Up' from 'In Rainbows is their best B-Side, but could not stand the B-Sides of Electronic Blips & Beeps from 'Hail to the Thief' and 'Amnesiac', but YMMV, as those Songs is not my type of music(sounds like laptop created music which Yorke actually did on his Solo Album, 'The Eraser'). The mix of Electronics with Guitars on 'OK Computer' was perfect though to me, but mostly the Songs themselves are just Great.

 

Nothing new