Paul McCartney Archive Collection - 'Forthcoming Releases' [TBC]

Discussion in 'Music Corner' started by Thrillington, Mar 25, 2017.

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  1. Blimpboy

    Blimpboy Forum Resident

    Location:
    Walton, KY
    I get that. I saw it in person. No interest in the current music from the crowd. I'm just not as excited seeing a Beatles cover band live as most are.
     
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  2. supermd

    supermd Senior Member

    Location:
    San Jose, CA
    I think calling Paul McCartney a "Beatles cover band" is disrespectful.
     
  3. You’re not seeing a Beatles cover band, you’re seeing a Beatle!
     
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  4. For the Record

    For the Record Forum Resident

    Location:
    Ontario Canada
    Agreed. The misconception of the 1993 remasters sounding like CRAP is greatly exaggerated. Perhaps they don't sound AS good as other versions, but they are far, FAR from sounding like crap.
     
  5. drbryant

    drbryant Senior Member

    Location:
    Los Angeles, CA
    That’s right. Both the Flowers in the Dirt and Off the Ground Tours featured six or seven new songs every night. And again, it’s hard to fault him for playing Beatles numbers that had never been heard live before. On the 93 Tour, he was playing songs, like Drive My Car, We Can Work it Out, Penny Lane and Paperback Writer, choosing iconic Beatles songs (repeat: that had never been played before) over tracks from albums like Press to Play? Hard to complain.

    At this point, however, when he’s essentially scraping the bottom of the Beatles barrel (“All Together Now”?) I can certainly see the argument for incorporating more solo material into the set list.
     
  6. supermd

    supermd Senior Member

    Location:
    San Jose, CA
    I can see the argument, too. The "problem" with Paul McCartney is he is one of the greatest songwriters in history. He has more hits than any other artist, easily. Those "other artists" have a much easier time giving fans the hits and also some good, obscure solo material. With Paul, he could perform 3 concerts in a row with no duplicate songs and still have hits leftover. It's the ever-present challenge of trying to cater to BEATLES and hardcore, the latter of which make up a very small percentage of the audience. Personally, I would take a concert of only solo McCartney and love the hell out of it, but can you imagine how disappointed all the Beatles fans would be going to that concert? We may love a first-ever performance of "Riding To Vanity Fair" (wouldn't that be cool to see live?), but they would be bored to tears. "Where's 'Let It Be??'" Look, I get it, but, again, BEATLES.
     
  7. Disagree. There is a reason why they are detested on this forum—they sound awful. Do you like the swirling, pumping sound of NoNoise artifacts? Do you like bloated bass and jacked up treble? If so, then I guess The Paul McCartney Collection disks are for you.
     
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  8. Beatlened

    Beatlened Forum Resident

    Location:
    Dublin, Ireland
    Old man Paul playing Beatles songs does that band no favours. They split in their 20s and should remain eternally youthful. To see Macca croaking thru a live show is painful and damages 'the brand' more than putting Let It Be on DVD will ever do. George complained that Paul was putting himself out there as 'The Beatles' and he was right to complain . Paul had enough solo songs to put together a live show without referencing his hits from 50 years ago
     
  9. Trainspotting

    Trainspotting Senior Member

    Location:
    Los Angeles
    I seem to recall that the Ram remaster on the big box set scored even higher than Steve's DCC gold disc in a poll here.
     
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  10. daveidmarx

    daveidmarx Forem Residunt

    Location:
    Astoria, NY USA
    Or check out the Ultimate Archive version of Pipes Of Peace, where it was lifted from a mint condition 45! :righton:
     
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  11. adm62

    adm62 Senior Member

    Location:
    Ottawa, Canada
    Harsh, but fair
     
  12. daveidmarx

    daveidmarx Forem Residunt

    Location:
    Astoria, NY USA
    Put me in that very small minority as well. I saw him in 1990 and enjoyed the concert, but would've enjoyed it MUCH more had Paul cut the Beatle numbers to about 1/3 of what he'd played and instead did more solo tunes.
     
  13. Marry a Carrot

    Marry a Carrot Interesting blues gets a convincing reading.

    Location:
    Los Angeles
    Great. Could you name one of the many biographies that tell this story? Because when I type "McCartney II double album" into Google Books, I find several mentions of the double album but very little about how it ended up a single. Even the references to commercial concerns avoid attributing those concerns to any particular party.

    For example:

    "McCartney originally recorded over 20 tracks for a planned double album, but he eventually pared it down in order to release a more commercially viable single album." (The Words and Music of Paul McCartney: The Solo Years)

    "The original intention was for a double album. Among the unreleased tracks were 'All You Horseriders' (later included on the soundtrack of the MPL documentary, 'Blankit's First Show'), 'Blue Sway', 'You Know I'll Get You Baby', 'Bogey Wobble' and the bizarre 'Mr. H. Atom'." (McCartney Solo: See You Next Time)

    "Paul originally planned this as a double album with several additional songs, including "All You Horseriders," running more than 80 minutes; test pressings of that version were made." (The Beatles: The Ultimate Recording Guide)

    "McCartney II was originally meant to be a double album but was whittled down to a single disc for commercial, if not artistic, reasons." (Lennon and McCartney: Together Alone)

    "By the time he finished, McCartney had enough material to fill two records. When he decided to release it, though, this was trimmed to a single disc — with two leftovers turning up as B-sides to singles." (The End of the Beatles?)

    "Over 20 tracks were recorded for McCartney II so a double-album was originally planned, although all this was merely theoretical. Before deciding exactly what to do with the tracks, Wings set out at the beginning of 1980 on what was to be their final UK tour." (The Unknown Paul McCartney)
     
  14. For the Record

    For the Record Forum Resident

    Location:
    Ontario Canada
    I don't hear any of that on mine. I will admit the treble is a bit high on them though and that's about it.

    Is there a particular disc that I could listen to hear an example?
     
  15. jl151080

    jl151080 Senior Member

    Location:
    Bristol, UK
    This is just referring to posts MPL put on social media saying ‘x album was released x years ago today. What are your favourite tracks?’.
     
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  16. The “big box set” isn’t The Paul McCartney Collection Ram.
     
  17. daveidmarx

    daveidmarx Forem Residunt

    Location:
    Astoria, NY USA
    The first time I'd seen McCartney II mentioned as originally being a double album was an article in Goldmine in late '88/early '89. It was titled "The Lost McCartney Album", and was a rather in-depth look at the songs and specifically mentioned the track listing for the 2-LP test pressing.

    The following spring, bootlegs of this version began to appear. Also titled 'The Lost McCartney Album', the sleeve notes on the back were almost a verbatim crib from the Goldmine article, but a few humorous changes had been made.

    In 2001, the book 'Eight Arms To Hold You' by Chip Madinger and Mark Easter (long thought of as the solo Beatles "Bible") also mentioned the original 2-LP version, along with the track listing. Here is an excerpt from that book:

    [​IMG]
     
    Last edited: Jun 8, 2018
  18. leeroy jenkins

    leeroy jenkins Forum Resident

    Location:
    The United States
    I dig me some bloated bass then. The '93s sound fine to me. You have to take some of what is said on this forum with a grain of salt.
     
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  19. revolution_vanderbilt

    revolution_vanderbilt Forum Resident

    Location:
    New York
    Whatever plans or intentions to make a double album never seemed to have made it to the final stage.

    The acetates used for the bootlegs are not the final mixes. Aside from editing down songs, Paul did vocals for Summer's Day song, as well as additional vocals for Mr. H Atom with Twiggy. I figure that the double LP acetates were meant more for Paul's private use (what he would play for his friends who subsequently "convinced" him to release the album.)
     
  20. Here is a really bad offender:

    Listen to the intro of Oh Woman, Oh Why on either the 2012 remaster of Ram or the 1987 original CD issue of Wild Life. Listen to the snare hits and their reverb trails. Next, listen to it on the 1993 Paul McCartney Collection remaster of Ram. Hear how dead the snare hits sound? And notice what you don’t hear? The reverb trails! The NoNoise was so aggressively applied that it actually removed the reverb, “thinking” that it was tape hiss.

    Listen throughout the rest of the 1993 remaster, paying attention to how the cymbals sound (swishy, phasey, like low bit rate mp3) and listen to the fades at the end of the songs, how they sound muddy and phasey as if they are going underwater.
     
  21. I agree with that but these discs are BAD.
     
  22. drbryant

    drbryant Senior Member

    Location:
    Los Angeles, CA
    His 1990 shows in Tokyo consisted of 29 numbers, 16 of which were Beatles songs. Every one seemed pretty essential considering most had never been played live before. Not sure which one I would have cut.
     
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  23. daveidmarx

    daveidmarx Forem Residunt

    Location:
    Astoria, NY USA
    Let's start with Fool On The Hill. Not only was it played in 1979, the '89-'90 versions were far too bloated and lost the charm of the original arrangement. Got To Get You Into My Life had been played in '79 as well, so you can lose that one as well. The Long And Winding Road ('75-'76) and Let It Be ('79) can be dropped, as could Eleanor Rigby, which doesn't really work as a live song (especially with synth strings). Things We Said Today just seemed like such a random Beatle song to throw in.. Why not Too Many People or Helen Wheels instead?? So we cut out eight Beatle songs, and you still have Hey Jude, Yesterday, Can't Buy Me Love, the Golden Slumbers medley, Sgt. Pepper and a few others. Plenty of Beatle representation there, which would open the setlist to No More Lonely Nights, Listen To What The Man Said, Silly Love Songs, Take It Away, Junior's Farm, Goodnight Tonight or any other solo favorites.
     
  24. long gone john

    long gone john Forum Resident

    Location:
    Whitley Bay, UK
    I was at that recording. Queued all day to get to the front of the crowd. Great gig. Singing along to Mull of Kintyre in a huge venue full of Glaswegians in was one hell of an experience!
     
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  25. Thrillington

    Thrillington McCartney Scholar Thread Starter

    Location:
    Cardiff, Wales, UK
    Paul himself referenced the plans for a double lp in a promo interview with Paul Gambaccini that was distributed with media copies of the album:

    "Originally 'Darkroom' wasn't going to be on this album because we had to knock off about eight or nine tracks as at the beginning we had planned a double album then it came down to a single album...but I edited it down because I liked it, and now it's on the album."

    Regarding the decision to release it as an album:

    "In fact, I wasn't even thinking of it being an album until I got all the tracks together on a cassette in my car; it started to sound like an album."

    Eddie Klein mentions that it took at most two weeks to mix all the recordings, largely done by Paul, including short edit pieces for transitions between songs. It was at this point that "it was time to appraise all the material Paul had for an album" - was this when Paul's cassette was made?

    "Initially it was considered as a double album so I edited the songs together in a certain order on to four spools for sides 1, 2, 3 and 4. These were sent to the factory for vinyl pressings to be made, in order for Paul to get some idea of a finished product. Eventually it was decided to make it a single album and that some titles would require editing down."

    After the editing, Paul then decided that 'Summer's Day Song' needed vocals, which were recorded at Replica Studio, and the song, or final album (unclear), was mixed that same afternoon.

    "At the end it was decided to make it a single album so a number of the recordings became outtakes and have not been released before, though some were used as B-sides to various singles. The final album was given to Malcolm Davies at Pye Studios in London to make the finished acetate production masters" - these would then of course be sent to EMI's record factory for commercial pressings.
    All of the above was taken from the McCartney II deluxe book. It isn't clear exactly why the decision was made to move to a single album - whether it was Paul's decision after hearing the double acetate, or indeed EMI requested it (as naturally he'd be reluctant to mention that in the book!).

    Hope this is insightful.
     
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