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

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

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  1. omikron

    omikron Avid contributor to Paul McCartney's bank account

    Location:
    Lexington, KY
    I love me some solo McCartney but I don't want to live in a world where he's "cutting" Beatles songs THAT HE WROTE AND ORIGINALLY SUNG from his setlist. Their his songs and he can play them if he wants. There's four generations of people in those audiences. Can't please them all so go for the bread and butter. People pay exorbitant prices to see an ex-Beatle playing his Beatles songs. Period. We solo fans love it and are also happy to hear the solo stuff we hear. I am NEVER complaining walking out of a Paul concert.

    Honestly I like wondering what the one or two little teases will be each time. He usually puts in a never-played-live song or two in each tour, or at least some not heard in ages. Flaming Pie, Temporary Secretary? Those are some pretty out there tracks to work into the setlist. Nice treats.
     
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  2. PaulMcCartneysGhost

    PaulMcCartneysGhost Forum Resident

    Location:
    Liverpool
    I think In Spite Of All The Danger should definitely be cut from the setlist
     
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  3. Brian from Canada

    Brian from Canada Forum Resident

    Location:
    Great White North
    When it comes to the 1989 tour, I have to disagree on some of those — because of the context behind the tour.

    Paul notes in Put It There that he took longer on Flowers In The Dirt because he didn't want to end up in America somewhere, playing songs he didn't really like. As fans, we know that's a dig on "Stranglehold," a single which was played in America and he wasn't so pleased with it — but it may not be the only thing he's thinking of: we also know now that Paul wasn't happy with the way the 1979 tour was playing out, and the set list didn't seem to generate much enthusiasm because he had to go back to bigger hits for rehearsal before heading to Japan. If he had continued the 1980 to America, playing songs he didn't like, to get lukewarm reception to songs like "Only Love Remains," it would have hurt his reputation — and in 1989, when Paul was not only being framed as a lesser to Lennon but as a poor seller compared to Harrison, he didn't want to risk the humiliation as well. He wanted it to be a success.

    And he knew what could be a success thanks to the Prince's Trust show, where he not only played "Get Back" and "I Saw Her Standing There," but threw in a last minute performance of "Long Tall Sally" which was not rehearsed and went down really well. Moreover, The Beatles' arrival on CD in 1987 was extremely well promoted and received, all the way through Past Masters in 1988 — which was when he was beginning to think of potential songs for the set list — while the greatest hits package All The Best! failed to score high in the charts, and his solo catalogue was making a much slower push to CD as a result. Note that of the songs you chose, Give My Regards To Broadstreet was hard to find in 1988, Speed Of Sound was not available on CD, and "Goodnight Tonight" was omitted from any UK CD until 1993.

    That's why the Wings component essentially ends at 1973: as far as Paul is concerned, the 1975-1979 material (save for "Coming Up") wasn't as strong. "Ebony And Ivory" was a major hit off a very well respected record, while everything after is ignored — including the Wings-intended material like "Take It Away" and the Broadstreet tracks.

    Whereas on the opposite side of the equation, he enjoyed playing those Revolver tracks again for Broadstreet. Elvis Costello encourages him to bring back the Hoffner, and it lists "Things We Said Today" on the side which he forgot about. He has Beatles songs that are beloved but never played, so that can be his challenge to himself… and he knows either consciously or subconsciously that he will succeed with most. The biggest risk is the Abbey Road medley alone. Every other song is a trusted hit; even when he trots out "PS Love Me Do," he knows that it's still got a Beatle truth to it.

    However, where I think we both can agree on — and in fact most of his devoted fan base — is the problem with the set list that follows after the 1989-1990 one. That, for me, is the one where the logic collapses because too much of the set list is repetition from the previous tour… especially the Unplugged mini-set. Why the heck would you be out there, plugging an album that's no longer in print, when you have a complete re-release of your solo albums that's pretty much getting ignored? Moreover, as tired as they were of Flowers In The Dirt, why not at least acknowledge that album?

    For me, the 1993 set list would have been far better had it been:
    Drive My Car / Coming Up / Looking For Changes / Another Day / All My Loving / My Brave Face / Peace In The Neighbourhood / Off The Ground / Let Me Roll It / Listen To What The Man Said / Robbie's Bit (Thanks Chet) / We Can Work It Out / Hope Of Deliverance / Michelle / Can't Buy Me Love (country version) / I Owe It All To You / Here There And Everywhere / Biker Like An Icon / Yesterday / Magical Mystery Tour / C'Mon People / The Long And Winding Road / My Love / Lady Madonna / Live And Let Die / No More Lonely Nights / Silly Love Songs / Paperback Writer / Penny Lane / Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band​
    with an encore of:
    Band On The Run / Birthday / Pipes Of Peace / Hey Jude​
    if only because it reduced the duplication to a handful of songs that he really loves from last tour and gives more balance to the rest of the catalogue.

    Thankfully, even with the relatively poor showing of Wingspan, Paul now surrounds himself with band members who think early Wings material is really good. We know James is also a fan of the period because Paul mentioned James likes "Soily," a song he cringes when he hears the lyrics of. The reason we keep hearing songs like "All Together Now" seems to be Wix, who is very rooted in the later Beatles material: Wix mentions in 2010's book he wants to hear "Rocky Raccoon" but the other three all want to try "Hi Hi Hi."

    I don't think we'll ever get a set list that makes us — as the diehards — happy any more. 2002's failure of "C Moon" certainly didn't help. I'm personally glad we at least get a representation of Wings that goes beyond the big three or four cuts, but I really wish this band would head into the 1976-1979 material more; imagine what they could do with "Spin It On" or "I've Had Enough"… and let Wix actually try playing a complicated keyboard unit like "Silly Love Songs" or "With a Little Luck." Perhaps then we might get to hear "Pipes Of Peace" or "Take It Away" — or even later material that they could try like "Mistress And Maid" (which would be perfect of #MeToo), "Put It There" or even "Not Such a Bad Boy."
     
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  4. Brian from Canada

    Brian from Canada Forum Resident

    Location:
    Great White North
    It wouldn't have been EMI, it would have been Columbia… which is why I think the author (who's name I forget) was able to make such a supposition: Paul got a hefty signing bonus to leave EMI, and shortly thereafter the industry took a downturn, double album Rock And Roll was split into two, and George Harrison was finding around that period the same type of concern over his record Somewhere In England as well — so that it would make sense Columbia didn't want to release an album of experiments at a higher royalty rate when they paid for a hitmaker (only to get screwed in the US by having to include an extra single in the package anyway). It also helps to think about rejections when The McCartney Interview was pulled from shelves and production shortly after its release the same year.

    The one we know was never considered to be a double LP was Tug Of War, despite the War/Peace theme between the two albums. What could have been a double LP — and likely should have been — was Broadstreet, but by that time the labels were beginning to encourage edits on the record to make it fit. It's not the only record to do so; Billy Joel's Greatest Hits in 1985 uses suspicious edits to fit into a double LP length while David Bowie's Never Let Me Down also got tweaked for vinyl too.
     
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  5. Marry a Carrot

    Marry a Carrot Interesting blues gets a convincing reading.

    Location:
    Los Angeles
    That's quite a shift from "according to every biographer" to the supposition of one author whose name you forgot.

    It seems like we really don't know how McCartney II ended up a single album.
     
  6. Neil Anderson

    Neil Anderson Forum Resident

    Location:
    Portland, Oregon
    Plausible...also wonder if he had in mind the somewhat mixed reception to "Ram" and wanted to try something different.
     
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  7. daveidmarx

    daveidmarx Forem Residunt

    Location:
    Astoria, NY USA
    They were not "suspicious edits". They were the normal single edits.
     
  8. SixOClockBoos

    SixOClockBoos The Man On The Flaming Pie

    For anyone in the LA area, Amoeba Music has all four of the latest colored vinyl albums (as of last Tuesday). This record store called Canterbury Records in Pasadena had a few of the colored vinyl albums as well (as of Wednesday) and even the elusive RAM colored album.
     
  9. daveidmarx

    daveidmarx Forem Residunt

    Location:
    Astoria, NY USA
    While the Archive series as a whole sounds fantastic, there are a few anomalies which, although not as blatant as the example you've cited, do sound pretty bad. One off the top of my head is Kreen-Akrore. Granted, that's not a track that one normally listens to in ANY circumstance, but if you compare the Archive with, say the gold DCC disc, the noise reduction applied to the Archive is immediately apparent. The natural room ambience which you hear in spades on the DCC CD has been erased, leaving it unnatural sounding by comparison. Also (on the same disc), the final few moments of the fade of Maybe I'm Amazed have been lost due to an early fade on the Archive disc. Unfortunately, this carried over to the song's appearance on Pure McCartney as well.
     
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  10. drbryant

    drbryant Senior Member

    Location:
    Los Angeles, CA
    The argument is stronger on later tours. I wasn’t one of the chosen few who saw the 79 Tour(I don’t think more than 100,000people total saw that tour), and each of the songs you would cut were a thrill for me to hear in 1990.

    For people in Japan, unless you were at the Budokan in 1966, people were seeing Paul for the first time. There were no complaints except when he played “PS Love Me Do”, people were just . . . perplexed.
     
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  11. Lovealego

    Lovealego Senior Member

    Any other DCC comparisons to archives ?
     
  12. daveidmarx

    daveidmarx Forem Residunt

    Location:
    Astoria, NY USA
    How do you say, "What is this crap??" in Japanese??! :laugh:
     
  13. Frank

    Frank Senior Member

    You go take a leak. It's the universal translation of "What is this crap?"
     
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  14. drbryant

    drbryant Senior Member

    Location:
    Los Angeles, CA
    He debuted “PS Love Me Do” to a baffled crowd of 55,000, towards the end of his Japan tour in 1990. It was part of the encore, so no one left, but it felt awkward and sucked the energy out of the Tokyo Dome. To this day, you wonder what he and Phil Ramone were thinking. He ended up playing it eight more times after leaving Japan, before realizing that crowds didn’t care for his reworking of two classic tracks.. He replaced “PS Love Me Do” and the Russian album track with the “Mull of Kyntire” in Scotland, and with the “Lennon Medley” in all subsequent shows.
     
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  15. long gone john

    long gone john Forum Resident

    Location:
    Whitley Bay, UK
    I’m guessing that ‘what he was thinking’ was something along the lines of ‘this is the only pair of Beatles tracks that I own the publishing rights to, so I’m going flog them to death...’

    Not the greatest artistic decision!
     
  16. Thrillington

    Thrillington McCartney Scholar Thread Starter

    Location:
    Cardiff, Wales, UK
    A simple medley would have done fine, as opposed to that...musical abomination.
     
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  17. Paul H

    Paul H The fool on the hill

    Location:
    Nottingham, UK
    You just cut out most of the songs I enjoyed the most from that tour... But yes, I too was disappointed that he didn't do stuff like No More Lonely Nights and Listen to What the Man Said.
     
  18. freddiebell

    freddiebell Forum Resident

    Location:
    Wisconsin, USA
    I'd like to offer a dissenting viewpoint. I heard it live in Lexington, KY, and I thought it had a good vibe to it, an energy and a passion that were conspicuously absent from the overly electronic studio version. Robbie's guitar solo was quite engaging, and while admittedly it was odd to see McCartney standing there without an instrument, waving his arms to urge the crowd on as if Ringo fronting the All Stars, I nevertheless found it to be a welcome break from the usual (having also seen him earlier on the tour). And then there is the fact that, for a guy who has been accused of not being musically adventurous enough at that point in his career and for saying and doing the same things at every stop on the tour, he at least tried to do something different and unexpected. I give him credit for that. He certainly could have played it safe and made it easy on himself instead.

    I respect the fact that a lot of people don't care for the song. That's fine. But for my part I enjoyed it at the time, and I still do when I hear the live version that was released on the CD single. Maybe the vote is 1,000 against one in this case. But I'm fine with being the one and I stand by my thumbs-up for it, all considered. :righton:
     
  19. kevintee

    kevintee I’d rather be listening to McCartney

    Location:
    St. Louis, MO
    1000 against 2
     
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  20. jmxw

    jmxw Fab Forum Fan

    I love that he tries different things musically.

    I do not love that track.

    But I do love many, many other things he has tried... so... I would still encourage him to try and shake things up and experiment. Just don't do that one again... :shrug:
     
  21. Brian from Canada

    Brian from Canada Forum Resident

    Location:
    Great White North
    Eight Arms To Hold You states that the track was mixed by Ramone for a potential tribute album that never happened — meaning that the studio version, released in 1989 on the Japanese edition of Flowers In The Dirt was meant as a demo for someone else. With some reworking, it could have been a decent offering from one of the Hit Factory artists like Rick Astley, Kylie Minogue or Jason Donovan.

    That Paul pulled it out and performed it — to me at least — shows just how tired he was of the existing set list and wanted to try another Beatles cut… without having much to rely on. That may explain why The New World Tour introduced cuts from albums he hadn't pulled from (with the Beatles, Rubber Soul) more… as well as his desire to play a different set of cuts form the Fabs.

    Still no excuse for the lack of solo cuts, but there you go.
     
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  22. long gone john

    long gone john Forum Resident

    Location:
    Whitley Bay, UK
    I quite enjoy the live version of the track. Can happily live without hearing the studio version again any time soon.
     
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  23. revolution_vanderbilt

    revolution_vanderbilt Forum Resident

    Location:
    New York
    I think it was still meant for Paul to perform.
     
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  24. drbryant

    drbryant Senior Member

    Location:
    Los Angeles, CA
    It might not sound so bad if he had chosen a different song for an 80's dance version. But, "Love Me Do", as the first single, is pretty sacred ground to most fans, and the original recording of "P.S. I Love You" is just beautiful. I wish that he had tried it live (maybe with Ringo making a guest appearance - on maracas, of course). I just listened to it on youtube for the first time in forever - such a wonderful little song.

     
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  25. mrjinks

    mrjinks Optimistically Challenged

    Location:
    Boise, ID.
    And he looked awkward as hell singing (and clapping) with no instrument. I saw that in Seattle at the Kingdome. I'm 98% sure he even mentioned at the press conference that afternoon that it would be his next single - thank Krishna cooler minds prevailed!
     
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