Beatles at the Beeb Question

The songs on the Beatles at the Beeb are mastered from all sorts of different sources, original BBC mono tape, off the air reel to reel, transcription records and probably a few more sources.
Does anyone know which original mono tapes still exist? I hear rumours that some have been discovered after ATB came out.
Which were the ones used on the disc?
Are there better sources for sound quality out there? (bootlegs?)
Keep Your Hands Off My Baby is particularly rough but that lends a certain charm.

 

There have been better versions found recently and have shown up on Internet bootlegs and on the Beatles Mp3 newsgroups. A lot of the old transcriptions are now obsolete.

I don't have the details to use in front of me, but yes indeed better tapes have been found. About 1/4 of the Beeb 2D is now obsolete, and more material has been found.

 

...which leads us to wonder why they didn't use these improved sources for the 2001 reissue.

 

You realize a TON of Beatles BBC shows are "complete" (have been for years) and some have been found to complete other incomplete's.

It would boggle your mind to find just how many shows and how much material is available for Beatles @ the Beeb. Now, great performance, sound quality, relevance... that's another bag.

Seriously, Capitol could just do a Vol. 2 to make things easy. Trying to put something like that through might be hard, as I don't think all involved saw the profits from that package, as they'd hoped.

Many fans were dissapointed in the track listings, even worse off than the Anthologys.

Honestly, fans are more interested in other unseen material on film and CD. BBC sessions, complete and in very high quality are better seen in trading circles and on the Internet. Trust me on that.

 

I always heard that private tapes recorded off the radio and the subsequent bootlegs are the source of all or nearly all the avalible BBC material. The BBC destroyed all their original tapes along time ago.

While EMI/Apple decry the existence and profiteering in Beatles bootlegs they have no problem in copying the BBC bootlegs, releasing them themselves, and cashing in. If it wasn't for bootlegging and bootleggers this stuff wouldn't be around in the first place.

So f---ing hypocritical, IMHO.

I think we are at the point were the unreleased Beatles recordings should be considered important historical audio material that should be publicly avalible. I personally see them as equivalent to the working sketchbooks of Michelangelo or some other great artist.

 

You are correct. The source for at least some of the material on the officially released BBC set was the Great Dane box.

 

Keep Your Hands Off My Baby in particular sound much better on collectors CDR's than the official release. I'm not sure if it's a different source or if it's because it was not no-noised. I don't have the official release anymore to compare but I'm pretty sure that Keep You Hands was also edited and/or looped on the official release.

Chris

 

If you listen closely to "Keep Your Hands..." you can hear an edit when John starts singing. Why, I don't know. I think part of the song selection was that they wanted to use all of the remaining tapes in the Beeb archives, even if they weren't as interesting as some of the bootlegged material. Incredibly short sighted point of view on the BBC's part, to destroy some historically important stuff just to save the cost of a tape.....

 

True, but there were a couple of cases on Live At The BBC where EMI found tapes that had never been bootlegged, the whole "Dear Whack" intro for example.

 

Sckott,
What details are you referring to and where can I find them?
Thank you
John

 

Rich,
Again can you reveal your sources. I'm really curious to find out more.
What does the Great Dane sound like and overall how does it compare to the official (heavily no-noised) release??
Thanks everyone.
John

 

The Great Dane set is from a varity of sources, so the quality varies from show to show.

 

Exactly, and a large part of the GD set has been bested since then.

-D

 

True but the book alone makes it a worth well purchase.

 

IIRC, the booklet was reprinted in at least one of the recent upgrades (none of which I can hope to keep track of).

-D