The Beatles: The Days In Their Life [1981 30 LP Radio Show] - Quality/Content/Sound?

whilst browsing Red Trumpet's excellent site, came across this:

The Days In Their Life [30 LP Radio Show] (TM Special Products/Sonic Workshop LP)

THE BEATLES: The Days In Their Life
A thirty-hour chronology tracing the life of four musicians who had a dramatic effect on directions taken by others. The group that inspired and redefined the boundaries of contemporary music.

Below is the press release accompanying the set from TM Productions at the time of release in 1981:
"The Beatles: The Days In Their Life" is a 30-hour chronological study of the band that did more to change the scope of popular music than any other force of the 1960's.

During the first 24 hours of the special, every song ever recorded by The Beatles is played, including several numbers never released. Because the producers have gained access to the original EMI masters, some songs previously heard only in mono are now in stereo.

The final 6 hours of the show trace the direction each of The Beatles took after the band dis-banded in December 1970. All information is completely up-to-date as of the date of release in 1981.

"The Beatles: The Days In Their Life" includes hundreds of interviews with The Beatles themselves and their associates, many of which have never been heard.

While "The Beatles: The Days In Their Life" is 30 hours long and is designed to run as a blockbuster, the show may also be stripped into one-hour segments if so desired.

The Beatles: The Days In Their Life is a 30 LP set and comes with press release, cue sheets, highlights sheet, song listing, promo sheets.

All 30 LPs are m- except the following which are vg+ (Hours 6, 16 and 30). Three folders with various press releases, etc. (as above) are all in vg+ shape.

To purchase this item, review the options below. When you find the one you want, just click Add to Cart next to it! Here are the versions of this album you can buy:

Pre-Owned: Cover M-, Record/Disc M-; Definitions FAQ $999.00

...does anyone here own, and/or can elaborate on the quality, content and sound of this release?

would love to hear what fellow forum members think of this release...pretty steep price, but if it's worth it...

p.s. apologies if this set has been covered here before.

 

Two different radio stations I worked at in the early, mid 1980s ran the documentary. I was in charge of dubbing the LPs to 1/2 track reel to reel tapes for use on-air. It was an excellent program covering all of the Beatles EMI/Apple tracks. The documentary even covered the early days of Apple playing tracks from James Taylor, Mary Hopkins, Badfinger, Billy Preston, Radha Krishna Temple, etc. The vinyl was very quiet too, IIRC.

The hosts name was something like Ira Lipshin. I think the program was produced here in Canada.

 

hi miike,

thanks for the post - sounds like it was a great program...wonder what tapes and/or masterings the music was taken from...

...if the vinyl is very quiet too, looks like it may be a nice set in it's own right.

 

I remember listening (and taping it on horrible "Certron" tapes I bought at KMart) to this when I was 11 years old, spring 1982. All of these years later I remember it being a quality documentary that explored the Beatles story IN DEPTH, with interviews, every song played, including rarities, the Christmas fan club releases, songs written by the Beatles and recorded by others (even "Thingymubob" by the Black Dyke Mills Band). I don't remember any unreleased stuff though. Even into the solo years, the series touched on every solo album and played singles and even album cuts in some cases.

The whole thing filled 20 or so 90 minute Certrons.

 

Ah, memories... this was the show I taped — twice — and my source for all the Beatles songs I listened to (and nothing else) for pretty much all of '81. That was the beginning of my music mania, which continues to this day. Not a bad way to start, huh?

 

How Do You Do It, from the September '62 EMI session, was played.

 

You may remember better than me. I thought HDYDI was played on another radio show - the Sgt. Pepper one in 1987 (?) in which the Beach Boys "Caroline No" was also played, thus introducing me to THAT world. Perhaps it was played on both shows.

The Days In Their Lives was so comprehensive (especially if you were a newbie to The Beatles) that I was exposed to a lot of their music, particularly solo stuff, that I otherwise wouldn't have heard. After that show I knew I had to get stuff like "33 1/3" (the show played "Crackerbox Palace") and "Extra Texture" (from which they played both "You" and "This Guitar - Can't Keep From Crying"). Yes, the memories. Listening to that 30 hour radio show for days on end, collecting obscure Beatles albums, and not meeting girls. Sweet....

 

They ran this show on a Toronto radio station right around the time of the Anthology releases back in 1995. It's an excellent program with most tracks in good stereo and a wealth of information, interviews and related material. The fact that it's a radio program does not make it an audiofile release but if you believe you would enjoy a great celebration of the Beatles legacy, buy it.
Bob.

 

I remember this special ran in mid-1981 over a period of several days on New York's WYNY-FM/97.1. One of their advertisers was a place called "Stereo & Video Warehouse" (on 57th Street and 7th Avenue) that, I.I.N.M., no longer exists. There was a whole controversy at the time due to the "home taping" imbroglio and its being scapegoated for the slide in record sales then, in those pre-MTV days (that channel got started, I believe, a few months after this radio show aired), as that establishment offered (for sale, of course) tape recorders for people to record that show over the air. But the retrospective itself was very informative and educational. A few years after that, it was on the now late, lamented WCBS-FM/101.1.

 

...has it been documented anywhere as to what sorts of tapes were used for compiling such a mammoth program / LP set? UK, US, original masters, -nth generations, Dexter-ized, etc. etc.?

 

Just doing a search on the net for the box set, as I own a copy (minus hours 5 and 8, which I did get a cassette dub from Ira Lipson some years ago) I found this forum. I worked at a station that ran it some years ago, then say gathering dust in a cabinet, I bugged station management for it, seems like my efforts are vindicated!

Here's what I know.....

while being pressed in the US, under the RKO label, with TM tied in, This was a canadian production, sold to US syndicators through Sonic Workshop In Toronto. David Pritchard, who worked for years with CHUM toronto, and was working with them at the time of the production, produced this mammoth tribute to the beatles. On my copy, David does the intro and extro bumpers into the segments, with Ira Lipson doing the bulk of the narration. A very nice man, as like I said, through the internet some years ago, provided me a cassette copy of the missing hours.

On a separate note, speaking of Canadian Beatles Productions, "Ringo's Yellow Submarine" which came out around the same time, was produced by Doug Thompson for telemedia network radio in Toronto, but sold to ABC Watermark for International Syndication. Doug went to england to record with ringo the series.

but I digress....

given the time period, the disc quality is excellent, high quality pressings, and segment length/side would run 22-25 minutes, which keeps the quality high, as everyone knows the more minutes you try to cram in on vinyl, the pooere the quality. audio source quality varies, you'll hear clicks and pops from the beatles xmas records, but the music is very clean, likely bought fresh pressings for production. I have noticed some sibilance on the voice tracks from Ira in some cases, but no big deal.

overall, a fantastic documentary for the hard core beatle fan. I was still working in radio toward the mid 90's, when the special came up on the satellite feed schedule in canada, through broadcast news syndication channels, but was cancelled for some reason. maybe there was no interest to run it in canada back then?

 

THE BEATLES: The Days In Their Life
A thirty-hour chronology tracing the life of four musicians who had a dramatic effect on directions taken by others. The group that inspired and redefined the boundaries of contemporary music.


How ironic, just this morning my son called and while we were talking he remembered that I had ran this program on a station I programmed in Knoxville, Tn. and then gave the program to him. Which he sold in mid 82 for 50 bucks and he was wondering what it would bring on ebay today. I laughed and said based on some of the junk I've seen overpriced that there was no telling how much it might bring. This is the first time that he and I had spoken of this in at least 20 years. As memory serves, "Great Program".

 

It's worth 50 bucks....LOL!!!

There's a guy on Ebay, just started the bids at 3k....a bit much to say the least, anything else i've found online puts it in the upper 100's, maybe 1k. a set of reels just got posted for 30k....yeah...right!!!

in any event, it's gravy to me if it's actually worth anything. I got it for nothing, saved from the trash, like a lot of syndicated stuff I have, records and CDs. nowadays, shows are all shipping mp3 downloads....

undeniably, probably the best and most indepth special produced by the beatles.