I am very much an impulse buyer when it comes to music. If I
\nfind something that even slightly tickles my fancy, I’ll snag it
\n(as long as I have the funds, and as long as my wife isn’t with
\nme). I can’t begin to count how many albums, tapes and discs are in
\nthe Pierce Memorial Archives – many of them from my escapades at
\nthe used CD stores – that seemed like a good idea at the time.<\/p>\n
For example, I honestly cannot explain why I bought a new copy
\nof
\nLive At The BBC<\/i> by The Beatles. I’m not a big Beatles junkie
\n(although I have the entire
\nAnthology<\/i> video series), and I don’t even come close to
\nowning all their albums. This one just seemed like something I
\nwanted at the time. And after listening to it for only the second
\ntime in a long while, it actually contains some very good material,
\nif just a tad heavy on covers.<\/p>\n
The Fab Four – John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison and
\nRingo Starr – are captured here over 69 tracks – some of them just
\nspoken word – all taken from sessions they did for the British
\nBroadcasting Corporation. Widely bootlegged over the years
\n(according to accounts I’ve read), the selection of tunes here is
\ninteresting as a snapshot of what pop music was like in Britain in
\nthe early 1960’s.<\/p>\n
What is surprising is that a few of the numbers here are of
\nbootleg quality – one such that comes to mind is “I Forgot To
\nRemember To Forget”. Granted, these are tapes that were locked away
\nfor the better part of three decades, but I find it hard to imagine
\nthat better quality numbers didn’t exist, and that the only option
\nwas to put a few tracks on this set (which appears to be
\nout-of-print) that were of dubious audio quality.<\/p>\n
For the casual Beatles listener,
\nLive At The BBC<\/i> might be a slightly confusing portrait of
\nthe Beatles. After all, over half of these tracks are covers. But
\nthere is a lot of gold that is there to be mined in these dusty
\nclassics. It’s interesting, for example, to hear a pop vocal
\nversion of “A Taste Of Honey” (a track you may know better thanks
\nto Herb Alpert & The Tijuana Brass); this version breathes some
\nnew life into a track I’ve heard for most of my life. The obvious
\ndevotion to artists like Chuck Berry is obvious with covers of
\nsongs like “Roll Over Beethoven” and “Sweet Little Sixteen”.<\/p>\n
When it comes time for the lads from Liverpool to tackle their
\nown material, well, that’s no slouch, either. Tracks like “I Saw
\nHer Standing There”, “Ticket To Ride”, “A Hard Day’s Night” (I
\nnever knew that the solo was on piano – and that it was George
\nMartin who played it!) and “Thank You Girl” are all pleasant
\nadditions to this collection.<\/p>\n
The only real negative is that near the end of the collection,
\nthe covers tend to drag down the whole project a bit. I would have
\nliked to have heard more originals in these sessions, or at least
\nhad the covers broken up a bit more. Still, I guess this is a small
\npoint to object to on a solid collection.<\/p>\n
\nLive At The BBC<\/i> is a set that the diehard Beatlemaniacs – or
\nthose who haven’t been hoarding bootlegs for years – were drooling
\nabout for some time, and did seem to set off the chain reaction of
\na rebirth of interest in The Beatles. If you can still find this
\ncollection out there – and I didn’t see a listing on Music
\nBoulevard or CD Now – then it’s worth investing in.
\n(Editor’s note: Since this writing, Music Boulevard was bought
\nout by CDNow… and the set was re-released by Capitol.)<\/i><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":24912,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"tags":[],"artist":[5675],"rating":[5615],"class_list":["post-36117","review","type-review","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","artist-the-beatles","rating-rating-b"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/36117","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/review"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=36117"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/36117\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/24912"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=36117"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=36117"},{"taxonomy":"artist","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/artist?post=36117"},{"taxonomy":"rating","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rating?post=36117"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}