Which do you like more? Beatles At The Beeb, or Live at the BBC?

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RalseiDeltarune
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Which do you like more? Beatles At The Beeb, or Live at the BBC?

Post by RalseiDeltarune »

I personally like Live At The BBC for its presentation, but I like At The Beeb because of its vintage quality. What do you guys think?
Interested in any/all Bootlegs. Sometimes I make my own.

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Lord Reith
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Re: Which do you like more? Beatles At The Beeb, or Live at the BBC?

Post by Lord Reith »

RalseiDeltarune wrote: Tue Feb 21, 2023 3:01 pm I personally like Live At The BBC for its presentation, but I like At The Beeb because of its vintage quality. What do you guys think?
Which Beatles At The Beeb do you mean? The radio special or the albums?
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Re: Which do you like more? Beatles At The Beeb, or Live at the BBC?

Post by RalseiDeltarune »

Lord Reith wrote: Tue Feb 21, 2023 9:07 pm
RalseiDeltarune wrote: Tue Feb 21, 2023 3:01 pm I personally like Live At The BBC for its presentation, but I like At The Beeb because of its vintage quality. What do you guys think?
Which Beatles At The Beeb do you mean? The radio special or the albums?
The Albums. Probably should have specified that..
Interested in any/all Bootlegs. Sometimes I make my own.

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Re: Which do you like more? Beatles At The Beeb, or Live at the BBC?

Post by Lord Reith »

I've only ever listened to the 1994 cd once and that was on the day I bought it. The first I heard about it was a tiny mention in the newspaper which caught my eye because it was next to a picture of George Martin (of course... ?!) and said that a new album was coming out in a few days. My expectations couldn't have been lower after Sessions. I can remember reading the booklet on the bus going home and wondering how much editing and reverb they'd added, and whether I should have just listened to it in the shop instead of buying it. I really did expect it to be a complete waste of money. So i was quite surprised and delighted to find it was very good quality with some amazing upgrades. But I also instantly hated the idiotic way all the songs bumped up against each other, because it meant you couldn't reprogramme the song order, and that was one of the biggest selling points of cds. I guess I must have made up a tape in chronological order and very quickly faded down the endings. But then you lost much of the point of it, in that it was no longer cd quality.

The series of albums probably had more of an impact on me. At the time I had been obsessively seeking out BBC bootlegs for about five years and had reached the point where I had nearly all of the material available. I used to visit my dealer every two weeks or so and he would tell me the latest rumours or show me the latest titles (far more thgan I could ever hope to buy). Then on one of these trips he says, "Oh, there's a new BBC boot". He hands it to me and my heart starts thumping. It listed loads of unfamiliar tracks and the liner notes said something about hifi sound. When I got that home and put it on it just floored me. I don't think any boot has ever had such an effect on me. But then it took like two years for all the rest to come out, and while there was oodles of new stuff it was frustrating that some of it was in pretty poor quality. But the sheer scope and depth of it meant that it was in a class all of its own. Unforgettable.

I guess at some point I must have made up cassettes of the best bits of both. But it all would have been pretty shabby, because all you really had back then was cassette and maybe a graphic equalizer. Great Dane did a pretty good job with what was available, but I couldn't afford that in 1993.

From the perspective of 2023, they had a perfect opportunity to rectify all the faults of the 1994 issue in 2013. But they retained the same crappy song order and noise reduction. Despite all the palava in the media, the new cds didn't really sound that much better and some of the tracks actually sounded worse. But they did lengthen the gap between songs, thankfully. However with its lack of chat and messed-up chronology it sits awkwardly alongside On Air which fared much better as a coherent album.

Does all that make any sense? Don't ask me to talk about the BBC stuff, I will chew your ear off. :lol:
Women there don't treat you mean, in Abilene
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