Harry And His Box Set (V1, 2, 7, 10, 12, 15, 14 update.)

[Lord Reith]

Lord Reith, Is the plan to re-do the Harry and His Box Set or to issue a collection of newly found material? Just wondering.

Jack

The complete tapes are a mess and I still haven't figured out what to do. She juggled everything up when she copied the tapes to cassette in 1978 and disposed of the reels. Also stuff from other people and Beatlegs is mixed in with her stuff. So I've been trying to work out what is completely new and what stuff is just of "historical" interest. I am concentrating on updating Harry first since that is what most people would want.

Lord Reith I think I've missed a clue ... but can you tell me plse who is Caroline and what's the story of her cassette-recordings? thanx!

Carolyn Ellis was a Cavern fan who recorded bits from all their radio broadcasts through to the end of 1965 when she was no longer able. She taped one version of every unreleased song plus any chat that caught her fancy. The songs were once rare but have been superseded since. But there's a small amount of chat that hasn't been heard before.

[Paharishi]

I agree - a real selling point for me. I'm a sucker for the pastiche 'official' album artwork that bootleggers began to adopt in the late 70s/ early 80s.
I drooled over many an LP in dealers' racks during the 80s, unable (or unwilling) to commit my hard-earned £10-15, and 'Youngblood' was one of them.

Yes, the beatleg artwork was always way more attractive than the official compilations. The Beatles were four of the most photogenic people in history... literally all you needed to do was slap some nice photos together with some text and you had a great eye catching album cover. But this simple truth completely eluded EMI for decades. Just some of the horrible, horrible official covers we had:

Love Songs. Crikey. Literally a shit coloured cover with a tiny unfamiliar photo in the centre.

Rarities. Royal Blue. Nothing else. Oh, hang on... the title in gold.

Greatest Hits. Every country seemed to have a different cover, and each was worse than the other.

Beatles Ballads. A painting of something vaguely resembling the four Beatles.

Reel Music. Garish badly drawn cartoon cover.

The Essential Beatles (Australia). An almost completely black cover. Like Spinal tap said, "It's so black it's like... how could it get more blacker?"

Rarities (US). Revolting lavender cover with yet another small polaroid stuck in the centre.

Love. Bright canary yellow this time. With more cartoonish characters (for the third time)

Rock And Roll Music. based on a perfectly good photo which would have made a great cover. But, no, let's turn it into another cartoon.

Live At The BBC. Another shit coloured cover! As someone said at the time, it was 1960s Britain, not the American wild west. No need for the sepia tint.

Past Masters. Another depressing black cover! Remember, someone actually got paid to come up with this.

I think I'll stop now because it's getting sad. I just can't figure out why some guys in their bedrooms could make better covers with magazine cut outs than the art department of a major record company.

Lord: And what about the cover of "Now and then"? Another waste of imagination? ha ha...

[Lord Reith]

Lord: And what about the cover of "Now and then"? Another waste of imagination? ha ha...

Oh yeah, that one is in the same tradition but for reasons I can't understand I am fond of it. I don't actually think it's any good, but when i see it I am reminded of the feeling I got when the song came out last year and how good it felt.

Let It Be Naked on the other hand... that's a different matter. One of the ugliest covers in pop music history. This time, let's make the Beatles look like X rays. Ugh.

[Captain_Kidd]

I found this recently.. make the negative images positive and the cover is on its way to looking pretty decent, or at least a lot better.

[Spaniard in da Works]

I imagine the reason the photo of George was replaced by another one was because his teeth looked ugly in negative.

Now that you've positivized it, the cover looks like "WE CAN'T HAVE ANYONE SMILING! THIS IS A ROCK ALBUM COVER!"

[ExDalek]

Let It Be Naked on the other hand... that's a different matter. One of the ugliest covers in pop music history. This time, let's make the Beatles look like X rays. Ugh.

Considering the title - it could have been so much worse...

[Lord Reith]

Considering the title - it could have been so much worse...

Ha ha!

I still have never really recovered from first seeing the Two Virgins cover when I was 13. Having adored The Beatles since I was 10, never did I expect in my young life that I would ever be called upon to see John Lennon's penis.

[Nimbus]

Considering the title - it could have been so much worse...

Ha ha!

I still have never really recovered from first seeing the Two Virgins cover when I was 13. Having adored The Beatles since I was 10, never did I expect in my young life that I would ever be called upon to see John Lennon's penis.

Has anybody got a copy of 'Self Portait' ? Only joking, but has anyone here ever seen it, and did it stand up to scrutiny

[Lord Reith]

Has anybody got a copy of 'Self Portait' ? Only joking, but has anyone here ever seen it, and did it stand up to scrutiny

No, but my sources tell me that Peter Jackson is working on a four-part miniseries about John's cock to be titled Get Slack! Each of the four episodes will tell the story of Lennon's todger from the perspective of one of his four girlfriends.

Episode One - "I've Just Seen A Nob" - will be from the perspective of Thelma Pickles.

Episode two - "A Hard Day's Night" - will be Cynthia Powell's story.

Episode three - "Obladi Obladong" - will be Yoko's version.

Episode four - "It's So Hard" - will tell the story from May Pang's point of view.

Coming to the Disney porn channel in 2030. Be afraid. Be very afraid.

[Lord Reith]

Over the next few days I will be uploading updated versions of five HAHBS volumes. These have small upgrades or additions from Carolyn Ellis's recordings. Thanks to jgjohnson for his generous help.

Patches are a pain in the arse and confuse people, so even though the changes are small I have gone down this route to avoid any anguish at your end.

Here's Volume 1. The "Going Up?" segment sounds a bit clearer and better being from the original taper and not 12 generations down. Also to make it worth your while I've thrown in "Mack The Knife" which doesn't feature any Beatles but had them standing there as it was being performed, so they are there in spirit.



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