There Goes the Fear, a UK/US Music Web site | Live UK gigs, news, and events

Live Gig Video: video of Beatles clips and animation, soundtracked by their cover of ‘Words of Love’

I really wasn’t sure where to put this ‘new’ Beatles video on TGTF, to be honest. But being a massive Fab Four fan, it had to go somewhere. Clearly, it’s not a live video in the usual sense, but it is a nice collection of clips of the Fabs, along with questionable animation and added colouring (?), all soundtracked by their cover of Buddy Holly’s ‘Words of Love’. This cover version appears on the Beatles’ ‘Live at the BBC Volume 2’ compilation album, out now on 2 CD and vinyl formats. The collection features 40 radio cuts from the band’s many appearances on BBC radio in 1963 and 1964.

MP3 of the Day #783: Frankmusik

I generally can’t stand artists doing Beatles covers. However, I do make exceptions. Vincent Frank, aka Frankmusik, has taken the early Fab Four’s single ‘From Me to You’ and put his unique spin on it. Have a listen to it below and if you like it, it’s free to download.

Live Gig Video: Arctic Monkeys cover the Beatles’ ‘Come Together’ at the London 2012 Olympics Opening Ceremony

In his quiff and tough guy leather garb, Alex Turner led his Arctic Monkeys through a performance of their ‘I Bet You Look Good on the Dance Floor’, followed by a cover of the Beatles‘ ‘Come Together’ at the 2012 Olympics opening ceremony in London last Friday night. Some nice Monkeys French fans posted the cover on Vimeo, so you can watch that below. A recorded version of ‘Come Together’ by the Arctic Monkeys is available as part of ‘Isles of Wonder: Music for the Opening Ceremony’, an Olympics 2012-themed compilation, now out on Decca.

Earlier today, we posted video of Two Door Cinema Club‘s Alex Trimble performing the song ‘Caliban’s Dream’ during the cauldron lighting.

Update 12 August 2012: since the IOC has gotten any video remotely related to the Olympics removed from the usual video channels, I’ve replaced it with the audio stream of the studio version and a cool looking photo of Alex Turner. Gotta make do with what you can, yeah?

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fkeshvf2Imw[/youtube]

The Issue with Reissues

Reissue! Repackage! Repackage!
Re-evaluate the songs
Double-pack with a photograph
Extra track, and a tacky badge
…
“Best of!” “Most of!”
Satiate the need
Slip them into different sleeves!
Buy both, and feel deceived…

(excerpts from the Smiths – ‘Paint a Vulgar Picture’, 1987)

Rather conveniently, the day after Blur performed on the 2012 BRIT Awards last week, we heard the news from the Guardian that producer Stephen Street is in the midst of remastering the Britpop giants’ entire back catalogue for the band’s intention to reissue all of the albums sometime in the future. Of course, reissuing and remastering is not a new idea at all in rock. Let’s take for example two of the biggest names in rock ‘n’ roll of all time. Jimmy Page famously went to task on overseeing the remastering Led Zeppelin’s master tapes in order to provide higher fidelity sound quality in the early years of the CD for the ‘Remasters’ release in 1990. The Beatles Anthology released in 1995-1996 were three CD sets that culled supposedly rare early recordings, outtakes and live versions of songs from the Fabs’ musical history. So what’s the issue with reissues?

As you’ve read in perfect clarity at the very top of this article two excerpts from Morrissey’s lyrics in the Smiths’ ‘Paint a Vulgar Picture’, most times the purpose of reissues is crass commercialism. For myself, I know I’ve bought doubles of and/or different versions of albums or unusual and rare singles simply because being a fan, I wanted to have them in my collection. (This explains how I have UK, Australian, Japanese, and Taiwanese versions of albums I already own in US formats and why I am rapidly running out of storage space. Yeah…)

Surely, the only limit to your music shopping habits is your own wallet. I’ve drooled in private at Talking Heads’ ‘Brick’, all eight of the band’s studio albums remastered in Dual-Disc format and available at a price out of my budget, just like I’ve balked at the price for a leather bound, signed copy of George Harrison’s I Me Mine. Luckily, I have some willpower…and definitely some prudence.

But I’m not a completist by any means. So when reissues or remasters are announced, I rarely jump out of my seat, unless there’s something new and really great on the new versions. Do record companies really expect long-time fans of a band to fork over change on an album that already own and know by heart? And they think old skool types who still favours physical releases will buy these in droves? Are they anticipating young people to suddenly think to themselves, “ah yes. Blur. That band in the ‘90s that the bloke who fronts Gorillaz used to be in. I should buy these!”

While I concede that record companies are trying every way possible to combat illegal file-sharing by trying to put out releases like reissues that they think are going to move by the thousands, they appear to be barking up the wrong tree in most of these cases. There is no easy solution to this problem; illegal file-sharing will continue as long as there’s an Internet. But surely there has got to be other creative ways to promote an artist’s work than simply rereleasing something that’s already been out before.

Interestingly enough, Stephen Street also has a hand in the reissue of Morrissey’s first solo album, ‘Viva Hate’, which will be reissued on the 26 of March. Moz has chosen to delete ‘The Ordinary Boys’ and replace it with an outtake from that era, ‘Treat Me Like a Human Being’. Which has already been released as a B-side to ‘Glamorous Glue’ when that single was reissued by EMI last year. Follow all that? Street is not happy about the tracklisting change, but I’m not paying attention to that. I‘m a Morrissey fan and I own ‘Viva Hate’ on CD and vinyl. Will I be buying the reissued version of ‘Viva Hate’? Not likely.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1uxP8h0SZRw[/youtube]

Header photo of Blur’s performance at the 2012 BRITs from Who’s Jack

Beatles for Sale: iTunes Begins Selling the Fab Four’s Back Catalogue

So the biggest news of the digital music world this week has to be the announcement by Apple’s iTunes that they had finally reached an agreement with the Beatles‘ Apple Corps so that the Fabs’ albums could be sold by the online music retailer. But what does it all mean? It means anyone with purchasing power can now obtain – legally – any of the Beatles’s official releases. Strangely, according to this Australian article, the price of albums varies by country. Doesn’t seem fair, does it?

To be honest, this purported ‘Holy Grail’ of all iTunes licensing deals doesn’t mean much to me, as I already own all the Beatles’ albums I want to own on CD or cassette. I received my first Beatles album at age 8 for Christmas (‘A Hard Day’s Night’) and saved up my pennies over the years to buy my favourites based on what songs were on the albums. Even though I, along with the rest of the record buying public, have the opportunity to purchase any official Beatles track, you won’t see me running to iTunes to complete my collection. Even though the digital music age has been around quite a while now and there has been a definite consumer shift from buying albums to buying individual songs, like Elbow, I never agreed with the single mp3 download. To me, something feels definitely wrong about being able to choose to buy ‘Nowhere Man’ or ‘In My Life’ from ‘Rubber Soul’ and potentially miss out on songs like ‘The Word’ and ‘Wait’.

Maybe this move will make the casual Beatles fan more eager to check out the more neglected parts of their back catalogue? The ones that think ‘Sergeant Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band’ is the end all and never bothered to go backward through the early days of Beatlemania? I still maintain to this day that while ‘Please Please Me’ is handicapped by covers, the sheer simple brilliance of tracks like ‘I Saw Her Standing There’ and ‘Twist and Shout’ (recorded amazingly in just one take, in mono and on a two-track recording machine) make it a worthy album to own, even if you’ve only ever been in love with the Beatles during their psychedelic period. (Really. I got into an argument with a kid in my freshman biology class who swore by ‘the White Album’.)

I would be very curious to hear what you think about this development. Do you like the idea of being able to buy these songs and album digitally? Will this encourage you to investigate the Fabs further? Or are you just not bothered? Comment away.