Well, shucks, parents.

[The Curmudgeon]

So as part of my new ultra healthy lifestyle, I've been playing badminton with my dad every other night. Running around getting beaten into the ground by someone twice your age really knocks the pounds off you.

Anyway, in between getting my ass kicked we, you know.. talk about shit. And one subject that's come up recently, as it has in here, is the Beatles. My dad, like most dad's, loved them, and so I've been telling him about recent album purchases and what songs I like etc.

So he phones me a few days ago about something he's seen on the internet, The Best Price - Ever on the deluxe, remastered Complete Beatles Collection. That Best Price Ever is still way out of my price range. As per usual with the Beatles, it's stupidly fucking expensive. Over £100, anyway. No way I can justify that right now.

Next day, another phone call, this time from my mother. What the hell, they bought it for me.

I don't have it yet, but I will soon be the proud owner of this beautiful thing.



16 discs. Every album ever released digitally remastered in stereo. A documentary DVD for every record.

Spoiler warning: it will be Beatlemania in the Curmudgeon household for the forseeable future.

[trashcanman]

Brag topic alert! That baby is sweeeeeeet. The Beatles are the goddamn Disney of music, man. Their shit only gets more expensive as the years go by. I've got the 1962-1966 and the 1966-1970 collections plus the "Love" Cirque de Soleil disc because friends burned them for me, but I have yet to actually purchase a Beatles album. One of these days, I'm going to spring for that set.

So, let me know what you think about the remaster. Some people say that it's a travesty and prefer the dated sound, but I'm kind of of the opinion that anything that makes it sound clearer is better.

[The Curmudgeon]

Yeah, I wasn't going to post this because I thought it might look like "hey, Flanders, look what I got!" kind of thing, but ah, whatever. I'm super pleased to get it.

Funnily enough, I had the same conversation before getting this boxset (don't have it yet) with a guy who's actually in a band. He hadn't heard the remaster, but he said that it's not always a good thing to touch up the sound, because sometimes things weren't meant to be heard that way. Bullshit. I want it to sound like Paul and John are playing in the fucking room with me and I'm not going to get it with the older CD's the way they sound now.

What's good though, Trash, is that the remasters themselves, without the boxset, are pretty affordable, especially on places like Amazon. I'll let you know how they sound and you can cherry pick the best albums if you really get in the mood for listening to the Beatles. Some of their early albums are, heathen that I am, pretty patchy at best.

[trashcanman]

Well if you can't share here, where can you share? In the "Lemmy" documentary, Motorhead's main man is seen shopping for the mono set and declared it to be "the way it's supposed to sound". While that may have been true in the 60's, there has been a lot of progress in sonic technology since then. I've never been the guy who buys both and listens to them for comparison so I don't really know, but I do know that when I hear a lot of classic albums from before the 90's that haven't been remastered (Def Jam's back catalog comes to mind) I really wish they had been.

[The Curmudgeon]

I did a bit of online window shopping a few months back when I first started getting into the Beatles, and if the boxset I'm getting is expensive, you can pretty much double it for the Mono version. I have no idea why.

Yeah, I'm of the school of thought, not being an audiophile or a musician, that things should sound as new and crisp as possible. I'm not asking for new mixes or anything like that, just pristine stereo sound please. I don't get why you would want it any other way. But then, I'm never exactly going to argue over Lemmy over anything. It's already scientific fact that man cannot be killed.