The Beatles-The Capitol Albums Volume 1

Beatlemaniacs are funny. I would consider myself one, but I am by no means a completist. To be honest, I couldn’t afford to be one if I wanted to and I think the baby boomers have both the money and the inclination to snap up most of the good memorabilia anyway.
Just consider the price tag of “The Capitol Albums: Volume 1” (seventy bones); it’s a box set clearly designed for aging boomers who have the spending cash to get the American Beatles albums they’re used to…and have been whining for ever since the band streamlined the catalog and released only the “proper” British albums in ’87.

A brief explanation: Capitol records cherry picked the Beatles British Parlophone records and released them as new titles domestically. These albums came in two forms, mono and stereo, and Capitol also used “duophonic” mixes in some of the stereo tracks. For laymen, “duophonic” essentially means “adding a bunch of reverb” to the tracks.
While these American releases may have not been exactly what The Beatles themselves intended, the millions of American fans that bought them understandably think of them fondly. Capitol records, always ready to take a music fan’s money, decided to release the American albums in a box set right before Christmas in 2004.
While I already own most of this material already in their British forms, I will admit missing the American versions a little; I was introduced to The Beatles thanks to my parent’s copy of “Meet The Beatles,” “Beatles ’65,” “Yesterday…And Today” and “Beatles VI.” Plus, it’s been nearly twenty years since someone has properly remastered The Beatles albums in any configuration. This means that if you buy, let’s say, The Beatles “For Sale” cd, it sounds exactly the same way it did in 1987: tinny, compressed, and not a lot of punch. “The Capitol Albums” is remastered (albeit using 2nd generation copies for the American version) and a lot of Beatle fans are excited about this.
However, there are lots of Beatles fans that are actually up in arms about the decision to release the American albums. It’s really quite humorous to visit sites completely devoted to this debate, and a few prominent members of the Beatles camp (but not directly related to them or their legacy) got involved in the dispute.
With all of this, I thought it would be cool to actually have the Capitol albums, but there was no fucking way I would spend $70 to have ‘em. All they are is the stereo and mono versions of the albums with no real rare treats (only a few minor differences in a handful of songs can be found) that warrant spending that kind of cash.
But Sam Goody’s going out of business news is my gain: with much of the store picked over, I did find a copy of this at 60% off, which was cheaper than the used versions that I had seen online.
Now “Meet The Beatles” is a five-star album, period. The sequencing contains eleven Beatles’ originals and this is critical. From this album onward, it became universally acceptable for pop groups to actually compose their own material. It was also hugely successful, and it forced pop bands to think in terms of l.p.’s instead of focusing on single-to-single.
“The Beatles Second Album” essentially compiles a lot of the band’s cover material and, either intentionally or by luck, the sequencing works. What you have is one of the band’s most rocking albums.
“Something New” starts to show signs of the bottom of the barrel and “Beatles ‘65” is a trainwreck of sequencing (“Rock & Roll Music” goes into “I’ll Follow The Sun” for Christsakes); the band had started to progress musically and Capitol really should have stopped the practice of bastardizing the British albums at this point. The band was making Capitol a ton of money, and there really was no need for this kind of strategy.
Capitol records didn’t abandon the practice of course, and this means there is a “Volume 2” available now and you won’t find me rushing out to buy it anytime soon.
Sure, as stupid as it sounds, I would actually like to have a version of “VI” because I completely ruined my folk’s copy of it so this title holds some sentimental value to me. But there is no way I’m spending full retail for it. Here’s the main reason why:
Capitol records has done a simply awful job of packaging Volume 1. The box is pathetically flimsy and the individual discs are packaged in cardstock album replicas instead of jewel cases. That’s not necessarily a bad thing, but the actual artwork looks like shitty scans of the original albums in either a stupid attempt to make the things appear four decades old or because Capitol records are run by retards.
Why the fuck would you release a premium priced box set like this? At the most, this thing is only worth half of the list price and I would advise any Beatle fan from avoiding this overpriced attempt at making a few extra bucks for the label that incidentally passed on the band four times before signing them. Save your money and wait for the updated mastered versions of the proper albums.