Welcome to the first post on this blog. My name's Katie. I run two blogs called katie's music blog and reviewingeverylrdrelease. This is the latest adventure into making a form of an archive where I can talk about something I'm passionate about. First general music, then Les Rallizes Denudes, and now... The Beatles.
A quick overview: I have a much stronger connection to The Beatles than to LRD. I've been a fan of them since I was a small child. The 1 album was the first album I have memory of playing on CD. There are recordings of me in kindergarten singing many of their songs. It became a massive part of my life to the point where it was part of my identity for years. Teachers of mine would note how odd it was for a child in 2013 to know every lyric to songs that were decades older than their parents. It did go to the wayside as I began to get obsessed with punk during middle school, but it came back full force within the last few years. And with my joint discovery of a certain Windows application with a blue bird as its logo and iBroadcast... this is why this blog exists.
The first album I plan on speaking about is one of importance in recent memory: 2017's
The Lost Album. An attempt by various fans to collect all of the band's unreleased music and alternate versions/mixes from across their time together. Spanning across six discs (and two bonus discs), it's a massive collection... which is somewhat overshadowed by the fact that it wasn't the last in this series. But that can be for another post(s).
Disc one's notable tracks include a great take of "Not Guilty" (which would eventually be released by George on one of his solo albums, but appears here with the full band), "Come and Get It" (which would be given to Badfinger), "There You Are, Eddie" (which is a fun little song by Paul that I find myself humming often), and, of course, the two Anthology special songs "Free as a Bird" and "Real Love".
Disc two opens with a version of "Teddy Boy" from the Let It Be sessions and an amazing acoustic take on "All Things Must Pass". This is also when it comes to an interesting thing this bootleg series does: it combines multiple songs into a larger track to create a medley of sorts. It's shown best on this disc with "Down in Havana", which combines the title track, a take of "Honey Pie", a great acoustic version of "We Can Work it Out", and a few other snippets. It closes with "Watching Rainbows", an unreleased song that's presented here in an edited form that combines both takes from the Let It Be sessions.
Disc three is mainly made up of these "medleys" I previously mentioned. "He Said, He Said" features an absurd 20 "sub-tracks", the namesake of the song only appearing as the second-to-last song over a 25-minute-long run. "Dig It" follows this theme, mainly making up songs that would eventually become Lennon solo songs. "River Rhine" mainly focuses on covers. There's a version of "Now and Then", which I believe I've heard on other bootlegs as being a version by an unknown band rather than the version done during the Anthology sessions, but I could be incorrect. It's still nice. The closing track, "Every Mother Comes Anytime", is a collage that works more as an interlude into the next disc.
Disc four seems to have a focus on the band's early years. It includes songs from the Decca audition, their early BBC sessions, the Quarrymen recordings that also appear on Anthology 1, and a smattering of other recordings from that time. One song of note is "Bad to Me", which appears here as the Lennon demo... with a backing band. I remember reading somewhere that it's either sampled from other Beatles recordings or it's performed by a group. I'm not sure. Otherwise, there's not a whole lot to detail; it's pretty straightforward.
Disc five keeps with this theme from the last disc, including more from around 1962-63. It's almost completely full of covers, featuring ones from BBC sessions as well as the previously mentioned Decca audition. One track of note is "Star Club", which is a medley of Beatles performances from the Star Club. Otherwise, again, not really a lot to note. It does feature, in my opinion, the better of the two takes on "The Hippy Hippy Shake" we got from the official BBC session compilations, so that's something.
Disc six, much like disc three, is mainly made up of medleys. Four tracks combine to over 80 minutes and 43 sub-tracks. The first of these main tracks, "Gnik Nus" (no relation to the song of the same name from the LOVE remix album), focuses for the most part on Magical Mystery Tour, with a couple of other miscellaneous songs thrown in. "Let It Back" focuses on the Let It Be sessions. "I Told You Before" doesn't have a main focus, but it has a lot from their early years. Finally, "Revolution 20" focuses on White Album material (with a part of "A Day in the Life" in it for good measure).
Finally, we reach the two bonus discs, which I'll summarize in one paragraph here since this is all getting quite long. The first doesn't have a theme to it, which I don't really mind. It has a version of "I'm Looking Through You" from Rubber Soul with a more subdued feel, which I kind of like more than the album version. "She's Leaving Home (Strings)" is nice on its own. The second also doesn't have a theme. "The House of the Rising Sun" is a very jokingly done cover of the song, which is combined with a pretty good rendition of "Stand by Me". "Thirty Days", likely in reference to the extensive bootleg of the same name, is a medley of recordings from the Let It Be sessions. The closing track, "Bye Bye Love", is another medley, but it ties together the ending of the bootleg nicely.
So... do I recommend this? Well, it's basically a comprehensive look at everything that wasn't released on a studio album by the band. Half of me wants to say that this is certainly way too much for one person to sit down and listen to... but the other half wants to say that there is so much music that makes this a good jumping-off point to get more in-depth into the Beatles bootlegs out there. Listen at your discretion, I suppose. If you feel it's worth it, go on. This is more or less a gold standard of sorts.
Verdict: 4/5. Lingers a little long, but is worth it in the end.
