Turn left at Greenland

Look what appeared on my desk this week! It's the brand-new Beatles: Live at the BBC, Volume 2!! I'm about halfway through the second disc now and I love it. I need to buy it for my collection (no surprise there).

The thing I love about the BBC sessions is that they are really the closest we have to an official "live" album. The music sounds so fresh, the boys sound so alive. And the talking tracks, the ones filled with giggles and snarky comments between each other, just make me so happy.

At the end of both CDs are solo interviews with each of the Beatles that happened around 1965-66. I listened to John's and George's this morning. John's just broke my heart because the interviewer asked him about being a dad and I'd never really heard John talk about his son at all. Most of the interviews you see, the pretend that both Cynthia and Julian don't exist. John talks about trying to pick out which schools Julian will attend that would be the least traumatizing for him. He also talks about his huge house he bought to sorta get away from people. George makes similar remarks about his much smaller home, though of course has no interest in children yet as he was the youngest of the bunch (which is hilarious because I get the feeling maybe he was the best Dad of the four).

Anyway, if you're a fan, I definitely recommend this set. I think there are a few duplicate songs from the first collection, but they are different takes from different shows. Most of the tracks sound fabulous though they did try to resurrect a few that have a little bit of hiss still but I assume Martin or McCartney or Starr must have had some sort of love for that particular cut to bother to include it with the CD.

Previous Beatles blogs here