ANTHOLOGY 2

This second volume of the "Anthology" series is more interesting due to the influence that the music of The Beatles of this period (1965-1968) had in the deveopment of new styles like Progressive Rock by other bands in later years. Betwwen those years, the creativity of The Beatles improved a lot in arrangements, new ideas, new experiments, always helped a lot by a very good producer like George Martin. With another producer, the band maybe couldn`t develop their ideas in a proper way, IMO. George Martin helped them to bring to reality their arrangements. He was a very good "Translator" of all these ideas to reality.

This "Anthology 2" package starts with "Real Love", another "new song", another song compoosed and recorded by Lennon in the late 70s to which the rest of the band added their parts in 1995, again with Jeff Lynne as a co-producer, but with better results than in "Free as a Bird". I think that as a song, "Real Love" is better than "Free as a Bird". Also the arrangement done by the other three Beatles are better, IMO.

The rest of Disc 1 shows the development of new aexperimental ideas for songs, like "Tomorrow Never Knows". Also there are some previously unreleased tracks, like "That Means a Lot", a very good song, IMO, which Lennon & McCartney finally gave to singer P.J. Proby to record, and "If You`ve Got Trouble", a song composed for Ringo to sing. There are also some live recordings of their 1965 and 1966 tours.

Disc 2 is mostly dedicated to their 1967-early 1968 period, with demos, alternate takes or new mixings of songs from the "Sgt. Pepper`s" album, the "Magical Mystery Tour" E.P. and some songs released as singles. Also included, is the 6 minutes Stereo version of "You Know My Name (Look Up the Number)", a very funny song. Disc Two is finished with a very good previously unreleased version of "Across the Universe", recorded in early 1968.