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The Beatles - Meet the Beatles CD (album) cover

MEET THE BEATLES

The Beatles

 

Proto-Prog

2.39 | 34 ratings

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Guillermo
Prog Reviewer
2 stars The history about The Beatles`s U. S. discography has been known to many people since a long time ago. But I want to comment about it. In 1963 they recorded two albums for the U .K. market. In the U. S. Vee Jay Records released an album called "Introducing The Beatles", twice, with little changes to the songs list. When Capitol Records, which initially refused to release their albums in the U.S. (despite being an EMI company, and that is why Vee Jay and other small labels released a few albums and singles there) realised how popular the band was becoming in other countries, they finally agreed to release their material in the U. S. in 1964. To do this, they sued Vee Jay, and they finally won the rights to release the bandīs material. So, this "Meet The Beatles" album was released in early 1964, with a title wanting to say to the U.S fans "this is really their first official album in the U.S. " (which of course, it wasn`t). Everything could be very fine if they respected the titles of their U.K. albums and the content of the songs included in the albums. But no... they didn`t. They even didn`t respect the mxing of the songs, even doing their own mixings for the U. S. market. This album is no exception. My late father bought this album in 1979. I listened to it recently, and the sound is not very good in comparison to other Capitol Records albums from The Beatles.

This album is essentially the "WithThe Beatles" album from the U.K with some variations in content. For example: "I Saw Her Standing There" was taken from their "Please Please Me" L.P from the U.K. "I Want to Hold Your Hand" and "This Boy" were electronically created Stereo versions of Mono recordings from the U.K. single. Capitol did almost the same treatments for several years for their own albums until they released the "Sgt. Pepper" album. So, the U. S. discography of the band was in those days with more albums than in the U.K., because to include 12 tracks in albums in the U.S was the norm there in comparison to 14 tracks per album in the U.K. In my opinion, that was done exclusively to make more money from the band`s success.

For some years, the Stereo mixings from these Capitol albums (original and not original) were the only available Stereo versions from many songs, because in the U.K. EMI released their first 4 albums on CD only in Mono sound in 1987. Fortunately, their U.K. albums have been recently remastered and re-issued and the Stereo mixings from their original albums are available again, but with remixings. In this case, they were done by people associated with the band.

In my opinion, their U.S. albums are now only important for nostalgic collectors.

Guillermo | 2/5 |

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