ANTHOLOGY 1

I have all the Anthology albums of The Beatles and they are real curio pieces with rare insights into the making of the legendary songs and albums that sparked a generation of Beatleholics that continues to this day. I consider these albums worthwhile as they show how a song is created and how the studio can make or break a song depending on how it is mixed.

This first volume features a lot of Beatles banter, segments of interviews, speeches, and mucking about. These moments are rather fun at first but not great to return to on a regular basis. The songs themselves are the drawcard and here we can indulge in the early years of the fab four ad it is raw and dirty, and you would have to be a diehard fan to appreciate the likes of the scratchy production, such as That'll Be The Day (2:08), In Spite Of All The Danger (2:45), Hallelujah, I Love Her So (1:13), You'll Be Mine, Cayenne (1:14), My Bonnie (2:42), Ain't She Sweet (2:13), Cry For A Shadow (2:22) or Searchin' (3:00).

The highlights are the swinging blues of Three Cool Cats (2:25), that I had heard on a psychedelic compilation recently, Besame Mucho (2:37), and early versions of Love Me Do (2:32), Please Please Me (1:59), One After 909 (2:56), I'll Get You (2:08) and I Saw Her Standing There (2:49).

It is nice to hear from the soft spoken Brian Epstein and John's voice rings out strong from the grave, which at times is chilling in context. The speech of Eric Morcombe And Ernie Wise is fun, and I like hearing alt versions of All My Loving (2:19), You Can't Do That (2:42), And I Love Her (1:52), A Hard Day's Night (2:44), I'll Be Back (Take 2) (1:13), No Reply (Demo) (1:46) and Eight Days A Week (Sequence) (1:25). It is as though you had collected all these bits n pieces from rarities and put them onto one album. Great new song Free As A Bird is of course wonderful and features all members of the band despite Lennon's passing, the wonders of modern technology here. Not a bad idea and not too bad for an educational experience, but I prefer the next volumes with the superior Beatles albums to choose from.