John, Paul, George and Ringo.
Surnames are not even needed here: the Beatles are that epic.
Considered by many the greatest rock band of all time, this fab foursome is still widely popular to this day, attracting fans from all generations with their iconic songs.
While the band always holds a special place in modern entertainment, the September 9 concurrent releases of The Beatles: Rock Band video game and the remastered discology placed the Beatles right back where they belong: front and center.
We all want to be rock stars, and regular Rock Band allows us to do just that. However, only The Beatles: Rock Band transforms its players into legends as they strum, drum and sing through the band’s ten-year career.
The game, created with the support of Paul McCartney, Ringo Starr, Yoko Ono and Olivia Harrison (John Lennon’s and George Harrison’s widows, respectively), includes 45 hits spanning the band’s evolution from its mop top days of 1960 to the more avant-garde tracks of ’69.
Presented in their original order, the songs take players alongside the Beatles as they conquer the music world.
Many famous appearances are included; players get to wow America on The Ed Sullivan Show and say goodbye to public performances on the Apple rooftop.
As the band then shifts from concerts to studios, the game smoothly replaces concert venues with more psychedelic, dreamlike sequences that showcase the band’s sheer creativity in the later years. With parts for guitar, bass, drums and up to three singers, six at most can jam away; one can even go all out and purchase special controllers designed after each member’s signature instrument.
Also, downloads of full albums will be released periodically online, beginning with Abbey Road in late October.
While the release of The Beatles: Rock Band is news in itself, the recent digital remastering of the Beatles’ collection is a huge deal.
Not since the 1980s have these songs received any sort of tune up, and most obsessive audiophiles will whine that the original CDs did not live up to caliber. This is what they have been awaiting for the last 22 years.
What exactly does remastering entail? This is not a remixing; you won’t buy the Beatles’ CDs and hear completely different songs.
Instead, the tracks will have been digitally polished, with any original imperfections in the recordings tidied up for a cleaner sound. The songs are still the same classic tunes; they now just are a little crisper in quality, with more punch.
Even I, who never had any fault with the original CDs, could hear a difference on the YouTube bootlegs that already have infiltrated the internet (I know I shouldn’t be surprised, but really? People, it’s barely been a week).
It’s almost enough to make me want to shell out the $200 just so I could hear them on something other than my terrible MacBook speakers. Then I remember how I am a poor college student and the notion quickly vanishes.
All twelve of the Beatles’ studio albums have been remastered, along with their two-disc collection of non-album singles. Packed with the original UK track listings and artwork, each album features both original and newly added liner notes, rare photos, and an limited-time documentary about the making of the album embedded on the disc.
They can be bought individually, but for those looking for the whole enchilada, there are two box sets to choose from: Stereo and Mono.
The Stereo set includes all fourteen CDs in a new stereo-mix and a DVD with all the “making-of” documentaries gathered in one place.
For fans looking for a more traditional collection (and who are willing to spend an extra forty dollars), there is the Mono version, which includes the first ten studio albums (Yellow Submarine, Abbey Road, and Let It Be were all mixed in the more modern stereo fashion) and the Past Masters collection of singles in their original mono-mix, all packaged to look like CD-sized versions of the original LPs. The Stereo and Mono sets run for $200 and $230 respectively on Amazon.
The Beatles are the best rock band of all time, and with these simultaneous releases, hopefully a new generation will discover the truth of that statement.
However, the true legacy of these four Liverpudlian men who revolutionized music-as-we-know-it is not just the sheer brilliance of their songs, but their overwhelming power to transcend eras. Over forty years later, we still love them. Mothers, daughters, fathers, sons, aunts, uncles, grandparents, friends…all have listened to the Beatles.
Can you imagine another band that could bring generations fifty years wide together to play, of all things, a video game? I know I can’t.
