Any comments on the Beatles' Bear Family package?

[Steve Hoffman]

Have not heard it yet.

Anyone have a copy they can "share"?

[christopher]

i would, but then i'd have to take out a second mortgage.

that bear family ****'s expensive, man!

later, chris

[Alan T]

I'll put one in the mail tomorrow.

[Douglas]

What's Bear Family?

[Cousin It]

Originally posted by jlomax:
What's Bear Family?

Click here and all will be revealed http://www.bear-family.de/index_english.htm

[feinstein]

I bought the Bear Family Tony Sheridan/Beatles box from Collectors Choice Music when it was on sale for $46.00. It consists of two CD's and a deluxe book. Frankly, the best part of the set is the book. It's very informative and finally has a factual account of the Beatles Hamburg sessions.

The CD's have a lot of extraneous material (mono/stereo versions of all of the tracks, ridiculous "medley" releases done by Polydor in the early 60's). A really interesting track though is the original 1962 version of "Sweet Georgia Brown". In 1962, the Beatles recorded the instrumental track to this and then, in a separate session, Tony Sheridan came in and overdubbed the vocals on the Beatles instrumental track. After the advent of Beatlemania, Sheridan recorded a second vocal track which was pasted onto all subsequent releases of "Sweet Georgia Brown". The appearence of the original vocal track on this new set is very rare.

The sound is superior to the Polydor CD released in 2000. It also is superior to the 1970 Polydor LP release since they used lower generation tapes to master the set.

[FabFourFan]

Originally posted by Steve Hoffman:
Have not heard it yet.
Anyone have a copy they can "share"?

Steve, "shame" on you for "begging for Beatles" records in the DCC forum!

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As for the _sound_ of the 2cds, sadly, there's no warmth and no 'breath of life' to be found.

It's confused on top, weird in the middle, and distant on the bottom, and nothing fits together.

So, IMHO, they don't sound real at all. (As always, YMMV!)

On the other hand, it's great that Gottfridsson seems to have been able to identify and use the actual master tapes, and his written research is authoritative and comprehensive, to say the least!

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But, Steve, I'd trade that beautiful book in a heartbeat to get to hear *your* version of these 8 songs!

And that's become the sad truth for nearly every recording I buy these days, whatever the format.

Realistically, we will probably NEVER get a better release of any of these recordings, so that makes this a MUST-HAVE set.

And it's available at http://www.collectorschoicemusic.com/item.cfm?itemid=BCD64472 - if I got the link right this time. :-)