BEATLES FIRST AMERICAN CONCERT! ON THE BIG SCREEN! One night only...

I don't think previous releases are really relevant when securing rights to this...perhaps everyone wants lots more money now.

 

Agreed, I think Gore would be thrilled to have her performance included with the Beatles and the Beach Boys. The trick I think is whether the Beatles want the Washington show included in an official release with the other acts, Paul McCartney's admiration for Brian Wilson notwithstanding. There is a precedent though with the Ed Sullivan DVD's that not only included the Beatles' performances but all the other acts that appeared on the same Sullivan shows, so there's at least a glimmer of hope.

 

But like the situation with "Monster Mash" on the Beach Boys 'Lost Concert' release, the problem could lie with the music publishing rights as opposed to the permission of performers...even with the Beatles set. Who knows what the rights holders to "Roll Over Beethoven", "Twist and Shout" and "Long Tall Sally" want?

 

Portions of the Washington, D.C. concert were incorporated in the Beatles Anthology DVD set and 'The Beatles First American Visit' DVD. Hopefully the rights for the rest of the songs from the complete concert can be cleared for a full release.

 

I doubt it's a rights problem. They would not have been able to put the full concert out on iTunes without getting all the rights holders on board.

 

All that means is that there's no problem with the rights to the Beatles portion of the show...

 

What do you mean, remastered? In terms of DVD, it hasn't even been mastered before.

 

Central switcher or not, the fact is, once you get this stuff in the digital domain, synching is an absolute piece of cake, what with frame-by-frame editing and time-stretching, etc, so there's no way you'd see or hear anything out-of-synch at transitions or anywhere else.

Unless of course you hired the amateur who remixed Eleanor Rigby for the Yellow Submarine Soundtrack CD - but I digress....

 

Nice. I wish I could go too.
I absolutely love the reaction of the girls in the audience. haha

 

Would a DVD release be harder/pricier than the itunes stream(promo or for sale?)

 

I'd love to know if this ois a fresh edit, with camera angles newly cut in program? I think that is what is being said, but I'm not sure.

 

Why would anyone think this would a new edit when the whole point of the event is to present the show as originally done?

 

Fresh mixdown from original camera angles = far better picture when done in HD digital, and a entire generation loss in 1964 is totally avoided. This is the difference in "amazing and stunning" picture quality vs. a really fun night out anyway.

 

There is no way in a trillion years that there are existing iso tapes from all 4 (?) cameras...I'd be surprised if there ever were.

 

Hi Kevin

Were are the camera angles 100% live to one Quad deck? Thus no alternate angles can be edited together now? And CBS edited with razer blades or via redubbing? For optical effects, fades and titles, they redubbed to another Quad deck to create the effect, thus creating one generation of analog fidelity loss for those portions with the optical effects?

 

yeah I guess the "They recorded the show direct to the quad machine in the truck" means that just one deck was in that truck.

It would have been too big a deal (for nothing) to drag out a set of machines just for this fly by night, flash in the pan, teenie-bopper, Brit Invasion, four hit wonder.

 

Joel, is there any audio restoration in the works?

 

Why would there need to be any restoration? The mono quad audio track is high fidelity. Check out the fidelity of the thump when Lennon stomps on the stage! Very little can be done about the bumbling mono mix which finds some mics too high and others too low. I guess the live location audio engineer was confused with the Beatles moving around on stage coupled with all the loud crowd noise. The inconsistent and at times subpar mix is due to the underperformance of the original sound engineer back in 64 -- it can't be remixed now. It's mono and it is what it is.

 

What do you think is the main reason for this? Fear of bootleggers? Wanting to tie it in with some mega-bucks box set of the future?

 

I was thinking perhaps playing with the eq to bring out some of the buried instrumentation

 

I would think it might have possibly - just maybe - already occurred to the current producers of this to "clean up" the sound as much as they can, with EQ and restoration tools. But as has been said already - there's just so much you can do.

Personally having just watched the trailer on YouTube, I thought it could have been much worse. The drums really rock, the whole band is giving an electric performance - I don't think you will get better than what we have here.

 

I wouldn't call EQ restoration.

 

This is why we also need the complete Australian concert (Shell) released on DVD. The sound mix there was very good for the time (certainly better than the Washington show). Also the picture quality was good, with nice resolution. The performance may not have been quite as exciting as the Washington performance, but in terms of the audio mix and video quality, it is arguably the best overall representation of early Fab concerts. We need it released in addition to the Washington concert. If only some Apple folks could be....uh....influenced, shall we say? This would only be a start, but it would be a good start.