{"id":279,"date":"2005-01-21T12:27:59","date_gmt":"2005-01-21T17:27:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.net\/?p=279"},"modified":"2005-01-21T12:27:59","modified_gmt":"2005-01-21T17:27:59","slug":"the-beatles-sessions","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/?p=279","title":{"rendered":"The Beatles: Sessions"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Thanks to the wonders of the XBox I&#8217;ve heard a &#8220;lost&#8221; Beatles album, <i>Sessions<\/i>.<\/p>\n<p>In the mid-80s EMI planned on releasing an album of unreleased Beatles tracks.  For a variety of reasons, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.vex.net\/~paulmac\/beatles\/sessions.html\">made clear on this webpage<\/a>, the album was never released.  It would have been a single album of a dozen tracks, ranging from &#8220;Besame Mucho&#8221; to &#8220;What&#8217;s the New Mary Jane,&#8221; covering almost the entirety of the Beatles&#8217; career.  And at very much the eleventh hour, the album was shelved.  All of the tracks planned for <i>Sessions<\/i> appeared on the <i>Beatles Anthology<\/i> albums, though perhaps not in the same mix as was prepared in 1984.<\/p>\n<p>What I did was take the <i>Beatles Anthology<\/i> albums, copy the relevant tracks to the XBox hard drive, sequence them according to EMI&#8217;s planned running order.  For good measure, I also copied over &#8220;Free as a Bird&#8221; and &#8220;Real Love,&#8221; the two John Lennon demo tracks completed for the <i>Anthology<\/i> project.<\/p>\n<p>There&#8217;s a real difference to listening to <i>Sessions<\/i> as compared to the <i>Antholog<\/i>ies.  The <i>Anthology<\/i> albums are, with a few odd exceptions, sequenced in strict chronological or historical order, while <i>Sessions<\/i> has a sequence that makes an artistic point.  <i>Sessions<\/i> begins with &#8220;Come and Get It,&#8221; an appropriate track to begin a collection of unreleased Beatles rarities&#8211;&#8220;If you want,&#8221; Paul sings, &#8220;here it is, come and get it.&#8221;  From there we go to a growling Lennon vocal on &#8220;Leave My Kitten Alone.&#8221;  Then some Paul songs, a George song, then the planned side one ends with &#8220;What&#8217;s the New Mary Jane,&#8221; cutting off abruptly at the end as John says, &#8220;Let&#8217;s stop, before they take us aw&#8230;.&#8221; setting up a complete change on side two as it begins with &#8220;How Do You Do It,&#8221; a traditional four-piece arrangement rather than the experimental weirdness of &#8220;Mary Jane.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>In other words, <i>Anthology<\/i> feels like an archive.  <i>Sessions<\/i> feels like an album.  It&#8217;s hardly a perfect album, but I think it might be better for casual listening than the <i>Antholog<\/i>ies.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Thanks to the wonders of the XBox I&#8217;ve heard a &#8220;lost&#8221; Beatles album, Sessions. In the mid-80s EMI planned on releasing an album of unreleased Beatles tracks. For a variety of reasons, made clear on this webpage, the album was never released. It would have been a single album of a dozen tracks, ranging from<a class=\"more-link\" href=\"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/?p=279\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">&#8220;The Beatles: Sessions&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4097],"tags":[98],"class_list":["post-279","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-beatles","tag-the-beatles","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/279","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=279"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/279\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=279"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=279"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=279"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}