The Collector’s Choice Music catalog arrived in the mail two weeks ago. I’ve received this catalog for years, though I seriously doubt I’ve ever bought anything from it. Sometimes I’ll look through it, but mostly I pitch it in the trash can, unopened and unwanted. This latest catalog, though, received some attention and for no particular reason. After a thorough perusal, I decided to buy two CDs, both Beatles related.<\/p>\n
The first, Josh Rifkin’s The Baroque Beatles Book<\/i>, I’d heard of years ago, but it has been long out of print. Released in 1965, The Baroque Beatles Book<\/i> takes classic Beatles songs — “I Want to Hold Your Hand,” “Ticket to Ride,” “Help!” “A Hard Day’s Night,” and a half-dozen others — and recasts them in a baroque classical style complete with orchestra and vocal arias. I’ve collected a number of orchestral renditions of the Beatles, but none are quite like The Baroque Beatles Book<\/i>. This, quite honestly, sounds like something you’d hear on a classical music program on NPR.<\/p>\n
The other CD I bought from Collector’s Choice Music was Beatlemanics!!! The World of Beatles Novelty Records<\/i>. It’s an oddball collection of Beatles covers, songs inspired by the Beatles, and songs about the Beatles, all produced during the height of Beatlemania in the early- to mid-1960s. There are girl groups trying to sound like the Beatles, there are country-flavored ballads about the Beatles, there are songs about the Beatle haircut, songs about Ringo, Paul, and even John’s “Bigger than Jesus” controversy. And yes, there’s even a jazzy pop instrumental cover of the Beatles’ “Please Please Me.” A strange album no matter how you cut it, I think of this album as a snapshot of how the music industry responded to the Beatles during their early years by trying to capture the look, the feel, and the sound<\/i> of the Fab Four, to capture the same wave.<\/p>\n
Both albums are for collectors and hard-core Beatles fans. Neither would appeal to the casual buyer as the markets these albums are aimed at are too niche. But for people who like this sort of thing — like myself — these would be interesting to have around.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The Collector’s Choice Music catalog arrived in the mail two weeks ago. I’ve received this catalog for years, though I seriously doubt I’ve ever bought anything from it. Sometimes I’ll look through it, but mostly I pitch it in the trash can, unopened and unwanted. This latest catalog, though, received some attention and for noContinue reading “On New (To Me, Anyway) Beatles Variations”<\/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-748","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\/748","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=748"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/748\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=748"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=748"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=748"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}