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21 of 22 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Until a UK equivalent comes along..., 27 Mar 2006
At first glance it would seem strange that there would be a British market for these American permutations, in whose compilation the Beatles had no hand, and which stretched the original British albums into far greater number by mixing up the tracks with assorted A-sides, B-sides and EP tracks. However, although all the British Beatles albums were released in both mono and stereo versions, the CD versions of the earlier albums (up to and including Beatles For Sale) have been monaural. This was apparently at the recommendation of George Martin, who thought the crude stereo of those early records was below standard for the modern listener. Since then, certain songs have appeared in stereo mixes by George Martin on collections such as The Beatles 1962-1966, The Beatles 1967-1970 and One, but many are available on an official release here for the first time, together with their mono counterparts.Meet The Beatles! comprises 9 titles from With The Beatles plus the single I Want To Hold Your Hand and its B-sides (This Boy in the UK; I Saw Her Standing There, taken from the album Please please Me, in the US). The Beatles' Second Album consists of a further 5 titles from With The Beatles plus the B-sides Thank You Girl and You Can't Do That; the single She Loves You/I'll Get You; and 2 tracks from the EP Long Tall Sally. Something New takes 8 tracks from A Hard Day's Night and adds the other 2 tracks from Long Tall Sally and a German language version of I Want To Hold Your Hand. Beatles '65 derives mostly from Beatles For Sale (8 of its 14 tracks) plus the single I Feel Fine/She's A Woman; and I'll Be Back, from A Hard Day's Night. These have all been remastered from the masters used to prepare the original American vinyl albums. These are generally the same as the British masters except that they had been "re-equalised" for the American market, and this generally translates as the addition of echo and reverb. While it is fascinating to hear the effect of this, most markedly on the second disc, The Beatles' Second Album, my British ears usually prefer the original versions. There are some interesting variants to the British counterparts which in some case amount to more than mere re-equalisation. Money (That's What I Want) is an alternative version; the stereo mix of Thank You Girl features additional harmonica; Paul's voice is uniquely not double-tracked on the mono version of And I Love Her; and the mono version of Anytime At All does not have the overdubbed piano found elsewhere. Finally, as stereo mixes of the singles were not available at the time of the albums' original compilation, vile fake stereo mixes (or "duophonic" versions) were concocted, and these have been allowed to stand here. The tracks to avoid are the "stereo" versions of I Want To Hold Your Hand, This Boy, You Can't Do That, She Loves You, I'll Get You, She's a Woman and I Feel Fine. Let's hope The Parlophone Albums Vol. 1 in similar format but with best available and new stereo mixes is planned.
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