gregr@basser.OZ.AU (10/16/86)
In a recent posting from James Turner a CD copy of Abbey Road was mentioned. News about CD releases is slow in reaching our antipodean shores and is often incomplete. Could people in the group fill me in on the state of Beatles CD's? (I presume James was talking about *the* Abbey Road!) I know of a Decca re-release of old (Star Club vintage) material called 'The First Beatles' and a Japanese release of a set of radio interviews on CD but know of no other releases. Please e-mail me any information you have and if there is sufficient interest I'll summarise for the group. Ta. Greg Ryan - Basser Department of Computer Science, University of Sydney gregr@basser.oz.au
jmturn@ringwld.UUCP (10/18/86)
Ah yes, the infamous Abbey Road CD...
Well, yah see, there was kinda like this mistake. EMI sent their Japanese
distributor the Abbey Road masters for pressing (vinyl). Once they had
them in their grubby little hands, they figured there was no harm pressing
some (5000) copies on CD as well.
Oops...it turned out that the Beatles never signed anything about CDs in their
contracts, so it all has to be renegotiated, and given the flakey state of
the fab four these days, it's gonna take a while. So off they went to chase
down all the copies. Unfortunately (for EMI), some of them had found their
way as imports into the US. I was lucky enough to pick one up at Strawberries
in 1984.
As you might guess, those 5000 were the only ones ever pressed, and the
demand for them is incredible. I've heard the going rate these days is
about $800. They come with Japanese/English lyric sheets, and the most
incredible sound you ever heard out of the Liverpudlians. The Jap
engineers did an great job, and you'll go ape-shit over tracks like
"Bathroom Window" and "Polythene Pam"...
Gloating,
James
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