Quickly on the heels of the announcement about the remastering of the entire Beatles catalogue, comes the announcement from the Rolling Stones that they are doing the same. Those of us who remember a time when these two giants of rock and roll competed with each other for the ears and dollars of music listeners know this scenario well.

The Beatles and the Rolling Stones have a love-hate relationship that goes all the way back to the early sixties before fame kissed them both. It really started when John Lennon and Paul McCartney wrote the Stones first Top-20 hit (“I Wanna Be Your Man”), inspiring Mick Jagger and Keith Richards to write their own songs (especially when they noticed the money Lennon/McCartney made as songwriters). This battle of the bands really hit it’s peak at a Rolling Stones party to celebrate the release of the Stones album “Beggars Banquet”, when Paul McCartney showed up uninvited with an acetate of The Beatles next single “Hey Jude”. Upon hearing the new song from the Fab Four, the entire Stones gathering had to hear it over and over again, promptly forgetting about the “Banquet”. It was an impolite and ungracious social act on McCartney’s part: in other words, typical Beatles-Stones behavior.

Maybe they are still at it with this competing announcement of their respective remastering projects. They say there is no hardball like family hardball. And sometimes family members push each other buttons just to see if they still work.

New album from U2 features some great tracks like “Magnificent,” “Unknown Caller,” and the title cut.

Brian Eno, Daniel Lanois & Steve Lillywhite co-produce. Eno & Lanois helped write many of the songs. Some fine sound scapes on this great addition to the U2
canon…

Hunter

You may not have heard that after 20 years, the Beatles are finally re-mastering and re-releasing their entire catalogue. Why this has taken so long is anyone’s guess, but now we can finally listen to some of the best music in the history of the recorded era in an up to date high-quality format.

There have been hints of the sound quality lurking out there, despite the much-derided initial releases that came out in the late 1980’s. These can be found on the Beatles Capitol Box Sets, in particular the Rubber Soul CD, which is absolutely stunning in it’s sound quality (since the Capitol release was pretty much how the group wanted it at the time, with very little compression and over processing). Another hint is on the Yellow Submarine Songtrack (not to be confused with the soundtrack), with all the songs re-mastered with current technology. Also you can find some nice remastering of their songs on the DVD Anthology Box Set.

I’m looking forward to these, of course. I wonder if this will move The Beatles (aka “The White Album”) up the chart of the ten best selling albums in recorded history: right now it sits at #10 on the list in the United States, being the best selling of all the Beatles releases, at over 19-million copies.

A lot of great musicians are coming to the area this year, like Coldplay, Crosby, Stills & Nash and even Billy Joel with Elton John. It reminds me of some of the great concerts that I have had the good luck to have seen. If I had to make a top five list of those concerts, it might look something like this:

1. The Who- their “Who’s Next” tour in 1971 with Keith Moon and John Entwistle at the top of their game.
2. The Rolling Stones- their early 80’s appearance in Atlanta’s Fox Theatre which only holds 1200 people.
3. Dire Straits- promoting their “Making Movies” album in a dive bar across the street from Altanta’s Fox Theatre which only held 200 people.
4. Lucinda Williams-just recently at UB. That reminds me: her new “Honey Bee” CD is typically insanely great.
5. The Eagles-before their first album came out: they opened for Procol Harum. They were quite good.