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I've just spent 2 evenings throughly enjoying a televised concert by Dutch musical collective 'The Analogues', a group who specialise in doing exact recreations of Beatles material that was never perfomed live after they decided to stop touring in 1966.

Firstly a documentary about how the band spent more than a year in preparing to perform the entire 'Sgt Pepper' album using precisely the same instrumentation and arrangements as on the original. This meant that they scoured the globe to get hold of obscure keyboards, vintage guitars and amps. Then they locked themselves in a studio and microscopically dissected the album to get every note, inflection, effect and mistake and work it into their performance.
As someone who is fascinated by how recordings are put together, this really appealed to the muso in me and I got drawn into the obsessive way in which, out of deep love and respect for the music, they painstakingly pulled it all together.



(Don't know if the following link will work outside Holland)
Sgt. Pepper 50 jaar later: Live in Concert

Then the concert performance. In front of an enthusiastic (and mainly middle-aged) audience, the band was augmented by a brass section and string section and the whole of Sgt Pepper was played with a couple of encore extras. I truly admired the dedication and perfection that everyone involved put into this and as a technical exercise it was stunning in its accuracy and faithfulness. Only drawback was that the band was so focussed on getting every note exactly right that they forgot to get down and enjoy themselves, no room for spontaneity - unfortunately.

But the love for The Beatles shone through and the crowd went wild(ish). Great fun !

Brilliant, almost the real thing, just comes a cross as a little dry and mechanical, probably because lacking the spliffs and LSD

The drummer is using Ludwig drums! But the bassist isn't left handed.

BBC2 tonight at 21:00

Sgt Pepper's Musical Revolution - with Howard Goodall

The composer explores why the Beatles' 50-year-old album is still revered as an innovative, revolutionary and influential release. With the help of out-takes, studio conversations between the band and never-heard-before outside of Abbey Road, Howard gets `under the bonnet' of the album, taking the music apart and reassembling it to reveal how it works. Producer George Martin and his team constructed the album sound by sound, layer by layer - a formula that became the norm for just about every rock act who followed.

This was, I think, the second album I ever bought. The first one was the Monkees, the third one was Cream Live at the Philmore. 32/6d in 1967. (£31.30 on Amazon now - don't think I'll be refreshing my vinyl copy.)

Dr Bunsen Honeydew wrote:Brilliant, almost the real thing, just comes a cross as a little dry and mechanical, probably because lacking the spliffs and LSD

Or simply Dutch English (probably better than Irish English )

Much to my shame, although I had Rubber Soul and Please Please Me by 1967, I didn't buy Sgt Pepper until eleven years later, when it was on offer at HMV Bond St - not a bad cut, but the looped final groove wasn't right, so maybe a cut-price batch... I made up for it with the vinyl box set in 1980 though, which I still have.

I have to find my original CD copy though, although I fear I may have lent it out and it's lost from view..

_D_S_J_R_ wrote: [SNIP]

I have to find my original CD copy though, although I fear I may have lent it out and it's lost from view..

I bit the bullet and bought the full stereo set. Listened to Sgt Pepper night before last. Really good. Enjoyed it. Particularly liked Paul's bass work.

pauls bass work on this is really unique very very trippy and such a wonderful dry precise sound i think it was recorded directly into the mixing desk
i bought the lp on the day of release and have listened to it hundreds of times it still amazes me
1967 was quite a good year for releases, are you experienced, axis bold as love, forever changes, younger than yesterday, magical mystery tour, leonard cohen, disraeli gears strange days, safe as milk, piper at the gates of dawn, john wesley harding, absolutely free

I think this is a feature of all the remastered albums, as a fair amount of tinkering has gone on, mainly to bring the bass out better than originally. Paul did play really well in a 'tuneful' sense and although Ringo never seems to do that much other than keep time, his time-keeping is always spot-on I think and a drummer once told me that one talent is very difficult.