The Beatles Remasters are released – The Good, The Bad and The Ugly

The Good:
The look and “feel” of the boxes are just great. You know your holding something special in your hand just from the sheer weight of the set. The remastering job that has been done with the sound on these releases is just top notch. My initial impressions abut the sound is that they used excellent EQ and levels, there is a a bit more "punch" (i.e. some limiting/normalizing applied) and overall they are quite satisfying. This is how the 1987 CD’s should have sounded!! “Beatles For Sale”, for example - the clarity and depth of the remaster is such that I feel like I'm sitting in Studio 2 with them. For the “white album” - when Ringo's hi-hat started on the intro of "While My Guitar Gently Weeps" it induced a huge big grin - that's how a hi-hat is supposed to sound! :-) Not some muddy upper-mid range wash of sound. On Abbey Road “Here Comes The Sun” is simply FABtastic sounding!
I love how they're using the "correct" Parlophone labels and Apple labels where appropriate for each release. My only “gripe” would be "Let It Be" should have a red apple on the label – but since this set is following the UK releases (except, of course for “Magical Mystery Tour”, which has the Capitol label), “Let It Be” has a green apple.

The Bad:
The packages are nicer than the old official releases, but still leave me wanting more compared to other reissue series (e.g. The Who).
The booklets – while expanded greatly over the 87 issues with lots of pictures corresponding to the era in which the CD was recorded - leaves a lot to be desired as far as information. There are the “original” liner notes from each record – then a small “historical notes” section. Key word here is SMALL. They should have gone into detail on the dates the songs were recorded, takes used, mixes, etc. This info is available in the fantastic Lewisohn books – but would have been an extra classy touch and not have taken very much room. (Does anyone else have trouble putting the booklets back in the digipack properly ? You have to shimmy it in there. They come out very easily, but then you go to put it back in and suddenly that little lip of cardboard seems to be in the way! Very frustrating. Also – the discs themselves are wedged into the side slots so firmly it’s hard to remove them! I’ve never been a fan of digipack packaging – and this is WHY!!!
The “Magical Mystery Tour” disc had the now often reported mis-print saying the "Let It Be mini-documentary" on it. Just makes that seem shabby.
Speaking of the mini documentaries – what a wasted opportunity and incredibly underwhelming. It’s basically like a bad mini “Anthology”. My opinion is, they should have done so much more. More recent interviews. How about some interviews with Norman Smith, Geoff Emerick? How about some info on how the they remastered the albums? I think they took the easy way out. 13 of arguably the most important albums ever made covered in 49 minutes? C’MON!!
(Oh and did anyone else notice the date of Paul McCartney's liner notes in the "Sgt. Pepper" booklet – 2008!!??? Wow - how long have these remasters REALLY been ready???)

The Ugly:
So they have spent many millions all summer hyping the remasters, commercials on TV, online promotions – just awesome in your face advertising. So come 09-09-09 and you want to actually go buy the box sets. They are nowhere to be found! Yesterday we spent the morning driving around Orlando and hit many different stores: 2 Best Buy's; 2 Barnes and Nobles; 1 Border's; 1 Target and 3 independent record stores. Saw a grand TOTAL of 6 Stereo boxes for sale and not a SINGLE mono boxes at all!! I ended up getting the stereo box at Borders and then finally just ordered the mono box at Amazon.com as they now show them to be back in stock – shipping October10!!. CHRIST
So yeah – let’s hype the mother f#*ker all summer and then can't buy the damn thing when it's released. What a damn shame. Shame shame EMI.
My fist stop was Best Buy the minute they opened. They had 2 of the 6 Stereo boxes I saw and they were snatched up before I even made it over to the rack (using a cane and all couldn’t very well run – but hey – maybe I shoulda used it as a weapon??). There was a small group of about 10-15 of us waiting for the doors to open looking to get both box sets and a few to get the “toy” (aka Rockband) - all of us leaving empty handed. Literally THOUSANDS of dollars left unspent today at just that one stop!! From my online reading – this scenario played out all across the United States.
(To be fair – I DID see 5 mono box sets behind counters at 2 different stores, but they were being held for people who did pre-orders. You’d think they woulda HID them instead of flaunting it in our faces! I DID try to bribe the workers there with CASH in their pocket to get them to sell me one to no avail.).

Ok – now that we have this – how about the re-MIXES now 