The ‘other’ Apple is also having a big day today …
Posted on 09 September 2009, at 9:00 am, by Michael Anderson
Everyone in techno-gear-land is frothing over the 1PM EST Apple ‘Rock & Roll’ event today. But 9/9/09 is also home to another huge Apple-related event – the Apple Corps Inc. release of the Beatles Rock Band and the entire remastered Beatles CD catalog in mono and stereo formats in special collector’s packages.
Info on the music release from Yahoo! News:
The box sets, however, are not at all undiscovered territory.
They’re the opposite, in fact: painstakingly exacting reconstructions meant not to shift the original influence of the Beatles’ music but to restore it. A team of top engineers, led by longtime Beatles associate Allan Rouse, labored for four years to return the feel that was lost in the flimsy-sounding 1987 compact disc reissues — the way everyone except audiophiles and vinyl hoarders (and, at the spectrum’s other end, YouTube browsers) hear Beatles music.
“It’s not smarter or more sophisticated,” Paul McCartney recently said in Billboard of the remastering effort. “It’s just more real — it’s more true to the noise we were actually making.”
Grasping the archival essence of this latest Beatles push doesn’t at all diminish the delight the reissues offer. Time spent with them is pure joy, and yes, revelation. As many critics have noted, McCartney’s bass playing sounds more powerful throughout, and it’s now possible to really hear Ringo Starr’s inventive drum work.
And because those 1987 reissues offered all but the group’s first four albums only in stereo, despite the fact that the Beatles and producer George Martin focused on mono mixes for everything up to and including “The White Album,” those who now invest in the limited-edition mono box can finally immerse in the details of these masterpieces as they were originally drawn.
And for the game release:
Anyone who has played Rock Band or even Guitar Hero over the last several years already knows the basics: you hold an instrument that looks like a guitar (or a microphone or a drum set) and hit the appropriate colors when they appear on screen. The difference this time is that all of the music and visuals are from The Beatles, and there is also a special edition set with high quality Beatles reproduction instruments in a $250 set (the ‘normal’ instruments are included in a $160 set, and if you already have instruments you can get the game for $60 for XBOX360, PS3 or Wii).
While the re-mastered catalog, its first overhaul since 1987, is seen appealing mainly to Beatles’ fans who would appreciate subtle variations and improvements that technology has brought, most excitement surrounded MTV’s video game, “The Beatles: Rock Band.”
“I’m buying the game, I’m not really a big Beatles fan, I prefer much stronger music like Metallica, I just want to try the game and see how it is going to work,” said Stefan Krupicki, 32, who queued for an hour at the launch at the HMV store in central London.
Developed by Harmonix Music Systems, published by Viacom Inc’s MTV Games and distributed by Electronic Arts Inc, the game could sell 2 million units in the first month alone, according to analyst estimates.
Source: Yahoo! News
Image Courtesy of Amazon.com
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