Love - The Beatles
I’d been avoiding this because in general I dislike compilations no matter how official they may be, but after seeing the episode of the BBC’s Imagine about the Cirque du Soleil show that this album (yes, I’m gonna call this an album, so sue me) is the background to, I just had to check it out.
In short, it’s absolutely extraordinary, a journey through the very best of the Beatles, a story in itself, the story of a band, the story of its fans, the story of the whole time period they occupied, the story of love. It’s so many things, and you can completely lose yourself in it again and again (I’ve listened to it twice already today). I don’t know how anybody could listen to these 80 minutes and deny The Beatles’ brilliance, even genius. The new mixes don’t often differ hugely from the originals aside from sounding spectacularly cleaner etc (I think this might eventually be my first 5.1 audio purchase when I have suitable equipment to play it on), but when they do deviate, they deviate in the most unusual ways and it’s almost ethereal. If you’ve seen any clips of the Cirque du Soleil show (there are some on their site) – heck if you’ve seen the whole show even better (god would I love to) – the experience is even better. You can really see those guys doing their thing in your head as you’re listening. The Beatles music fits their work so well it’s wonder it wasn’t done sooner (I say that even knowing how long the remix process has taken).
That Ringo Starr’s “Octopus’ Garden” is included is the icing on the cake for me, ‘cos it’s one of my favourites and you just never hear it enough. Should I have ever actually seen the show I would’ve almost regretted hearing this recording first, because in the form it appears here, I swear I would’ve be in tears if I wasn’t expecting it.
It’s absolutely incredible, and though technically it’s a compilation, I’ve gotta say, one of the best albums of 2006. You feel the electricity that happened between The Beatles and their fans, you feel their sound developing, you hear them rehearsing, playing, experimenting and when it hits Sgt. Pepper, you can almost feel them become musical gods before your very ears. It’s really, really, really incredible, I wish I had better words to describe it. I hope they filmed the actual show for a future DVD release, or that they put it on tour or something at least.
