Michael Fremer

A visit to Czech Republic-based GZ Media recently published on a website includes an un-captioned photo of a large stack of the upcoming Beatles Mono box sets. This has flooded analogplanet.com's "inbox" with emails from readers, some inquisitive, some hysterical and a few spewing expletives.

(photo: Jeremy Neech)
The blank white The Beatles double LP gatefold jacket intended to show the world that the group was finished with busy, production heavy studio creations that relied for completion upon production tricks and gimmickry. Instead, the group wanted to emphasize musicianship and “live play”.

Never mind that the songs sometimes ended up being more individual than group efforts and that squabbling and disagreement led to acrimony as well as long time engineer Geoff Emerick exiting, producer George Martin going on holiday and even Ringo Starr walking out for a few weeks.

Having licked his wounds and moped us into a melancholic swoon on the sumptuous sounding break-up album Sea Change, Beck casts off his blues and self absorbed ballads, puts his ears to the ground and, reunited with Mike Simpson and John King (a/k/a The Dust Brothers), comes up with an Odelay style, beat based musical mélange sure to please fans.