Michael Fremer

The Beatles The Singles Collection arrived the other day and it was opened with great anticipation and the embedded YouTube video was quickly produced in a single take before listening to a note. As you'll see when you watch, the packaging is "top shelf" and imaginative and Kevin Howlett's booklet notes are illuminating and useful. Using original artwork from around the world was a nice touch that every Beatles fan with appreciate!

Here’s more proof that sound quality—or its factual representation—is no longer on the radar screen of the mainstream press. I recently sent this letter to the Wall Street Journal’s corrections editor:

“Sarah McBride’s assertion in today’s lead story that satellite radio offers ‘higher quality sound’ than FM radio is demonstrably incorrect. This is not a matter of opinion. While satellite radio is ‘digital,’ it is a highly compressed digital format. . . . I believe were you to speak with the chief engineer at Sirius or XM, and were they to be honest and candid, they would agree too that while satellite radio is a fantastic innovation and offers ‘noise free’ sound, FM offers demonstrably better sound than current satellite technology provides. I know if you spoke with the chief engineer at WGBH in Boston or [W]FMT in Chicago, they’d tell you the same thing.

Though you could argue that Bayou Country containing "Proud Mary" and "Born on the Bayou" was a better album, I'm going with Green River as a stronger, more consistent overall album (you remember albums, don't you?), which also had some hits like "Bad Moon Rising" (with it's refrain "there's a bathroom on the right"), "Lodi", which at the time made me wonder why Fogerty was writing about New Jersey and of course the title tune. In retrospect, despite the New Orleans musical setting, much of what Fogerty wrote was about his life growing up in Berkeley, Calfornia. But I digress.

I have been assured by co-producer Guy Hayden that this 45rpm box was cut directly from TAPE and that whatever transfers were done (hence the credit) was done as they were for the AAA mono album box, to use as a reference before actual cutting in order to preserve the tapes.