THE BEATLES
"MEET THE BEATLES" OPEN-END INTERVIEW DISC
CAPITOL PRO 2548/2549
Remastered Edition
RMW 653
Originally issued to US radio stations February 1964
Restored from a pirate edition of the Capitol Compact 33 promo disc.
The purpose of this record was to enable local DJs to sound as though they were interviwing The Beatles live in the studio. The sleeve contains the text of an interview with the questions for the DJ and the answers given by the group. Note that several of the answers are misattributed to the Beatle who spoke them. Only the answers are on the disc. It then plays their new single, and includes two tracks from their first US Capitol album. The shelf-life of this promo item was fourteen days - February 7-21, 1964. It is unlikely that it received much airplay beyond then, with the group having left the US, and the deluge of their records that would appear on the charts afterward.
For many years, the musical portions of this disc have been identified as "ping-pong" mixes, taking on a kind of "rarity" status. Under further examination, these turn out not to be special mixes of any kind, but the result of a mastering error at the Capitol plant. It sounds as though a mono signal was being fed to the stereo cutting head, passing through a stereo compressor which had different attack and release settings in each channel. This resulted in random, asynchronous pumping and breathing in the left and right. The stamper was mastered this way, and all copies of the record sound the same. We present the record not only as an historical artifact, but also to put to rest the notion that it contains rare mixes.
Please preserve the lossless quality of this material.
Uploaded to Demonoid March 13, 2011
Enjoy!
Remasters Workshop
RMW 653