Okay, okay so I’ve fallen off the wagon .. .again. No, I haven’t caved in on my plan for an alcohol-free January*, I’ve just made my first vinyl buys of 2016. I sort of didn’t mean to, there I was striding through Liverpool purposefully at lunchtime, then I must have taken a bit of a funny turn because the next thing I can remember was striding in the opposite direction holding a heavy carrier bag. Man, I really need to get this medical condition of mine seen to.
I finally bought an LP I’ve wanted for a few years now but never got around to, I’m sure you foreign types won’t have heard of them but its by an obscure outfit from around these parts called The Beatles, I understand they were pretty big on the local scene, I bought Let It Be … Naked. I can tell you now that it is every bit as wonderful, as it’s title is awful**. It is a beautifully luxurious slab of cardboard and vinyl so heavy I could barely lift it onto the turntable. You know the premise, basically Let It Be shorn of Spector’s decorative bits and some other bits and pieces, running order rejigged and laid bare before us.
It really has been an uncanny experience tonight hearing all these songs that I have known and loved all my life, in a totally different manner. Some are not vastly different, some like ‘The Long & Winding Road’ in particular are fundamentally changed, for the better too; and I say that as a big fan of Let It Be. The clarity of the mix is rather jaw dropping too, the rockers really rock and you get a sense of the Beatles as a real living, breathing band, rather than as a remote culturally iconic untouchable entity. I hoped it was going to be really good, I guessed it was but I really was quite unprepared for just how good it was, so warm and emotional. I’d just like to point out that I’m a hard macho type and I wasn’t crying by the end of LP closer ‘Let It Be’, I just had something in my eye. Honest.
This is all so good, I’ve barely touched my other beauty, Muse The Resistance. It really is an LP I love, it reminds me of a great family holiday we had in Cornwall when it first came out. Muse were never very good to us vinyl freaks, this LP was only available on LP as a mega-expensive box set filled with stuff I didn’t give a flying, umm, duck about, but now their record company has re-released everything on wax to cash in on every sane person’s format of choice. But I don’t care – exploit me as you will.
But tonight is about the Beatles, I’m off to treat my ears again.
622 Down (still).
PS: Anyone want to go into business with me? I’m planning to open a cake shop called Let It Be … Baked.
*yet.
**I.e. fucking loads!