Beatles Torrent on shnflac.net
- From: "Richard Morris" <jrmorris@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Mon, 9 Apr 2007 18:16:13 -0700
http://www.shnflac.net/details.php?id=389141cd771c92e6f2c2f8d7bb9279bbf86a0180
THIS IS 14 GB DONT DOWNLOAD UNLESS YOU GOT THE ROOM
The Beatles
January, 1969
"A/B Road" session tapes
Also known as The Nagra Reels
COMPLETE SET version 1.1
83 CDs
2187 tracks
97 hours, 44 minutes, 7 seconds
Twickenham Studios (Part 1)
Apple Studios (Part 2)
______________________________________________________________________________________
Background info, from Doug Sulpy's "Complete Beatle's Audio Guide"
From Doug Sulpy2006 Edition
THE "GET BACK" SESSIONS
I'll make this easy for you.
You need Purple Chick's "A/B Road" series. Period. No doubt, using one of
my previous books as a template (at least I hope he did - I'd hate to think
of two people going through all that work!) Purple Chick has compiled every
extant moment from the Nagra A and B rolls and edited them together in
sequence.
In January, 1969, virtually every moment of The Beatles' rehearsals and
recording sessions were captured on audio tape as part of the project that
ultimately became the film "Let It Be." For the first part of the month, at
Twickenham Film Studios in London, The Beatles' performances were only
preserved on small 16 minute long mono tapes (known as "Nagra" reels) that
were recorded for use as the film soundtrack.
Two different tape recorders were running (usually off of the same sound
feed), resulting in what was termed "A" and "B" roll Nagra recordings. The
"A" rolls generally ran the full 16 minute length of the tape. The "B" rolls
were more fragmentary, but often captured performances or dialogue missed
while the "A" roll operator was changing reels. In addition, once the
sessions shifted to Apple Studios on January 21st, Glyn Johns began
recording multi-track tapes of The Beatles' sessions which, again, sometimes
captured performances not heard on either the "A" or "B" roll Nagra
recordings.
In 2004, Purple Chick collated these recordings, and issued them in a
series of CDs called "A/B Road."
These are now the most readily available source for the "Get Back"
sessions material.
______________________________________________________________________________________
Further history on the Nagra Reels (source of this giant set)
By ALLAN KOZINN
Published: January 13, 2003
To read the statements made by British and Dutch officials after the
arrest of a group of bootleggers in suburbs of London and Amsterdam on
Friday, one would think that the police had apprehended a band of thieves
who for the last three decades had been sitting on a vast trove of long-lost
master tapes from Beatles recording sessions. There is an element of truth
in what they say, but also a good measure of exaggeration. Whether the
seizure of these tapes should be regarded as good news -- and for that
matter whether it will have any effect on the thriving trade in Beatles
bootlegs -- is another matter.
What the police seized was a collection of 500 to 550 reels of tape, each
running about 16 minutes. They were recorded during the sessions for the
Beatles' ''Let It Be'' album -- originally to be called ''Get Back'' -- from
Jan. 2 to Jan. 31, 1969. But they are not the multitrack session masters
from which the album was made. Those are safely in EMI's archives. Instead,
they are monaural recordings made on a pair of Nagra tape recorders for
reference purposes by a film crew that was documenting the sessions for a
proposed television documentary. When the television plan was scuttled, the
film was released theatrically as ''Let It Be.''
It is unquestionably an important collection. Unlike normal session
tapes, which usually include only performances, the Nagra reels, as these
tapes are known, run continuously and capture everything: rehearsals,
discussions, arguments, clowning and loose jams on Buddy Holly and Chuck
Berry classics as well as older Beatles tunes and oddities like the theme
from ''The Third Man,'' all in addition to the nose-to-the-grindstone work
of making an album. No other set of Beatles sessions is so thoroughly
documented.
These tapes are well known to collectors. Instantly recognizable because
the film crew is regularly heard announcing slate and roll numbers, the
material was the source for some of the first Beatles bootlegs in the early
1970's. Until the early 90's the trend in Beatles bootlegging was to compile
collections of the most interesting performances and discussions. More
recently, bootleg labels began releasing these tapes more systematically:
unedited, in chronological order and with reel numbers and recording dates
fully documented.
These tapes have also been the subject of two books: ''Get Back: The
Unauthorized Chronicle of the Beatles' 'Let It Be' Disaster,'' by Doug Sulpy
and Ray Schweighardt (St. Martin's, 1994), and ''The 910's Guide to the
Beatles' Outtakes: The Complete 'Get Back' Sessions,'' a comprehensive
catalog of the material by Mr. Sulpy (The 910, 2002).
As originally proposed, the idea for ''Let It Be'' was elegantly simple.
Having completed the White Album a few months earlier, the Beatles were to
convene at the Twickenham film studios in London to rehearse an album's
worth of new songs. The rehearsals would be filmed by Michael Lindsay-Hogg,
an expatriate American who had directed their promotional clips for
''Paperback Writer'' and ''Rain'' in 1966, as would the highlight of the
project, a concert at which the Beatles would perform their new material.
What the plan did not take into account were the increasingly fractious
relations among three of the four Beatles. John Lennon, more interested in
his collaborations with Yoko Ono than in the Beatles, wanted either to
involve her in the band or to distance himself from it. He brought a handful
of songs to the sessions, and is heard in a few hilarious monologues
(including one about how masturbation ''doesn't make you go blind, only very
shortsighted'') but is often passive and uninvolved.
George Harrison, by then a prolific songwriter, was disgruntled about his
paltry representation on the Beatles' albums, which were always dominated by
the music of Lennon and Paul McCartney. He was also uninterested in
performing in concert, and irritated by what he regarded as Mr. McCartney's
condescension in telling him what to play. At one point Harrison walked out,
effectively (if temporarily) quitting the band, leaving the others to pursue
a series of aggressive but fascinating jams with Ms. Ono vocalizing. Mr.
McCartney is at times almost despondent about his partners' lack of interest
and cooperation. Only Ringo Starr seems to be taking the sessions in stride.
In the end Harrison returned, but only after being guaranteed that his
songs would receive greater consideration, and that there would be no more
talk of a concert. The project was completed with a series of performances
filmed at the group's new Apple studios, and on the rooftop of their London
offices.
What makes these tapes crucial to Beatles biographers and musicians
interested in studying the band's working process is that they capture it
all. The rehearsals often begin with one of the Beatles playing a new song
while calling out the chord progression to the others. The group joins in
and works through the changes, and ideas for arrangements slowly accrue.
Some songs -- ''Two of Us,'' ''One After 909'' and ''Get Back,'' for
example -- are tried as everything from sizzling, fast-tempo rockers to
country-influenced ballads.
The process of lyric writing unfolds before the listener's ears as well.
In one session for ''Get Back,'' Mr. McCartney stops during a run-through
and says, ''I've got it -- Jo Jo left his home in Tucson, Arizona.'' Lennon
asks, ''Is Tucson in Arizona?'' Mr. McCartney replies, ''Yeah, it's where
they make 'High Chaparral.' ''
There is also a good deal of material that, even for the
Beatles-obsessed, can be hard slogging -- hours and hours and hours of ''The
Long and Winding Road,'' for example. And the discussions, which often last
several reels at a stretch, range from the amusingly loopy to the
contentious. Several are about the proposed concert. Among the plans
suggested are playing in an amphitheater in North Africa, or on a cruise
ship on the Mediterranean. When Harrison quits, Mr. Lindsay-Hogg suggests
going on with the show and saying that Harrison is ill, to which Lennon
replies, ''If he's not back by Tuesday, we'll call Eric Clapton.'' One reel
captures a lunch meeting at which the group airs its problems in some
detail.
Had these illuminating tapes not already found their way onto the
collectors' market, their seizure would be unfortunate, because it is
unlikely that Apple, the Beatles' company, will ever sanction their
legitimate release. Apple has even tried to stifle scholarly discussion of
them. When Mr. Sulpy and Mr. Schweighardt were at work on their first book,
they naively sent Apple a sample chapter and sought permission to hear the
studio recordings. Apple responded by threatening legal action.
______________________________________________________________________________________
NOTES ABOUT THIS SET and DDSI numbers
from jameskg
January, 2007
I started trying to collect this set 2 years ago. It gets seeded all
kinds of ways. One disc here, one disc there. someone thought it would be
nice to encode to .APE on a few I found. Very frustrating to try to collect
a set this big that way. Like most people, I only had some pieces and the
tracks are always named "Track01.shn, Track37.flac, track0048.shn" etc...
just all over the place and really hard to keep up with.
A gentleman named alGo did manage to collect all these though, as they
were first being posted.
He notes:
This was all downloaded from easytree and then later dimeadozen. It
was upped by PC_Eclipse and later by hexer, and, supposedly, they got their
sets directly in flac format from Purple Chick (mmm PC and PC_Eclipse. Never
thought of that. Who knows...).
They were seeded in small batches of maybe two or three cds. I've
made one directory for each day and then put the correspondent discs there,
like it should be.
Some of the uploaded files had defects and patches were uploaded.
Those patches are already applied, as was a later patch from PC to one of
the tracks. So this is AB road 1.1 instead of 1.0.
In a disc or two an 'unofficial' patch was uploaded and suggested
too. I have NOT replaced the original PC track, but I've put them on a
directory inside that disc so everyone can judge and replace it where
necessary.
Some of the first batches (that started with the apple sessions) were
originally in shn format. Personally, I can't stand shn so I reconverted
them to flac level 8 using Flac Frontend. Hope no one really minds about it.
So, alGo did a lot of further work to organize this set. I was still
unhappy with having to reference a track list document to browse 2100+
files, so I have named all the tracks, combined into a single folder and
added FLAC tags. This is the most complete presentation of this historic
set, of over a thousand reels, you will find anywhere. All tracks have been
meticulously labeled to include all info for easy browsing, including the
DDSI take numbers.
DDSI numbers were published by Doug Sulpy when these tracks were
initially pieced together and cataloged, in order of recording, for the most
part, and presented in the book, "Drugs, Divorce and a Slipping Image
(DDSI). Doug will be releasing an updated version of this book soon, and it
is my hope that this set will compliment that nicely - you'll be able to
instantly call up a track while you read about it using the DDSI # assigned
by Doug.
TRACK TITLE FORMAT IS:
Month.Day - Disc-Track - Title DDSI#.flac
example:
Jan.02 - D1-08 - Don't Let Me Down 2.01.flac
Jan.02 - D1-35 - Sun King 2.24.flac
Not all tracks from Purple Chick were assigned the DDSI numbers,
so some are just in-between takes.
______________________________________________________________________________________
Attempt at Lineage
It is widely known that the original lineage of this set is not widely known
Roughly, it would be:
A Nagra reel machine >16 min tape >(unsure) >Purple Chick (splicing of A and
B reels) >SHN >PC_Eclipse/Hexer >alGo (FLAC conversion) >jameskg
(organization, corrections, naming with DDSI #s and FLAC tagging)
I note these here, not for boasting, but for general information. This set
has been notoriously hard to complete, especially with any consistent
lineage. Here is the chain of custody for this set:
THE FILM ENGINEERS - recorded thousands of audio reels over 4 weeks
<unnamed> - the people in between
PURPLE CHICK - initial compilation and lots of hard work piecing the
reels together
PC_ECLIPSE & HEXER - initial individual distribution of the 83 CDs
alGo - initial compiling from the 83 individual Discs to 4 big sets
ROGERLANCELOT - computation of times & track data.
JAMESKG - final compiling and file naming, flac tagging
I have gone through this set with a fine tooth comb and Doug Sulpy's 2006
edition book's list by DDSI #s. I found a few anomalies with track #s and
DDSI #s and have re-aligned to Sulpy's book. Something like 100 or so errors
out of all 2187 tracks. I'm pretty sure this is as accurate as the
documentation has ever been for this set.
______________________________________________________________________________________
Some notes about compression:
This set has long been the subject of debate. is it lossy or not?
Basically the two arguments go like this:
1) Uncompressed: These thousands of 16 minute reels were recorded on a
set of Nagra recorders for possible film use. The tape and recorders used
likely didn't reproduce the entire spectrum from 20 Hz to 20kHz - these were
not the tapes used for the albums. The lack of dynamic range on the
equipment and media would produce high-end roll off around where we see the
MP3 codecs of today roll off, and that makes these tapes appear lossy, when
they simply were not recorded full-spectrum.
2) Compressed: Regardless of the frequency reproduction range of the
recorders and media (tape), a lot of this set exhibits characteristics of
ATRAC compression on a graphic frequency analyzer, like that found on
MiniDisc recorders. Old analog equipment wouldn't produce these kinds of
characteristics, so it is likely these tracks went through a MiniDisc
recorder at some point.
The dilema: No one. NO ONE seems to have these tracks in any other quality.
They all seem to be the same, no matter where you get them from, and now
that the original reels have been recovered (see the story above - you were
reading, weren't you ? ? ), it doesn't seem that we'll ever see a cleaner,
more pure transfer.
It is my opinion that this set was archived from reels to MiniDisc and the
source for the splicing was those MiniDisc transfers. I'd be surprised if a
lossless transfer to digital was ever done of this 98 HOURS of audio. Since
this seems to be all there is to have, The Traders Den has made a special
exemption for this set, to allow it to be posted - just like if a concert
was only recorded to MiniDisc and that's the only way it exists.
It is very rare to notice any of the ATRAC artifacts when listening to these
recordings. ATRAC is much more pleasant than MP3, even at high rates, and
doesn't exhibit any obvious "swishy" aliasing on this particular set, at
all.
______________________________________________________________________________________
This set is huge. The md5 checksum strings will not fit on a single post
because of the number of tracks (2187!). Neither will the list of the
tracks, themselves, for the same reason.
I am attaching supporting documentation as attachments. ALL of these are
included in the .torrent, but you can download the attachments to browse
while you are running the torrent if you want to see the file names.
______________________________________________________________________________________
Someone will ask, so here it is:
I did not alter the audio information on ANY of the 2187 tracks in any way
EXCEPT for the Love Me Do track on the 28th, Disc 3. Purple Chick's fix for
this track was, itself, broken (not redbook CD compliant). Note are in the
documents.
I did rename the tracks, as documented above, and I did add full FLAC tags
with all info for every single track. Also, ALL ORIGINAL PURPLE CHICK
ARTWORK IS INCLUDED! The only 'artwork' I created is the logo 'art' at the
top of this post. I have it in a higher res if someone wants it.. it's nice
for the folder's picture on your hard drive if you have XP or Vista. Maybe
MAC, too?
CHECK SUMS AND TRACKS DONT FIT ILL ATTACH INFO
ALL INFO IS IN TORRENT...
IF YOU GOT THE ROOM THEN START DOWNLOADING
MAY GO SLOW ILL TRY TO DEADICATE MY BANDWITH TO THE BEST OF MY ABILITY....
IF YOU HAVE THIS PLEASE JUMP ON AS A SEEDER
BE YOUR BEST FRIEND
CHECKSUMS
http://www.megaupload.com/?d=805U81W5
ALL INFO
http://www.megaupload.com/?d=PMLLC2R1
SORRY ABOUT MEGAUPLOAD.COM I DID NOT KNOW WHAT TO DO WITH THE PDFS AND THE
TEXT FILE DIDNT EVEN FIT 1/25
--
Drop "trousers" to respond via email.
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