The LP -sized book is written by Kevin Howlett and reserves a chapter for each album, with insight on how the remasters came to be, packed with never before seen pictures (this is still possible?). The album listing is well known to collectors as it contains all the UK format albums usually found on CD and box sets previously issued for the past few years, but with the particularity of issuing for the first time in North America, the first four albums in stereo on vinyl.
As taken from the offical Beatles website, details of the release go as follow:
Available individually and collected in a boxed collection, accompanied by a beautiful 252-page hardbound book.
Please Please Me
“Love Me Do” and “P.S. I Love You” are presented in mono
(North American LP debut in stereo)
With The Beatles
(North American LP debut in stereo)
A Hard Day's Night
(North American LP debut in stereo)
Beatles For Sale
(North American LP debut in stereo)
Help!
Features George Martin’s 1986 stereo remix
Rubber Soul
Features George Martin’s 1986 stereo remix
Revolver
Original album
Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band
Packaging includes replica psychedelic inner sleeve, cardboard cutout sheet and additional insert
Magical Mystery Tour
Packaging includes 24-page colour book
The Beatles (double album)
Packaging includes double-sided photo montage/lyric sheet and 4 solo colour photos
Yellow Submarine
“Only A Northern Song” is presented in mono. Additional insert includes original American liner notes.
Abbey Road
Original album
Let It Be
Original album
Past Masters, Volumes One & Two (double album)
“Love Me Do” (original single version), “She Loves You,” “I’ll Get You,” and “You Know My Name (Look Up The Number)” are presented in mono. Packaging, notes and photographic content is based on the 2009 CD release.
A Special Non-Capitol Tribute To Glenn Gould's 80th Birthday Anniversary September 25th, 2012
- Glenn Gould
We commemorate Glenn Gould's 80th. birthday this week; he was born in Toronto, Ontario on September 25th., 1932. Here we share with you our own "Capitol 6000 Variations", these being the two essential 1950s Canadian Columbia LP label variations of his ground-breaking Goldberg Variations (J.S. Bach) album recorded for Columbia Records in 1955 ( as Columbia ML 5060).
The entire album was recorded at Columbia's New York Studio in June 1955 when Glenn was just 23 years old but was not issued on LP until January 1956. This would of course become Glenn Gould's most famous long playing vinyl album. He would record another much different version of the work much later in his life.
Columbia stated that sales were "astonishing" for a classical album at the time and they claimed that 40,000 copies of the LP had been sold by 1960. We do not have the separate sales figures for Canada but would suggest that more than 5,000 copies of the album were sold in Canada during that time. Further information would be appreciated.
Columbia Records began to produce records in the USA in 1901 and their history in Canada dates back to 1904. Columbia had contracted with Sparton Records of London, Ontario to press records for Canadian distribution between 1940 and 1954. In late 1954, Columbia set up their own subsidiary in Canada with their own pressing operation in Toronto. (Source : http://www.capsnews.org/barrcol.htm).
The earliest Canadian issue of the ML 5060 LP was pressed by Columbia Records in Toronto using green labels. These versions are of course the "Picasso" versions of the album and are very rare to find in pristine condition. We expect that fewer than 750 copies were pressed using the earlier green label as the label change to the darker blue label occurred sometime soon after the LP's release in 1956 . The original 1950s mono Goldberg Variations albums were housed in special cardboard jackets with a heavy cardboard pull out inner sleeve that contained the continuation of the liner notes on one side. Both label variations use a simple silver ink on a solid colour paper label.
The album was re-pressed from 1956 through 1960 on the darker blue labels.
There were no stereo issues of the album as no stereo recordings were made at the June 1955 sessions.
Many thanks to our colleagues Gilles Pepin and Serge Pelletier in Quebec for sharing their passion for the earliest Canadian vinyl pressings of Glenn Gould's very first and ultimately his most famous album.
For more information on Glenn Gould please visit the Glenn Gould Foundation (www.glenngould.ca).
Everyone will have wonderful stories about Sam The Record Man who left us last night at the ripe old age of 92. Our condolences to the Sniderman family. A major player in the history of Canadian music retailing has been lost. The tributes to Sam have poured forth all day today.
My own visits to his Yonge Street "Mecca-store" began in the 1970s. And before that my brother and cousin made vinyl pilgrimages there for me while I lived in western Quebec in the 1960s. His prices really were among the very best prices for new releases and he was a fierce competitor in that regard.
A $2.99 Capitol Canada mono Beatles Revolver LP came from there around Christmas 1966 and some great Kinks Pye LPs from the 1960s were found there for 99 cents in the legendary fourth floor delete bins. I saw him running his record business in Toronto many times.
A small memory ... Sam was one of the first retailers in Canada to heat seal the plastic bags once you had paid for your discs. This applied for both LP and 45 sized bags.
When Capitol Records Of Canada was the first company to press a Beatles album in North America in November 1963, on the very day that President Kennedy was shot in Dallas, Sam The Record Man was offering that new LP to eager fans at the "lowest price anywhere" (see advert below).
In the summer of 1967, the Summer Of Love, the CBC's "Action Set" radio program asked Sam to sit in on a special panel to review the Beatles new Sergeant Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band LP. That was a great program.
What Mr. Sniderman will be remembered for is his un-wavering commitment to the music business in Canada. Before the web arrived, Sam brought music to many hundreds of thousands of Canadians and he did this only by his extremely hard work. His network of STRM retail shops penetrated small towns like Huntsville, Ontario in the early 1970s where music really did make a difference to fans young and old. At one of his franchise shops in Thunder Bay I found a pile of Standells LPs on the cool Canadian Sparton label .. at a basement bargain price of 99 cents. In Kingston, Ontario my brother found a mono copy of the Chocolate Watch Band "No Way Out" LP on Sparton for 49 cents.
Thank you Sam.
Today was the announcement the long awaited vinyl release of the Remastered albums. Indeed, three years later, "the set contains all 12 studio albums, plus ‘Magical Mystery Tour’ and the ‘Past Masters’ releases, presented on 180 gram vinyl in what the label description promises is “authentic, jaw-dropping sound guaranteed to rival the original LPs.” according to ultimateclassicrock.com. This will please all Beatles collectors and vinyl enthusiasts for sure, but be ready to plan a few hundred dollars to put your hands on this beautiful set, around 400$ to be precise! The good news though, is that you still have almost two months, until November 13, to prepare for this historical (re)release that will also include a book. In Canada, odds are that we will see imported pressings from the UK, as usual, although it is unknown at this time if some US pressings will also be made. The Fall of 2012 will be packed with remastered material, so brace yourselves because shortly after the October release of the Magical Mystery Tour film on DVD and Blue Ray, The whole catalog will fill the shelves. Let's just hope this release will not see limited number of copies worldwide like the other remastered singles we had the chance to see in the past three years…
As music enthusiasts, we don't all collect records for the same reasons. Some attribute a lot of importance to their historical value as a cultural heritage, some are rather fond of the object in itself, others trade them as a business while many like them simply for the nostalgia of music written in the grooves. Either way, there is an aspect of record collecting (and collecting in general) that is common to all and always trigger a lot of questions: how to determine the value of a specific item. A simple question that unfortunately can not be resolved by a simple answer…
The common principles of supply and demand obviously establish a said basic value for an item, but in reality it is much more complicated and subtle because this said value is influenced by many other factors. First of all, value, as it is understood in price guides, is exactly this: a guide, and not an absolute number by which we should vouch to set our prices. Unfortunately, too many collectors take this value as an absolute reference, sometimes overpricing their items. Why must we not take this number as an unconditional reference then? First because these prices are set from the observation and compilation of many sales, creating an average price that can be said to be the value, the "average value". But these different sales that have been compiled, are determined by very different factors; some of them being universal, but others being very specific. The universal factors, like scarcity or currency value are easy to take into account, but factors like regional interest, or the fact that the interest for an item changes over time, are much more complicated to deal with when wanting to know how much a record is worth. My mother used to tell me it is not worth more than what somebody will pay for… it is true in some way, but it never made complete sense to me as a kid, because I figured that maybe this buyer does not know what he is doing, after all, 3000$ records have been cluelessly sold in bargain bins for 25 cents!
The truth actually lies half way in between; records are worth what people are willing to pay, for sure; that it what sets the "market value", as an average, which allows us to determine what is overpriced or what is a good deal. This value also differs for from one group of people to another, meaning that value is subjective and relative. Like it was mentioned earlier, people like the same records for different reasons, some sentimental, some historical, others simply for the looks of the object, and all these reasons are good and motivate their interest in an item. But this also mean that value is relative to "a certain category of people" (and therefore not for everyone). For example, Canadian Beatles records will generally sell for a higher price among Canadian buyers than they would among American buyers, and the same works the other way around - Many Canadian collectors do not care much about US releases. Why? Simply because they don't relate to them and will much more prefer pay 100$ for a Mint Meet The Beatles with a Parr's slick, than for US pressing. Does this mean Canadian records are worth less because more Americans buy records (number-wise)? Not at all, it only means items then, generate a regional interest, they are worth less for Americans, but they are worth far more to Canadians.
Value also changes over time, because people's interest change over time. Some items always stay interesting, like the butcher cover for example as it fascinates the musical mythology by its odd destabilizing cover and the fact that it was banned and took of the shelves. But other items have proved to be highly desired at first, to finally generate little interest today. A good example being the never issued picture sleeve for "Leave My Kitten Alone" in 1985. Everybody wanted to put their hands on this mysterious unissued record item, until they discovered a box full of them a few years later - the item was not special anymore and almost felt like a bootleg item, and today, if it sells for more than 30$, the seller can consider himself to be pretty lucky. Another common point of interest among collectors is the desire for original pressings. even though some records have been reissued over the years, the re-pressings and re-masterings often sound great, and sometimes even better, but they lack the historical value in that the record was made when the artists were making their initial, perhaps pioneering recordings. The Decca My Bonnie 45 was, as an example, issued before Love Me Do was even recorded, before the idea of Beatlemania could even be thought to exist in the future, so to some collectors, owning this rare item it is like having an early Picasso... a piece of art and a piece of history that happened at the very embryonic stage of a famous artist's career.
To make things even more complicated, subjective factors like regionality, are also relative; let us say, for the purpose of this example, that Canadian records don't interest American buyers as much as their own home ground releases. True, but not in all cases. The Love Me Do Canadian single and the Beatlemania album sell really well with our neighbours to the south, because these two items have the distinction of being the first North American Beatles releases, preceding any American release (besides the Decca single). The "region" of interest now grows from one's country to the whole continent. Why is that? Simply because the common denominator to all factors related to value is INTEREST. If there is no interest in an item, there is no value. People tend to focus on releases from their own region because they relate to them, they remember them, they identify themselves to them, but in some cases, the same people will also develop a specific interest for "foreign" releases too when they can relate to them in some way, like the case of the Love Me Do single.
Interest (demand) is therefore relative to region, but other factors are instead quite universal - UK Beatles releases, for example, will always be of major interest because they were issued in the country where the artists come from, thus making these releases the most "original releases" by the artist, rounding up major interest from all over the world - these are the landmarks of where, why and when it all happened in the first place.
So can we set up a sure value on scarcity, desire and regionality alone? Unfortunately no… To complicate things further, there are also some instances where what an item is considered to be worth, is not reflected by the average sales of such an item - this is usually the case with high priced items. The best example to illustrate this would be the sales of the Canadian Decca 45 My Bonnie. Indeed, the average sales price of this item is surprisingly only 3500$ even though they are far more difficult to find than the US release… why? Well, two elements come into play, the first being this record is so scarce that it is difficult to build a statistically significant price value, with only a handful of recorded sales. The other, which is quite important but often disregarded, is the fact that the amount one would be willing to pay does not always coincide with the budget we can allow ourselves for the hobby! Basically this record sold around 3500$ because most of the people who wanted it the most only had that amount to give. I, for example, could be willing to pay 10 000$ for it, considering it is even more scarce than the US pressing valued at 10 000$, but I can simply not afford to pay that much, and probably never will. So how can the value be set for such an item then, if it is potentially worth far more than what people can afford to pay for it?
There is probably no straight answer. Collecting is a relative hobby that changes through time, influenced by many factors, but driven by interest; a subjective factor in itself. Some records sell for extremely low prices considering their historical significance, while others are way overpriced, but like in any relevant statistical analysis, extremes should not be taken into account when building an average guide value. So to consider a book value (or even worse, ONE specific sale) as an absolute indication can be a little cavalier in light of all these factors one has to juggle with… There is no universal way to price a record so, come to think about it, in the end maybe my mother was right: a record is only worth what I am willing to pay for it, whether it is in synch with the rest of the community or not. One thing is certain, though, overpricing records to squeeze out the maximum price out of it kills the fun out of collecting, and sincerely, probably generates less of an investment than selling more records at a lower price. Value should be buyer driven and not the other way around. Furthermore, records that move around and trade hands contribute to a more even distribution among the collector community and therefore spreads out better knowledge about the hobby. In the end, the most important thing to keep in mind is not loose focus on the reasons why we are interested in the hobby in the first place!
Yes, it is time for another Recent Sales news entry for this month! First, the rare Dave Clark Five Instrumental album sold for 20$, A much rare item sold for 143$ this week, the Québec psychedelic band Melchior Alias…' self titled album Capitol 70024, green target label - this album is quite hard to find and always sell for a premium. Another album always selling well is the Yardbirds' stereo pressing of Little Games which sold for 118$ in NM condition, while the equally rare album Thrillington sold for a mere 31$, but this copy had tape all around the cover and a sticker on the front. Nonetheless, this makes two sales for this rare item this week alone!. Lee Gagnon also saw his Jazztek album sell for 20$ while the hard to find Family Way Canadian pressing on London sold for 23$. Another rare item seen twice this month, the Stereo Meet The Beatles with the Parr's slick, still in its shrink wrap, sold for 51$ this time.
As for singles, a regular copy of Something / Come Together sold for 21$, showing there is always interest for good condition stock Beatles singles. Reissues also sell quite well, especially those target 45s. Indeed, Twist And Shout, one of the only two known Beatles 72000 singles to have a ppeared on this late 60s label sold for 46$, while a more common, but still hard to find Eight Days A Week sold for 9$. Finally, a mint copy of BJ Kramer's Bad To Me / I Call Your Name sold for 15$.
Scott Relf of Winnipeg was rummaging through the basement of an old record shop in Winnipeg where he was working a couple of decades ago when he came across a very cool Canadian record store cardboard standee for the original January 1969 issue of the Apple SW-153 LP Yellow Submarine. The album was issued in Canada on January 13th, 1969 and these cardboard standees were prepared using colour slicks printed by Ever Reddy Printing of Toronto. The colour standees were distributed to the various record retailers across Canada to promote the new album inside record shop display areas. Similar standees were prepared for the Abbey Road album later that same year.
Scott told me that there was a small amount of water damage to the top right hand corner of the front. Several months later, he found out that the basement had been flooded yet again and that this time the remaining stock of albums and other items had been completely destroyed by the flood. Sadly, that used record shop in Winnipeg where Scott worked closed in the 1990s. So many thanks to Scott for saving this original Beatles Canadian relic from such a fate. This is the only one we have ever seen.
What record sold these past weeks you might ask? Well, for starters, a hard to find stereo pressing of Dr Healy Willan on the 6000 series sold for 8$, while the Hollies Love N Flowers sold for only 50 cents more at 7.50$. We have the proof that Beatles records always sell at a premium price because a VG copy of Beatlemania sold for 96.50$, while the sarce Do You Want To Know A Secret sold for 51.50$, and a pack of three rare 1968 Capitol promo 45 sleeves with markings for Cashbox and RPM Weekly sold for an impressive 137.50$!
Otherwise, a few CLJ reissue Canadian albums on the retro rainbow sold for around 16$ each; those are not always easy to find nowadays. A very rare stereo Meet The Beatles with the Parr's slickalso sold for a great price as it changed hands to an eager fan willing to pay 128$ for his copy. A rare first pressing of The Early Beatles with the Monophonic notice at the back sold for 20$ and finally, last but not least, a very lucky collector from Eastern Canada put his hands on an extremely rare promo copy of McCartney's Thrillington album, for only a dollar at his local Value Village; showing once again that on some rare occasions, these unexpected stores do pay off once in a while. Needless to say, catches like this one make a lot of fellow collectors jealous! Maybe the next bargain bin catch will be a certain Decca 45…