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The Beatles

Back in the early '90s, some enterprising soul got hold of the soundboard feed from a 1965 concert by the Beatles from Houston, which included not only the Liverpool quartet, but also all of the acts on the bill. The results were a revelation in terms of presenting a Beatles concert in full, something that no prior bootlegger had done, and that Capitol Records and the Beatles' business arm had never endeavored to offer. It was available for a short time as a box set and then disappeared, as these unauthorized underground productions tend to do.

The makers of this 2007 double-CD set have now outdone the work of their anonymous predecessors, turning to what was arguably the single most well-publicized concert of the Beatles' career and the entire British Invasion (no pop/rock concert had ever been presented in an outdoor sports arena before, and Shea Stadium was then brand new, and considered one of the wonders of the sports and entertainment world). This is the sort of handsome double-CD package that, if the source tapes were in slightly better shape, might well have been issued legitimately (perhaps as a deluxe, limited edition) sometime, on the Beatles' August 15, 1965 performance at Shea Stadium in New York: two CDs housed in a thin, compact, but heavily annotated and illustrated hardcover book. But it didn't appear legitimately; rather, it was some anonymous bootlegger who has done the job, and done it exceedingly well. The makers of this set got access to the unedited line-feed of the audio from the show, which reverses the usual problems inherent in any Beatles concert of the period: the audience noise, so overwhelming on most of their shows, is pushed into the background here, while the voices and instruments are where they should be, upfront and in center stage. Not that there aren't problems, including sound leakages and balances that make much of the recording very bass-heavy, and the occasional loss of instruments and vocals in the recording, due to moment-to-moment electrical anomalies at the time of the event. But overall this is the best presentation of the Beatles' music in a concert setting from the arena phase of their international career that has yet surfaced. And while there are some intermittent problems with the performance, mostly owing to the fact that the bandmembers could scarcely hear themselves, much less what their fellow musicians were playing and singing, it's also surprisingly tight for most of its length -- the group hadn't yet lost its edge from too many gigs of this sort, and were still giving basically good (even great) performances, even if the audience itself was no longer able to hear them through the noise. One must still adjust one's ears to get past the bass-heavy bias, but it's easy to appreciate the flourishes and excitement they brought to "Everybody's Trying to Be My Baby," "Can't Buy Me Love" etc., especially on the break of the latter; even with their hopelessly tiny and under-powered amplifiers pushed to the limit, in a setting much too large for what they were trying to do, it's possible to hear the nuances of the playing, and the proper live rendition of "Act Naturally," sung by Ringo Starr (which was replaced by the record for the official film of this show) is also here, and the drummer does as well on his vocal spot as any of the other members of the group. What's more, the complete between-song patter is heard for the first time, which allows us to hear Paul McCartney's humor at the expense of "Baby's in Black" on his intro as well as other revealing moments. There are flaws, to be sure, including momentary dropouts, which mostly happen between songs, but do seriously mar the performance of "Help!" And their singing gets a bit raw toward the end, as the toll of the members trying (vainly for the most part) to be heard becomes a bit much after almost 40 minutes on-stage.

The producers have cheated a bit on this release