Aunties Fantasy (His Masters Choice – HMC 021)
Part One – Station Id Tune / Introduction / Some Other Guy / Interview / I Saw Her Standing There / I’ll Get You / Please Please Me / Intermezzo / She Loves You / Till There Was You / Twist & Shout / From Me To You / Money / Roll Over Beethoven / I Wanna Hold Your Hand / All My Loving / Boys / A Hard Days Night / I Feel Fine / Ticket To Ride / Yesterday / Help / Baby’s In Black / Long Tall Sally / Get Back / Hollywood Bowl Compilation Mix (61:12)
Part Two – Live In Sweden 28th July ’64 – All My Loving – Hollywood Bowl Concert 23 Aug ’64 – Introduction / Twist And Shout / You Can’t Do That / All My Loving / She Loves You / Things We Said Today / Roll Over Beethoven / Can’t Buy Me Love / If I Fell / I Want To Hold Your Hands / Boys / A Hard Days Night / Long Tall Sally – Pathe News Reels – Beatles Come To Town / BCTT She Loves You / BCTT Twist And Shout / Off To America / Conquer America / Welcome Home / Get Show Biz Top Award / Take Over Holland / Conquer Aussies (65:57)
Volume 9 of HMC’s TMOQ gazette series “Aunties Fantasy” brings us the BBC ‘Fantasy Concert’ broadcast from the May Day bank holiday in 1999. A simple premise. Raid the BEEBs archives of radio sessions, pop them together like the setlists of the 60’s, add a little “Get Back” and mix to provide a audio soup thats a fun way to reintroduce the BBC sessions to the collective conscious.
HMC use their particular brand of mastering and a great ( if slightly echoey ) recording of the show for the first disk of the set. The BEEB took care to make sure that the inter-song chatter was left as complete as possible to emphasise the ‘live’ feel of the show. Thus the CD is made up of officially released music. Certainly nothing that hasn’t been bootlegged before and, because of the quality of this recording, in better quality.
We begin with a cover of “Some Other Guy” from BBC radio, broadcast on June 23rd, 1963 which end with a short interview with the birthday boy, Paul McCartney. This is cross-faded in to an energetic “I Saw Her Standing There” from Easy Beat, 20th October, 1963.
“I’ll Get You” follows, recorded at the Beatles appearance at the London Palladium from the 13th of October, 1963. This is quickly followed by a return to the BBC’s ‘Easy Beat’ show, 20th October, 1963 and a flush, fast “Please, Please Me” where at the end, Brian discusses with Paul the fact that the band have been booked to play the Royal Variety Performance that year.
A quick edit to the section has the Fabs on that very stage rushing through “She Loves You” and then slowing the pace for the first time with a rendition of Paul’s “Till There Was You” complete with his quip about Sophie Tucker ( Imagine what kind of a reception that comment might get nowadays .. )
We end this trip to the variety performance, upping the ante again with a pulsing “Twist And Shout”. Another break from the BEEB next as we join the band in Sweden for the first time this set at the Karlaplan Studios and the oft’ bootlegged set from there ( which was also another highlight of the official Anthology Vol. 1. ) supported by the trio of “From Me To You”, “Money” and “Roll Over Beethoven”.
A trip back across the waters and to ATV TV studios for the Morecambe and Wise show. Not the more famous “Moonlight Bay”, where Eric and Ernie did their best to crack up the lads with their aping around but the lesser listened to “I Want To Hold Your Hand”. It flops straight in to place rather like a bomb rather than fading in but, in the same instance, it works.
Over to the States, where the band were breaking through, with their burglary busting performance on the Ed Sullivan show. The show is represented by “All My Loving” a much more successful ad-juncture in to the mix but it’s Ed’s introduction that softens the blow.
The next stop is the first visit to the Hollywood Bowl where the band run through Ringo’s solo “Boys” and “A Hard Days Night” – preceded this time with one of John’s greatest introductions.
We go right back to Blighty for the Fabs promotion of the very same ‘Hard Days Night’ album performed at the Blackpool Night Out TV show. This features the longest run of tracks from one single set – “I Feel Fine”, “Ticket To Ride”, “Yesterday” and “Help”. Figuring in all the chatter and banter that goes on between.
On the return to the Hollywood Bowl we have “Baby’s In Black” and “Long Tall Sally”. Appropriately the song that would feature at the real end of the Beatles live career in 1966.
We end this particular set though with the final song from the one off show atop of 3 Saville Row from 1969. “Get Back” ends with the police joining the band on the roof, politely asking them to desist. No intention is made in mixing this in to the fray but it tops off the show quite nicely.
The CD itself is lead off by a compilation – a Hollywood Bowl mix. Apparently bolted together by the late Roger Scott for reasons unknown. HMC’s little tribute to the man who fed Bootleg releases for years.
The second disk features he best of last years downloads – tracks that were recently made available on Medusa’s and Unicorn’s releases – “Hollywood Bowl” and “Early Years 1962 – 1966” respectively.
The first track is “All My Loving” – the only track from Sweden, 28th July, 1964 that has been released so far. It sounds just as good as the soundboard extract on Unicorn’s release. The next set of 13 tracks comes from the recent internet download of the upgraded Hollywood Bowl Concert on the 23rd of August, 1964. Again, it sounds just as good at the formers presentation – a very good, wide stereo picture with only the ghostly screams from the crowd to get in the way from time to time.
The set ends with, as the recent Unicorn releases have, excerpts from the Pathe video archive, the short films that preceded films in the cinemas of Britain in the innocent age of the 60’s. These mini-programmes offer excellent fidelity and are quite nice to listen to at least once or twice as they throw open the window to Beatlemania as it was.
The set as a whole is tentative. The fidelity of the Fantasy Concert isn’t as finger lickin’ as we’re lead to believe but is still nice in concept. The inclusion of the Swedish snippet and the Hollywood Bowl upgrade are welcome unless you were wanting to collect the general other hodge podge items on the Unicorn release.
Still, as a collectibility, the gazette is a great, fun item and the label always manage to mine some rare items for their pages too. Not essential as a whole but a wonderful item to own.
