November 16, 2004

"'Something New'? That can't be a Beatles album because we have all the Beatles albums and we don't have that."

That's something that a Generation Y-er said to me a few years ago. And my own son likes to say to me, when I say something like, "That's my favorite song on 'Beatles 65,'" "There is no 'Beatles 65.'" My answer is something like: ""Beatles 65' is more real to me than whatever it was released as in England and on CD. 'Beatles 65' is part of the structure of my brain! 'Beatles 65' is my youth!"

Of all the packagings and repackagings of the Beatles music, the decision to release the original American albums on CD makes the most sense. These albums may be dismissible to later generations because they are not the collections the Beatles themselves made, but they have everything to do with memory and feeling for those of us who made these albums a part of ourselves, one by one, as they were released to us in the 1960s.

Funny, my previous post talks about the problem I had when "Ruby Tuesday" followed "She Smiled Sweetly" when Margot played "Between the Buttons" in "The Royal Tenenbaums." The records you play as a teenager make a deep and meaningful imprint!

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