Tomorrow is the 40th anniversary of the White Album’s original release date, which seems like a good opportunity to get nerdy on the Beatles, staring with the Purple Chick remaster bootlegs.  Considering I first read about them back in April in Rolling Stone, I figured I was one of the last to hear, but surprisingly few of my friends are familiar with the project. 

Here’s the story as I understand it.  After years of complaining about the shotty audio quality of the Beatles CD releases (which haven’t been remastered since they were released in 1987), the bootleg group Purple Chick (which could be one sweaty middle-aged dude in his mom’s basement for all I know) have taken the task into their own hands.  Using top quality, first-pressing vinyl as their source, they’ve issued deluxe remasters of all the Beatles albums for free on the internet.  The real icing on the cake is that they didn’t stop at the released tracks.  There are discs and discs of extras for each deluxe release, including the original mono mixes, the singles from those sessions, loads of studio outtakes, tracking sessions and assorted other rarities.  The White Album deluxe edition is ten discs, including home demos.  Last year, they released Sgt. Pepper with all four tracks isolated.  These releases are nerd-only events, but events nonetheless.

This page lists details on all the Purple Chick releases.  They’ve now expanded to remaster concerts (dating back to the first Quarrymen performance where Paul met John) and are, as one blog put it, “making all other bootlegs obsolete.”  You can download the deluxe copies for yourself at various bittorrent sites on the internet or try this blog for a taste of the remasters.  Thank you internet.

Speaking of Beatles bootlegs, one infamous track that remains unreleased is “Carnival of Light,” an experimental piece helmed by McCartney recorded during their psychedelic period for an electronic music festival.  In an interview last week, Paul hopes the track will now finally be made available to the public.  Of course it depends on the approval of everyone’s widows.  Oh, and Ringo, who finally has some free time to think about this sort of thing now that he’s refusing all autographs.  After years of hype, I’m prepared to be underwhelmed by its release, but who knows - maybe I’ll be amazed.

In other White Album non-news, I was just learned from wikipedia about Francie Schwartz, Paul’s live-in girlfriend during early tracking of the album.  Apparently this was his transitional relationship between Jane Asher and Linda.  In this interview she talks about the period when she lived with Paul, John and Yoko, sang backups on ”Revolution 1″, and listened to Paul composing “Hey Jude” at home.

For bedside Beatle reading, in the past couple years I’ve read two great Beatles books - engineer Geoff Emerick’s Here There and Everywhere, (which has great fly-on-the-wall studio stories, recording tricks and bits of trivia, such as Paul audibly saying “Fuck!” when he biffs a note on the “Hey Jude” piano track or George blowing up at Yoko when she got out of the bed to steal the food off his amp)  and Barry Miles’ McCartney: Many Years from Now, which is the closest thing to a McCartney autobiography that exists and shows that despite Paul’s reputation as “the cute one,” he was the most cutting-edge, musically-inclined and perfection-driven of the fab four.  Also the most hyphenated.

And for the Beatles mega-nerd who wants THE LATEST BEATLES NEWS, there’s this Beatle blog on WordPress that is updated almost daily.  Its latest post? Paul McCartney mused to Rolling Stone today about his collaboration wishlist, and topping the list are Bob Dylan and David Byrne.  “Girl Is Mine” remake with Dylan anyone?

Finally, I’ll leave you with the fourth single on Apple Records, a brass band recording written and produced by McCartney.

Black Dyke Mills Band - “Thingumybob”