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Beatles Box
January 16, 2006

I have been a music consumer/collector for about twenty years now and I have to make a confession: I don’t own any Beatles albums.  That’s actually not true, I picked up a copy of Revolver on LP at Buch Spieler last summer.  BUT, before that, I never owned anything by the Fab Four.  As a matter of fact I had never even put on one of their albums that belonged to someone else. I guess I always thought their music was ubiquitous, that I would hear it through the course of my life from elsewhere, like Phish and the Steve Miller Band.  But the freakin’ Beatles are certainly worthy of spins on my own setup, on my own terms, especially since much of the music I love from the Kinks, Big Star, and the Replacements, to Pernice Brothers, Olivia Tremor Control, and Apple in Stereo is so influenced by them. 

So I’m itchin’ to spend some Christmas dough on some new tunes today.   I have my Norton Records mail order catalog all scratched up with circled tunes on dogeared pages.  Time to get the Ramones first three albums to replace my various cassette copies and cd comps.  Oh, and they have the first two New York Dolls records! And the original Velvet Underground records reissued on Verve…I have the first one, but the last two real records I only have on pretty worn cassettes. And of course there’s all those crazy psychobilly/raunch rock comps that Norton specializes in.

SO I’m up at 4:30 AM trying to get little Alice to sleep.  I’m dicking around on the computer and poke through eBay.  I remember those Beatles Blue Box collections, from the late ‘70s, put out in England (I’ve since learned they were put out all over the place) that contain every studio LP released on Parlophone or Apple.  Twelve albums in all, thirteen if you count the second LP in the White Album.  It also comes with a rarities/B-sides record. All on what’s considered to be pretty good vinyl/pressing quality, many feel better than the MF$L early eighties pressings which fetch $50-100 per LP. I’ve looked just a little bit at them (the Blue Boxes) on eBay, where they’re not hard to find, and always balked at the cost.  Well this morning on was about to go off on a record binge anyway, and I found a set closing on auction in about ½ hour in Australia at a pretty reasonable price.  Maybe I could pop in a bid, not too high, but reasonable considering what we were looking at. I did, and I won the auction.

Now I await the arrival of my full Beatles collection.  Sure, to be a completist I would need the Magical Mystery Tour and some of the singles collections, handily pulled together on the Red/Blue sets from the early seventies.  But for all intents and purposes, I’ve got it all. And what did this set me back, you ask?  How about $128 US.  Sound like a lot?  It’s an absolute bargain to me.

Update February 7, 2006:

I finally received this and have to say it's freakin' great!  The Blue Box is a little worn but the jackets are great and the vinyl in near pristine condition.  Lately it's been all Beatles, all the time at my house.

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