For those of you who have been waiting breathlessly for Capitol Records' infamous "Duophonic" (fake stereo) versions of the Beatles' catalog to appear on CD, well has Capitol got a treat for you!

"The Capitol Albums Vol. 1" contains the first four of Capitol Records' Beatles' albums (well, their first four music releases, as the 2-LP documentary "The Beatles' Story" came out on Capitol before "Beatles '65"...)

Yep, these are the reverb-laden Capitol mixes we all grew up with! For good or bad, this is what most of us remember. They're not the Beatles' albums as the Beatles envisioned them, but so what? They are a lot of fun to listen to!

So, what's good? Well, you get both the stereo and mono mixes of each album. When the Beatles' catalog was released on CD in 1987, only mono mixes of the first four albums were made available. This release is therefore the only place where you can get stereo mixes (albeit *reverb-laden* stereo mixes...). What's more, the sound quality is much better than the sound quality of the many "Capitol albums" bootlegs that have been on the market for years. It's great to have discs mastered from the original tapes! (Although, there is a glitch / dropout 18 seconds into the stereo version of "Don't Bother Me"...)

So, what's bad? That's easy! The packaging *really* stinks!

So, how is the packaging lousy? Well, the discs are inside small "reproductions" of the original jackets that aren't 100% faithful to the originals (compare them to your old LP's to see for yourself). The CDs themselves are also put into the jackets without any sort of protective inner sleeves. (There is a reason why records used to have protective inner sleeves! Unprotected records / CDs are easily scratched!) The CDs fall out very easily, so great care must be used when opening the set. The CD jackets are also quite shoddy looking with fuzzy printing and mismatched folds. Capitol should have spent more care in creating true "Mini LP" sleeves for this release. If bootleggers can create 100% accurate sleeve reproductions, then why can't Capitol/Apple?

Most of you will want to stop reading here. But, for you hardcore Beatle collectors out there, there's more!

These really *are* the original Capitol masters! The stereo version of "Komm, Gib Mir Deine Hand" *has* the strange noise in the vocal channel before the singing starts! The mono version of "When I Get Home" *has* the alternate vocal line! The mono version of "Any Time At All" *has* the mixed down piano during the instrumental break! For those of us who need to have all the known mixes, you *will* find the original Capitol mixes here!

And, even though Capitol's "Duophonic" (fake stereo) mixes are infamous, the fact is Capitol only really used them when true stereo mixes weren't available. These are the only songs in Duophonic:

Meet The Beatles - I Want To Hold Your Hand, This Boy
The Beatles' Second Album - You Can't Do That, I'll Get You, She Loves You
Something New - (all are true stereo)
Beatles `65 - She's A Woman, I Feel Fine

One final note: The Japanese version of this title (on the Toshiba / EMI label) has slightly larger packaging, complete with nicely printed inner jackets and inner sleeves to put the CDs in. But, the Japanese release also contains "Copy Controlled" CDs, so that set isn't perfect either...)

I'm a brit and I must admit I see these US albums (and those from other countries) as compilations rather than the real deal. After all the Beatles had no input as to how they were compiled and saw the chopping up of their own albums as a necessary evil (one that they eventually on the whole managed to stop). That's not to say that the big buck of the nostalgic american baby boomer doesn't talk loud enough to produce a release such as this. However, if Capitol want to sell and people want to buy then we're going to be getting something like this every Xmastime. Now onto the CDs themselves. Let's not start telling folk now that these cds sound better than their 17 year old british counterparts because they don't. I know we now have 24 bit remastering etc etc but the american masters are at best 3rd generation copies of the original UK master tapes and by the sounds of things haven't been kept in the best of conditions either (I lost count of the amount of dropouts etc I heard when listening to these CDs). Yes the stereo mixes sound refreshing after listening to the mono versions for all these years, and the genuine alternate mixes are good to have as well (This is the main reason I bought the box - this is the first time Thank You Girl has been released officially in true stereo in the UK - This box is a worldwide release) This plus point is unfortunately counterbalanced by several sonic disasters of which I Feel Fine and She's A Woman are prime examples. Hopefully people will see that overall these albums are not meant to be a sonic improvment over anything that's been out before on CD, or even in fact to replace the UK releases as the definitive Beatles catalogue - This will not change so get used to it. This release is a 'side project' like Let It Be..Naked, designed primarily to be a faithful reproduction of what the folk in '64 had on their turntables. If you want to hear the Beatles songs in the order they intended and in the best quality possible, hang off until the UK catalogue gets remastered (which can't be too far away now). Oh and I agree with everyone about the packaging. It stinks. I heard though that this was Apple's doing and nothing to do with Capitol who were only tasked with producing the actual CDs themselves. I've heard reports of packages on sale with the two part inner box prefolded in a CD size slipcase instead of flat packed in a longbox so you may want to try and look one of them out if you don't want the CD's falling out everytime you open the packaging which I and by the looks of things several other people have had happen to them.

Capitol did a tremendous job with the music here. They did exactly what they were supposed to do: take the original American Capitol stereo and mono mixes, transfer them cleanly and leave them alone. All of the original anomalies are here: Lennon's harmonica overdub on Thank You Girl, which was only in America, guitar overdub in Money, the extra verse in the US mono I'll Cry Instead (but not the stereo), the single-track McCartney vocal in the US mono And I Love Her, the extra reverb on both stereo and mono US versions of She's a Woman/I Feel Fine, the double-track intro vocal on the US stereo If I Fell, and so on. These are all here, exactly as they were on the US albums. And for that, Capitol deserves applause, because frankly I've been disappointed with the Yellow Submarine remaster, and Let It Be Naked. I don't like tampering. This box set is the genuine (American) article.

And it's worth preserving for what it was and is. The Beatles and George Martin both knew exactly why Capitol was releasing different versions of these records in America, and George Martin gave Capitol his stereo mixes for that purpose, after which Capitol added some reverb on certain songs, but the fact of the matter is that both Martin and the Beatles had no problem whatsoever with this practice. And by the way, the butcher cover of Y&T was NOT a protest against these American releases. That photo was a protest against the carnage of the Vietnam War. The band said it, and the photographer also says it. So stop the myth that it was an anti-Capitol photo. It was an ANTI-WAR photo.

I actually like the fake stereo and reverb from these US albums...it was a product of the times and of the era, and in fact the first four mono UK albums as they sound on the current EMI CDs are very flat, dull, and dry. This new Meet the Beatles beats the pants off With the Beatles. It's big and bold. The Beatles 65 material has never sounded better, listen to Baby's in Black. No comparison to the Beatles For Sale CD. For those who really wish to hear a cleaner version of With the Beatles, you can have some fun by taking these new mono mixes in this box set, and reconstructing With the Beatles from the tracks here on MTB and the 2nd Album. You'll make yourself a new version of WTB that sounds way better than the flimsy EMI disc.

With all of this said, I dock one star for the packaging. The album covers look discolored, not their original colors, worst offense. The sleeves force you to pull the disc out by your fingers and possibly smudge the disc, second offense. The cardboard packaging is ridiculously cheap, third offense, and the booklet is irrelevant and useless, fourth offense.

My suggestion? Get the "Beatles On Capitol Records" book, scan the covers from there because they look much better, print out your own front and back covers, and put these discs in jewel cases to keep them safe. That's what I've just spent an hour doing, and the packaging is now in the trash. Terrible job on the packaging, but I have to say, kudos to Capitol, they did a great job musically by cleaning up the American tapes, and then leaving them the hell alone.

If you took everything the Beatles officially released from Please Please Me thru Real Love, singles and albums, B-sides and "rareties", you could comfortably put the whole she-bang on 7 CD's.

But, of course, that way Capitol, Paul & Yoko wouldn't make nearly as much money.

So instead the relatively limited ouevre of the Beatles is doled out in small quantities. With lots of padding and lots of duplication. Having already released each Beatles album in the original UK Parlaphone configuration, then putting out 3 double CD anthologies of alternate takes, a single CD Greatest Hits, an extended Yellow Submarine "songtrack" and a "Naked" Let It Be, we are now blessed with the original US configurations of the Beatles albums.

But since the price doesn't justify the equivalent of 100 minutes of 40 year old music that could fill a 2-CD set with room to spare, Capitol pads this package with both the Mono & Stereo versions of the same tracks. C'mon, do you really need two mixes of Mr Moonlight?

Yes, the Beatles were wonderful, probably the most creative group in the history of music. Certainly still my all time favorite band.

But this is not the band at their creative peak. Most of these albums were recorded in a rush, some songs in a single take.

These are cubic zirconium songs that are being sold for the price of diamonds.

And, yeah, I'll probably buy it anyway. Sigh.

The Capitol release of the first four Beatle albums sorely lacks the continuity of their orignal British counterparts. I can appreciate an American baby boomer who experienced the Beatles a certain way, wanting to relive that experience, but for anyone else there really isn't enough here unless your satisfied with yet another interim release. As has been stated many times, the packaging and liner notes are practically worthless, so it's really all about the playing order and sound quality. Most of the cleaned up Capitol mixes are an improvement over the very dated 1987 EMI mono CD remaster, but the problem is they are still not the "Holy Grail" of early Beatles recordings. When EMI finally reissues the original masters using 21st century remastering techniques, those will be the DEFINITIVE releases that fans worldwide have been waiting for. Firstly, they will be from the original two and four track studio masters - not the downmixed single track George Martin hand-me-downs that Capitol had to work with. Secondly, the songs that were originally released in mono only in the UK will be sans the fake stereo drenching of reverb and echo that Capital dubbed duophonic. If you really want that, just press the Concert or Stadium EQ button on your receiver. Lastly and most importantly, they will be in the playing order that George Martin and the Beatles originally intended...

The album arrangement on the American LPs is really bad - unless I suppose that is the way you remembered them. Why do I say this? One of the glories of listening to the Beatles from start to finish (Please Please Me to Abbey Road) is to experience their wonderous transformation from Mersey Beat club act to the greatest rock group of all time. Please Please Me and With The Beatles were a hodge podge of original material and popular covers from their Hamburg and Cavern Club days. At that time, John and Paul were still developing songwriters and George Martin wasn't confident enough with what they had written to that point to fill an entire LP with original material. One would never get that notion from Meet The Beatles, which has only one cover. It is essentially With The Beatles stripped of all the Motown and Do Wop covers that were so instrumental in their early development and replaced with hit singles. As a matter of fact, the only cover on Meet the Beatles is Till There Was You, a Broadway tune which is probably the least indicative of their musical roots of ALL their cover songs!

Then comes the Beatles Second Album, which is essentially all the covers that were omitted from With The Beatles mixed with more hit singles. The problem here is two-fold. The covers got released in America when the Beatles were really starting to reveal their talent as songwriters in their UK releases. Secondly, the rest of the album is oddly out of place with the tracks I Call Your Name and You Can't Do That which are much more sophisticated and musically light-years ahead of the Do Wop covers and the earlier Lennon-McCartney compositions like Little Child or I Wanna Be Your Man.

Then comes the curiously named Something New - which was a total disaster. Capital lost the rights to all the great tunes from A Hard Day's Night (Title track, I Should Have Known Better, Can't Buy Me Love, Thing We Said Today etc...) to UA so they dumped two forgettable cover songs and I Wanna Hold Your Hand in Deutsche (talk about desperate) with the leftovers from UA and called it an album. Meanwhile, the folks in the UK got to enjoy the amazing LP, A Hard Days Night - the FIRST Beatle album to feature original compositions from start to finish.

Lastly comes Beatles '65, perhaps the worst butchering of all. The most amazing thing about Beatles For Sale is that it may be the first album EVER that was not simply a collection of tunes with no rhyme or reason. Everything from the melodies, lyrics, album cover, and title were well thought out by the Fab Four and clearly carried a moody and introspective overtone that gave the album as a whole an amazing continuity. This teaser of the brilliant studio work that was yet to come gets totally destoyed by Beatles '65. Gone is the intriguing title, amazing album cover, and theme created by the the song lineup. Instead of I'm A Loser, No Reply, and Baby's In Black being complemented by I Don't Want To Spoil the Party and What You're Doing, we get She's a Woman and I FEEL FINE. Hello???

I'm not trying to piss off Baby Boomers or defenders of the Capitol releases, I highly recommend this box set for those fans. But for everybody else, this is more about nostalgia than great albums or offering any insight to the development of the greatest rock and roll band of all time...