Posts Tagged ‘Beatles’

Review: The Beatles: Rock Band

By Chief Oddball on September 13th, 2009 at 6:08 pm

Filed under Reviews ··· 4 Comments

The Beatles: Rock Band

The Beatles: Rock Band

I spent last week (mostly) on vacation in my Michigan home town, where I had the opportunity to get together with my good friends for a rousing day of Rock Band 2. We spent a great many hours jamming on the massive array of songs (many of which were DLC) offered by the game, which all served to remind me of how much fun these music games are. I myself have Rock Band 1 for the PS3, but haven’t played it in quite a while, so I resolved to dust it off once I got back to Florida.

However, as our return trip neared, I hatched a more grandiose scheme: I wanted The Beatles: Rock Band. The full game, complete with Beatle-inspired instruments, runs a whopping $250. But because the instruments from Rock Band 2 are compatible, I realized that I could buy the marked-down Rock Band 2 full game, along with the Beatles software only, and get two games for $160. (Note that I could even have used my Rock Band 1 instruments, but I wanted to platform-switch to the Xbox 360.) So yesterday, after our flight home, we went to Gamestop and picked everything up.

First, a word about the hardware. Coming from Rock Band 1, I noticed a few improvements to the instruments in Rock Band 2. I like playing the drums more than anything else, and I was happy to note that the RB2 drum pads are softer, much quieter and register hits far easier — in fact, they’re almost exactly like the practice pads I used when I was taking lessons many moons ago. The new kick pedal has a much stronger return spring and a vastly improved feel overall, to the point where you can actually rest your foot on it like a normal person. There are also expansion jacks for a cymbal add-on kit, which I’d love to get because it would allow me to use the familiar cross-over pattern for the hi-hat and snare which is used when playing an actual drum kit. Lastly — and this is big — the RB2 drums are wireless, so there’s no frakking around with cables.

The guitar feels mostly unchanged from the original Rock Band’s simulated Stratocaster, although I noticed it now has a faux-woodgrain finish on the fretboard and is no longer equipped with the largely-pointless on/off switch. It remains to be seen whether this guitar will hold up better than my original Strat, the strum bar of which started to get flaky after only a few plays, but so far it’s working well.

After setting up the instruments, I popped in The Beatles: Rock Band game disc. I should note here that the game comes with two free codes to unlock two Beatles: RB T-shirts for your avatar to wear: One female and one male. Loading up the game, I was presented with a pretty impressive animated opening movie, and then dropped at the colorful main menu. Pumped through my 5.1 surround system, the audio was pretty impressive.

We had a lot of trouble with calibration on our impromptu Rock Band 2 setup in Michigan, but I’m happy to report that the calibration routine on my home system yielded a perfectly playable setup that felt perfectly spot-on. Having never played a music game on my Xbox before — only my PS3 — I was pleased to find that I could actually use my home theater receiver (and thus my 5.1 system) for the game. By contrast, Rock Band 1 on my PS3 lagged so badly over my HDMI pass-through that I was forced to switch to my TV’s built-in speakers whenever I played, and it was annoying.

After calibrating, Apple joined me on the couch and we set aside The Beatles: Rock Band’s story mode in favor of a Quickplay session.

Continue Reading…

Comments (4)

Beetlemania

By Pooch on August 31st, 2009 at 5:16 pm

Filed under Reviews ··· 2 Comments

(Note: I orignally wrote this nearly seven years ago, and published it on an old version of my own web site. With the Beatles remasters coming — and because I don’t blog on my site anymore — I thought it might be fitting to give this a new home at Oddball Update. I edited a few things here and there, but this is largely the same text I wrote back in 2002. I hope you enjoy.)

The year was 1964. The world of music as we knew it was about to change, and that change came from Liverpool. The Mersey Sound, as they called it, would change the face of music forever. At the forefront of this so-called “British Invasion” were four lads with the looks and musical talent that would define a generation. Together those four youngsters were known as…

…The Buggs.

Faces only their mothers could love

Faces only their mothers could love.

With their first hit, “I Want to Hold Your Hand,” the Buggs stormed onto the American music scene, which they would dominate for years to come with such classic albums as Meet The Buggs!, A Hard Day’s Bugg, Bugger Soul, as well as the revolutionary masterwork Sgt. Bugger. They took elements from all genres of music — rock, blues, R&B, and country, to name but a few — and molded them into something unique, something timeless…

Bah, who am I kidding?

Continue Reading…

Comments (2)

I’ll Never Give You My Money

By Pooch on July 19th, 2009 at 8:43 pm

Filed under Rants ··· 3 Comments

You may have heard: the Beatles’ albums are being re-released.

On the surface, it’s a Beatle fan’s wet dream: the new discs have awesome packaging, (apparently) superior sound, and best yet — there will be mono releases, just like fans have been wanting for years! It’s a dream come true!

Hardly.

Being the hardcore fan I am, I’ve been salivating over these new remasters…but also dreading them. Dreading them because I know Apple Corps and EMI would not waste such a glorious opportunity to stick it to fans with outrageous prices, and I’m glad (?) to see I was not wrong: the new CDs will retail at the same old, gouge-tastic $18.98 MSRP the old, circa 1987 Beatles CDs were priced at. Oddly, though, The Beatles (aka The White Album) gets $10 knocked off its MSRP, and is now $24.98 (also, Past Masters is now a single, two-disc set that also retails for $24.98). So, I guess $35 for two CDs is ridiculous to Apple Corps, but $20 for one CD isn’t. Gotcha.

There are also two box sets being released: one with all the stereo CDs, and one with the albums in mono (God forbid they actually put the stereo and mono albums together, like with the recent Capitol Albums box sets — the only albums you couldn’t do that for are The White Album and maybe Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band). In true, Beatle-price-gouging fashion, the stereo box set — 16 discs in all — is barely worth it: at $260, it’s only $17 or so less to buy the box set than to get all the albums individually (though this is better than the first Beatles CD box set from the late 1980s, which actually cost more than if you bought all the CDs separately…which would seem to defeat the purpose of a box set in the first place).

As for that mono box set, filled with mono mixes fans have been anticipating? It’s the only place you can get those mono albums — no single discs will be available. Better yet (?), the mono box set is limited to a whopping 10,000 copies, meaning the majority of fans who wanted these mixes most likely won’t get them (not in a store, anyway — watch Apple Corps claim piracy is killing the music industry when fans start trading the mono tracks online because they can’t buy them in stores). Better still (?), the mono box set will retail for…$300! No, I’m joking — it actually retails for only $298.98. What a bargain! But wait — not every Beatles album was mixed into mono, so the mono box set will only have 12 CDs in it. So…a 16 disc stereo set retails for $260, but the 12 disc mono set is $40 more. That makes perfect sense! It is a limited edition, after all!

I was pretty angry when I first read about this, because I wanted the mono versions of the albums…but for $300, Yoko, Paul, Dhani and Ringo can keep them. I’m sure $300 is a drop in the bucket to the Beatles — billionaires all — but to those of us living in the real, recession-hammered world, it’s not such a light sum of money. Eventually my anger subsided, and now I just feel sad. Sad because I’ve forever read about how the Beatles — in the 1960s — were always conscious of giving their fans “excellent value for their money.” Sad because that obviously no longer holds true — today, the Beatles & Apple Corps are just as money-hungry and greedy as everybody else in the business. Who cares if one in ten people in the U.S. doesn’t have a job — this is the Beatles! Sell your car, jackass! Sell your kids! They’ll understand! This is THE BEATLES! No price is too much for the greatest music ever recorded!

I’d seriously love to meet Paul McCartney and ask him to his face if he really thinks, say, Yellow Submarine is really worth $20. $20 for four Beatles songs, essentially, because “Yellow Submarine” (the song) and “All You Need is Love” are on other albums, and no one really cares about the George Martin orchestrations on the second half of the album. Is that excellent value for my money, Sir Paul? Is Let It Be — an album you have ripped quite a bit over the years, and which the other Beatles have all said is lackluster — worth $20? Are your mono albums really worth $25 apiece, which is flat-out ridiculous, no matter how you look at it? Is Apple still being run like in the ’60s, with people walking out of your offices with supplies left and right, and this is the only way to stay in the black? Whose idea was it to make the mono albums a limited run? If Apple wants money so badly, you’d think they’d offer the mono albums as separate, non-box set entities, if only to get your devoted faithful to buy the same albums over and over and over again. But that might be pushing it, right?

And before anyone brings it up, yes, I know the stereo CDs all have QuickTime documentaries about the making of each album on the disc. And the album art will be faithfully reproduced…blah, blah, blah. That doesn’t matter. I’d rather have (reasonably priced) mono/stereo two-fers than a freaking QuickTime documentary. And CD packaging isn’t that expensive. I’ve read various interviews with people associated with the Beatles and Apple Corps, complaining that the Beatles are losing money in this age of digital music. Whose fault is that? Who are the ones reacting so slowly to changes in the music industry (the Beatles are still one of the few major acts to not be on iTunes, largely because Apple feels Beatle music is worth more than 99 cents a track), slavishly clinging to the old way of doing things? We’re no longer in the bubble economy, guys, and if you think the Beatles name is enough to get people to plunk down $600 on your CDs, no questions asked, I have a feeling you might be in for a bit of a surprise.

It used to be about the music, guys.

PS – I really feel sorry for whatever schlub decides he (or she) wants to buy both CD box sets and The Beatles: Rock Band on release day (9/9/09!). All You Need Is…$850 or so. Unless you want to get the replica John and George Rock Band guitars too, in which case add another $200. Or you could take that $1100 and put a down payment on a car to enjoy your old Beatles CDs in while driving (or not, because you probably couldn’t get financing to buy the car).

Comments (3)