Friday, August 27, 2021

The Beatles - Instant Karma! UPGRADE

The Beatles – Instant Karma!
(a soniclovenoize reimagining)
August 2021 UPGRADE



Side A:
1.    Instant Karma!  (We All Shine On)
2.    All Things Must Pass
3.    Every Night
4.    I Found Out
5.    Beware of Darkness
6.    Working Class Hero
7.    Momma Miss America

Side B:
8.    It Don’t Come Easy
9.    Isolation
10.   Junk
11.   My Sweet Lord
12.   Maybe I’m Amazed
13.   Love
14.   Hear Me Lord


Alright, you asked for it, you got it!  This is an UPGRADE of the first in a series of album re-imaginings that proposes “What if The Beatles didn’t break up?”  This first volume—Instant Karma!would have theoretically been released late 1970, and was intentionally raw and stripped down.  This upgrade notably uses the brand new All Things Must Pass 50th Anniversary remix as the source for George’s tracks, as well as the 50th Anniversary remixes of Plastic Ono Band for Lennon’s.  In doing so, John’s songs sound slightly more polished and George’s songs sound slightly less polished, somehow meeting Paul in the middle.  I have also thrown in a couple more surprises as well...   Maybe you can find them?  

To restate once again, the “rules” of these 70s Beatles albums are:
1)  One album is represented per year, culled from tracks each Beatle recorded that year; the only exception is All Things Must Pass is split over 1970 & 1971, and Living In The Material World is split over 1972 & 1973.   
2)  Generally speaking, to include five Lennon songs, five McCartney songs, three Harrison songs and one Ringo song; there might be some deviance to this rule depending on availability per year.
3)  The chosen songs must be Beatle-esque in nature; we will attempt to avoid the idiosyncratic musical tangents each Beatle pursued in the 70s and vie for the solo songs that would have been most likely recorded by The Beatles (i.e. not vetoed by the rest of the band).
4)  The songs must flow together and make a unified album that shares a specific tone. 

 

Note that a suspension of disbelief is required to fully enjoy these 70s Beatles albums, and I encourage listeners to imagine what each Beatles would have contributed to each other’s songs, had they actually made these albums together.  

My original album notes from 2012:

This reconstruction—or reimagining, as I’m calling it—asks the question that I think we’ve all asked at one point or another: What if The Beatles didn't break up?  This theoretical album attempts to cull the best of The Beatles solo material from 1970 alone to create what could have been the band’s follow-up to Abbey Road (or depending on how you look at it, Let It Be).  The songs were carefully chosen to create a unified and cohesive album that would best carry on ‘The Beatles torch’ while still retaining each of the members’ diverging interests.  The best and least brickwalled/clipping remasters were chosen for source material, volume levels adjusted for song-to-song balance and all songs are tightly book-ended to make a continuous two sides of music.  

The result—an album I call Instant Karma!—is a somber, introspective album, full of contradicting stripped-down John & Paul songs juxtaposed with the massively-produced George & Ringo songs.  Sonically, it lies somewhere between The White Album in its stark contrasts and Abbey Road with its epic majesty.  All of the songs are from different perspectives, yet hint at the same thing: a desire for understanding the essences of basic human nature and the quest for the soul itself.  If I may dare, the songs seem to create a particular narrative: the members of the band themselves engaging in their own dialog with themselves, repairing the bond between them that had slipped over the previous 4 years.

So sit back and imagine, if you will, an alternate timeline…  That sometime in 1970: The Beatles fired Allen Klein and somehow came upon an agreement of how to run Apple Records, allowing the band members to separate the music from the business, the chief destruction of the band being averted; with the success of “Here Comes The Sun” and “Something” and an amazing back-catalog of unused and new songs, George successfully campaigns for an equal share of his own songs to be featured alongside the Lennon/McCartney originals (with the compromise that Linda and Yoko are allowed in the Beatles' inner circle if need be); pleased with Phil Spector’s work remixing Let It Be, The Beatles opt to have him produce the bulk of their recordings throughout the 1970s (despite McCartney’s reluctance); John agrees but wants to elaborate on the stripped-down and live-band-sounding arrangements, as revisited in the Get Back sessions from the previous year, but at least for his own compositions written from his Primal Scream therapy sessions; Ringo was, as always, just happy to be there.


Instant Karma! is released to critical and commercial success in late 1970, re-establishing The Beatles as a dominant musical force in the 1970s.  Three hit singles were released from this album in 1970 and early 1971: “Instant Karma!” b/w the non-album B-side “That Would Be Something”, “Maybe I’m Amazed” b/w the non-album B-side “Apple Scruffs” and “My Sweet Lord” b/w the non-album B-side “Well Well Well”.  The success of Instant Karma! gave a new confidence to the band that was so close to breaking up, especially with a new producer, a stronger leading-role for their lead guitarist as a songwriter and the band's uncertainty of relevance in a new decade.  Regrouping in the summer of 1971 with a new set of songs and a new sense of unity, The Beatles attempt to record their second album of the 1970s.  Can you... imagine?



Sources used:

All Things Must Pass (2021 50th Anniversary remaster)
John Lennon/Plastic Ono Band (2021 50th Anniversary remaster)
McCartney (2011 remaster)
Photographs – The Best of Ringo Starr (2007)


flac --> wav --> editing in SONAR Pro and Goldwave --> flac encoding via TLH lv8
*md5, artwork and tracknotes included

52 comments:

  1. empty three:
    https://mega.nz/file/D04yAZYS#4A85Nh74jfMbkCTYLUlUmvZaEvC04kS1EynfRUm4-HY

    listless flack:
    https://mega.nz/file/PlggBZrR#wIOfeQqkR-dT0G1hLT9Gz1OMoJNXenB-M7b8-P-RKAg

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    Replies
    1. Thank you.........I'm looking forward to listening...

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    2. Thanks a bunch.. looking forward, or should that be pastward to this one. Be Well

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  2. I hear hard edit/cross-fades between songs. All Things Must Pass into Every Night works very well.

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  3. Thanks For this sonic I always enjoy listening to the albums you put together. I still dream of the day you may be able to compile a Tom Waits album. :)

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  4. Is that John & Paul's backing vocals on All Things Must Pass (grafted from the '69 group demo)?

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  5. Does this mean LITMW is getting an upgrade as well, being the only two that require recalibration using the ATMP and Plastic Ono Band reissues?

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  6. Sorry Sonic I did't mean to nag. Something happened to me recently that changed my whole outlook on life and I realised how fickle things are. Always enjoy whatever you managed to undertake. Best wishes. :) :)

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  7. Sonic, these links aren't loading for me...is my bandwidth jut junk??

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    Replies
    1. empty threes: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1OcL_rju-_cMEO5C5fPTDWI4rDo_gjVpU?usp=sharing

      listless flack: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1PE_5bGmjRHmTMLdjEbNEsmjIN2pzFCJa?usp=sharing

      You're welcome.

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    2. Thanks Frederick! I have no idea how else to get these, so I look for your comments

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  8. Wow, my wish came true! Thanks Sonic! Do you plan to do the same to your Imagine album (although that suffered less from the original mixes of ATMP)?

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  9. I've already did this awhile back made and mine was figuring from 1970 to 1973 and mine was a double CD like the white album alot of same songs except one and mine I figured Ringo had 6 and John and Paul let goerge finally have equal amount of songs at John ,Paul and George had 9 or 10 each and it sounds awsome

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  10. I love this! Brought immense joy to my Monday morning, and I think the new mixes work really well. Makes the album feel a lot more cohesive. I have listened to the earlier versions of the album dozens of times, but this one definitely reigns over them.

    Changes I noticed:
    - new backing vocals during chorus in ATMP
    - bongos (?) in I Found Out
    - shorter intro to Momma Miss America
    - Maybe I’m Amazed cross fades into Love

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    Replies
    1. Was the guitar in Love always there before?

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  11. I can't imagine J&P's massive egos allowing G 4 tracks on an LP! But then it never happened so we'll never know.

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    Replies
    1. In one of their last meetings (maybe their last?) on September 8th, 1969, the group discussed moving forward with four songs apiece for John, Paul, & George, and two for Ringo "if he wants them."

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  12. Thanks so much for the post!! As an aside, JL's Isolation flows great into PM's Man We Was Lonely - both musically and the "being alone/isolated" theme.

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  13. What a super imaginative way of looking at the 1970 solo songs! Well done and thank you.

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  14. personally I would switch out Isolation and Hear me Lord and put in Ballad of John and Yoko and Old Brown Shoe....

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    Replies
    1. These you suggest were released in stereo in the "Hey Jude" álbum, from 1970.

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    2. Those two were actually recorded in between Get back and Abbey Road. Wrong era.

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  15. If you redo Imagine Clouds Dripping you should find a way to include Gimme Some Truth. George's Beatle-ish guitar makes it one of the most, er, Beatle-ish songs of the era and therefore an obvious inclusion.

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  16. It's an oddly despondent album for the Beatles, and works well that way, and then it ends with Hear Me Lord, which in 1970 would have got a lot of people talking about the Beatles getting religion!

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  17. Nice collection, but I have a hard time believing Lennon would have OK'd "My Sweet Lord" and "Hear Me Lord" considering where his feelings were at during this time. But I could be way off base.

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  18. Getting pumped for the imminent "Landlocked" and possible "Reverberation/Add Some Music" and/or "Hubba Hubba".

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  19. Hi Sonic, nearly a year since Neil Young's Archives Volume 2 was released! Just wondered if you had any plans or ideas for an album or three? I've been wondering if a live album, combining tracks from Tuscaloosa, The Roxy and CSNY 74 might be what could have been released at the time as a compilation, using a similar pix n mix approach as taken by Neil Young in creating his studio releases.

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  20. I love your attention to detail. You're the go to man for these reimaginings. I'm never satisfied to be fair but I think that is the point and you always come very close. Crucially they always sound great. The sequencing on this is near perfect even though it demonstrates starkly how the band had radically splintered in different directions both sonically and lyrically. I wonder if a full unstripped sound would sound more unified? Looking back at others your SF 1862 needs to just be SF imo. Ambitious and very worthy but too much. That humble pie lp is too good on its own to be dismembered. Wish your Smile was 100% stereo as it is possibly the best I have ever heard which is saying something. But your Lifehouse has become my Lifehouse. Naked Eye has to be there! Anyway untl the box set comes... and we all start again. Keep up the great work.

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  21. Thanks so much and I am continually amazed my the dedication to perfection. Thanks for all you do for all of us.

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  22. For those of you who do the Spotify thing:
    https://open.spotify.com/playlist/05UTbTQ5VZVBpn1fqZGvXw

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  23. https://www4.zippyshare.com/v/7vRawx3j/file.html

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    Replies
    1. Is there possibly another way to do this so we don't have to spend lots of time getting the file? I hope my comment doesn't come across as ungrateful. In fact, I feel the opposite, thanks to your amazing work! It's just frustrating to get this close, and then continually denied because I get 1 chjaracter not quite correct when trying to duplicate the exact file name in my browser's URL window...

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  24. Just gave this another listen for the first time in 6 months, seriously good comp, appreciate the upgrade too. Could've been a legit Beatles album for sure. Thanks for your effort...

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  25. Can you please provide an updated link for this and Imagine Clouds Dripping? I missed the updates. Thanks!

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