Sunday 19 March 2017

The Beatles: Get Back (The Elektra Acetate) (Bootleg)

TREON144
The Beatles - Get Back (Glyn John’s First Compilation) The ‘Elektra’ Acetate (Stereo) 1969. Heleter Skelter Records (2012).

Notes:
 In late summer 1969 and throughout that autumn, tape copies of one of Glyn John's acetates of Get Back were aired by a number of American radio stations, including WBCN in Boston. WBCN obtained a reel-to-reel tape of an acetate and broadcast the tape on 22 September 1969. The broadcast was preserved on another high-quality reel by a listener. At the end of 1969, the recordings turned up on The Beatles' first bootleg release titled Kum Back and has been a staple in The Beatles' bootleg canon ever since.

In 2012, the Elektra Acetate was shared on torrent sites, blogs and on forums around the net, this is the earliest version of Glyn John's first Get Back compilation from early 1969.
The acetate features the same stereo mixes that were famously broadcast on US Radio in 1969, later leading to the bootlegs 'WBCN Get Back Reference Acetate' (Yellow Dog) and 'Posters, Incense and Strobe Candle' (Vigotone). Both of these discs had their problems, noise reduction for one, seriously damaging the high frequencies, and also some pretty bad low frequency hum.
This new source is far superior but the problem with this new Elektra Acetate however is that it is noisy, very noisy, suffering all of the problems you would expect from a 50 year old acetate. So for this Helter Skelter release, unlike other variations circulating, no noise reduction was used. It was painstakingly de-clicked, de-popped, and de-crackled each track one-by-one, putting the integrity of the music above anything else - leaving a very enjoyable listen, of what is a very important historical recording. Added also are the stereo elements that were missing from the acetate, taken from the Yellow Dog disc (only a section of dialogue), some tracks are available in longer form in mono with extra studio chat, but this is simply stereo only.

The disc has been pitch, phase and level corrected and the peak limiting applied to the original disc undone.

As for the name 'Elektra' acetate it could be a bad translation of Electrola. German pressings of records between 1972 to 2002 bore the name EMI Electrola. These pressings may have been imported to Japan and the original Japanese bootleggers familiar with that name instead of just EMI, translated it incorrectly.


Tracklist:
01 - Get Back (False Start)
02 - Get Back
03 - I've Got A Feeling (False Start)
04 - Help (Partial Jam)
05 - Teddy Boy
06 - Two Of Us (False Start #1)
07 - Two Of Us (False Start #2)
08 - Two Of Us
09 - Dig A Pony (False Start)
10 - Dig A Pony
11 - I've Got A Feeling
12 - The Long And Winding Road
13 - Let It Be

14 - Don't Let Me Down
15 - For You Blue
16 - For You Blue
17 - Get Back
18 - The Walk

Password: GetBack

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