Battle of two backroom Beatles

The Sessions, the musical of the “exact” recreations Beatles discography by their studio audio engineer Geoff Emerick, had its world premiere at the Royal Albert Hall Soundstage Theatre in London, Great Britain on April 1, 2016. It put the audience in the inner sanctum of Studio Two of Abbey Road to listen to their epic recordings.
“The original (Beatles) records are iconic; they’re pieces of art. Would you go and repaint the Sistine Chapel? You don’t. Just leave it alone,” Emerick deadpanned Love, record producer George Martin and son Giles Martin’s 2007 mashup album of Beatles songs that Cirque du Soleil interpreted to take viewers to their core.
But Emerick keeps on contradicting himself. He re-recorded the Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band album featuring Oasis, Travis, Razorlight and others, broadcasted in 2007 to mark the epochal album’s 40th anniversary.
The Sessions was based on Emerick’s 2006 memoir, Here, There, and Everywhere: My Life Recording the Music of The Beatles, which is not a pioneering book. Mark Lewisohn’s journal-type book, The Complete Beatles Recording Sessions: The Official Story of the Abbey Road Years, pre-empted him by a good 19 years.
With musical and recording proficiency, Martin shaped the Beatles’ sound, even playing instruments that validly qualified him as the Fifth Beatle. Emerick, who realized that the aural visions of John Lennon and Paul McCartney with contributions from George Harrison and Ringo Starr did not have such distinction, wanted to level up.
Marcus Cahill and Jimmy Coburn do the double-tracked vocals of Lennon while Alex Linpinski and Tony Coburn of McCartney in The Sessions. Josh Ferrigan is Harrison and Mark Richards is Starr. A complement of 39 musicians remake their officially released songs inside a replica of Studio Two, made to its exact dimensions.
With Emerick as creative consultant, The Sessions team includes creative producer/designer Stig Edgren, director Kim Gavin of the 2012 Summer Olympics closing ceremony, set designs by Stufish, and video projections by Luke Halls. Without affiliation to Apple Corps, the Beatles or Abbey Road Studios, it turns into a techie’s version.
Why this massive format? Many Beatles songs were recorded with more than the quartet playing instruments and singing in the track. They involved multiple takes and various versions, technical manipulations including artificial overdubbing that made them difficult to reproduce on stage, a reason they ceased touring.
“A Day in the Life,” perhaps their most complex-structured song, involved recording two separate songs, one each by Lennon and McCartney, double-tracked vocals to beef up its dreamy feel, joined by aural manipulations, sound effects and a crescendo performed by 42-piece orchestra.
Emerick attempts to create this complexity in one take in The Sessions when the Sgt. Pepper’s album with a length of 39:52 minutes took all of excruciating 200 hours to record.
“It got its problems,” vaguely admitted Emerick about The Sessions. Its production dremphasized the Beatles’ personalities as it is an aural and not a visual extravaganza. In concert formation, the mock Beatles performs in low intensity lighting behind a video wall flashing the Fab Four’s images.
It’s biggest snag, for sure, is the failure to approximate the quality of the official releases that sound ultimately outstanding. To level up is minimum expectation in a project such as The Sessions. When the Sistine Chapel is repainted, it may as well be matched to Michaelangelo’s.
SHOW OF LGBT POWER FOR BOY GEORGE AND CULTURE CLUB. The untapped power of the pink peso and the support of the LGBT community is up for a test. Culture Club Featuring Boy George is the best event to show how influential and powerful these two can go together and show force. No one has done this yet since a lot of those who wrote about it just came out with straight news about the concert.
One of the biggest ‘80s pop groups, Boy George and the Culture Club, are back together for a major concert tour. This news doesn’t get much cooler for all their Filipino fans with the announcement of a Philippine leg slated on June 17 and 18, 8 p.m. at the Araneta Coliseum. As the title of their song says, “It’s A Miracle!”
Formed in 1981 in London, the Culture Club is known for smash hits “Do You Really Want To Hurt Me?,” “Time (Clock of the Heart),” “Karma Chameleon,” “Miss Me Blind,” “The War Song,” “Love is Love,” among other chart-toppers. The group achieved worldwide success in the ‘80s, scoring three Top 10 US hits from their debut album, Kissing to Be Clever, and becoming the first group to hit that milestone since the Beatles.
Composed of Boy George (lead vocals), Jon Moss (drums), Mikey Craig (bassist) and Roy Hay (guitar), Culture Club rode a wave of pop hits and sold more than 10 million copies of their album Colour By Numbers and captured the Grammy Award for Best New Artist. The said album is included in Rolling Stone’s 100 Best Albums of the 1980s.
The band broke up in 1986 and got back together in 1998. Their last album, Don’t Mind If I Do, was released in 1999. In November 2014 the band released “More Than Silence,” their first single from their upcoming album called Tribes, expected for release this year.
“There wouldn’t be any point in doing it if it wasn’t everybody. I think when bands try to come together and they got like a different singer or a different drummer, it’s never quite the same. There’s a kind of magic about those four people that created the band,” says the flamboyant Boy George about Culture Club’s reunion.
After all these years, Culture Club has not missed a beat! The group kicked off with their tour last year and their fans are really happy to see them back on stage.
Boy George, who was recently seen as one of the coaches in The Voice UK, is excited to perform for their Filipino fans. He expects it to be one big party and a celebration of one’s individuality.
Boy said, “We’re rewriting the story of Culture Club. This concert tour will be a new chapter and will definitely be part of the band’s history. And we’d like all our supporters, fans, and everyone to be part of that story.”
Culture Club Featuring Boy George is a must-watch concert as it happens live for the first time in Manila, presented by Royale Chimes Concert and Events Inc. Tickets are now on sale at Ticketnet (911-5555). For more info, call (0918) 497-2121 and (0906) 418-0786.

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