SELF PORTRAIT OF THE DAY

BEATLES Vs. STONES

(Now don't start THAT again......! ED)

Now over at Big O they have a little gem from The Beatles this morning, the acetate pressing of the 'Untouched' sessions for Phil Spektor at Elektra...it is really revealing and Philip Cohen (what the legendary Philip Cohen? ED Yes him!) has cleaned the clicks and pops and clicks and farts (there aren't any farts now are there? ED - Well you know what I mean.....)

The Beatles Untouched @ Big O

THE BEATLES
Untouched - Off Elektra Acetate [Idol Mind Production IMP-N-036, 2CD]
Outtakes, unreleased mixes.
This set just surfaced and it’s already being shared on the internet. These are the uploader’s notes:
This is an upgraded source of Glyn Johns’ early mix acetate which contains the session performed in January 1969. The bootlegger says it is an extremely rare audio source directly ripped from the Elektra Records acetate disc named “UNTOUCHED”, which the producer of Let It Be (Phil Spector ?) had as a referential material. Disc 1 contains 18 tracks which are completely raw. Disc 2 has the same tracks de-clicked and de-noised.
Thanks to ThePetSounds for sharing the tracks on Demonoid.
This is what music collector Philip Cohen commented:
These acetates are in fairly poor condition. With the exception of the very brief snippets, these tracks are on other bootlegs, but with better quality. Some of them appear on several Vigotone titles, including “Get Back: The Glyn Johns Final Compilation”.
While the de-clicked and de-noised Disc 2 does sound better, not surprisingly, within a week of the release of the Untouched discs, there were already two upgrades.
a) The Beatles Untouched (Revision A), from ThePetSounds Productions:
I used the raw source on Disc 1 of… Untouched, released by IMP in Japan. Disc 1 contains 15 tracks which were de-clicked, phase-corrected, and speed-corrected. Disc 2 has the same tracks de-noised (used noise reduction), and the three missing parts in them have been patched up from other sources: The beginning of Track 1 “Get Back” was patched with a source from “Celluloid Rock” released by Yellow Dog, and the end of Track 9, “I’ve Got A Feeling,” and the beginning of Track 10, “The Long And Winding Road,” were done with a source from “Posters, Incense And Strobe Candles” released by Vigotone.
However, ThePetSounds does not allow these tracks to be shared as MP3s.
Click here if you want to download the tracks. You will need to register with Demonoid, and registration slots can be hard to come by.
b) The Beatles - Get Back: The Elektra Acetate, from Helter Skelter Records:
[The Elektra] acetate features the same stereo mixes that were famously broadcast on US Radio in 1969, this 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. But this new source blows the others out of the water. 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.
For this release, unlike others floating around, I have not used any noise reduction, but instead painstakingly de-clicked, de-popped, and de-crackled each track one-by-one, putting the integrity of the music above anything else - leaving what should be a very enjoyable listen, of what is a very important historical recording. I have also added all of the stereo elements that were missing from this acetate from the Yellow Dog disc (only a section of dialogue), some tracks are available in longer form in mono with extra studio chat, but I did not want to mix stereo and mono here, this is simply stereo only. I also took the liberty of pitch, phase and level correcting this disc, as well as un-doing the peak limiting applied to the original disc.
Click here if you want to download the tracks.
For serious Beatles fans and collectors, here is the Untouched set that started it all.
Note: A longtime music fan, Philip Cohen was a contributor to the now-defunct ICE Magazine and compiled the boxsets for The Yardbirds, The Small Faces, Humble Pie and Nice.

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