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For easy reference, here are some of the videos released about The Beatles: Rock Band. It comes out two weeks from today!

Opening Cinematic

Here's the opening cinematic; a traditional cell animation summarizing the Beatles career in a very entertaining form, this sets the mood for the game.


Gameplay Trailer 1

This was our first look at how gameplay works. Includes bits of "I Saw Her Standing There" in the Cavern Club, "I Want To Hold Your Hand" at the Ed Sullivan Show, "I Feel Fine" at Shea Stadium, "Day Tripper" and "Taxman" at Budokan, dreamscapes of "I Am the Walrus," "Back in the U.S.S.R," "Octopus's Garden" and "Here Comes the Sun," and "Get Back" from the Apple rooftop concert.



Gameplay Trailer 2

Again we start in the Cavern Club, with "Twist and Shout." Check out the Beatles logo on Ringo's drums, this early logo was designed by Paul McCartney and discarded as soon as Ringo bought new Ludwig drums, although the French used it on some album covers and picture sleeves. Also note John's Rickenbacker, in its original un-painted form. Lennon later decided to paint it black. From the Sullivan set, we get "Can't Buy Me Love," "Eight Days a Week" at Shea, "Paperback Writer" at Budokan. Then a dreamscape of "Yellow Submarine," in which the Beatles are wearing the costumes that their cartoon counterparts wore in the animated film of the same name. "Sgt. Pepper," "Within You Without You" and "Revolution" round off this clip.



Gameplay Trailer 3

Here we start off with the Ed Sullivan Show and "A Hard Day's Night." "Drive My Car" from Budokan follows, then dreamscapes of "Lucy In the Sky With Diamonds," "Dear Prudence," "While My Guitar Gently Weeps," "Helter Skelter" and "Come Together," concluding with "Don't Let Me Down" from the roof of Apple.



Birthday

Here we get a look at how "Birthday" is presented: we begin in Abbey Road and transition to a dreamscape. That's how most post-1966 music is represented, except for things near the very end of their career that would be appropriate for the Apple rooftop concert.



Ticket To Ride

Here's a similar video for "Ticket To Ride." It's done at Shea Stadium, and the amount of detail is startling. The Beatles logo on the drum head is accurate for the concert; a bolder version than was used in most earlier concerts. And I love one particular shot of two girls screaming, with a man reacting to the noise.

"Who would have thought we'd end up as androids." quipped Paul McCartney, alongside former bandmate Ringo Starr yesterday at the E3 gaming expo in Los Angeles.

Aside from a brief glimpse of game footage behind Macca at a recent concert, this was our first look at the design of the game. We'll be able to play as the Beatles in such varied venues as real locations like the Cavern Club, the stage of the Ed Sullivan show, and the rooftop of Apple headquarters, but also in fantasy locations, like the underwater performance of Octopus's Garden.

45 songs will be included with the game. Ten were announced:

• I Saw Her Standing There


• I Want To Hold Your Hand


• I Feel Fine


• Day Tripper


• Taxman


• I Am the Walrus


• Back in the USSR


• Octopus's Garden


• Here Comes the Sun


• Get Back

The presentation was given at a Microsoft demo. Xbox Live users will be able to download "All You Need As Love," with all proceeds going to the charitable organization Doctors Without Borders. Users of all platforms should be able to purchase other individual songs on line, and even albums, starting with Abbey Road.

Also new: a graphic showing all four The Beatles Rock Band instruments.

This gives us our first look at the Rock Band drum kit with its black pearl finish and Beatles and Ludwig logos. It and the Höfner Bass come in the $250 deluxe package. The Gretsch Duo Jet and Rickenbacker 325 will each be available separately for $99.

An article on the web site for The Escapist, a video game web site, has an interesting tidbit from Dhani Harrison. But the author of the article seems to me to be harboring unnecessary negativity.

This just in: Breaking box art, courtesy MTV Networks.

Playstation 3:

This art is incorrectly missing George Harrison's signature:

Wii:

XBox 360:

It could cost you about $450.

It was already announced that The Beatles Rock Band game would be released on September 9, 2009; both in a $60 standalone version and a $250 bundle. That bundle includes the game, a microphone, a microphone stand, and two controllers: One modeled after Paul McCartney's Höfner Bass, and a Rock Band 2 drum kit, fitted out with a classic pearl finish and a Ludwig-branded bass drum skin with The Beatles drop-T logo.

Today, two more things happened: Harmonix opened its preorder club. If you have preordered the game, you get access to an area that currently has a press release, and will soon have extra materials and behind-the-scene videos.

And that press release announced two new controllers! Most attractive, and most like the original, is a Gretsch Duo Jet, just like the one George played during the earlies years of the Beatles' success. Except that its not a real guitar. Think $99.99 is expensive? A new real Duo Jet will set you back around $2500. It is a classy, twangy, great guitar.

Also announced, a Rickenbacker 325. This is not the 12-string George is famous for. It's based on a guitar Lennon bought in Hamburg. The original had gold pickguards, the game controller has white. That's another hundred bucks, thank you.

Sadly, I'll probably have to buy it all.

An interesting but short Engadget piece points to some rumored features for The Beatles Rock Band.

BeatlesNews.com seems to have more detail than any other source I can find on the remasters of the Beatles catalog. I've bullet-pointed some of the most interesting technical details, but I recommend the full article for details.

• Tracks transferred to Pro Tools at 24-bit 192 kHz
• Songs transferred one-at-a-time
• Tape heads cleaned for each song
• Clicks, mic pops, bad edits fixed where possible without harming integrity of recording
• Subtle de-noising, only 5 minutes of music needed this
• Limiting used to increase overall volume of stereo tracks, EMI claims "moderate" use to retain original dynamics
• Limiting not used on mono recordings
• Critcal listening done at Abbey Road studio 3, and another location

Also included, biographies of the engineers who accomplished the remastering.

It is now clear that the main albums will be the original mixes, except Help! and Rubber Soul which will use the 1987 George Martin remixes. I expect that those two albums will see the smallest improvements, as the original analog-to-digital conversions were done in 1987 and then mixed digitially.

The New York Times article about the upcoming Beatles re-releases states that the 1987 George Martin remixes will be used for Help! and Rubber Soul, and that the original stereo mixes will be used for the other albums. I don't find that information anywhere else. If true, its awfully disappointing.

I've been waiting a long time for this. For the first time since 1987 & 1988, the original Beatles albums are remastered and due for reissue.

It sounds like Apple Corps has taken a good approach to this. Let's look at what the press release says, and what it doesn't say.

The date of the release has been timed to coincide with the release of The Beatles Rock Band game from Harmonix. Think "number nine...number nine...number nine."

14 titles, 16 discs. All in stereo, all with the original UK album designs and song orders. The albums would be, in release order:

• Please Please Me


• With the Beatles


• A Hard Day's Night


• Beatles For Sale


• Help!


• Rubber Soul


• Revolver


• Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band


• Magical Mystery Tour (as released originally in the US)


• The Beatles (aka The White Album)


• Yellow Submarine


• Abbey Road


• Let It Be


• Past Masters

A couple of notes on that list: Although Magical Mystery Tour was released in the UK as a double-disk EP, this will be the album as it was released in the US, which became a part of the international core catalog during the first remastering in 1987. Past Masters, which was originally two separately sold CDs containing non-album tracks, will now be sold as one album.

For a limited time, each of these albums except Past Masters will also include a QuickTime mini-documentary on the making of the album, including never-before-heard studio chatter from The Beatles.

If you're a collector, you'll also be able to buy all of these stereo albums in a box set, and the mini-docmentaries will be included on an accompanying DVD.

Of even more interest to serious collectors: A second box set entitled "The Beatles in Mono." Ten albums of the mono mixes, which were almost always the mixes on which the Beatles and George Martin slaved over. The stereo mixes, until very late in the game, were afterthoughts. In fact, the mono versions of The White Album and Yellow Submarine weren't even released in the United States back in the LP days. And it's the description in the press release of these mono discs that leads me to believe we'll be hearing entirely new, albeit faithful, mixes.

"As an added bonus, the mono "Help!" and "Rubber Soul" discs also include the original 1965 stereo mixes, which have not been previously released on CD."

--thebeatles.com press release

According to the press release, the tunes have been remastered over a four-year period, but it isn't clear from the release what this remastering entails. I think it entails a lot. Back when The Beatles first were released on CD in 1987, George Martin was unhappy with the state of the mixed masters. So the first four albums were issued in mono only, and Help! and Rubber Soul were actually remixed by Martin in 1987 from the multi-track masters.

What I suspect and hope is that these are all new remixes, made from the original source tapes, not the original mixes. Why do I hope this? Because other Beatles remixes have proved to me it can be a valid approach. The 1999 CD of the Yellow Submarine Songtrack was entirely remixed, and sounds amazing. Even better, the Cirque du Soleil LOVE Soundtrack. Although much of that album is not faithful to the original mixes, listen to the LOVE version of I Am the Walrus. Loudly. It is amazing, and until the last minute or so of the song, retains the original's feel. If the experts at Abbey Road studios have worked their magic right, it should sound like years of grime have been cleaned away from these recordings. My only regret is that they won't be in surround sound, at least not yet. The surround sound mixes on the Yellow Submarine DVD and the LOVE DVD-Audio disk are superb. Furthermore, if they were using the original mixes for the core CDs, why would they bother to put the original stereo mixes on the mono discs of Help! and Rubber Soul? I doubt they would use the 1987 mixes of those two albums for the main part of this project.

It will be interesting to learn what the engineers have actually done. Of course, many of the early recordings are just on two-track or three-track tape. In fact, I've read that the original recordings for "She Loves You" have been lost; and that the version we're currently used to on CD was mastered from a 45 rpm single. But we'll know all the answers in five months and two days.

I'm not sure whether its the official motto of Austin, Texas, but there are t-shirts for sale everywhere reading "Keep Austin Weird." If South by Southwest is any example, they have nothing to worry about.

My feet have been aching, so I didn't do much traveling today. I began by having the best tasting barbecue I've ever had the pleasure to eat. Iron Works BBQ is located in a former iron works building right next door to the Austin Convention Center. If you're ever in Austin, and are not a vegetarian, eat here. I mean it. If you don't, I may have to slap you. If you are a vegetarian, well, I pity your loss.

Next, I went to Stubb's, which had hosted Metallica the night before. There I saw Parachute, a decent rock band from Charlottesville, Virginia. I guess they're best known for a song of theirs that is used in a Nivea commercial. I shot a bit of video, but haven't converted it yet for the web. I'll probably post it after I get home to Chicago.

It was already late in the day. I started walking towards West 6th Street, where there's music away from the mayhem of East 6th Street. I sat for about an hour outside a Starbucks, sipping some raw caffeine and utilizing the wifi, before I ended up at Opal Divine's Freehouse.

I saw three groups there, all from distant lands. First was Café Funquê, from Brazil. The lead singer was clad in a skeleton costume, her face painted white. Very tight band, a mix of rock, funk and bossa nova. Again, I have some video, but that will have to wait until my return.

But fear not: For the next two groups, I've got the clips processed and ready to go.

The Pepper Pots are not, as the name suggested to me, a bunch of Monty Python freaks. They are a troupe of three female singers, backed by a rocking band, who are trying to bring the dance music of the 1960s back to life. And they succeed! The group is from Catalonia, Spain, and its their first U.S. appearance. Here's their tribute to the Supremes.

Lastly, something that seems like the product of a somewhat questionable imagination. Vowing to change the world through the power of bikinis, Futomomo Satisfaction from Japan centers on three trombone players in bikinis. The keyboardist wears a bikini. The bassist? You guessed it, bikini. And smacking of inequality, the male guitarist and drummer do not appear in Speedos, they remain attired in more normal gear. Futomomo is Japanese for thighs.

Lest you think I'm imagining all that, here's the proof.

Futomomo Satisfaction from David Fell on Vimeo.

This posting is going up late due to the crappy internet service here at the Embassy Suites Downtown Austin. Aside from that, its a nice hotel.

As for day 10, there's not much to tell. I had some delicious barbecue at Artz Rib House, watched the bats fly out from underneath the Congress Street Bridge, and headed back to 6th street for some more music. It was a dead zone compared with the rest of the week. Streets weren't blocked. There were no crowds. And not too much music. I heard a Canadian singer named Krista Muir. She was entertaining, but there was only a sparse group of listeners. Both before and after her, there was a DJ. That holds no interest for me, so I head back to the hotel. Before I get picked up for my flight Monday, I plan one more barbecue excursion: Green Mesquite, which is just a block or two from the hotel, and was recommended by a cab driver.

So that's it! South by Southwest 2009 is history. I hope you've enjoyed sharing some sights with me.

-edited 4/6/09 to add Pepper Pots video

With all due respect to my female readers, are we not men? The answer in a bit!

Another excellent day at South by Southwest. I can easily imagine this becoming an annual trek for me. I continue to be delighted by most everything I see and hear. Actually, I'm relieved to say that my hearing seems fine, despite the pounding my ears took tonight.

I got up at a reasonable hour and took care of some personal errands, before going to the Austin Convention Center. Two rooms there have been set up as large TV studios, for some live broadcasts on DirecTV. I attended Ben Harper & RELENTLESS7, who put on a very strong show. Anti-photography rules were being strictly enforced, so I have no photos or videos to show you, but I should have a nice HD recording of it at home so I can enjoy it again, and try to pick my face out of the crowd.

Next I headed to the Hilton Gardens Hotel to see The Miserable Rich. But before they came on, I saw a performed named Denis Jones. A remarkable experimental performer from Manchester in the UK, he uses electronic looping devices to record bits of vocals, guitar and odd percussion, creating rich textures against which he performs. At one point he was using his thumb against the tip of a guitar cable, to make 60 hertz buzzing noises to add to the mix. It's difficult to describe. I suggest heading over to his MySpace page (linked above) and giving him a listen.

Then came the act I was there to hear, The Miserable Rich, from Brighton, UK. Their web site indicates a five piece band, but there were only four at this performance. The singer has a lovely voice, and the instrumentation includes a cello and a violin. An excellent group. Here's a bit of video.

The Miserable Rich from David Fell on Vimeo.

After that, I walked over to the Velveeta Room, a comedy club on 6th street, to see Janeane Garofalo. In fact, I got there early enough to see several of the preceding comedy geniuses, and had a great deal of fun. Eric Krug did some hilarious rap, and 18 year old Natasha Leggero of Rockford Illinois was also very funny. Garofalo began by squirting hand sanitizer into the hands of many audience members, including myself. She joked about an Austin mayoral candidate's name (think Bart Simpson phoning Moe), Twitter, aging and anti-depressants. She was rapid-fire and hilarious. Jack Bauer was nowhere in sight.

Because it was so short, I had some time on my hands. I enjoyed a hot dog topped with pulled pork, cheese and pickles from a street vendor. Delicious. And I went to Aces Lounge to hear a bit of Cut Off Your Hands, a hard rocking group from New Zealand. Very crowded bar.

After that, it was off to the Austin Music Hall for the answer to the question with which I began this entry: Are we not men? We are DEVO. Arrival was a bit of a pain. My camera bag was not permitted in, so I took one of Austin's pedicabs back to the hotel to drop the camera off, and then returned to the Music Hall. But once inside, I managed to find a place to stand off to the left, close to the stage, to see the end of the previous act, Tricky, a rapper/singer from Bristol, England. I didn't hear enough of him to get a real feel for the music.

Then came DEVO. I should tell you that this was the loudest music I think I've ever heard. Not that I'm complaining, mind you. But with every beat, my vision vibrated. It seemed like wind was going through my hair. Only half-way through the show, when I got to the very front of the stage, did I realize: I was about two feet from the biggest subwoofers I have ever seen. As for the performance, for a bunch of guys even older than myself, there was one hell of a lot of energy. A constant barrage of video played behind them, and members of the crowd were jumping up and down, one landing hard on my left big toe. I also found people rubbing against me uncomfortably. When I noticed they were female and cute, it became far more comfortable. Since I was forced to leave the decent photo gear back at the hotel, I only managed to capture a few snaps with my iPhone, including one in which Mark Mothersbaugh, just 6 feet from me, was working some pom-poms. The slow exposure made by the iPhone came out psychedelic. I like it.

That's all I have for now, dear readers. I shall be back again with more tales from Austin Texas in another day. Don't do anything I wouldn't do, which should give you plenty of leeway.

I have lots of video to share with you from Thursday!

I missed the two things I wanted to see at the Austin Convention Center. I slept right through a keynote address by Quincy Jones. I tried to make it to a panel discussion by DEVO, but got there late and found it full and closed to new arrivals. So I wandered over to the music hub of 6th street. You never know what you'll run across.

Katzenjammer hails from Oslo, Norway. Quoting their flyer, this fun-orchestra proves Norway has more to offer than chaos and darkness. It certainly does. It was the hilarious looking bass that drew me toward the all-girl quartet. Aside from this street performance, they appeared four times at SXSW venues, headlining Thursday night at the Rio.

Katzenjammer from David Fell on Vimeo.
I had a delicious meal called Chicken Poppicotti at The Old Pecan Street Café, then walked about half a mile to the Elephant Room, a dark basement club. There I saw a local Austin band called the Golden Arm Trio. Despite the name, there were five men on stage, and I'm told the band is even bigger, but they couldn't get any more people onto the stage. They performed an entire set of Duke Ellington numbers, and sounded fantastic, as you can tell from the video below. I was about 4 feet from the stage. I'm really glad I bought that wide-angle lens for my Sony HDV camcorder. This was by far the best music I've heard so far, proving you don't have to be a cutting-edge rock band to find a place at South by Southwest.

The Golden Arm Trio from David Fell on Vimeo.
Then another longish walk took me to Mother Egan's, where I heard a few songs by The Belleville Outfit. The MP3 they have on the SXSW web site sounded like Django Reinhardt, although they really are a bit more modern then that. They have a good sound, and a fetching violinist.

The Belleville Outfit from David Fell on Vimeo.
After that, I came back to the hotel, to try to get this done by a reasonable time.

Music has finally arrived in Austin Texas. Actually, it never leaves here, but there's never more of it than during SXSW.

I had a very musical evening, after sleeping most of the day. Boy, I'm gonna miss sleeping this much when I go back to work next week.

The first band I saw was called Canopy. According to the SXSW web site, the group is a live-performance project of a videographer. Mostly a four piece band, they were joined occasionally by two more musician, a cellist and a saxaphone player. They were good, their music had a bit of a 60s influence, with some modern sounds mixed in. The audience was sparse.

Next up, Ann Vriend. She was excellent. A Edmonton, Canada-based singer-songwriter who plays piano, she has a crisp and clear voice with great range. Her voice reminded me a little bit of Maria Muldaur. Elle magazine has compared her intensity to Aretha Franklin, her piano skills to Nora Jones, and her songwriting prowess to Paul Simon and Leonard Cohen. I found her to be a complete delight. She has two more performances on Thursday. I encourage anyone here to see her. She's damned attractive, too.

Next, I saw Angus and Julia Stone. A brother-sister team from Australia. Their voices blended well, but the songs all sounded the same: dull.

So on I went to the evenings main event, Echo and the Bunnymen. This well-known band hails from Liverpool. I remember another band from there. I videoed one song of theirs, included in my video report below. I only stayed for about five songs. My feet were aching pretty badly, so I headed back to the hotel, getting here around 2:30. I spent the rest of the night writing this and editing the video. It's morning already. I can tell I won't get much done today.

A taste of 6th street, and Echo & the Bunnymen from David Fell on Vimeo.

The interactive folks have mostly gone home, the movie awards are over (although screenings continue), and musicians are arriving in droves. On to the next part of SXSW!

I continue to enjoy sleeping late, which has the unfortunate side effect of limiting which panels I can attend. Furthermore, I got goofed up today and went to the wrong place for one.

That panel was "Policy Trainwreck: How Copyright Law Failed the Digital Age." I ended up catching about 3/4 of the discussion, which was mostly about music and ways for musicians to control their works. Interesting stuff, but not directly applicable to anything I'm doing, at least not yet.

After that, I went to the reception for the Film Awards. There, I bumped into Becky James, a delightful young animator whom I met earlier on the shuttle bus between our hotel and the convention center. She introduced me to her friend Matt Boch, a creative designer at Harmonix, makers of Rock Band. We talked at some length about the excitement over The Beatles Rock Band game that will be released on 09/09/09 (Number nine. Number nine. Number nine). While Matt stuck to his NDA and didn't reveal anything new, he was able to tell me that Dani Harrison, George's look-alike son, has been instrumental in making the game happen, and frequently visits the Harmonix offices. Matt says the Beatles game is fantastic. He gets to play it every week. I am so freaking jealous!

After that, I attended the film awards themselves. It was great watching the excitement of the winners. The aforementioned Becky James won a special judges award for the poster she and Lydia Corkin designed for James' film "Snake."

For the full list of winners, see sxsw.com/film.

Following the awards, I got in line to see "Saint Misbehavin': The Wavy Gravy Movie." Clown noses were passed out. I hopped into a seat and introduced myself to the guy sitting next to me, who turned out to be the film's producer, David Becker. SXSW is so cool! And I hadn't noticed, but in the fourth seat from me was none other than Wavy Gravy himself. I'd met him at a party a few days earlier and got a picture with him. But famed photographer Lisa Law set up to take a photo of the whole audience around Wavy, wearing their red noses! Becker had temporarily left his seat, and there was nobody between Wavy and me, so I popped into the chair right next to him for the photo. I can't wait to get a copy of that from Law.

The film itself was exceptional. In fact, they won me over with the very first bit of music, because the song was "Indian Lake" by the Cowsills, which just happens to be the very first record I ever purchased with my own money, back in 1968, when I was 10 or 11 years old. But the whole story of Wavy and his great kindness and charity was a delight from start to finish. Like his friends the Grateful Dead said, what a long, strange trip it's been.

The film ended after midnight, so I strolled over to 6th street, the main bar and music scene in Austin. I had a delicious burger at The Jackalope, and found friendly people who told me pirate jokes. This is a very friendly place to be.

Tomorrow: More movies and finally some music!

A little musical entertainment: The Buckinghams were on ABC 7 News This Morning, and after the broadcast, they recorded a couple of songs for you.