More than half a century has passed since two Liverpudian teenagers named John and Paul met at a church fete and found their voices sounded good together. Fifty years; and yet,for most of those years,anything the group they were to form did was inevitably the biggest musical news of the year. Nothing in the musical world is likely to cause as big a splash in 2009,for example,as the news that came in on Tuesday that the Beatles albums are finally being remastered for CD. This has been years in coming. Apple records,the Beatles music company,tends to take its time and,with such a large and fanatical corps of fans demanding quality,who can blame them? This means,however,that the Beatles music hasnt been remastered since the first CDs,in 1987; thus the technology was pre-digital and their sound is a little jangly. Most of the seminal bands of the 1960s have seen several updates of their music since then,with each iteration taking the listener ever closer to that ideal,the sense of being in the room when the music was made. And,of course,remastering the most inventive musical group ever will have had its own challenges,and will provide its own rewards. You may have heard the Beatles music already: but you wont have heard the string quartet in Eleanor Rigby,the piccolo trumpet in Penny Lane or the distorted guitar in Revolution quite the way youll be able to now. The last Beatles re-release,1,remains this centurys highest-selling album worldwide,in part because Lennon and McCartneys are our only real,world-spanning folk-songs. Something else happens this week: a new,much-anticipated Star Trek movie will be released,forty years after the original TV serial. As our cultures become ever more fragmented,its warming to revisit the enduring appeal of the cultural touchstones of the 1960s.
