Top Six--The Teenagers (sic) Choice: Beatlemania (1964)

A return post from 2020. Its link still works, and I recall that the audio quality is quite good, considering the much-played condition of the U.K. vinyl.  By now, I've probably heard 80 percent of the budget Beatles knock-offs--from dreadful to adequate--of this period, and this my pick for the jewel of the fake-Beatlemania crown.

 Lee

DOWNLOAD: Beatlemania--Artists Unknown (Top Six TSL 1; 1964)


Fake Beatles tonight.  (That sound like the title of a Broadway comedy.)  Why fake Beatles tonight?  Because fake Beatles are fun, and faked Fab Four records were pretty much an industry unto themselves, so they're a big part of sound recording history.  A big part of the underground thereof, anyway.  And because it's giving me a break from stressing.  Hope it can perform that feat for some of you, too.  This 1964 British LP, titled Beatlemania (no attempt at exploitation there), has its expected bad moments (and bad tracks, like Please Please Me), but considering the rushed nature of the product, it's fairly amazing.  As in, legitimately good overall.  It captures the George Martin production sound with much skill--maybe by accident; I don't know.  But it is by far the best Beatles copy I've yet heard--and it's a whole LPful, which is not a word, but so what.  I read someplace the name of the group that allegedly did these tracks, but of course I've been unable to re-find that info.  It may not even be true.  But I can say without Google confirmation that these guys are good--the lead guitarist, especially.  This very used copy played amazingly well with my entry-audiophile cartridge and stylus at 1.5 grams (which I did not expect), and VinylStudio did superbly on the many clicks.  The sound is bright and full.

The front jacket says (I believe) eleven shillings and one pence, which was a little over half a pound.  That was for twelve hits.  Top Six singles (with six hits, of course) were six shillings and eight pence.  In pure junk-label fashion, there are no liner notes, and the back cover contains only an unpunctuated track listing and an ad for Top Six singles.  My kind of LP!

I wonder what the L in "TSL" stood for.  "Top Six...?"  Lemons?  Laugh riots?  Hm.  Probably "Limited."  At any rate, if you can forgive the absurd moments, I think you'll find it a remarkably good effort.  And, if you don't, I still will.  Note how the mystery studio group messes up a line (actually, two) in the first number.  It's supposed to be, "When I'll say that something: I want to hold your hand."  Even as a kid, I got that, except I thought "I'll" was "I."  As did these guys, too.  Anyway, they sing it, "When I say that someday, I want to hold your hand."  Huh?  The singer is expressing a present desire, not a future one.  "I assure you that someday I'll want to hold your hand.  But only after this pandemic is over."  Anyway, the Beatles were known for doubling words: "something" shows up twice in the first verse.  It's as if these underpaid pros were rushing to junk-label deadline.  Come to think of it....

Money is maybe the finest fake of the bunch, in good part because the lead singer sounds uncannily like John Lennon.  This LP is the definition of fun.  And proof that fake hits sometimes transcended the awful-to-medium curve.  Enjoy!

UPDATE: Apparently, the drummer on this LP was Jimmy Nichol, who subbed for Ringo with the Beatles in an international tour when Ringo had tonsillitis.  Read about it here.  Some info on Top Six, too.  I'd read about this before at various sites but suspected it was an urban legend.  I guess not!

Lee

Back to the blog!

 And what a journey it has been.  It started with the sudden demise of my HP laptop in the midst of Christmas blogging.  Then, the challenge of a new laptop (a lovely Samsung Galaxy, on sale, and minus an instruction manual), Windows 11 (which I've nicknamed "Let's see--how can we make 10 worse?"), a new audio analog-to-digital interface (nice enough, but no Roland Duo-Capture), an external keyboard (I hate typing on a flat one), an four-jack USB extension hub, and... the return of my big and superb Omen monitor.  I'd have stuck with the Samsung display, which is gorgeous, but the cause of too much eyestrain when I'm editing images and audio.  An aging-vision issue?  Very possibly.

And some glitches too complicated to explain.  Or too boring to describe, at least.  For instance, my Behringer U-Control interface has no internal volume control, and the VinylStudio program, sensing the lack of an internal volume adjustment, shuts off its OWN.  AND, though my MAGIX software has an auto-adjust feature for the (very loud) Rec Out signal from my vintage Sony amp, stereo input is channel-summed to monaural.  I have no idea why.  I've studied the settings, but no clue.

Oh, and despite what the Best Buy Geek Squad assured me, the data-retrieval process (from my old tower to my Samsung) went poorly, with many C-drive items lost--and ALL of the D-drive data--kaput.  Meaning, any number of this blog's ZIP files.  Truth is, I had tried to move D-drive data to my whatever-it's-called Microsoft cloud storage.  (Oh, yeah--OneDrive.)  But I couldn't figure out how to do it.  The ways of OneDrive are strange.  I was happy, though, that my C-drive data all went into the cloud quickly and automatically.  Meanwhile, the Geek Squad managed to retrieve C-drive data I had long ago deleted.  It's all too complicated.

Anyway, a post in progress, and--meanwhile--a repeat of a 2020 offering whose ZIP somehow still remains at Box.com.  It is, in my fake-hit-authority opinion, the very best Fab Four knockoff of all time.  The LP dates from a period when U.K.-to-U.S. postage rates were still reasonable.  Stay tuned.

Wolf: I just can't explain it, Dr. Hood.  This drive to gobble up grandmothers--I just can't control it.  You must think pretty badly of me.  Especially since I just ate YOUR grandma.

Dr. Hood: I'm here to listen, not to judge.

Lee