
The Rolling Stones on the Paris-Marseille train. June 1965.
San Francisco. Anthony Stern. 1968.

I spend my days looking at Apple Records releases from around the world so you don’t have to! Most of these are French unless otherwise noted. But we’ll begin above in Germany where “All Together Now” was released as a single (news to me). Below, we have a few Lennons. None of them are all that though I recently found out that the picture that adorns this “Be-Bop-A-Lula” single (and the Rock and Roll LP) was found by May Pang at the first Beatlesfest. As usual, all of these images are from ebay.


Here are two French Wings singles. “Junior’s Farm” and the elusive (or, more accurately, always overpriced) “Hi Hi Hi” picture sleeve featuring the band in some seriously great outfits.


“Hi Hi Hi” in Portugal:

My most recent obsession has been with these awesome looking “Eat at Home” singles. I’ll have to pick up a few eventually. The cover art on some of them feature the same picture as the “Another Day” single which I went on about a while back.
Spain (not on Apple!):

Italy has the best one:

Germany:

I don’t remember where this one is from but the orange Apple works (probably Stateside):

Speaking of Ram, I think one of the Beatles photo blogs posted this a few weeks ago but I can’t quite remember which one. I have no idea if it is a legitimate ad or not. If it is, it’s great. If it’s some fan designed thing it is horribly lame.

All hail the brilliant French “Something” single! Pretty mind-blowing stuff here.

Plastic Ono Band’s “Mother.” Sharp picture:

A French “Hey Jude” similar to the French sleeves I posted last time I did something like this:

Did Ringo lose a bet (in France)?

This Billy Preston cover is pretty exciting:

Yoko repeats herself:

A pretty great “Mind Games”:

Posted in apple records, context, Macca, music, on your sleeve, years after the event

I’ve done this before but it’s just now occurred to me that this is a feature on its own. Here’s a recent pick up, a Dylan mystery: a stereo copy of Blonde on Blonde. It’s an early pressing but the absence of Claudia Cardinale and the whispering scene in the gate (see below) seem to rule out it being a first pressing—either way, the two records themselves are in pristine condition, virtually unplayed. The serial and matrix numbers, along with the “Stuck Inside Of Mobile With The” listing (the track listing in the gate continues the song’s title reading: “Memphis Blues Again”) and the presence of the “STEREO ‘360° SOUND'” logo all seem to indicate that it’s a first pressing. Despite this site‘s seemingly exhaustive study of the endless differences in the various versions of the LP’s release, I remain confused as to what exactly it is that I have here.


Apparently, Cardinale wasn’t involved in the photo shoot for the album but was in the photographer‘s portfolio and Dylan thought it would be cool to include it—and who can blame him?

Posted in music, record labels
While preparing a post on the McCartney/Costello collaboration of the late eighties (which may or may not materialize), I came across this pretty slick video of Costello performing “God’s Comic” solo/acoustic style. According to the guy who posted this on youtube this comes from something called Everything You Wanted To Know About Spike. Seeing this sort of makes up for the lack of alternate versions on this song on the Rhino reissue.
Record shopping today I bought another copy of the Stones’ Exile on Main Street LP. This copy included some (but sadly not all) of the postcards that came with the first run of record and here they are:




A 1990s CD booklet included reproductions of these cards. My reaction to them then is pretty much the same as my reaction now, “what the fuck is this all about?” Must’ve had to have been there.
Mower. Superchunk. 1993.
Posted in apple records, music, years after the event

Now you know how many holes it takes. Albert Hall Archemical Wedding bag performance by John and Yoko.


I’ve got nothing as far as non-Anthology “A Day in the Life” outtakes. Here, somewhat randomly, are two great takes of “Remember” instead.
Posted in apple records, music, years after the event