Press release of the day: ‘No further information available at this time’

Keywords: Beatles, catalog, digitally, remastered.

Could it be that the Beatles are finally coming to iTunes, as has been rumored and rushed into print so many times? Nope. Reissued CDs, that powerhouse commodity of 2009:

London, England – April 7, 2009 – Apple Corps Ltd. and EMI Music are delighted to announce the release of the original Beatles catalogue, which has been digitally re-mastered for the first time, for worldwide CD release on Wednesday, September 9, 2009 (9-9-09), the same date as the release of the widely anticipated “The Beatles: Rock Band” video game. Each of the CDs is packaged with replicated original UK album art, including expanded booklets containing original and newly written liner notes and rare photos. For a limited period, each CD will also be embedded with a brief documentary film about the album. On the same date, two new Beatles boxed CD collections will also be released.

Hey, it's better than a $395 White Album fountain pen ... right?

To their credit, the biggest-selling act of all time did offer this thoroughly lawyered non-update on the issue of digital distribution:

Discussions regarding the digital distribution of the catalogue will continue. There is no further information available at this time.

Press release of the day: John Lennon = Faust, Robert Johnson, ‘others’

I’m not enough of a Beatles freak to know or care if there’s much of a “turn me on, dead man”-type precedent for this, but thank God somebody has decided to be the Ralph Macchio here and tackle head-on the urgent question of whether John Lennon sold his soul to the devil “in exchange for his worldly musical success with the Beatles and beyond.” And beyond!

The basis for this conclusion? On Dec. 27, 1960, “when Beatlemania first struck audiences,” the Beatles played a concert that “evoked a response noticeably different from anything in their past,” and thus they “inexplicably and immediately” became superfamous. So John must have struck a deal with Old Scratch. QED, right?

WASHINGTON, D.C., November 18, 2008 - Did John Lennon sell his soul to the devil in exchange for his worldly musical success with The Beatles and beyond? That’s the theory set forth by Joseph Niezgoda in his soon-to-be released book The Lennon Prophecy, A New Examination of the Death Clues of the Beatles.

The Lennon Prophecy offers a new interpretation of the hidden messages and symbols that have ornamented Beatles mythology for years and offers the view that Lennon joined historical figures such as Mississippi “Crossroads” blues guitarist Robert Johnson, Dr. Johann Faust, Pope Sylvester II among others who entered into a pact with the devil to exchange their souls for earthly successes....

Niezgoda alleges that a 20-year pact began in December of 1960, shortly before a night when Beatlemania first struck audiences on December 27, 1960, when the Fab Four played at Town Hall Ballroom in Litherland, England. During that performance, as Niezgoda writes, “The Beatles evoked a response noticeably different from anything in their past.” From there, The Beatles inexplicably and immediately shot to global fame at a level never seen before or since. The 20-year pact came to its tragic conclusion on December 8, 1980, when Mark David Chapman, who testified he was possessed by demons, fulfilled the end of the contract by murdering Lennon outside of his apartment at The Dakota in New York City.

I appreciate the reference to Sylvester II. You can’t count on good medieval papal scholarship anymore.