For Beatles Fans

[dlazarus6660]

For Beatles Fans, Christmas songs played to the songs of the Beatles.
The Fab 4 is a Beatles cover band and recorded these gems.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kBTIi...eature=related

[DavieRockets]

Very cool.

[JStarStar]

For Beatles Fans, Christmas songs played to the songs of the Beatles.
The Fab 4 is a Beatles cover band and recorded these gems.

The Fab Four did two whole CDs of Beatles Christmas songs. I've got both of those CDs and also "The Beatmas," a Christmas album done in about 1985 by a Swedish Beatles tribute band, "The Rubber Band."

IMO, they do the single best Beatles Christmas song:

"White Christmas" done as "Ticket to Ride."

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=--qGWehsIuE

Some of the other Rubber Band versions are goofy because of translation problems: they tell kids "you better not Hout." What the heck is a Hout??

The Fab Four songs are pretty good: "Revolution 1" (slow version off the White Album) redone as "Blue Christmas" and "While My Guitar Gently Weeps" as "What Child is This?" especially good, but there are a couple of duds. But by and large they're pretty fun.

[jadebox]

The Fab Four did two whole CDs ...

For several years, the Beatles, the real ones :-), released 45 rpm singles containing a "Christmas Message" that included talking and songs. The singles were distributed to the Beatles fan club members.

-- Roger

[sylvie369]

CDs. :-)

For several years, the Beatles released 45 rpm singles containing a "Christmas Message" that included talking and songs. The singles were distributed to the Beatles fan club members.

-- Roger

There's a lot of filler, but also a lot of golden moments:

http://beatlesource.com/bs/mains/audio/xmas/xmas.html

These are as much a part of Christmas as "Alice's Restaurant" is for Thanksgiving.

[ndzied1]

A while back iTunes had the Beatles 1963 Christmas Record Single. Very cool to hear the boys. And at that time they were just boys

I must have gotten that as a free download from Starbucks or something as I can't remember actually buying it? ...

[JStarStar]

While the (real) Beatles' Christmas messages were fun, they don't actually go to the lengths of singing many actual songs or Christmas carols. Mainly it's just goofing around, sometimes very funny goofing around, but not really all that Christmassy.

The tribute band CDs are actually better for Christmas singalongs.

I think the Beatles just looked on doing the fan-club holiday songs as a chore in the early days, and an opportunity to fool around toward the end of their career. Of course by that time, Lennon and Harrison in particular had gotten to the point where they probably didn't want to promote Christmas as a religious holiday.

Funny, all four Beatles put out very unequivocal holiday singles as solo artists: Ringo late to the party with the jaunty "Dear Santa" just a few years ago (in fact, Ringo did a whole Christmas CD), Paul with the abominable "Wonderful Christmastime" (which must have taken him a full five minutes to write and record), George with the actually quite good "Ding Dong, Ding Dong" (actually more a New Year song), and of course the world-famous outspoken atheist John Lennon with an honest-to-goodness holiday classic, "Happy Xmas (War is Over)," which works perfectly fine as a religiously-themed Christmas anthem as well.

The tribute band albums are always fun to throw into the mix. It's not really the Beatles, but it sure does sound like them.

[RocketT.Coyote]

The Fab 4 were tapped to do Rutlemania and were performing Rutles songs on tour. The Rutles was a spoof on the Beatles done with some of the cast of SNL and Monty Python btw.

Hark! The Herald Angels Sing performed to HELP! by the Fab 4 makes you want to expect the Grinch to be throwing darts at the screen.

[JStarStar]

The Fab 4 were tapped to do Rutlemania and were performing Rutles songs on tour. The Rutles was a spoof on the Beatles done with some of the cast of SNL and Monty Python btw.

Hark! The Herald Angels Sing performed to HELP! by the Fab 4 makes you want to expect the Grinch to be throwing darts at the screen.

I actually think "Hark!" isn't bad, but "Away In A Manger" mashed into "You've Got to Hide Your Love Away" by using "... asleep in the HAYyyyy...!!!!!!!" doesn't work.

Also, using "Mr. Moonlight" (almost unanimously acclaimed as the worst Beatles song) as the basis for "Frosty the Snowman" doesn't work either.

The Fab Four did two whole albums of Christmas songs -- 20 songs in all. The top 12 or 15 come off pretty well, but those half-dozen songs from the bottom of the barrel are like egg-nog left out on the counter overnight.


The "Beatmas!" album by the Rubber Band I mentioned above has about 6-8 decent songs and 2-4 duds, so a compilation CD made up from the 3 CDs would be pretty good.

[RocketT.Coyote]

Good King Wenceslas is quite good IMHO.

The Fab 4 once played at the local band shell here. I could hear them playing over 2 miles away as the nearby river carried the sound well.

[JStarStar]

Good King Wenceslas is quite good IMHO.

The Fab 4 once played at the local band shell here. I could hear them playing over 2 miles away as the nearby river carried the sound well.

The Fab Four, I am pretty sure, are veterans of the original "Beatlemania" traveling stage show which first hit the road about 1980 (I saw them in concert then).

They were the first act, I believe, which tried to go whole-hog on the Beatles tribute thing: they tried to look, sound and act like the originals (there were soundalike groups before but they didn't look right, guys who LOOKED right but couldn't play or sing, etc etc.)

Although there were Elvis impersonators long before then.

I've seen Paul and Ringo live so I guess the Fab Four may be the closest thing we have left to seeing the real Beatles live.