Friday!!! Who doesn’t love Friday? Best day of the week. Major TGIF and since the weather’s great even more so!
In honor of the end of another long work week I thought it might be fun to take a journey overseas, to a more tropical climate. Not to troll a beach or gaze at the surroundings mind you, in this corner of the Web we’re looking at records. (Shocker I know).
Today I’m going to feature three of my favorite foreign Beatles pressings – a mono copy of “Revolver” and stereo copies of “A Collection of Beatles Oldies” and “Let it Be” – all from Uruguay which are fairly obscure at least in the United States.
I acquired these three beauties somewhere in the late 1970s at of all places my local shopping mall!
There was a store there which is now long gone and of course I forget the name but they used to stock quite a few import Beatles lps – UK, Japanese and these three pressings (see above) from Uruguay.
While these Uruguay Beatle records come with flimsy covers consisting of thin paper stock covered in plastic and look cheaply made they sound surprisingly good!
They seem to have been made from UK pressing plates as they have the same matrix numbers as UK pressings and fairly early numbers as well – see below:
“Revolver” – XEX 605-2 and XEX 606-2
“A Collection of Beatles Oldies” – YEX 619 and YEX 620
“Let it Be” – YEX 773-3U and YEX 774-3U
Because of using the British parts these really sounded much better than I remember as I hadn’t touched them in over 20 years.
I just played through all three pressings this week and while I would say the vinyl quality is a tad below a standard UK pressing (the Uruguay pressings have an occasional pop and crackle) they really do sound wonderful and are almost as good sounding as first pressing UK copies.
This mono copy of “Revolver” was the first mono copy I had ever heard and as soon as the cowbell popped up loud and clear in “Taxman” as it does in the mono mix I knew this pressing was something different and exciting.
“Got to Get You into My Life” is another song from the mono “Revolver” that really stood out as Paul’s vamping near the fade is just great, one of the reasons I prefer the mono version of this (and truthfully most) Beatles albums as the mix seems to just pop with an energy and vitality that’s missing from some of the stereo mixes.
I don’t have many other Uruguay pressings to compare (I do own an album by the group America but haven’t played it) but if all pressings from Uruguay sound this good it might be worth tracking some down if you can find them.
I would imagine these were’t pressed in great numbers but who knows, they did find their way to a Midwest shopping which seems amazing to me.
Anyway, feast your eyes on these unique pressings and until we meet again on the World Wide Web enjoy the sunshine – if you have it!!!
Records, CDs and Music: 