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Vintage crime paperback covers

Beatles vinyl re-releases on the way as singles and box set

Three years after the entire catalog was issued in remastered form on CD, the Beatles' albums will soon be available on LP, too.

Sounds like only the stereo, British versions will be produced. The CD reissue campaign also included a box set of the mono releases.

Details:

Every Beatles Album to be released on vinyl, as a boxed set and individually on Nov 13 in the United States. Manufactured on 180-gram, audiophile quality vinyl with replicated artwork, the 14 albums return to their original glory with details including the poster in The Beatles (The White Album), the Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Heart Club Band’s cut-outs, and special inner bags for some of the titles.

Each album will be available individually, and accompanied by a 252-page hardbound book in a boxed edition limited to 50,000 copies worldwide.

The book is authored by award-winning radio producer Kevin Howlett and features a dedicated chapter for each of the albums, as well as insights into the creation of the remasters and how the vinyl albums were prepared. The 12”x12” book includes a wealth of photographs spanning The Beatles’ recording career, including many images which were not included in the 2009 CD booklets.

BBC radio this week - stream drama, comedy, music documentaries

Click the links to hear the following programs.

David Frost's Hollywood Greats
Stars of the silver screen share insights and anecdotes with Sir David Frost.

Creme De la Crime
The history of crime, using a daring mixture of reconstructions, interviews and music

Evan Hunter - Me and Hitch
The American author's entertaining account of working with director Alfred Hitchcock

The Goon Show
Classic material from one of the all-time radio comedy greats

Noel Coward - This Happy Breed
The Gibbons family's inter-war life in a new suburban home from 1919 to 1939.

Paul Temple and the Geneva Mystery
Peter Coke stars as the debonair sleuth investigating whether a 'dead' man still alive

Terry Pratchett - Nation
South Seas adventure read by Matt Addis and Charlie Norfolk

The Fall of the House of Usher
Classic Gothic Horror. What is the power that the House has over the Usher Family?

The Beach Boys Story
Bob Harris charts the history of iconic surf band The Beach Boys.

Beach Boys at 50
Harry Shearer mixes archive with brand new interviews and a sun-soaked soundtrack

Radio 2 In Concert
Jo Whiley presents the Beach Boys in concert from The Mermaid in London.<

Reunited Beach Boys concert online

You can hear one of the Beach Boys' recent shows in London here, on BBC Radio 2.

Reunited Beach Boys on Jools Holland

They can sound hit-and-miss live, but there's still something very special about the Beach Boys' harmonies. The reunion LP is so much better than I'd anticipated. I've listened to it a ton and I'm hopeful that Brian Wilson will persuade the others to join him in making the "rock'n'roll" album of up-tempo tunes he has in mind.

It's a pity that Mike Love would rather revert to touring with the county fair circuit version of the band than maintain the reunited line-up, as both Wilson and Al Jardine are interested in continuing it.

Here's the group from their appearance yesterday on Britain's "Later with Jools Holland." They are playing some London dates at the moment.

Doctor Who - Angels Take Manhattan pics

Images from this week's episode of Doctor Who.

New comics Sept. 26, 2012: Flash; Green Lantern; Amethyst; Archie; Dave Stevens; Gasoline Alley, more!

Notable releases this week. Click the link to order discounted items from Amazon.

The Flash Vol. 2: The Road to Flashpoint

Absolute Green Lantern: The Sinestro Corps War

Saga of the Swamp Thing Book 2

Showcase Presents: Amethyst, Princess of Gemworld Vol. 1

Archie: The Best of Harry Lucey Volume 2

Dave Stevens' Stories & Covers

Gasoline Alley Volume 1

Joe Kubert's Tarzan of the Apes Artist's Edition

The Mighty Thor, Vol. 2

Marvel Masterworks: The Invincible Iron Man - Volume 2

Asterix Omnibus 6: Includes Asterix in Switzerland #16, The Mansion of the Gods #17, and Asterix and the Laurel Wreath #18

The third volume of Fantagraphics’ reprinting of Carl Barks’s classic Donald Duck and Uncle Scrooge work, like the previous volume Uncle Scrooge: Only a Poor Old Man, focuses on the early 1950s, universally considered one of Barks’s very peak periods.

Originally published in 1951, "A Christmas for Shacktown" is one of Barks's masterpieces: A rare 32-pager that stays within the confines of Duckburg, featuring a storyline in which the Duck family works hard to raise money to throw a Christmas party for the poor children of the city’s slums (depicted by Barks with surprisingly Dickensian grittiness), and climaxing in one of the most memorable images Barks ever created, the terrifying bottomless pit that swallows up all of Scrooge's money.

But there's lots more gold to be found in this volume (literally), which features both the "The Golden Helmet" (a quest off the coast of Labrador for a relic that might grant the finder ownership of America, reducing more than one cast member to a state of Gollum-like covetousness) while "The Gilded Man" features a hunt for a rare stamp in South America — two more of Barks's thrilling full-length adventure stories.

But that's less than half the volume! This volume also features ten of Barks's smart and funny 10-pagers, including a double whammy of yarns co-starring Donald's insufferable cousin ("Gladstone’s Usual Very Good Year" and "Gladstone’s Terrible Secret"), as well as another nine of Barks's rarely seen one-page Duck gags… all painstakingly recolored to match the original coloring as exactly as possible, and supplemented with an extensive series of notes and behind-the-scenes essays by the foremost Duck experts in the world.

New music I like: Flying Lotus

Seems to be a lot of buzz about this upcoming LP. I like the video and this tune. Sort of reminds me of Zappa's instrumental/experimental work.