The Smiley Smile Message Board

In the past few weeks, the website of Amazon.co.uk listed a series of January 2014 CD's(from "Commercial Marketing".I.E. Universal Music) by The Beatles. These discs were to be individual releases of the eight CD's in "The Capitol Albums Vols.1 & 2" boxes (I.E. the albums "Meet The Beatles", "The Beatles' Second Album", "Something New", "Beatles '65","The Early Beatles", "Beatles VI" & the U.S.A. versions of "Help" & "Rubber Soul"), plus "Hey Jude", "Yesterday....and Today", The U.S.A. version of "A Hard Days Night" & the truncated 11-song "Revolver". I was immediately suspicious. The 11-song "Revolver" is even more of a pointless ripoff now than it was in 1966, and I doubt that Yoko, Paul,Olivia & Ringo would ever permit it to be reissued.
                      On two internet forums(in which I'm no longer permitted to participate) my name was used as a synonym for pessimism by people who expressed their doubts as to whether these CD's were for real(though certainly there are unauthorized Russian CD's of nearly all of these albums). Not surprisingly, Apple Corps became aware of these preorder listings on Amazon.co.uk, and these listings have now disappeared. Apparently, these CD's were a hoax.
                      The one or two release "Slots" in Apple Corps annual release schedule should be used for something more worthy. It is a mystery as to why someone at the website staff at Amazon.co.uk would create such a hoax. 

There would be little or no demand in the UK for these cd's, those fans grew up with the British albums. In the US, a lot of us grew up with the Capitol albums - I played them so much, they are ingrained in my memory. When I hear "I Want to Hold Your Hand" end, I immediately hear "1, 2, 3, 4" in my head, kicking off "I Saw Her Standing There". And Rubber Soul starts with "I've Just Seen a Face", not "Drive My Car". To my admittedly biased ears, that would be like The Beatles aka White Album kicking off with "Hey Jude" instead of "Back in the USSR", or Sgt. Pepper starting with "Stawberry Fields Forever".

100% correct. I'm about to travel there for the fourth time and I'm always amazed to see what is available in the music shops. The last time I was there I saw hundreds of data-cd compilations that contained entire discographies of hundreds of bands in mp3 form.