The Smiley Smile Message Board

Check this out!

http://endlesssummerquarterly.blogspot.com/2010/12/beatles-complete-first-american-concert.html

Cool ! I fear, though, that the Beach Boys come off a little lame. Not because of their playing and singing, which is very cool (except for Al's off key "In my room") but because there's such a lack of audience participation, especially girls screaming. It's probably very much there during the Beatles' set

Cool!
A great first project for the 50th anniversary.
Let's hope a DVD release.

They were a little more frantic at the TAMI show but I love this concert. I hope Monster Mash is in there.

Will this differ to the already-released version greatly, if at all, other than improved quality?

Well, if "Monster mash" indeed should be included as MBE imagined, then it would be very cool. Don't know how much could be bettered with the sound

"Monster Mash" is in there.

Hoooray !!

I think it's Carl that's flat there. Flat, not fat.

Haven't watched it in quite a while. But I remember that it looked to me as if Carl (and Brian) were giving Al some looks... Maybe someone else knows better

Brian told Sean Lennon that he had never met John. Didn't they see each other back stage at this show?

Brian did meet John at Ricci Martin's birthday party in the early '70's...that's documented by many eyewitnesses. However, the concert film that is the subject of this thread is not a joint appearance by the Beach Boys and Beatles...the Beatles set is from their Feb. '64 concert in Washington D.C. and the Beach Boys set (as seen in the Lost Concert) was filmed in L.A. in March '64. Two different shows, one film.

Check out the updated post.  DJ Roger Christian's introduction to The Beach Boys and Lesley Gore is in this film.

http://endlesssummerquarterly.blogspot.com/2010/12/beatles-complete-first-american-concert.html

Finally, I can watch a version of the Beatles concert in good quality.  ;D

Video trailer added: http://endlesssummerquarterly.blogspot.com/2010/12/beatles-complete-first-american-concert.html

Don't let out any news here, cuz we don't want to spoil it( you can send everyone PMs) but is there a really good chance the whole film is going to be available for all of us that can't go to the show?

Bet the Hoffman board's a tad moist.

I'd like to know this too. Will there be a DVD-release?

Oh ok. Not the same show. I guess Brian doesn't remember a whole lot in the early 70s. Like does he recall crashing Keith Moon's party in a bath robe?

No DVD release is planned at this time.

Al and Carl sound fine to me, and it sure ain't Brian. Which leaves . . .

I'm not sure who's in charge, but that is a REALLy stupid decision.

It has more to do with clearance issues and legalities than anything else...so probably not stupid, just calculated as not possible at this point.

Ya gotta give Ringo his props!  He is one bad-ass Drummer!!!

Be that as it may, it's still stupid.

Agree - someone's gone to an awful lot of time and trouble and it's a shame their efforts won't get the recognition they deserve.

Maybe later...

Sadly this is the kind of situation which bootleggers love to exploit. Let's hope for an official release before any of those ne'er-do-wells get their grubby mitts on it!

http://www.examiner.com/beatles-in-national/beatles-archivist-who-has-seen-it-all-gets-64-d-c-show-back-to-the-big-screen


Beatles archivist who has seen it all gets '64 D.C. show back to the big screen

The Beatles' Feb. 11, 1964 Washington Coliseum concert is one of their best-known shows. One huge reason is it was their first on American soil. And while it's not a rare video among collectors, it has circulated in incomplete forms of varying quality thanks to bootleggers. An edited form was also included in both releases of "The Beatles' U.S. Visit"

You can see memorabilia and images from the closed circuit broadcast in the slideshow at left. Also at left is the video trailer.
Another reason is that back in 1964 it was videotaped and presented in theaters all the country four times as part of a special film show featuring the Beatles concert, plus recently recorded live footage of the Beach Boys and Lesley Gore.
 
All the various forms of the Beatles' footage seen up to last November have been incomplete, missing "Long Tall Sally" and other incidental footage. When the Beatles finally hit iTunes in the middle of that month, the concert with unseen footage was included in the Beatles box set and also allowed to be streamed online until the end of the year.
 
The Beach Boys' footage has been available on DVD as "The Beach Boys' Lost Concert," but that DVD is missing "Monster Mash" and spoken introductions by Roger Christian, the KHJ Boss Jock who co-wrote "Don't Worry Baby," "Little Deuce Coupe" and several other Beach Boys songs with Brian Wilson. And the Lesley Gore footage has not been shown anywhere since originally screened.
 
Until now, that is. At 7:30 p.m. Feb. 11, 47 years to the day of the Washington show, the special concert screening from 1964 will be recreated at the Egyptian Theater in Los Angeles. For the first time, all three concerts will be shown in their original length and uncut.
Ron Furmanek, who worked on the Beatles archive footage seen in "The Beatles Anthology," is behind the event and says the screening will be "what you saw in March 1964 for the four screenings with nothing cut out." He calls the Washington show the first-ever pay-per-view concert.

"In March of '64, they ran it four times closed circuit through theaters all over the United States," he told us in a phone interview. Furmanek says the Beach Boys and Lesley Gore footage was taped after the Beatles. "They did a special 90-minute concert that you were able to pay your $2 and sit (and watch) in your local theater."
 
All the previous versions, even "The Beatles First U.S. Visit," didn't have what will be screened next month. "This was something that was missing and I found the master tapes in 1995. I worked on "The Beatles First U.S. Visit" a year or two earlier and we had to use a kinescope at that point because I hadn't found the videotape yet."
 
And though all the versions, including the one to be shown are in black-and-white, that wasn't the original plan.
 
"The Beatles' show was supposed to be in color," he says. "And it was going to be the very first color closed circuit broadcast ever with these new hand-held cameras that they invented. If you watch the concert, you'll notice five or six cameras and a few are hand held. At the last minute, the color was scrapped because of some problems with the tubes.
 
"That's why," Furmanek says, "the Beach Boys and Lesley Gore was recorded at NBC Burbank. They had the all-color studios. They could have easily went to CBS in Television City on Melrose or Fairfax or ABC at Prospect, which were black-and-white. But they chose Burbank because it was going to be recorded in color."
 
 Furmanek is no stranger to the Beatles archives. He's been involved with restoring Beatles footage for over 20 years. "I was the first film archivist at Apple. I started back in '87, '88. I got the vaults all together. Basically, when you watch the 'Anthology' film, anything that looks super clear in there is my work, my restoration work and my discoveries," he says. "I'm an archive preservist, producer. I've got many titles."
 
One of the projects he has worked on was the Beatles' Shea Stadium film, the release of which is high on every Beatle fan's wish list. He says the bootleg versions that have appeared in the last few years don't come close to what the remastered version looks like.
 
"There was an auction a few years ago with some audio tapes, a rough soundboard recording from the stadium P.A. system, apparently, which is quite crude," he says. "It's nothing like the original tapes are. It might have nice fidelity, but it's raw. Microphones are going on and off.
 
"I found the original stereo tapes with M. Clay Adams in 1987," he says. "This bootleg is nothing but a mono P.A. feed. It's like what you heard if you were at the concession stand buying a hot dog. Whoever won that auction obviously synced that up with the picture. When I restored that film, I went off the original camera negatives. The film was shot in 35mm and the color is stunning off the negative. The bootlegs are off of a print that somebody found, a faded print that they color corrected."
 
"Take the footage off 'Anthology' that I did off the negative and then compare it to this current bootleg. You can see the difference," he says. "It's no master. It's just an old composite print. And when you have an Eastman Color print from 1965 or 1966, it's going to be faded beet-red or all brown."
 
"You can't beat the original camera negative. Apple has the originals. It doesn't have any fades. If there's a fadeout for a commercial, the negative doesn't have the fadeout," he says. "Shea Stadium, other than the sound issues, of any rock concert that was ever shot in the '60s of any group, I think Shea Stadium is the highest quality film. It looks better than 'Woodstock,' 'Gimme Shelter,' 'Monterey Pop.' It really does. Go look at it in 'Anthology." It's stunning. Put on the headphones and listen to it in 'Anthology'. You're going to hear some true stereo there, like 'Dizzy Miss Lizzy and 'I'm Down'."
 
He says the restored "Let It Be" looks equally fantastic."When I restored it, I sat down with (Neil Aspinall) and Derek (Taylor) up in the screening room where we were editing 'Anthology'. And they sat and watched the entire film. They were blown away. They couldn't believe the difference. It's a fun film to watch after I restored it. It's lively. It's crystal clear. There's no grain. There's no blow-up. There's one time Paul says something to George, but other than that, the movie's a lot of fun.
 
"It's not dark, it's not poor quality like the VHS or laserdisc that was released. It was shot in 16mm Kodachrome and Echtachrome and it's gorgeous. There's no problem with it. I remixed the entire second half of the film from the 8 track master multitrack tapes and it is in stereo, starting with the sessions in the studio and the concert on the roof."
 
And the video collection everyone is hoping for? "I restored and remixed all of the picture and audio for the promo films. That's all my work. They start in '65 and they're those funny black-and-white performances. The Beatles went into the studio. They actually videotaped most of them so they could ship them to different countries where they could not appear on TV to promote those records. These are not 'A Hard Day's Night' or 'Help!' These are just simple, mimed promotional videos, with a few amazing exceptions, like 'Paperback Writer' or 'Strawberry Fields Forever'." 
 
"When the Red and Blue albums came out on CD for the first time, Apple simply serviced most of those again to promote the new CDs. When I was restoring them, I couldn't believe it when I found the 35mm camera cut negatives for 'Paperback Writer' and 'Rain.' And they were in color. Nobody had ever seen them in color. And look at the stunning quality I got out of those two negatives." 
 
Why is this all taking so long to get released on DVD? "I have no idea when that will happen, but let's think positive," Furmanek says.
 
Will the Beatles/Beach Boys/Lesley Gore films be shown elsewhere besides Los Angeles? Furmanek says possibly they will. "It's non-profit. No one is making any profit. It's all for the American Cinematheque."
 
Will there be any special guests? "We hope to have some of the people who were there. Maybe a couple of the Beach Boys or Lesley Gore," he says hopefully. "We're going to have an intermission where the original intermission was in March 1964 right after the Lesley Gore and Beach Boys performances." The break will include an original commercial for a Beatles poster that was shown at the original screenings.
 
"It's going to be a lot of fun," he says.
 
That's a definite understatement.
.

Owing to popular demand, the Egyptian Theater has just added a second show of the "Beatles First American Concert" screening for Friday, February 11th, at 11 pm.  The first show, scheduled for 7:30, is sold out.  Hope to see some of you there!

Alan

So Alan....about this SMiLE 2011 project? ;)

Any chance this'll be shown in San Francisco? That's a little closer to home for me.

I have some of the restored Let It Be (Twickenham Studios portion) and I can confirm it is fantastic.

This Beatle/Beach Boys black and white footage is almost tear inducing and I want it!

I quote Dom: 
>>eventually it'll play in NYC and SF, maybe some more places.<<

If someone has the rights to show it in theaters then why not a wide release?  This sounds like Disney rereleasing those old movies for a brief time before "returning them to the vault".  A marketing ploy to keep interest high and not flood the market.

There's a big legal and monetary difference between obtaining permission for festival showings, or limited one or two night screenings, and wide releases in theaters or on DVD. Note that the presenters are archivists (and fans), not entertainment executives. I'm sure they would prefer a wide release, along with the profits that would come with that, but apparently a wide release is not an option right now.

So.....anybody seen it ?

So, I recently watched the "Lost concert" DVD (I love the Beach Boys' early live era) and realized that on the DVD there is actually a clip of "Monster mash" during the closing credits.

I guess there are still no plans to re-release the "Lost concert", this time including "Monster mash" in some form.....?

Should mention that-an article from a March 10, 1964 paper makes clear that the “lost Concert” had already been taped the previous week (sometime between March 1 and 7) and therefore Keith Badman’s taping date of March 14 was incorrect.  This of course also raises the question of the accuracy of his American Bandstand taping date-which he said was the same day in his book.  The band members do look somewhat similar in both clips though, so it is not impossible they were taped around the same time.