314: Anthology 4 and The Beatles' SDEs - A Critique

Thirty years after the first Anthology collection was released, several years after the Special Deluxe Edition (SDEs) series commemorating individual albums became a thing, and on the eve of an unexpected 4th Anthology series installment, we take stock. Are The Beatles (or Apple or otherwise those overseeing these re-packages) doing as good a job as they can be? There are plenty voices in the world of Beatle "authorities" that insist that we should be grateful for anything we are given - they don't owe us anything. But at SATB, we take a different position: no one is above criticism and that once upon a time, The Beatles were simultaneously the cutting edge and the gold standard in what they produced. Those days are long gone and we now find ourselves in a world where many an artist with a fraction of their following is showing how it's done. 
So in the name of hashing this out, I invited a couple of returning guests who are the world authorities on what exists in the vaults, on tape: Beatles scholars Doug Sulpy and Chip Madinger. Between the two of them, they have been going deep for years on the contents of the proverbial Beatle (and solo) vaults and are therefore in position to not only suggest where things could be done better but what kind of material is sitting around, awaiting the day the official curators deem it time to go public with these treasures. Hopefully, some of us are still around. 

You can find Doug's writings (books like Drugs, Divorce and a Slipping Image and informational newsletters) at dougsulpy.com 

Chip Madinger's works (which include Eight Arms To Hold You and Lennonology: Strange Days Indeed - A Scrapbook of Madness) can be found at lennonology.com 

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