I've always been a big fan of the first BBC recordings of the Beatles (Live at the BBC) released back in the mid-1990's, on the eve of the Anthology series. Even though there's a little trickery involved, the BBC versions give you a sense of what a force the Beatles were as a live act without having to compete with hordes of screaming girls. From that disc's liner notes, I knew that compilation was not comprehensive, so I wasn't surprise to see a second volume, even though I had to wonder why it took nearly 20 years.
For the curious, this compilation is a little more slight than the first volume. It also features a lot more live (or "live" as defined by the Beeb) versions of tracks from the studio albums, particularly heavy on the first album. A number of the tracks also appear on the first volume, albeit different recording sessions. I'm thinking that a lot of these songs were held back to drum up more interest for non-album cover songs (stuff like "The Hippy Hippy Shake" and copious amount of Chuck Berry) and also because they probably didn't want to put multiple versions of the same song on to the same volume. There is a lot more studio chatter on this volume, which I typically graft on to the supporting song when ripping the discs to my computer. As an added bonus, there are four "pop profiles", an interview of each Beatle, which I think fall chronologically after most of the recordings here.
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