Went to see the film 'Eight Days A Week". A splendid time was guaranteed for all, and it was exciting to see the Beatles live on stage. I found it disappointing that of the live performances are interrupted by interviews; these add little to the story, but break the spell of watching the Beatles live.
I noticed hardly any new material as such; virtually all was available on Anthology, or on bootlegs. I was struck, however, by the quality of the concert in Manchester, of November 20, 1963. The Beatles performed two shows at Manchester's ABC Cinema on their 1963 Autumn Tour.
During the first show, Pathé News filmed the group performing. Accompanied with backstage footage and crowd scenes, this became an eight-minute cinema feature entitled The Beatles Come To Town, shown for a week from 22 December 1963.
In Eight Days a Week the show is presented with great picture quality (widescreen, not TV), and sound in HiFi stereo! This may well be the best quality document of any Beatles concert!
Unfortunately, only 2 complete songs are included in the extended DVD-CD set, She Loves You and Twist and Shout.
These are also the songs that were known before, in much lesser quality. Was the remainder of the concert recorded, and does it still exist? I hope so, but I doubt it.....
For the real Beatlemaniacs, I have recreated the 1963 Manchester concert, using the 2 songs actually from that concert, and the remaining setlist from concerts around the same time. This recreates the original sound of their concerts at that time: dominated by the warm, compressed sound of the VOX-AC30 amplifiers. A few months later, they would switch to the somewhat harsher sounding AC-50s and AC-100's, since the AC-30's weren't loud enough for the stadium concerts in the US.
So clap your hands and stamp your feet!
Setlist 1963-11-20
1 I Saw Her Standing There
2 From Me to You
3 All My Loving
4 You've Really Got a Hold on Me (The Miracles)
5 Roll Over Beethoven (Chuck Berry)
6 Boys (The Shirelles)
7 Till There Was You (Meredith Willson)
8 She Loves You
9 Money (That's What I Want) (Barrett Strong)
10 Twist and Shout (The Top Notes)
11 From Me to You - reprise