Number 9, Number 9, Number 9

It's 9/9/09, and the remastered Beatles CDs have finally been released, about a dozen years after they should have been, but oh well. With them, it's almost always worth the wait. I'm looking forward to buying the "White Album" again (for the third time), my favorite album of all. I like every song on it (except maybe "Wild Honey Pie" and "Don't Pass Me By", sorry Ringo), including "Revolution 9". I like eclecticism. I like collage. Culturally, in the West at least, we live in a fragmented time (still), and this double album, more than anything I've heard, captures the essence of that while still being engaging, entertaining, and fun.

The illustration above is the rejected cover art for what eventually became known as the White Album. I wonder if, had they used it, we would be calling it the "Animal Album" today.

Postscript: It sounds great. The muddiness of the original CDs is gone, and it almost sounds like you're in the same room with them. This is especially evident on the quieter tracks, like "Julia" and "Blackbird".