The Beat: Remastered Beatles catalog worth the wait

This is it.

The Holy Grail of music.

Arguably the pre-eminent, most important collection in pop-music history.

Maybe that sounds hyperbolic, but for fans of The Beatles, the rerelease of the band's original catalog is a reaffirmation of what it means to love music, to want to crawl inside the songs and examine their pieces, trying to figure out how four young men and a brilliant producer cobbled words and sounds and instruments to create greatness.

You'll get a whiff of that musical significance on the second half of "Abbey Road," which Paul McCartney refers to as an "operatic structure." You'll hear their innovation in the rattle and hum of Ringo Starr's tom-toms at the end of "Strawberry Fields Forever." And the metronomic click of McCartney's shoe against the studio floor during "Blackbird" is so natural and simple, it's chilling.

On Wednesday, when The Beatles' remasters hit the streets in three forms -- a stereo box set comprising the band's 12 albums and "Past Masters Vol. 1 and II," a limited-edition mono box of the group's first 10 albums in their original mixes, and individual copies of the stereo CDs -- it might be the happiest musical day ever for devotees and completists.

And it appears EMI Music might have underestimated consumers' willingness to pay roughly $200 for the stereo box and $250 for the mono (single discs should be priced from $13 to $19).

Amazon.com, which had been taking pre-orders since early July, sold out of advance mono boxes a couple of weeks ago and the stereo version last week (don't fret; more are coming). A Plan 9 representative said its allotment of mono boxes was claimed within days of taking pre-sale orders -- another shipment is expected in October -- and that interest has been strong in the stereo box.

Interestingly, while these remasters have been hyped and explained for months, I've heard this question, in an annoyed tone, from more than a few people: "How many times are they going to rerelease the same material?"

The answer would be two (for now).

These albums initially arrived on CD in 1987, and, while the sound on most of them was overwhelmingly tinny, scratchy and muffled, fans had no choice at thetime but to embrace the lackluster offerings as better than nothing.

In the intervening years, we've gotten three "Anthology" volumes, some "number ones" collections and sundry compilations, but this is the first we're seeing of this material in 22 years -- and its first-ever sonic overhaul.

A team of engineers at Abbey Road Studios in London has been fiddling with and fine-tuning these songs for four years, and it is deliberate that the release date is 9/9/09 -- an important number in Beatles' lore. Take a listen to "Revolution 9" on "The White Album" if memory fails.

It's also the day that The Beatles' music will make its multimedia debut on its own painstakingly crafted edition of "Rock Band" video game. (Rumors abound that a planned Apple Inc. conference called for 9/9 means the company will announce The Beatles' long-awaited arrival on iTunes, but it's most likely an announcement of yet another iPod or the company's new "Cocktail" iTunes format.)

But enough about the back story.

What you'll hear on these remasters if you listen chronologically is the maturation of a band from three-chord, girl-group-style harmonies ("Please Please Me") to poignant introspection sandwiched between untested studio tricks ("Revolver" and "Rubber Soul") to unabashed experimentation ("Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band," "The White Album").

And it all rings through with glorious clarity, as if those late-'80s CDs were spritzed with Windex.

This set marks the debut of "Please Please Me," "With the Beatles," "A Hard Day's Night" and "Beatles for Sale" in stereo, and the aural results are immediately noticeable. Whoever heard the clattering of instruments in the background of "A Hard Day's Night" or the "Yeah!" at the end of John Lennon's endearingly raspy "Twist and Shout"?

Considering these albums are some of the most played in history, even a casual listener might detect some nuances: The scrape of the drumsticks against the high-hat in the opening of "My Guitar Gently Weeps" is alarmingly pronounced; the gentle finger snaps behind "Here There and Everywhere" add a slight, previously undetected, rhythmic sweep to the ballad; McCartney's trilling syllables on some of the "Magical Mystery Tour" verses are amusing in their accented over-enunciation.

Add the mini-documentaries that play when you insert the CD into a computer and the glossy booklets stuffed with priceless photos, lyrics and recording notes that accompany each disc, and you have a Beatles fiesta that will keep fans engrossed for weeks.

But when you've waited decades for the reappearance of greatness, that's the least amount of time it deserves.

Contact Melissa Ruggieri at (804) 649-6120 or .