Remastered Beatles: A day in the life of a journalist

Jesus Christ. So I share at least one thing in common with the very columnist whose name I cannot mention because I hate his every opinion. Worse, that very one thing in common happens to be, of all the darned things in the universe, a passion for the music of the Beatles.

 But that is putting the cart ahead of the horse. Let me first go back to a few minutes before I made that startling discovery. I was on the way to work. Music, and least of all the Beatles, was farthest from my mind at that moment.

 I never had any inkling when I walked into the office last Thursday afternoon that the rest of the day would turn out to be a Beatles day for me. Not even when food guru Dr. Nestor Alonso and assistant Lifestyle editor Quennie Bronce stopped me with a Beatles question.

 As I passed by Quennie's work station, with Dr. Alonso hovering over her as he might over a wok, both called out to me to ask if I already have the much-bruited-about newly-remastered Beatles albums.

 To be honest I have been waiting for the albums. In fact it was only the Saturday before that I inquired at Astroplus (or was it Astrovision?) if they already had the albums. But the salesclerk gave me a blank stare, suggesting she didn't know what I was talking about.

 So I told Dr. Alonso and Quennie that I didn't think the albums were already available. Smirking at my haplessnes, knowing as they did that I was such a great Beatles fan, they chorused that Dr. Alonso already has. Every single one of the remastered Beatles albums, they boasted.

 Really? How could that be? And they proceeded to tell me. Oh, I said. Except for the jackets, there is really no difference, they insisted. And you don't listen to the jackets, they said. You listen to the music.

I knew when I am defeated. So I left the two to gloat over my lack of quickness to grasp the new technologies and the myriad ways in which they can be acquired. I went inside my office. After disposing of a few things, I began to read the columns.

 After having gone through my favorites, I shifted to the ones I hate. By the time I got to the third line of my most hated columnist, it was as if I was hit by the hot and heavy twang of that all-too-familiar opening guitar lick from "A Hard Day's Night."

The feeling I got in my stomach was the same you would get while waiting outside the office of your dentist. And as I read on I realized that this s.o.b. was even better than me in analyzing the technical aspects of the Beatles' music.

 While I have always regarded all music as emotional, to be listened to and enjoyed by the heart and not subject to intellectual analysis, I have to grudgingly admit there is no avoiding technical analysis this time if the subject is the remastering of all the Beatles recorded music.

 And the columnist whose name I cannot mention because I hate his every opinion is beating me in a subject that is very close to my heart -- Beatles music. Not only is he beating me with his technical analysis, but he is beating me because he already has the remastered album series.

 Like Dr. Alonso and Quennie, the columnist whose name I cannot mention because I hate his every opinion managed to acquire the new Beatles remastered albums by any of the myriad ways in which they can be acquired. Be resourceful, he even advised in his column.

 So, do I have to be resourceful? Nah. I better just keep on visiting Astroplus, or is it Astrovision, until some saleclerk will finally get what I am talking about. There is something in acquiring the real thing by truly working for it, even if you have to get it one at a time.

 Beatles music, you see, for all they are worth in the world of culture and art, come pretty expensive. The old existing CDs, of which all existing record stores worth their salt have in their inventory, cost something like P600 each. Pretty stiff for a wage earner like me.

 Worse, music producers have long realized there is a big market for Beatles music out there and that Beatles fans will snap up anything they put together that has Beatles music in it, from compilations to every conceivable version -- instrumental, jazz, classical, bossa, etc.

 The funny thing is that I am not an exclusively Beatles fan. I am in truth a fan of the music of the 60s and 70s, which were the best years of my life. It just so happened that Beatles music belonged to this period and happened to be the best, unequalled even to this day.