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fossilcat's Collection

The Beatles   ??/??/1981

20x4, various, various
Source Vinyl
Media cdr   1 disc
Notes This is a restoration of the famous Beatles bootleg "20 x 4" originally issued 1977 on Ruthless Rhymes JPGR 1177.
Remastered 2005 at Remasters Workshop
J-Card Comment This is a restoration of the famous Beatles bootleg "20 x 4" originally issued 1977 on Ruthless Rhymes JPGR 1177. (This album is also listed in "Eight Arms To Hold You" as being on Idle Mind 1176.) It was reissued in 1979 and 1981 on JPGR REMIME OBS-204 with the last track on Side 2 omitted, in lesser sound quality. Most people who own this bootleg have one of the reissues. The original pressing is very, very scarce. Many thanks to Jeff for the original 32-bit .wav files from which this restoration was made.

The pressing was in such sad shape, I think this project has taken the longest of any I've done in the past, to get it right. Over four million scratches were removed. The sound of the turntable and the vinyl have been removed. Hum and odd frequencies have been filtered out. The recordings have been restored to true mono and pitch corrected to A=440 Hz. Of special note is "Peace Of Mind", which may or may not be The Beatles, that has had all of its pitch variations ironed out flat so that it does not speed up at any point, as the original did. This is as close to how the original tapes sounded as it is possible to get without having the tapes.

There is a song on this album that was titled "Penny O'Dell" by the bootleggers, which was said to be from Paul McCartney's 1974 Nashville recording sessions. This is not the case. Track 7 is a monitor mix, recorded on a portable cassette deck, by a person sitting in the control room at The Soundshop in Nashville. During a lull in the playback, he quite clearly says "Kenny O'Dell." That's whose session it was. Who knows how it ended up on a Beatles bootleg? This song is called "Homecoming Queen", written by Kenny O'Dell and Larry Henley (of The Newbeats) and it was issued in 1972 on the B-side of the single "Lizzie And The Rain Man" on Kapp K-2178.

Note that there are four tracks here from the as-yet-unreleased "No. 3 Abbey Road NW8" - which would not show up for another two years.
Trades Allowed Yes
Ratings Show: A    Sound: A
Owned by fossilcat · Last Updated May 23, 2023