CD Review: Love

1) Because

2) Get Back

3) Glass Onion

4) Eleanor Rigby/Julia

5) I Am the Walrus

6) I Want to Hold Your Hand

7) Drive My Car/The Word/What You're Doing

8) Gnik Nus

9) Something/Blue Jay Way

10) Being for the Benefit of Mr. Kite!/I Want You/Helter Skelter

11) Help!

12) Blackbird/Yesterday

13) Strawberry Fields Forever

14) Within You Without You/Tomorrow Never Knows

15) Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds

16) Octopus's Garden

17) Lady Madonna

18) Here Comes the Sun/The Inner Light

19) Come Together/Dear Prudence/Cry Baby Cry

20) Revolution

21) Back in the U.S.S.R.

22) While My Guitar Gently Weeps

23) A Day in the Life

24) Hey Jude

25) Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band

26) All You Need Is Love

The Beatles' catalog deserves the special treatment it gets.  Many great artists have come and gone before and after this band was active, but none produced such a quality array of songs.  And someone made a remix album?

Thankfully, that someone was George Martin, the guy who produced most of the Beatles' songs.  He had some help with all these modern technological do-hickeys from his son, Giles.  So, don't worry, my fellow Beatles fanatics.

Just check out "Drive My Car/The Word/What You're Doing".  The Martins created a seamless mash-up of the three songs, embellished with the horns of "Savoy Truffle", the guitar solo of "Taxman", and the backing vocals of "Helter Skelter".  Any obsessed fan who read those last two sentences is now salivating with delight.

It doesn't end there.  The circus sounds of "Being for the Benefit of Mr. Kite!" segue perfectly into the raw jamming of "I Want You".  The familiar finger-picking of "Blackbird" introduces another beautiful ballad, "Yesterday".

I could go on forever about all the cool moments.  Just check this CD out, if you haven't already, and listen to it all the way through, like a truly great album.  THIS is how to treat the Beatles' catalog.

****3/4 out of five