Beatles on Hols

August 1978 was an eventful period for me as a fourteen year old boy as we'd gone on our hols and this year we were in Aberystwyth on the north west Wales coast which is a university town.

As a teen I already had an interest in music and spent part of a morning in record shop where apart from getting my first copy of one Beatles album I learned that students liked to have them sent home so actually the shop just kept the covers for display and sent an ordered copy to you!  

It was also the week All You Need is Cash starring The Rutles was shown on the BBC.

Their were a number of trusted budget labels which for popular music included EMI's Music For Pleasure and the Pickwick group and while in a branch of W H Smiths one morning that week I spotted this album.

In the early days of the Beatles they had been recorded mainly as a backing band to Tony Sheridan a popular singer who also performed in Hamburg in the then West Germany and one song, My Bonnie was the single requested by a few early fans that lead to Brian Epstein making inquiries into them and becoming their manager. 

This was while Pete Best was the drummer before being replaced by Ringo Starr.

Those recordings had been issued a number of times but were on Contour a budget label in the Pickwick Group that had recordings from the Polydor and Philips catalogue.

They had it in stock on record, eight track cartridge a tape format that was on the wain and cassette which was non dolby and had orange labels and it was that I bought playing on a sky blue portable Prinz shoe box recorder I'd had since early 1972.

Several years ago I did get the record edition as my tape had long disappeared as apart from these being the earliest studio recordings, they despite what it says on the label are true stereo and sound amazing.