Day 316. Listen, do you want to know a secret? (12/11/13)

There is very little in life finer than being suddenly reminded of The Beatles' utter genius at a random moment. (J just stopped reading. She doesn't, as we've already established, get The Beatles. I maintain that there is nothing to get. They just are.) a song popping up on the radio, switching channels on the TV and finding footage that you didn't expect; not hunting, not purposeful, just suddenly there.

Case in point:

The Beatles Live At The BBC Volume 2, released yesterday as a belated follow up to the first volume (you may have guessed that) released in the mid 90s as the first step of 'newly found' material that led to the Anthology series which embedded them back in their rightful place as a cultural force 25 years after they split up.

The reason for the delay in following up? The BBC had a wonderful habit in the 60s of wiping anything vaguely useful, interesting or relevant in order to ensure that they had enough fresh tape to record new stuff on. In fairness, nobody in 1963 would have envisaged a 'beat group' still being of interest by the end of that decade let alone the millennium and beyond. Ditto all the Dr Who episodes that they destroyed.

Luckily private collectors have more wit and intelligence than massive public corporations; people are resourceful, they find ways to capture the material they love, they store it, squirrel it away, share it with friends on the quiet.

And so, when things are needed, things surface.

This is how we have a whole new double album of Beatles performances that haven't been heard widely since the day that the BBC broadcast them.

Early Beatles. Early enough to still have most of their act based on covering other artists material. In complete contrast to most artists' covers there is not one single song that The Beatles covered that doesn't match the original (well, okay, there's one and I'll come back to it in a minute) Most surpass the source material by quite some distance. Early Beatles are (is?) a different creature to later Beatles; what you have here is a really tight little R&B four piece that can turn their hand to anything, long amphetamine fuelled Hamburg nights having given the band an edge that you'll hear in very few places either then or now. They've worked through a real musical education, they're in the process of assimilating their influences into something new but still sound raw, fresh, young, musically naive.

There's a joy in hearing the occasional dropped note, fluffed lead line, mistakes making them more human than they would later be but it's still notable how powerful they were before the screaming took over, before they could no longer be heard, before they stopped caring about playing live, before they ultimately stopped. If you walked into a club tomorrow and saw this band you would still be blown away by how good they were. And by how young. Halfway through the first disc we start talking about Paul McCartney's 21st birthday party. That's Paul McCartney's TWENTY FIRST birthday.

Ridiculously young, ridiculously talented, already on top of the world and just about to change it. Unheard for years, a band at what would be most other band's peak and they're only just starting. You think you know them, here's a bit more that you didn't know.

Genius.