Dear Sir or Madam...

Been in the middle of a big fat Beatles binge lately, largely fueled by a stack of bootlegs (or "Beatlegs" in geek-ease) I've recently acquired.

Among that stack were some of the Dr. Ebbetts remastered things (from mint original vinyl), and listening to those Beatles-supervised mono mixes has been like hearing much of this stuff for the first time (and I've probably heard these songs thousands of times). I've really developed an all-new appreciation of Paul's bass-playing, something the thinner stereo mixes concealed. I urge you to seek out these Ebbetts bootlegs. (For Paul's sake if nothng else.)

Anyway, for Christmas, my wife got me a shady-looking import Beatles DVD (from Russia, no less) that presents a ton of Beatles TV appearances and promo films in their entirity--not talked over, excerpted or spliced up.

Making my way to the DVD player, I was struck by all the misspellings on the package: "Hey Tude," "Paperblack Writer," etc. The ones I was really stoked about were "Paperback Writer" and "Rain," my two favorite Beatles songs and my candidate for the single greatest 45 ever released ("Good Vibrations" would be #2).

I'd seen clips and stills from these films before. Produced to promote the record without the Beatles having to actually make a series of TV appearances, these films may have created the music video as we now know it. They were shot in London's Chiswick Park in May of 1966, and directed by Michael Lindsay-Hogg (who'd go on to direct "Let It Be"). The photo above is from that shoot.

The band's hanging out in Chiswick Park, miming to the record. Paul's got his Hofner bass, John his Rickenbacker and George a red Gibson SG. Ringo's drums are nowhere to be seen, so he just sits around tapping his feet. (Why didn't someone just throw Ringo's Ludwigs in a truck and run them over to the shoot?)

As music videos go, these are really not all that extraordinary. But it's the Beatles, it's 1966 and it's "Rain" and "Paperback Writer." In 1966, The Beatles, The Stones and Bob Dylan had pretty much cornered the market on Cool. And it's been a slow slide downhill ever since. It really don't get no better than this.

You can see both of these films on YouTube in fairly decent quality. Go look 'em up.

"A hand-me-down dress from who knows where"

So the other day, I hear that the much-lauded Velvet Underground acetate from 1966 is on eBay, going for big money. Like a lotta record geeks, I was well aware of its discovery at a New York yard sale back in 2002. And of how it contained completely different versions of a few tunes from VELVET UNDERGROUND & NICO. And of all the various theories, rumours and crap about how one of the most collectible records EVER ended up in a cardboard box for 75 cents.

Throughout all that, I used to ask myself, When am I gonna get to hear this thing? I figured the Velvets' label would buy it, clean it up and put it out to get their hands into our pockets yet again. (After all, we've already sprung for the regular CD, the box set and the Special Edition that contains both the mono and stereo mixes.) Evidently, the label DID try to get ahold of it, but nothing ever came of it.

So, with all that history, it was pretty weird to see it listed on eBay. And again, I asked myself, When am I gonna get to hear this thing?

With it popping up in the news, I searched it to really wallow in record dweebdom. (Googled it, to use a verb I detest.) And among all the news stories and fan-theory bullshit was some blog. And on that blog was a link. And at that link, was the acetate—in all its scratchy skipping digitized glory.

It ended up going for $155,401—to some dude who fessed up that there was no way he could afford 155 grand for a Velvet Underground record. The whole thing made the news again. (When I last checked, it wasn't back on eBay.)

However, no longer am I wondering when I'll get to hear it. Now, I can say "It ain't worth no $155,401."

But it is really, really cool.