The Fab Eight

3 June 2004 :: Beth Peerless, Monterey Herald.com

White Album Ensemble will re-create The Beatles' 'White Album' in its entirety in Carmel Saturday night

Even though there are a multitude of records released with The Beatles performing their music on numerous compilations, as well as records on which other artists pay tribute or twist the Fab Four's tunes to fit genre-specific marketing niches, there are precious few albums in this melange of offerings actually released by The Beatles while they were a group.

Since they quit performing public live concerts in 1966, very few songs in The Beatles' catalog of work have been heard live, other than at concerts by surviving ex-Beatles in forms not much resembling the original recorded versions.

And since they revolutionized the way pop music was created by learning and utilizing the cutting-edge recording studio technology of their time, they never were able to recreate on stage what they envisioned on their classic recordings since 1967's "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band."

At the "White Album Live!" concert, you get virtually note for note what you hear on the classic two-disc 1968 release officially titled "The Beatles."

You will be blown away by hearing this music done impeccably by the core eight-piece Santa Cruz/Monterey-based White Album Ensemble.

Four of the eight members are studio recording engineers who were able to decipher the now-antiquated studio trickery and figure out how to deliver the sounds in a live setting.

All are celebrated, professional musicians with impressive past and present band affiliations.

Granted, there are portions where they use samples of the actual recorded material, for example, the song "Revolution 9," which is exactly that, a bunch of samples patched together, or the sounds of a jet taking off as a prelude to "Back In The USSR."

Otherwise, it's pure music and includes such classics as "While My Guitar Gently Weeps," "Blackbird," "I Will," "Birthday," "Mother Nature's Son," and "Helter Skelter."

Although they don't claim to sound exactly like The Beatles, the singers have beautiful voices that recall the group's authentic sound and harmonies, and the instrumentalists do strive to hit the same notes as heard on the record.

Most of the time they succeed and the results are stunning. Add to that zany and interesting video footage projected onscreen behind the group and a band of dancers who appear for several songs throughout the 30-song rundown of the double-album's exact sequence, and you've got yourself an entertaining evening.

The ensemble has performed the "White Album Live!" program for sold-out audiences at venues comparable to Sunset Center Theater six times.

They've since worked out the music to "Rubber Soul" and "Revolver," plus the two singles released simultaneously with the albums in a program titled "Rubber Revolver." Those three performances are all sold out.

With so much success, the group is taking it on the road, first to Carmel this week and, in the fall, to San Jose and San Francisco.

The goal is to continue to offer a portion of proceeds to local music programs or foundations where possible. They've already contributed more than $11,000 to Santa Cruz County school music programs and the Guitars Not Guns non-profit organization.

Since reliving the past is a major thread of this whole experience, in a sense, recycling the glory days of a band known to have changed the course of Western culture through its experimentation and communication of counter-cultural ideals in the 1960s, what better place to exchange thoughts on the program with singer/percussionist Richard Bryant than at Recycled Records in Monterey.

Stepping inside, Bryant is found thumbing through the vinyl record bins, owner Michael Lunt is spinning discs through the store's stereo system, helping customers with new and used music sales, and coincidentally, selling several "White Album Live!" tickets as Bryant and I converse.

"In so many ways, they set up the blueprint for our lives," said Bryant. "We got it six months to a year later. They processed their experiences and wrote songs about it some time before we actually got it. It's amazing to look back and see how quickly things were changing."

Bryant pulls out the album he was looking at, the Jeff Beck Group's "Truth," and comments on how that was also one of the classic trend setters in its day.

The 1968 blues/rock release presaged heavy metal and the onset of the legendary Led Zeppelin.

"The White Album is what happened when they got through with 'Sgt. Pepper' (1967)," said Bryant. "They had been doing so much with orchestras and stuff (with the help of producer/arranger George Martin) they were saying 'Let's just be a band again.' They explored what each one could do and released a record that really was a compilation of solo work by each Beatle.

"I wonder how I can be so blown out by this stuff after making such a great effort learning it," he continued. "I'm still blown away how good it is. I wonder whether it's my emotional attachment to it, or my trying to put as much as I can into it."

At The Beatles vinyl bin, few albums are available, and a search for classic 45s reveals Lunt's desire to keep them behind the counter. It's not always easy to buy the past, but through efforts such as this program, one can nearly touch it.