Here’s a sneak pre­view of Bob Dylan’s forth­com­ing Christ­mas album. It will hit the streets in Octo­ber, and you can pre-order now. A safe assump­tion: this will be a “love it” or “hate it” album.

On Sep­tem­ber 9th, EMI released a remas­tered ver­sion of the entire Bea­t­les cat­a­logue — the first remix since 1987. And now the Bea­t­les are once again back on top of the charts. If you’re won­der­ing whether to buy the remas­tered ver­sions at all, or whether to buy the stereo or mono box sets (or some com­bi­na­tion of the two), or if you’re sim­ply won­der­ing what goes into remas­ter­ing the Fab Four’s com­plete body of work, then you will be inter­est­ed in this inter­view with Bea­t­les his­to­ri­an Kevin Howlett, who helped write the lin­er notes for the new releas­es. In this con­ver­sa­tion with NPR’s All Songs Con­sid­ered (MP3 — iTunes — RSS Feed), Howlett describes what the remas­ter­ing involved, and then com­pares the old ver­sions to the new ver­sions (both mono and stereo). When you’re done lis­ten­ing to this 20+ minute inter­view, you’ll have a much bet­ter sense of what this long-await­ed remas­ter­ing deliv­ers. You can lis­ten with the play­er below, or via the links post­ed above.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

What New York­ers Heard on the Radio the Night John Lennon was Shot

The Bea­t­les: Pod­casts from Yes­ter­day

The Grey Video: Mix­ing the Bea­t­les with Jay‑Z

RIP

What’s the sto­ry behind this video? Here it is, straight from the pro­duc­er, Jar­bas Agnel­li from Brazil: “Read­ing a news­pa­per, I saw a pic­ture of birds on the elec­tric wires. I cut out the pho­to and decid­ed to make a song, using the exact loca­tion of the birds as notes (no Pho­to­shop edit). I knew it was­n’t the most orig­i­nal idea in the uni­verse. I was just curi­ous to hear what melody the birds were cre­at­ing.” You can get more details here.

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On Fri­day, we gave you this ani­mat­ed piece that shows the genius of Bach. Now, we give you an ani­mat­ed score of Beethoven’s 5th, and here you can find a chart that explains what the col­ors in the score mean. Essen­tial­ly each col­or rep­re­sents a par­tic­u­lar instru­ment. Get the chart here, and don’t for­get that you can find more free clas­si­cal music in our Music Pod­cast Col­lec­tion. (We’ve added this clip to our YouTube Favorites.)

via The Dai­ly Dish

Speak­ing of The Bea­t­les, I’m remind­ed that The Bea­t­les: Rock Band, the new video game hon­or­ing The Fab Four, is hit­ting the streets this week. (See the soft­ware on Ama­zon for the Wii or Xbox.) The clip above shows you the intro to the game, and this Ars Tech­ni­ca piece tells you why The Bea­t­les: Rock Band (which can be pricey if you need to buy instru­ments) may actu­al­ly be worth your hard-earned mon­ey.

Today is a hol­i­day in the U.S. But I leave you with this bit of Bea­t­les good­ness. Back tomor­row.

(If you want to find more clips of 12 year old Sung­ha Jung play­ing rock clas­sics, check out this page.)

Bob Dylan sings your favorite Christ­mas songs. “Here Comes San­ta Claus,” “Win­ter Won­der­land,” “Lit­tle Drum­mer Boy” and “Must Be San­ta.”

It sounds strange. But it’s very real. All mon­ey will go to char­i­ty. You can pre-order now. And although the album won’t be released until Octo­ber, it’s already #4 on Amazon.com’s sales chart.

If any­one comes across some mp3s from the album, Christ­mas in the Heart, please send them our way. Get more details on the project here.