It popped on iTunes a couple of days before Christmas, according to the date on the post, seemingly as a special Christmas bonus. It hasn't gotten a lot of publicity and it didn't pop up in our searches very easily.
But we can tell you for certain that the audio of the Beatles' 1963 Christmas Record can be downloaded for free on iTunes. You can find it here. This is the only one there, from what we can tell. We didn't find any of the others.
It sounds from our download as it was recorded from a flexi disc, as there's a small bit of crackle and hiss behind it. If memory serves, there were bootlegs that had these Christmas records from a tape source, but that isn't what's used here. Was a bootleg used? That would be ironic.
We don't know how long it'll be on iTunes, but we suggest you grab it while you can.
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Comments
Unfortunately, it's not the complete 1963 message. It doesn't have the little celeste intro, and fades abruptly just after George sings "gathering winter gruel". Maybe they didn't want to pay royalties for "Rudolph The Red Nosed Ringo"?
I think this is the truncated version from Beatles Bockband
Wardo's right. I'll stick with my "unofficial" version, although for free, I downloaded it, anyway.
Hey, it's another Beatles track variation for the completists (myself included) :-)
How true.
How much longer will we have to wait for an official Beatles Xmas LP release? Should have been a bonus disc in the remastered box sets! Thankfully the excellent bootleg version is out there!
I'd prefer it as a separate disc. But yeah, this is something that deserves to be released.
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