Disc 1:  Coliseum, Washington DC - February 11th, 1964:  Intro., Roll Over Beethoven, From Me To You, I Saw Her Standing There, This Boy, All My Loving, I Wanna Be Your Man, Please Please Me, Till There Was You, She Loves You, I Want To Hold Your Hand, Twist And Shout, Long Tall Sally.  Coliseum, Seattle - August 21st, 1964:  Intro., Twist And Shout, You Can't Do That, All My Loving, She Loves You, Things We Said Today, Roll Over Beethoven, Can't Buy Me Love, If I Fell, I Want To Hold Your Hand, Boys, A Hard Day's Night, Long Tall Sally.  Empire Stadium, Vancouver, Canada - August 22nd, 1964:  Introduction, Twist & Shout, You Can't Do That, All My Loving, She Loves You. 

Disc 2:  Empire Stadium, Vancouver, Canada - August 22nd, 1964:  Things We Said Today, Roll Over Beethoven, cancel the show announce, Can't Buy Me Love, If I Fell, Boys, A Hard Day's Night, Long Tall Sally.  Hollywood Bowl, Los Angeles, CA - August 23rd, 1964:  Intro., Twist And Shout, You Can't Do That, All My Loving, She Loves You, Things We Said Today, Roll Over Beethoven, Can't Buy Me Love, If I Fell, I Want To Hold Your Hand, Boys, A Hard Day's Night, Long Tall Sally.  Convention Hall, Philadelphia, PA - September 2nd, 1964:  Intro., Twist And Shout, You Can't Do That, All My Loving, She Loves You, Things We Said Today, Roll Over Beethoven, Can't Buy Me Love, If I Fell, I Want To Hold Your Hand.   

Disc 3:    Convention Hall, Philadelphia, PA - September 2nd, 1964:  Boys, A Hard Day's Night, Long Tall Sally.  Indiana State Fair Coliseum, Indianapolis, IN - September 3rd, 1964 (matinee):  Intro., Twist And Shout, You Can't Do That, All My Loving, She Loves You, Things We Said Today, Roll Over Beethoven, Can't Buy Me Love, If I Fell, I Want To Hold Your Hand, Boys, A Hard Day's Night, Long Tall Sally.  The Forum, Montreal, Canada - September 8th, 1964 (evening):  Twist And Shout, You Can't Do That, All My Loving, She Lovs You, Things We Said Today, Roll Over Beethoven, Can't Buy Me Love, If I Fell, Boys, A Hard Day's Night.

The Masters Of Beatles Essentials (MBE) have for some time been releasing very comprehensive and well documented collections.  At the end of last year the released collections of The Beatles' in France and Germany and John Lennon's Rock And Roll sessions spread out over three discs and a DVD.  Their latest couple of releases focus upon their Christmas fan club material and this, a three volume set covering live documents over their three tours of North America.  

The focus of this collection is upon tapes of concerts played in front of a paying audience.  Their television appearances are thus omitted (no Ed Sullivan or Shindig).  MBE also wanted to present complete, or very nearly complete, recordings.  Some of the fragments that have surfaced over the years are likewise omitted from this collection.  What is left are all very common tapes presented in very good to excellent quality with 24-bit remastering done by the label.  Most of the recordings are soundboard quality (with some exceptions) and, although there are no dramatic improvements in sound quality, nothing here sounds worse than has been available previously.  The virtue of this set is that it collects all of the best documents from their first US concert in Washington DC to their last in San Francisco in very good quality in one convenient package.           

Washington DC show comes from a mono soundboard soundtrack and contains most of the show. The tape runs out in "Twist & Shout", thus that track and "Long Tall Sally" come from the Hollywood Bowl tape to complete the show.  The set list, for obvious reasons, sounds very 1963 since they were "pushing" (in McCartney's words) With The Beatles and stands out from the bulk of the shows in this collection.  "From Me To You", "I Saw Her Standing There", "This Boy" (their most 50's sounding sweet ballad), "Please Please Me", and "Till There Was You" were dropped before the summer and make their only appearance over the seven discs.  The sound quality is very good and clear withs some slight distortion due to the screaming audience.       

The Seattle and Vancouver tapes that follow are the very earliest from The Beatles' first actual tour of North America and they were touring off of their hit movie A Hard Day's Night.  Both were released together last year at this time as Pacific National Exhibition on the Misterclaudel label.  MBE worked with the poor sounding audience source for the Seattle show and attempted to make it listenable.  The music can just about be heard above the din but is still poor to fair.  The Vancouver tape, on the other hand, is an excellent soundboard recording sounding very sharp, clear and enjoyable.

The Hollywood Bowl tape is excellent soundboard quality and is the best tape in this collection.  This tape was used along with the others from this venue for the official live LP released in 1977.  It's much better to have the complete shows unedited.  This was previously released in bootleg as The Complete Hollywood Bowl Concerts Complete 1964-1965 box set on Midnight Beat (MBCD108/109) issued in 1997 and it's clone The Complete Hollywood Bowl Concerts 1964 + 1965on Repro Man (RPM101-102).  Yellow Dog also released this as Hollywood Bowl Complete (YD034)  This begins with the lengthy five minute introduction by KRLA jockies Reb Foster and Bob Eubanks.

Philadelphia and Indianpolis tapes are very good to excellent soundboard recordings.  Finally the Montreal tape is a fair, distorted and distant audience recording that is just about listenable.  The tape is also incomplete, missing the final number "Long Tall Sally".  There is also a cut between "If I Fell" and "Boys".  It's unclear if "I Want To Hold Your Hand" was omitted from the tape or dropped from the set list in this concert.

There are several fragments from this era that MBE omitted.  The first is from the Cow Palace, San Francisco August 19th, 1964 containing "Twist And Shout", "She Loves You", and "A Hard Days Night".  This appeared on a Misterclaudel release and is very short and not very interesting.  Two songs from the International Amphitheater in Chicago from September 5th, 1964, "Twist & Shout" and "You Can't Do That", and a one song fragment from the Olympia Stadium in Detroit from September 6th, 1964 ("Can't Buy Me Love") were both released on Live In Minneapolis 1965 on Nighthawk (NH-02020).

I was at first concerned that the September 16th, 1964 New Orleans tape, which has circulated as Roughest Visits on Excavation (EXCD-001) was omitted.  MBE made the correct decision as that tape, which is a WNOE broadcast from September 16th, 1977, contains the studio tracks with crowd cheers overdubbed.  Not really a live document at all. In general this is a very noble collection and makes it very convienient to hear these live Beatles tapes.