THE BEATLES TMOQ COLLECTION
15 LP BOX
Company: BoxTop Records
Release Date: June 1986
1 - 20X4
2 - ATLANTA WHISKEY FLAT [actually, HOLLYWOOD BOWL, from matrix BHB-115]
3 - BROADCASTS
4 - DECCA TAPES
5 - FILE UNDER THE BEATLES VOL.1
6 - LIVE IN HOUSTON
7 - LOOK BACK
8 - MACH SHAU
9 - MARY JANE SPICY BEATLE SONGS
10 - N.3 ABBEY Rd NW8
11 - STOCKHOLM & BLACKPOOL
12 - THE BEATLES CHRISTMAS ALBUM
13 - THE GET BACK MASTERS
14 - JOHNNY MOONDOG [JOHN LENNON]
15 - TELECASTS [JOHN LENNON]
COMMENTS
In early 1986 and summer 1986 BoxTop Records released two boxes containing many of the Beatles records that the company had distributed, including a few that were first released by the original TMOQ in the early seventies, all from stampers cut from the original masters. One of these was FROM THE VAULT (8-LP box, late 1985, that will have its own entry), the other one is THE BEATLES TMOQ COLLECTION. Actually, BoxTop Records was mostly a family organization. This is what the producer told us: "My wife, my brother-in-law, my kids and myself glued everyone of those photos onto those jackets in my garage. Boy, did I ever hate those records. It was a dumb idea. But we thought we could do limited runs, because we could make lots of jackets for not much money, and the only cost would be a rubber stamp and a photograph. Though I will admit, when I would order two or three hundred photos of the Beatles from a photo place, they did sometimes look at me like I was a little strange. But they never said anything. They just took my money and smiled. As for the records themselves, for the most part, it was just numbers to me. A friend of mine was responsible for the material". For sure, it had to be quite boring to spend days in gluing all the photos and the stickers with the track listing, and rubber-stamping the jackets!
The musical content of each record is analyzed in each specific entry, here we treat only the box.
RELEASES
The box was distributed in 500 numbered copies. Some unnumbered copies exist as well. There are a few differences between the jackets of some of the records contained in the copies with a low number (up to about 250) and those with a high number or the unnumbered ones, suggesting that they were prepared at two different moments. All, or almost all, the discs were in colored vinyl and had the colored TMOQ pig labels. The sleeves of the stampers of several records report 500 copies having been pressed at the end of May 1986; these sleeves are illustrated in the analysis of each single LP.
Low-numbered boxes. The stickers that were glued on the back of some of the jackets had a photo on the upper part; other jackets had the track listing in a red sticker. Most of the discs were in colored vinyl with dots of black wax or variegated stripes.
High-numbered copies. The majority of the discs were pressed in monochromatic colored vinyl. A few rubber stamps were replaced, namely, FILE UNDER, LOOK BACK, MARY JANE (different fonts), THE BEATLES CHRISTMAS ALBUM, JOHNNY MOONDOG. More had a different sticker on the back, lacking the photo. A few boxes included one or two records with the jacket used in the low-numbered copies.
INTEREST.This is a de-luxe edition that includes many LPs that were quite interesting when they were first released, so it was a good compilation. From a collector's point of view, it is surely an important, and nowadays not so common, item. ***/****.