It seems that there are not too many things that you can count on these days, but one constant is that every holiday season will bring something from the Beatles that will make a great gift for the music lover in your life. In fact, this year there’s an abundance of choices, given the release of the Beatles mono and stereo remasters earlier this year.
Any of those albums, or the box sets themselves would make fabulous gifts, but maybe your Beatles fan snapped them all up the day they were released. Or maybe you’re not sure which ones he already has you and don’t want to take a chance of getting something that’s redundant? Or, maybe you just want to give something a little less obvious, something that shows that you really spent some time researching your gift?
To save you all that time and effort, let me bring to your attention The Beatles Box of Vision. I have to admit that when I heard the name of this product, I couldn’t figure out what it was all about. Now I can tell you that it is, as the name states, a box. Within this impressive, cloth-covered box, you will find two large format, LP-sized books. The hardcover book collects all of the Beatles album artwork, U.S. and U.K, in one place for the first time. This includes all the album covers, back and front, liner notes, and any other text or photos that were included with the albums. It is, in a word, impressive.
The other book is the Catalography. This soft cover book offers a side-by-side look at the U.S. and U.K. Beatles albums. You get photos of the album covers, a track list for each album, a running narrative covering the release history, a song index that places each song in its proper context, and an essay by Bruce Spizer, a noted authority on the Beatles’ recordings.
The books are very nice, but what this box is really about is storage. Within the box are sturdy clear vinyl pages that allow storage and display of Beatles CDs, including digipacks and CD remasters. Each panel is backed with a photo of an individual Beatles album. There’s room for the CD booklets too. So, if the person that you’re shopping for already has some or all of the remasters, or just the regular old CDs, The Beatles Box of Vision, with the iconic With the Beatles photo on the front, and ‘The Beatles’ embossed in large letters on the side, is a fine way to organize and display the CDs.
The Beatles Box of Vision is a hefty box, and the price tag is equally hefty. Whether you want to spend the money will depend on your budget, but if you can swing it, I think any Beatles fan would be happy to open this package on Christmas Day.
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