When The Beatles hit American shores in February 1964, JFK had just been murdered in Dallas and the country was reeling from it’s worst self-inflicted episode since the Civil War, just a hundred years before. With the early ‘63 pop charts dominated by the innocuous harmonies of The Beach Boys and The 4 Seasons, the Beatles’ mix of pop and hard rockin’ R&B was a bolt from the blue and in short order they proceeded to conquer the charts, hearts, minds and ears of America. By the time of the Fab Four’s first U.S. Lp release on Capitol Records late in ‘63, Meet The Beatles!, they were already a cult favorite here and an established act in the U.K. Recording their own affectionate homage to that first Beatles Lp on Capitol, The Smithereens released Meet The Smithereens! on Koch Record in mid 2007. The note-for-note revival of the Fab Four’s original 12 track Capitol classic is a well done slice of pop as art recording and comes packed with liner notes by noted American Beatles experts such as Bruce Spizer, Lenny Kaye, Andy Babiuk and even legendary promoter Sid Bernstein. Commenting on the original album, Smithereens drummer Dennis Diken adds, ‘Meet The Beatles! was a call to arms to an army of musically-inclined kids across the nation.' John Lennon’s murder in New York—ironically (or rather ostensibly) by another madman from Texas—marked the official end of The Beatles in 1980. Even so, 44 years on from 1963, the Smithereens' reenactment of Meet The Beatles! is an excellent, nicely detailed tribute to the album that kicked off Beatlemania in America. www.officialsmithereens.com

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