Nah, nah, nah!

Philosophers used to ask, "If a tree falls in the forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound?" I guess the question for this generation is, "If the surviving Beatles approve of the defacing of their work, does that make it okay?" At least one fan’s answer is "No."

Capitol Records is proud to release the sequel nobody asked for – The Beatles: The Capitol Albums, Vol. 2 (Capitol/Apple). For the uninitiated, here's a brief history.

The Beatles' CDs that have been out for nearly 20 years on the Parlophone label –- Please Please Me, With the Beatles, et al. –- are the Beatles albums that were originally released in Britain. That is to say, they were the albums of which The Beatles approved. Each was about 40 minutes in length, and The Fab Four dictated the running order of the songs, in order to give their listeners "the complete package."

In America, it was a different story. Before The Beatles became household names, Capitol Records wouldn't even take on The Beatles until forced to do so by EMI (the parent company of both Parlophone and Capitol). But once The Beatles became a cash cow, Capitol wasted no time in exploiting them.

Capitol siphoned off songs from The Beatles' British LPs and put out "Americanized" Beatle albums that were barely half the length of their British counterparts. Thus, in the time it took for Parlophone to release seven Beatles albums, Capitol put out nine of them. (Even the landmark albums Rubber Soul and Revolver were truncated in their American versions.)

When all four Beatles were alive, they were outraged by this tampering with their work. Now, not only does Capitol celebrate their having tampered with great music, but the remaining Beatles –- Paul and Ringo –- have condoned it. And both Capitol and Apple (The Beatles' record company) are making you pay through the nose for the privilege of buying it.

Capitol’s Vol. 1, consisting of CDs of the first four Americanized albums, was released a year-and-a-half ago to less-than-ecstatic acclaim. Now comes Vol. 2 with four more CDs that, again, are half as long as the legit British LPs. (It’s even more infuriating when you consider that a CD can hold twice as much music as even the British albums could.)

To cite just one example, the British LP of Help! consisted of songs from the same-named movie, plus seven more Beatles tunes. The American version (included in Vol. 2) contains only the movie's songs, along with some incidental instrumentals from the film.

The Beatle fans from the '60s who want to pay $70 to wallow in the memory of their own exploitation are free to do so. The rest of us should descend upon the Capitol building in Los Angeles and loudly sing an appropriate Beatles lyric: We told you before, you can’t do that.