jaeger66 Not basically the best band ever.
The Beatles ARE the best band ever. Period!!! IMO of course.
No other comes even close. They are what every band in every garage in the world longs to be. Elvis is called The King, but without the Beatles. The music we listen to would not be what it is today. They started it all! They are The Kings of R+R.
I love all types of music, and get bored with most CD's quite easily, yet I've been hearing the same Beatles tunes my entire life (I'm 28) and never, ever get bored with anything they do. Everytime I go to the music store. I am drawn to the Beatles section. It's like a magnet.
My latest Beatles buy is: 1962 Live at Star Club in Hamburg. It's from a reel to reel recording made by a friend (George McIndoe) of theirs at the time. He was basically a hippy/photographer. He held on to the tapes for way too long, and he ended up giving them to a fellow who helped him sell off some of his other prized memorobilia without getting ripped off. This fellow (Tom Larkin) held on to them for another few years, until he met Gary Michael Walters (Walters Records Inc.) in 97'. The original tapes were over 90 minutes long, but 40+ of them were lost. What's left is just fantastic. They opened (yes I said opened

) for Tony Sheridan, then later on did a spontaneuos set, playing late into the night.
They did mostly covers, but did some originals too. They sounded great even then. Raw, but great. Please check out anything by them. You'll be thankful you did. I really like the Anthology sets a lot also, and would highly recommend these to you. There's a huge variety, and you get an idea of the great sense of humor they had too.