Something along those lines crossed my mind after I'd posted.
While not strictly speaking a Rock 'n' Roll person myself, but more a Rock person, in that I prefer the later, harder stuff, my general sense of what Rock 'n' Roll is, generally conforms to what you're saying... but obviously there are many songs that are a little harder to place on the "spectrum", or define, or even distinguish from rock...
.. but it was just that the songs on this album were a little light too to be rock in my opinion, and at the very least don't live up to the title or the what the cover image leads you to expect.
Some great songs on this of course... just a bit too broad a term for what is here.
The other thing that oddly only occured to me after I'd posted was:
This is better called: A Monument To British Rock 'n' Roll.
If I saw an album titled like that, I would expect it to feature British rock 'n' roll: you know, Cliff Richard, Adam Faith, Johnny Kidd and the Pirates, Don Lang, the John Barry Seven, Tony Crombie, Dickie Pride and so on (if we're speaking of EMI artists).
"British rock 'n' roll" is a pretty well-established term used in this sense. Wikipedia's extensive article British rock and roll ("or sometimes British rock 'n' roll") also refers exclusively to this sense.
Of the 20 tracks on this album, only "Shakin' All Over" and "Apache" are British rock 'n' roll.
This is better called: A Monument To British Rock 'n' Roll.
Perhaps it's just I have expectations of the term: "Rock" that signify a harder brand of music than this provides, that this feels kind of tame in it's selections; Only The Quo track and The Deep Purple one live up to what I would call rock.
It comes in at 64 mins and 30 secs!
(Approx. -Ihad a skip on The Troggs tune)
...And when you take it out of the inner sleeve and look at the record, the bands seem very narrow, and very busy, having to accomodate the 20 tracks here (10 per side)...I thought it must make compromises, as with the Island Compilation I recorded the other day (Nice Enough To Eat), which I thought was long, and had some tracks pretty quiet (This is a full 11 mins longer even than that!).
But not so, the levels were right up at a decent volume.
There are a few reasons why I wanted this bizarre album when I found it in the charity shop... Mainly because of a couple of songs I wanted: Johnny Kid And The Pirates: Shaking All Over, Deep Purple: Black Night, and Chris Farlowe: Out Of Time, but also because it's strange to see The Beatles on the Harvest Label (So curiosity factor too).
But there was another reason that I discovered only when I got it home that piqued my interest, and that was the notation next to some of the tracks signifying a processed "Stereo effect", from a mono recording... The Beatles track among them.
I've not heard any recording processed in this way before (Knowingly), and was curious to hear what they sounded like.
The tracks that have undergone this process are:
Johnny Kid And The Pirates: Shakin' All Over
The Troggs: Wild Thing
Chris Farlowe: Out Of Time
The Beatles: Get Back
Small Faces: Itchycoo Park
Procul Harum: A Whiter Shade OF Pale
The Swinging Blue Jeans: The Hippy Hippy Shake
The results are a mixed bag, as the ""processing" is not as sophisticated as the term might suggest.
Basically they've taken any of the instrumentation that stands over the levels of the other instumentation at any given moment, and allowed it to bleed into the left and right channels (I recorded on headphones to really listen to the effect)... so they taken off the top to feed the sides.
This creates a kind of echo effect kind of like the famous "Sun sound" of Presley etc. But mostly they do something really wierd, and make the effect slightly- more than slightly right of centre (More right channel than left), so that I thought I was not getting sound from my left tin - but the actual stereo tracks proved this wasn't the case - I resolved this when ripping my recorded CD by adjusting the right channel down, and saving the file like that.
The effect works well on most tracks (The Johnny Kid one really gains a little something, as does the Farlowe track... but conversely, it pulls the teeth of the Troggs tune a little, and dilutes it.
It works best on the Procul Harum song and the Swinging Blue Jeans, which are recorded more centrally on the record itself, with the bleed more even either side.
And you'll have noticed I haven't refered to the Beatles track yet, and that's because it posed a very odd question: How is it they are able to find a Stereo version of The Shadows: Apache, for this record, which was made in 1960, but not find a stereo vesion of Get back: 1969 (release)?
An odd choice!
The effect on the Beatles tune is like listening to someone playing a mono copy in a hall or large room from outside.
The only other thing to say about it is in reference to what An6y66 says about the Wizard song: See My Baby Jive, which timed at 3:44 (for those who are interested).
Roll over Beethoven is a unique version to this release
"This version is the same as the edited single version, but is further cuts the second chorus and the first two sequences of the repeated ending" (Jeff Lynne Song Database)