Jan 082009
I SUMMON HOMEFRONTRADIO!
Quick: Name an album that you were familiar with in its original form that benefitted greatly from remixed or remastered reissue! What new qualities arose in the grooves?
Quick: Name an album that you were familiar with in its original form that benefitted greatly from remixed or remastered reissue! What new qualities arose in the grooves?
Can I call shenanigans? The advantage of remastered CDs — in my view — is not to sound better than the “original form” (I assume you mean vinyl), but to sounds better than the first CD issue of an album that originally came out on vinyl.
Kind of Blue, (not rock, I know) was actually fixed better than the original release. Tape speeds and all kinds of sound issues.
No shenanigans, Oats. Well made cd’s sound way better than crappy mass market major label lp’s. Cd’s that were made from crappy mass market lp sources sound pretty bad, but when theyre done right, it’s a great format.
Off the top of my head from last year, I think Whiskeytown’s Stranger’s Almanac is a big improvement (though I haven’t heard it on vinyl). David Bowie’s Live In Santa Monica 72 is way better than all the vinyl bootlegs (a few were quite exceptional, too), and much better than the sort of legit release from 1995. It really kicks ass.
So far as comparing vinyl I’m really familiar with, I’ve got to give Virgin and ABKCO a lot of credit with The Stones catalog. I’ve got the MoFi boxed set of ABKCO’s stuff, and it sounds as good as any vinyl I’ve ever heard of The Stones. ABKCO’s SACD’s are definitely better, and not just because of speed correction, but there’s just deeper, tighter bass, the guitars have some extra bite and hearing most of the hiss missing from Let It Bleed is awesome. The DSD layer is more than good enough, too.
Virgin cleaned up the mud from Goat’s Head Soup and the what used to be my least liked Stones album is a lot more enjoyable now that I can hear it. Exile on Main St. is pretty sweet, too but there’s a guy that cleaned up a Japanese Victor lp version of Exile that I might like even more, but the entire Stones catalog sounds best on little silver disks now.
Short run lp’s on heavy vinyl get a lot more TLC than what’s going out on the cd’s, but I think they use the same masters, so I tend to find the wider dynamic range of cd’s “better” sounding. Provided the cd wasn’t mastered at virtually the same volume throughout every song.
The Band CDs remastering job was very nice. The original CDs were relatively flat and the vinyl versions weren’t much better. I did have one of those audiophile vinyl pressings of Gergley’s favorite, Music From Big Pink, and the remastered CD is just as good.
My best example of improved sound with remasters was the Peter Gabriel back catalog that was reissued in the early 00’s. The first generation CDs sounded awful. I think these are coming out again on SACD. This is a new trend I find frightening. Fortunately 5-channel mixes seem not to have really caught on. I have no interest in those.
The new remaster of REM’s Murmur is fascinating. The guitars sounds are crisp and clear, and it’s lost a lot of the murky mysterioso sound it had on vinyl. The earlier CD version was just kind of flat. Stipe still mumbles though.
Oats, I’m not trying to open a can of “All remasters of ‘Satisfaction’ are inferior to the vinyl versions I grew up hearing,” if that’s what you think. This is a sincere question I ask with an entirely different motivation.
The Band’s second album is one of my all-time faves dating back to the vinyl version my uncle gave me when I was about 5. I still love the vinyl version, but I have to admit that the remastered reissue that is part of the series Geo refers to, is spectacular. It reatins all the “woodiness” of the thick vinyl version I’ve long worn out, but now the grains are deeper and richer.
As a converse, while Townspeople chew on this, have you ever started knowing the remixed/remastered version of an album and then went back to the “source” version and found that superior? Again, there’s no need to focus on the first wave of CDs, which everyone says sucked (I was a bit of a latteccomer to buying CDs, so I never went through that record-buying angst.)
Insteresting, what you say about the loss of “murky mysterioso sound” of the remastered Murmur, BigSteve. Wasn’t that a big part of the band’s appeal? Were you not into that aspect of them the first time around? As I read what you wrote, it seems like you prefer the new guitar sounds.
I no longer have the vinyl of Murmur to compare. When I bought the earlier CD, it made me wonder why I had liked the album that much. The new version made me like it again, but it also made me wonder whether the mysterious qualities were something I had projected backwards onto the album, based on the Look of the cover and years of accumulated conventional wisdom.
I recommend the new version to anyone who might have liked Murmur. You can really hear those guitar arpeggios with clarity, and the combination of acoustic and electric guitar layers is more apparent. In a way it makes it more effective when they dump a ton of reverb on the vocal, because there’s a contrast, not just a huge mess of sound.
The SACD remaster of “Let It Bleed” really is all that and a bag of chips; the drums in particular sound freaking *amazing*.
Remastering, in film and music, has turned a corner over the last decade or so. Being a fan of music from the twenties and thirties it has made a huge difference, particularly in the Louis Armstrong Hot Five discs and Ellington’s Blanton/Webster sides. The early reissues were that “No Noise” system which sounded like they just turned the treble all the way down to mask the static. The recent edition really re-inserts the life into the recordings, they sound like they’re in the room as opposed to in the next apartment. Probably the most essential upgrades in my collection.
The PET SOUNDS stereo version from the late 90’s is a radical reworking I’d endorse. I thought I was going to be a purist for the mono edition but the stereo mix really bowled me over right from the opening of “Wouldn’t It Be Nice”.
I second Slocum’s verdict on KIND OF BLUE; the recent edition of The Doors debut corrects supposed tape speed issues as well. It also re-inserts the word “High” after the “She gets…” line in “Break On Through”, which sounds kind of crazy.
(Also was listening to some of Morrison’s poetry recordings recently, the stuff they carved most of AMERICAN PRAYER out of. Whatta hoot!)
Dead Boys, YOUNGER, LOUDER AND SNOTTIER. Unlike, say, the Stooges’ ROUGH POWER, this is one original mix that truly is better than the one that was officially released. I love the AOR-style dual guitar licks that were excised, probably so that the Dead Boys wouldn’t get mistaken for Boston or Thin Lizzy.
I really prefer the new versions of Tommy to the original. The vinyl is very bassy and murky. The new version is all crispy and clean.
TB
Steely Dan (all) Beggar’s Banquet, all of the crap MCA CDs from the 1980’s (The Who’s Meaty Beaty is the worst CD transfer in the history of man)
The mastering they used was the cassette master, no new Cd mastering was done until the late 1990’s for most of this stuff.
Remastering is not in itself evil, much of the time it is a case where there was NEVER a CD master to begin with, they just took the cassette master and made a CD, which almost always sounded worse than the LP
I’m not a fan of Exile On Main Street or Born To Run in the new remasted forms… I prefer the crappy 1980’s issues.
Having grown up with the original “Break on Through”, I found the restoration of “…high…” pretty jarring and, in fact aesthetically less appealing. Never knowing he said something there, just Everybody, loves my baby, she gets, (pause), she gets, (pause), she gets…AAARRGH” worked so much better. I really question whether something like this is appropriate for a remaster.
Although it theoretically restores the artists “intent”, it can destroy an effect of the original that is critical, even if incidental. I genuinely regretted that my new copy of the Doors album had that restored. If you gotta do stuff like that, make it a bonus cut or something.
Christ, I sound like Mr. Mod talking about the extra bar of guitar in the remastered Sweet Jane.
It does seem pretty true that neither Jimbo nor Lou ever quite had a handle on what was good about what they did.
I totally agree with you about “Break On Through,” which incidentally is the only Doors song I really like all that much. Or, liked, until I heard the original intent. Just ask Paul McCartney about whether an artist is the best judge of his own work…
Another great example of what you speak of–where the restored version should be a bonus track and not on the album proper–is the Velvet Underground’s FULLY LOADED, where they restore the “heavenly wine and roses” bit to “Sweet Jane” because Lou says he always thought the song was better with it. Guess what? This version isn’t, not by a long shot. Bleah…it sounds sloppy and completely out of place. What they needed was two different songs, not one where the two are combined. I’ll take the studio version from LOADED and the 1969 LIVE version on their own, thank you very much. The restored bits on “New Age” and “Rock & Roll” aren’t good either. It’s obvious why they were edited out in the first place…and now if I want a copy of LOADED as I know and love it I have to buy it again because the originally released versions of these three songs are nowhere to be found on this double CD. Grrr….
Speaking of “high” being added into “Break On Through,” as I have mentioned here elsewhere, Lionel Ritchie finally admitted that the listener is supposed to fill in the missing word in “Brick House,” which is exactly why there’s such a long pause between the two words. Brilliant! I’d been singing it to myself for years.
opos..I didn’t realize I was repeating the “Sweet Jane” thing…duh, that’s what I get for posting before I finish reading what I’m responding to!
Geo wrote:
It’s about time someone feels this way about such a restoration! I had trouble understanding what db was talking about at first – I kept thinking of the Ed Sullivan appearance. When you explained it, Geo, I was sitting here high-fiving myself in support of what you were going through. We’ll remember this day.
pudman13, welcome to the club! Those two songs not being in their real form on the VU box set drive me crazy.
Other cases like this that drive me nuts are a few extra ad libs with echo at the end of James Blood Ulmer’s “Are You Glad to Be in America” from the album of hte same name. The original album version I’ve had since about the time it came out cuts out the stupid ad libs (and it has a stronger sequence and drier, meatier sound. Then, when it came out, someone bought me that Clash box set, The Clash on Broadway, I think it’s called. Beside the fact that the remastered versions of just about everything BLOW compared with my vinyl copies of the Clash albums, the version of “Straight to Hell,” the only song I care to play on Combat Rock, has an added, unecessary ad lib about some “Chico.” Total buzzkill.
Of course, as I’ve stated before, I’m a believer that the Stones and the Clash are best listened to on worn vinyl, but I do like the mastering and packaging of The Clash singles box set I got last year. Again, I should state, this little beef is NOT the motivation for this post.
Ah, that brings to mind another one, the “Very Best Of Moby Grape,” which ruins their incredibly tight debut album by including between-song banter, longer endings of songs that were faded out, false starts, etc… Completely destroys it, and the worst thing is that for years that was the ONLY way to get the album on CD, and I believe that at the moment the original version of the first album is out of print and selling for like $40 on ebay.
Oh, and to show just how to get it right, several of the reissues of Love’s Forever Changes include as a bonus track the alternate version of “You Set The Scene” with the extra vocal line that was dropped from the end of the song (it’s not an extended version–this vocal line was sung over the final chorus, as a counterpoint tothe other vocal.) It’s fascinating for people like me who know and love the song, but it’s much better as an extra and not part of the album.
Another one that burns me…the CD issue of Television’s Marquee Moon that restores the end of the title track–about 30 seconds or so after the LP version fades out. I love the fade out…it implies that the song is a never-ending nightmare. When it actually finishes the verse and comes to an end, it completely destroys the effect.
The more you love something, the more nitpicky you get…these are two of my very favorite albums. Another favorite is the obscure album by Indiana band Zeras, released in 1973 and only available on CD as a bootleg. The LP ends with the final song being cut off abruptly, “I Want You (She’s So Heavy)” style, and I have always thought it was utterly perfect. The LP reissues have this ending. The CD “reissue,” for some stupid reason, “corrects the mistake” and fades it out about 1/4 of a second before the cutoff, and completely destorys the effect.
None of you have probably ever heard this album, so you’re just going to have to trust me that the abrupt ending is one of the most perfect things about a nearly perfect album, and the fade makes it completely unlistenable to anyone who has actually heard the original.
ACK! I’m a sloppy typist!
Z-E-R-F-A-S
That’s Zerfas, not Zeras.
Finally…from the mouths of Zerfas themselves:
“The way the song finishes was completely intentional… it was meant to stop abruptly… it’s not your equipment going bad.”
Here’s more info:
http://www.700west.com/htdb/releases/Zerfas-Zerfas.html
I think I’ve got a burn of that Zerfas album sitting on my desk at work, courtesy of you, pudman13! I remember it being pretty cool. I’ll have to pull it out tomorrow.
Right on about the Television!!! That disappeared fade came up in the original CD issues. Someone shoulda realized it was a loser by the time they did the nice sounding remaster, but nooooooo, that would require a little artistic judgement. The fade was totally critical and perfect to create that endless loop effect, espaecially since you hear just enough to realize that the new cycle is amped up slightly, wilder fills and guitar eruptions that the first time through the top verse and then it trails off.
I’m with you guys on the Television extension. Man, the more I think about these “helpful” restoration projects on reissues, the more I start to see the face of the dork who thinks he’s doing the music world a great service by sticking that stuff back in. I don’t think this stuff happens because of oversights, except for maybe the Ulmer ad libs. I think it’s the Curse of Completists! The hell with director’s cuts, restored breaks and endings, and so on. Let them be bonus cuts if they’re needed so bad.
sorry to be a knucklehead, but what;’s the missing word between brick and house?
and…
Let it be Naked is better than Let it Be.
“sorry to be a knucklehead, but what;’s the missing word between brick and house?”
If you don’t know what comes between those two all I can say is “Sheeeeet”.
Thank goodness the vinyl rip of The Zerfas I downloaded has the cold ending on “Fool’s Paradise”. Whatever happened to those Zerfas Brothers?
I don’t know what they’re talking about either, Shawnkilroy. Don’t let these big bullies try to make you feel bad.
How about Capital Radio One by the Clash?
The version on the original Black Market Clash is one of my favorites by them. I have two versions on disc: one is a rerecording and the other has about 2 minutes of hard to hear studio chatter before the song kicks off. Don’t touch that dial indeed…
I don’t like the ‘complete’ version of Marquee Moon either, but I actually never liked that ‘endless loop’ thing anyway. I love the spacey part with the piano after the second solo ends, and I wished they’d closed with that.
Here’s more heresy. I’ve realized that the title song is actually my least favorite song on that album. The guitar solos are great, but as a song it doesn’t do that much for me, and I don’t really like the signature guitar riff.
So shoot me.
You like “Torn Curtain” Better!?!
As a song, not as a track.
COP-OUT!