Beware of previously unheard incidental vocal sounds!

I believe my intense sense of moral outrage over the Velvet Underground box set reinsertion of the “heavenly wine and roses” middle eight of “Sweet Jane” and, even worse, the insertion of 4 measures of out-of-context room mic-recorded rhythm guitar preceding kick-ass guitar lick that sets up the coda of “Rock ‘n Roll” is on the record.

[Deep breath.]

Sorry, I’m getting myself worked up just thinking about this again.

Today, I want to complain about related instances of archivists introducing previously unheard incidental vocal sounds in remastered, reissued recordings. I don’t like it. I don’t like it one bit. About 12 to 15 years ago I jumped on an import CD of James Blood Ulmer‘s Are You Glad to Be in America album. This was at a time when it seemed right to buy some of my favorite vinyl albums on the still-somewhat newfangled CD format. I’m sorry I bought it.

It was bad enough that they scrapped the excellent painting from the original album cover and that the album was sequenced differently than my version; in rare cases I’m a big enough man to realize that cover art and sequencing can vary from one country to another. Surely the Japanese had good reason for their sequencing. What really bugged me, though, was hearing some additional guttural sounds from Ulmer during a solo section. Those sounds did not appear on the vinyl release. Someone had the good sense to mix them out. Who’s the asshole who thought they added something to this Japanese CD version? Restoration projects can attempt to improve the original luster to a work, but they shouldn’t uncover purposely discarded bits. Continue reading »