The 10 best for ‘09
by Paul Rosano on Dec.22, 2009, under Music
Last year I picked five albums I considered the best of the year. This time I’m upping it to 10 with a few bubbling under and some added tidbits.
1. Already Free, The Derek Trucks Band: Traditional blues with modern sensibilities and influences from jazz, roots and world music, all played by an array of accomplished musicians and one of the best slide players of our time.
2. The Deep End, Christine Ohlman and Rebel Montez: Stellar songwriting, impassioned vocals and infectious grooves highlight Ohlman’s fifth album, which also features an impressive roster of guests. Her best yet.
3. Electric Dirt, Levon Helm: On this electrified followup to his comeback album Dirt Farmer, Helm blends traditional roots music with elements of folk, blues, soul and gospel. The mix of new original material and classic covers works perfectly. The arrangements are clean and to the point and musicianship impeccable.
4. Middle Cyclone, Neko Case: A wonderful concoction of folk, rock, country and pop interlaced with enigmatic lyrics and penetrating melodies. All topped with Case’s crystal clear voice.
5. All In One, Bebel Gilberto: Her best since Tanta Tempo in 2000, this work is alive with beautiful songwriting and Gilberto’s gorgeous, hushed, cool vocals. Aided by her pals Carlhinos Brown and Didi Gutman among others.
6. Soul On Ten, Robben Ford: A ripping, rocking live set with two live-in-the-studio cuts, filled with Ford’s interesting blues-based originals, some classic covers and his unique take on blues, rock and jazz playing.
7. The List, Rosanne Cash: A love letter to her father Johnny and her audience, giving back songs from his list of 100 that he gave to his teen-age daughter. Arrangements and execution by Cash and husband John Levanthal are enthralling. (continue reading…)
Beatles remastered: Revolver & Sgt. Pepper’s
by Paul Rosano on Sep.23, 2009, under Music
In the summer of 1967, when Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band was released, fans of The Beatles didn’t get together with friends and listen to the mono version of this landmark album.
I don’t recall anyone buying the mono version. Perhaps if you couldn’t afford the $1 extra for stereo, because that’s all it was. But that’s not the point. The way to listen to Sgt. Pepper’s back then, as it is now, was in stereo.
I can remember at rehearsals and jams at the Aiardo Brothers house during the summer between the demise of the Bram Rigg Set and before I went off to school in Boston, we would take a break and listen to the entire album’s left channel.
Later the same afternoon we would listen to the whole album but just the right channel. Yeah, it was entertaining, listening to what George Martin and The Beatles were up to, but we were also trying to figure out what the hell they were doing as far as the recording process.
It wasn’t until several weeks later that I found out this album was recorded on a four-track machine. A four-track! Most studios in the States had long before installed eight-track recorders, including Syncron, later Trod Nossel, all the way out in Wallingford, CT, where my bands Bram Rigg Set and later Pulse worked out of.
Yet, The Beatles and Martin had produced an album on a four-track, albeit bouncing to a second four-track for many songs, and the album sounded extraordinary.
In a previous post on the recently released remastered versions of Help! and Rubber Soul, The Beatles albums that preceded these two, I wrote that bottom line the mono versions of those albums, even though I had grown up with the stereo, were my preference. OK, maybe not for Drive My Car and a few other tunes, but mono is the way to go for those: balanced, clear, direct and in-your-face punchy. (continue reading…)
Beatles remastered: Help! & Rubber Soul
by Paul Rosano on Sep.15, 2009, under Music
The Beatles remastered catalogue on CD has arrived. I decided to start listening with two albums that were originally released back-to-back in 1965, Help! and Rubber Soul.
These two also are the only ones with three versions released over the various formats of the series. Both are available in stereo and can be purchased individually or as part of The Beatles Stereo box set. Those versions are the 1987 re-mixes by producer George Martin, the same mix as the original CD releases from the late ’80s but of course remastered.
The albums are also included in The Beatles in Mono box, each disc of which includes a mono mix, only available if you purchase this mono set, and the original 1965 stereo mixes remastered, the first time those mixes have been available on CD.
I also have the 1987 CDs of these titles. So, I was able to compare all four versions.
Why were these two albums remixed in 1987 by George Martin? Good question. He said back in 1987, after being completely overlooked by EMI on The Beatles first four albums of that remastering campaign, that these two albums along with Revolver sounded “woolly” and he wound up not changing anything but “hardening” the sound up.
He applied digital echo in the mixing process as opposed to the original echo chamber at Abbey Road from the ’60s and cut down a little of the background noise. But that really simplifies it. Check this link for an interview with Martin in 1987 in which he gives a more detailed reasoning of the process. It can be quite illuminating.
In fact, the differences in the stereo mixes are quite subtle, but the differences in the new remastering applied are significant. But let’s start with the mono versions. (continue reading…)
A Jackie DeShannon quartet
by Paul Rosano on Sep.10, 2009, under Music
More than a decade before the singer-songwriter era of the early 1970s, Jackie DeShannon was interpreting other writers’ songs and writing hit records of her own.
She came clearly into the public conscience after her recording of Jack Nitzsche and Sonny Bono’s Needles and Pins in 1963 and followed it with her own When You Walk In The Room. In 1964, both songs became hits for the English band The Searchers.
But DeShannon had been recording since the late 1950s and she would continue with a string of eclectic albums on Imperial, a subsidiary of Liberty Records, throughout the ’60s, which would include a couple of world-wide hits.
Running through all her changes in style was a pure, proficient and pleasing voice that held a tinge of country and gospel from her background and was perfectly suited for pop and rock music.
Collectors’ Choice Music has just released remastered versions of four of DeShannon’s albums spanning a period from her self-titled folk album of 1963, seeing its debut on CD, to 1968’s Me About You coupled with Set Me Free (1970) on a two-fer and on to 1975’s New Arrangement, which yielded the Grammy Hall of Fame song Bette Davis Eyes, a major hit for Kim Carnes six years later. (continue reading…)
The Beatles remastered
by Paul Rosano on Jul.01, 2009, under Music
As reported earlier this spring, The Beatles catalogue on CD has been remastered for the first time since the 1980s and will be released on 9/9/09. Hmm. No. 9, No. 9, No. 9. In another coincidence of marketing strategy, a new Rock Band video game version featuring The Beatles will be released on the same day.
For details about the project, including specific mastering techniques, as well as a wealth of other information on The Beatles, check out Beatles-History.net.
As I often react to these type of announcements, I was rather resistant to yet another wave of remastering by a major act, particularly since the results of these re-releases has been mixed at best in the past 10 years. Many audiophiles and purists are now claiming the original CD releases — you know the ones we sold, traded in or in some cases some collectors threw out! — actually sound better than the remastered ones because they came from better sources.
Add to this that I, for one, believe the original Beatles CDs from the 1980s, sound rather good. When first released I was a bit miffed that all the early albums were mastered in mono, since I grew up with the stereo versions no matter how retched they were. (continue reading…)
Taking a look into Neil Young’s Archive
by Paul Rosano on May.27, 2009, under Music
OK, I admit it. I caved. On pre-ordering the first installment of the Neil Young Archive Box Set, that is. I wrestled with this one for a while. And it wasn’t Neil’s testimonial to the Blu-Ray format on his web site that made me more amenable to the lofty prices for this set, which is available in three formats, Blu-Ray, DVD and CD.
But I figured I would wind up buying it at some point anyways because it covers what I find the most interesting aspect of Young’s career, 1963-1972, and it seems that recently the best prices you can find on new releases are available before they are released. Although I have noticed the prices going down a little on the CD and Blu-Ray sets since I ordered.
Also, if you pre-order it in either Blu-Ray or DVD, you receive a preview disc in Blu-Ray of the first disc in the set, labeled Disc 00 (how high tech!?!), just the kind of offer for which I’m a sucker.
This set has been in the pipeline for something like 15 years. Ridiculous, isn’t it? In the meantime, Young has refused to re-master any of his early albums, the ones I believe are his best, because he hates the CD format for sound quality almost as much as he hates digital downloads. (continue reading…)
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