Sonic Mysteries

One of the interesting quirks of listening to old LPs that were originally mixed for vinyl is how different successive LPs by the same artists can sound. Here are two examples:

Steely Dan "Katy Lied" and "The Royal Scam"
"Katy Lied" was recorded in 1974, and Steely Dan went to great lengths to ensure that it was a state-of-the-art recording. The success of "Pretzel Logic" had given Donald Fagen and Walter Becker more leeway with recording, and they used it to not only equip themselves with more recording hardware, but they also purchased a brand new Bosendorfer grand piano for the recording.
However, when it came to mixdown time, trouble struck. The decision had been made to use DBx noise reduction, and this caused all manner of problems, chronicled here by Denny Dias. Eventually the LP was successfully mastered, but relics of the compromises forced in the mixdown can be heard in the overall sound. Despite the tremendous basic sound quality, both in terms of depth and warmth, the most notable defect is clipping and phasing of the cymbals, notable on "Your Gold Teeth II". However, I still find the sound quality of the LP to be tremendous, and the remastered LP on "Citizen Steely Dan" sounds wonderful.
"The Royal Scam", by contrast, has a sound that I find unattractive, particularly in the drums. Also, the lead guitar sounds (mostly played by Larry Carlton) are harsh and pseudo-metallic without being convincing. Carlton's lead parts on "Don't Take Me Alive", for example, sound like somebody with a cheap amp and an effects pedal trying to sound nasty. Coupled with dead drums that sound almost like cardboard boxes, the overall soundscape is leaden and lifeless.

Weather Report "Night Passage" and "Weather Report"
This time the sound issue and time sequence is reversed. Most of "Night Passage" was recorded in the Summer of 1980 at The Complex in Los Angeles, a new studio managed by George Massenberg. The band recorded most of the basic tracks live in front of an invited audience (audience bleed-through can be heard at several points in "Dream Clock" and "Port Of Entry"). The title track was a non-live track. "Madagascar" was a live recording, recorded live in Japan in 1980 by Brian Risner to two-track.
However, despite this being one of the great Weather Report LPs, the sound is anything but. It sounds largely dull and lifeless. The contrast with preceding LPs is stark and unflattering. I bought the CD copy of "Night Passage" in the early 90's, but the sound quality is no better than my original vinyl copy. As far as I know, this LP has never been properly remastered for CD.
The following year's LP, "Weather Report", despite being a pale shadow of "Night Passage", has a sound quality as great as "Night Passage" was poor. The sound leaps out of the speakers, and is crystal clear and crisp. Different recording studios may have played their part, but there has to be something else to create a plausible explanation. I would rather have had the sound quality reversed, with the better sound quality on "Night Passage", which is still one of my favorite Weather Report recordings.
More recently, several tunes recorded at The Complex concerts but presumably not deemed good enough at the time appeared on the Weather Report CD compilation "Live and Unreleased". The sound quality of these tunes seems to be very good, far superior to the original version of "Night Passage", which suggests that the mixing and/or mastering process might have been responsible for the dead sound on "Night Passage" itself.

11.9.2010 • Music • PermalinkPermalink

Mick Green - R.I.P.

One of the issues with living in the USA is that occasionally you find out about events in the UK way too long after they occur.
So it was that today, I found out that one of the great and criminally underrated British guitar players, Mick Green, died in January at the age of 65.
I first heard and saw Mick Green when The Pirates (without Johnny Kidd, who had died in a road accident in 1966) reformed in 1977 as the punk-rock era blossomed in the UK. Several bands who could actually play their instruments sailed for a while under the flag of convenience provided by the punk era. Among them were The Police, XTC and The Pirates.
Reading about The Pirates' stage show, a friend and myself went along to a concert at the ICA in London. As a hammed-up piece of swashbuckling orchestral music played, the three-piece band hit the stage dressed in pirate outfits, and launched into their classic set opener "Please Don't Touch".
For the next hour or so, my friend and I both stared intently at Mick Green as he relentlessly and accurately produced what sounded like the sound of two guitars from a Fender Telecaster Custom guitar patched almost directly into a Marshall stack. I had seen Wilko Johnson play live, and he was reckoned to be a great exponent of playing rhythm and lead guitar simultaneously, but this was something else. Like men against boys, Green's playing simply blew Johnson into the weeds. He effortlessly sounded like two separate guitar players on "Lonesome Train", and created a wall of sound on "Gibson Martin Fender" that still pins my ears back to this day.
I later discovered via home experimentation that, like many seemingly mysterious guitar techniques, there was nothing that clever about Mick Green's guitar technique. However, I couldn't play like him (and I still can't) because his style relied on two devices that I have never mastered - the fast chop full string pick, and a massively heavy gauge set of strings on the guitar.
Most of the lead-rhythm duality was obtained by selective blocking of strings with the left hand. The classic example of this is the riff to "Gibson Martin Fender", which is an A major chord shape played above the 12th fret.
At a later Pirates concert, I wandered down the front to inspect Mick's primary guitar as it sat on its stand. The top string was probably a 15 or 16 gauge, and the bottom E was more like a 58 gauge - almost the size of piano wire. This massive string mass, coupled with the humbucker pickup on the Telecaster, gave Mick Green his trademark fat growling guitar sound, somewhat different to the sound that you normally get with lighter gauge strings on a Telecaster, which tends to be the more rattly jangling sound beloved of country music.
Mick Green's solos were not fast or long, and were not in the slightest bit flashy, but they were excitingly effective. I regard him and Steve Stevens as primary exponents of the "short sharp shock" school of guitar solos - short but exciting elaborations totally in keeping withe the fundamental spirit of Rock'n'Roll. Green's solo on the lead-out section of the live Pirates version of "Johnny B Goode" on "Skull Wars" is one of the great solo guitar figures, as exciting as Steve Stevens' solo on "Rebel Yell".
After several years of late 70's success, The Pirates went on hiatus for a while. I went to see a newer incarnation of the band at The Cricketers pub next to the Oval cricket ground in 1984, but that version of the band was disappointing - Johnny Spence and Frank Farley had been replaced by better players (including former Wings drummer Jeff Britton) and singers, eliminating the rough raw edge that is essential for this type of rock trio music. The band was too slick and precise, and Green's raw-edged playing, while as a effective as ever, could not bring the overall sound back from "too smooth" territory.
More recently, Mick had been getting much overdue recognition from fellow artists such as Paul McCartney, Van Morrison and Bryan Ferry, all of whom hired him to play on their albums and tours. He had been in poor health for a while, so his passing was not totally unexpected. But it is always sad when a criminally underrated musician leaves us.

03.17.2010 • Artists • PermalinkPermalink

An interesting interview with Sting from Australia

Link: http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2003/11/10/1068329493904.html

In which Mr. Sumner muses on a whole collection of meaty issues (as normal)...

03.10.2010 • Artists • PermalinkPermalink

Interesting interview with Clive Gregson from 1999

While searching for information about the criminally underrated Clive Gregson recently, I found this interesting interview with Clive from 1999. Clive relocated to the USA and currently lives in Nashville. His comments about Nashville are funny, but also poignant:

I used to go to the Bluebird Cafe in Nashville and do these songwriters in the round. The most surreal one I saw in recent years featured Graham Gouldman from 10cc, who is, I think, one of the most sophisticated, brilliant pop songwriters of all time and around him were three country singer-songwriters singing absolute bilge about being lonesome in my saddle since my horse died. Graham was doing 'For Your Love', 'I'm Not In Love', 'Bus Stop' 'The Things We Do For Love', 'Heartful Of Soul' and other songs, and was getting no reaction. I was thinking, "This is another planet and these people do not understand that this is probably the most sophisticated pop music they're going to hear and all they want is bum-kerjing-ah, bum-kerjing-ah". It was bizarre.

03.9.2010 • In Their Own Words • PermalinkPermalink