I'm old enough to have been through five incarnations of music. Vinyl, cassette, 8-track, CD and now mp3. Along the way, I've had to endure the endless (almost) remastering and remixing of stuff that I bought and listened to when I was ten years old.Part of the problem is that the stuff was good when I was ten, but somehow it did not age well enough to be left alone (much like Michael Jackson) and had to be altered in some way as to make it "marketable" to the masses who probably didn't hear it in its original form.
While cruising Amazon's web site for some new music (I pre-ordered Son Volt's new CD) I came across this list of remastered Beatles CDs which most of, I'm happy to say, I didn't buy when they were first issued as CDs about 20 years ago. That's nice because now, I see that the third generation wasn't good enough, and now they have had to be remastered (by who?) and re-issued AGAIN on CD, for sale to a gullible American music-buying public. Meanwhile, the mp3 files have yet to be officially released for those of us who prefer that medium.
When I see things like this, I'm taken back to my youth, and the issues that arose over the faulty vinyl records and the diamond needles we used to play them on a spinning top called a turntable. The troubles were many, but the pleasures (we thought) outweighed the trouble. Surface noise, skipping, dust and other problems infested our lives while we tried to enjoy the music of The Beatles, ELP, Yes and other musicians who took the trouble to record things in sound-proof rooms while we listened in faulty environments akin to indoor echo chambers. Mostly, the remastered stuff doesn't sound like the original, and to me, it ruins the original experience instead of enhancing it, which I thought was what remastering should do. I don't want to hear your "this is what it should have sounded like." I want to hear what it sounded like.
I can only imagine what that music would have been like if we had CDs when I was 15 years old. Focus would have sounded like a symphony, ELP would have been mind-altering and Gentle Giant would have been even more awesome than that needle on fabric.
So, they keep fiddling with stuff and remastering things that were already masterful. It strikes me as messing with perfection.
But it's all about the money, isn't it?
2 comments:
Man, i had all those Beatle albums as a teenager. i even had the Butcher album cover to Yesterday and Today.
My mom got rid of of em all sometime between college and my first apartment.
Sgt Pepper album cover only looks good on Vinyl, imho. Too much detail to shrink it to a CD or a tape.
I have read that the recording artists of the past were constantly disappointed that their vinyl, 8-track and cassette recordings could not compare to the actual 8, 16, than 32track masters made at the studio. Brian Wilsons masters of "Good Vibrations" were suppose to have been unbelieveably good to hear at the studio.
Apparently the goal has always been to recreate the actual sounds of the masters, and they did not come close until the digital era.
I have a friend who has a small recording studio in his basement who still uses 8 & 16track tapes. After he re-mixes and burns to CD there is always some loss in quality. The music never sounds as good as the original studio recording.
Later...
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