BOC: new remasters

[Jonathan Jarrett]

	I've had time to give these a proper spin now, and even to get 
the DVD somewhere I could watch it, or most of it. I'm pretty pleased 
with this overall: _Spectres_ will never be my favourite album, but I'm 
a lot more likely to stick it on now it's not on muddy-soudning tape :-) 
As someone else said, it still sounds like _Spectres_ but that's much 
less of a problem now than it was. `I Love the Night', particularly, 
really shines with this sound and even `Searching for Celine', which I 
was always dubious about, makes a lot more sense when its subtleties are 
audible. `R U Ready to Rock' is still a bit of a clunker, but the live 
version on SEE has always solved that problem :-) And of course 
`Godzilla' is still fabulous. Odd that `Golden Age of Leather' doesn't 
seem improved much; I was hoping the chorus at the beginning would 
become clearer, I don't know; this song it seems to me has been cleaned 
up less successfully than the others.

	Of the bonus tracks, well, I am at a complete loss to understand 
*why* BOC recorded `Be My Baby', but it's a perfectly good version, and 
reminds the listener that Eric can in fact sing (in fact this whole 
album does a pretty good job of that). `Night Flyer' is great, it's not 
quite `Boorman' again but close to, and the lyrics drag one into the 
middle of the song slowly just to work out what's going on. I'd have 
happily seen this on the album instead of one of the tracks that made 
the cut. I am less sure about `Please Hold', mainly because Eric misses 
several of the high notes, and the whole song sounds strained as a 
result in places, but it keeps popping up in my head. Weird amalgam of 
Stalk Forrest Group and something like Becker & Fagen in some ways... 
And `M for Murder' also keeps coming back, but like `Mommy' on _Secret 
Treaties_ I can see why it didn't make the cut.

	_Some Enchanted Evening_ was the album that got me into BOC in 
the first place. This remaster has firstly proven that I was quite right 
:-) and secondly given me a kind of deja vu of another experience. At 
about the same time in my late teens I had recently developed, firstly 
the conviction that SEE proved that BOC were, or at least had in 1978 
been, the most brilliant rock band ever, and secondly, a huge crush on 
Chrissy Hynde. Now a few years ago I actually saw the Pretenders, fully 
expecting to have my teenage obsessions firmly drowned by the passage of 
time, and Ms Hynde was entirely fabulous and I went away very surprised 
that anything I'd thought when I was seventeen could have been so true. 
Well, this remaster has proven that there were at least two such things 
:-) If there's a better live rock album than this I'll never believe it. 
So the remasterers have done a good job I'd say. It still sounds like a 
live album, but now you can hear the slight echo from the edges of the 
performance space that is *why* the sound is slightly confined, and 
whatever fuzzinesses and slight crowdings of ranges there may be you 
feel were there in the halls when the recordings were made. So I'm 
pretty happy with this; one of my favourite albums of all time renewed 
and made better.

	Again, bonus tracks; here I think it's clearer that the right 
decisions were made at the time when choosing what to include. It's good 
to hear all these extras but not a one should have replaced anything 
that was there to start with. I was very struck by the busier drums on 
`Summer of Love', and I'm glad I didn't listen to the audio-only `5 
Guitars' before I'd seen the DVD version because I'm not sure I'd have 
really understood what was going on. Joe can play bass a bit can't he? 
:-)

	As for the DVD, well, the sound could be better but it could be 
oh so much worse, and Eric looks less ridiculous than he could have done 
(the silver spandex and cape picture in the _Agents of Fortune_ liner 
notes proves how far he *could* have gone :-) ) without dampening the 
whole rock spectacle thing. And the 5 guitars bit is a lot of fun, and 
the pyrotechnics works well; the lasers, I thought, didn't really come 
over as impressive as the write-up makes them. For my money the coolest 
thing by far is Eric and Buck's duelling guitars; after all the pictures 
I'd seen of it it's great to find out what that actually *sounded* like, 
especially when the answer is, `almost as much as if things are on the 
point of breaking as it looks as if they were' and also `really cool'. 
The actual performances are also more or less as good as the audio disc, 
but less well preserved; and the "semi-bootleg" nature of the film means 
that you only get one perspective and so Al, most of all, is very hard 
to see properly for a lot of the show, whereas one would like to be 
able to see what he was hitting, assuming that his arms weren't blurred 
in real time too :-) But basically, anyone seeing this show on DVD ought 
to see what the whole fuss is about, and that's the most important 
thing. It needs a proper viewing on a bigger screen turned up with beers 
to hand, but for now, I am very happy with this package.

	Roll on the next batch, whatever they may be. That is a question 
actually. CE's already had a kind of remaster, hasn't it? And though 
_Mirrors_ badly *needs* one, it's perhaps the least important album 
musically speaking (though if what has been done for `I Love the Night' 
on _Spectres_ can be done for `The Vigil' I'm sold already). We all want 
OYFOOYK, but we've just had two discs of live material, so I wonder if 
the people in charge will not want to put it off some more; and does 
*anyone* care enough about tRbN? So I'm guessing next batch will be 
_Mirrors_ and FoUO, but not for some time... Anyway, that's more than 
2pworth by some way, so I'll stop. Yours,
					  Jon

-- 
"When fortune wanes, of what assistance are quantities of elephants?"
	    (Juvaini, Afghan Muslim chronicler, c. 1206)
 Jon Jarrett, Fitzwilliam Museum, jjarrett at chiark.greenend.org.uk