BOC: new remasters

[Carl Edlund Anderson]

On 26/03/2007 10:19, Jonathan Jarrett wrote:
> 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.

Maybe there were just lots and lots and lots of layers of analogue tape 
(or overdubs on analogue tape) in the mix that remastering can't help 
much with?  My understanding has been that _Imaginos_ suffers from 
similar problems of vast, vast piles of analogue editing.  (Though I 
stand ready to be corrected in these recording-amateur's assumptions!)

> I went away very surprised 
> that anything I'd thought when I was seventeen could have been so true. 

I am sure everything I believed at 17 is still true! :)  I have, 
however, added a few other true beliefs to stand alongside those over 
the intervening zillion years .... :)

> Joe can play bass a bit can't he? :-)

Let the record show it!

> 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 :-) ) 

And _had_ in fact gone before.  On the other hand, Buck has never looked 
better than he did in the white suit and sporting the 'tache.

 > It needs a proper viewing on a bigger screen turned up with beers
> to hand

As does nearly everything ....

> CE's already had a kind of remaster, hasn't it? 

Um, can't remember ....  Has 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). 

And maybe with some very nice previously unreleased bonus tracks, or at 
least some top notch live cuts from the era.

> and does *anyone* care enough about tRbN? 

My guess is: No.

> So I'm guessing next batch will be 
> _Mirrors_ and FoUO, but not for some time...

Good guess, I'd say, though I've always thought _FoUO_ sounds pretty 
damn good already!  A lot of care seemed to be taken with the recording 
process there, I thought.  Still, that's not stopped people remastering 
plenty of other stuff from the 80s (some of which still sounds perfectly 
respectable, though other 80s stuff was mastered in an utterly dire 
way), and again the addition of good bonus tracks would be the clincher 
here.

I would, of course, clamour for an _Imaginos_ remaster, though that will 
_never_ happen :P  (And though it certainly couldn't hurt, I'm not sure 
how much it will help, giving the complicated recording process.)  Maybe 
someday about a million years from now Rhino Handmade will release a 3 
disc package of _Imaginos_ goodies salvaged from the original recordings 
(hey, they did it for the Monkees' _Headquarters_!) and we'll finally 
hear it in all it's random access glory.  And, then again, Donovan's 
monkeys might fly out of my butt .... ;)

Cheers,
Carl

-- 
Carl Edlund Anderson
mailto:cea at carlaz.com
http://www.carlaz.com/