LATEST ADDITIONS

Michael Fremer  |  Sep 01, 2003  |  0 comments

The heir apparent to the Elton John/Billy Joel musical fortune culled these 17 tracks from live performances recorded during a daring 6 month long nationwide solo tour. Daring because a guy and a piano needs to project like hell to fill some of the mid-sized halls in which Folds played, and he does. A guy and an acoustic piano can still fill a big space.

Michael Fremer  |  Aug 31, 2003  |  First Published: Dec 31, 1969  |  0 comments

Jack Pfeiffer: The Last Interview

When I sat down at last January's (1996) Consumer Electronics Show with veteran RCA producer Jack Pfeiffer, I had no way of knowing that I would be conducting the final interview he would ever give. Pfeiffer suffered a fatal heart attack on Thursday February 8th, 1996 at his RCA office where he'd worked in the Red Seal division for the past forty seven years. He was 75.

Jack Pfeiffer was a pleasant man, soft spoken and easy to talk to. When my rather limited knowledge of the classical music world became apparent, he picked up the slack so I wouldn't feel too uncomfortable.

My reason for speaking with him had less to do with anything technical, and more to do with getting his take on the work being rediscovered and appreciated by a younger generation of music lovers thirty plus years later, and how, given the usual corporate bottom line mentality (yes, even then) such a dedication to quality could prevail. So yes, it was more People and less Mix and under the circumstances that's fine with me.

Michael Fremer  |  Aug 31, 2003  |  First Published: Dec 31, 1969  |  1 comments

M.F.:Now that whole "Dynagroove" thing. Do you want to....

J.P.:Well, I'll dispose of it quickly. Some of them were great, great recordings too.

M.F.:Recordings yes, but....

J.P.:Yeah.

M.F.:Once they got on to disc though....

J.P.:Well.

M.F.:The difference was in the cutting, correct? It wasn't in anything else.

J.P.:It was in two places, basically. It was in the cutting, but it was also in the mix down, because the head of our engineering department came up with a device to make the translation from a high level of listening to a moderate level of listening that most people listen to. And to make that translation from listening to it at high level to low level or lower level, it changed the whole ear characteristic change.

Michael Fremer  |  Aug 17, 2003  |  0 comments

The Police have always been a well-produced, superbly recorded group. The first album, Outlandos D’amour, was an explosive, starkly recorded document. Issued as the punk movement ascended, the band chose to emphasize a propulsive, reggae infused rhythmic thrust rather than its considerable instrumental virtuosity. Stewart Copeland kept his pounding beats relatively simple, jazz virtuoso guitarist Andy Summers made do with slashing rhythmic attacks, and Sting shot his impossibly high-pitched rasp seemingly out of a cannon. Engineers Nigel and Chris Gray complied by keeping the miking close and the production simple, yet dramatically immediate and natural sounding. The first album was “in your face” big.

Michael Fremer  |  Aug 01, 2003  |  1 comments

You won’t be buying these two LPs for their sonics. Primitive television show soundtracks from a Compton, California based local program recorded before an appreciative live audience, provide listeners with a “way back machine” glimpse of another time, and seemingly another universe—especially when you consider the music for which Compton’s currently best known.

Michael Fremer  |  Aug 01, 2003  |  2 comments

Yes

Jon Anderson was always busy exhorting listeners to “Get up!,” “Look around,!” “See yourself!,” etc. His lyrics feel like a Tony Robbins self-improvement course (“Take the straight and stronger course to the corner of your life,”), but Anderson and co. were doing it first and setting the self-help lectures to bombastic musical constructions. Because of Anderson’s lyrical themes, Yes could be preachy, pretentious, mechanical and cold, but you had to respect the musical craft—especially the rhythmic suppleness (it was smart to unleash Bill Bruford) and the group’s sophisticated manipulation of dynamics.

Michael Fremer  |  Aug 01, 2003  |  1 comments

If you were going to pick one album from the Kinks Katalog for an SACD remastering it wouldn’t be Low Budget and that’s all there is to it. Not that it’s a bad Kinks album. It’s just not one of their best, though it was certainly one of the group’s most popular. Leave it to the public to ignore Arthur, The Village Green Preservation Society and Lola Versus Powerman and the Money Goround not to mention Face to Face and Something Else while driving Low Budget to gold sales status.

Michael Fremer  |  Aug 01, 2003  |  1 comments

The monophonic master tape of this 1958 Prestige session recorded at Rudy Van Gelder’s Hackensack home studio has probably had more tape head contact over the past few years than it had for the first 30 plus years of its life. Along with this 2 LP set and SACD, there’s a 180g Acoustic Sounds LP still in print, there was a 1998 JVC XRCD reissue, a 1993 DCC Compact Classics gold CD, a standard CD, a 20 bit mastered edition, a Japanese 20 bit “LP sleeve” edition and probably a few others as well. Do a search on Amazon.com and you’ll find a confusing jumble of Soultrane editions priced from $6.49 to $49.00 (the out of print DCC Compact Classics gold CD), none of which are identified in adequate detail. As you’d expect, www.acousticsounds does a better job of identifying this recording’s many iterations.

Michael Fremer  |  Aug 01, 2003  |  0 comments

In his 35 year recording career with Fairport Convention, with ex-wife Linda, and on his own, Richard Thompson has made some great records and some that were ill-conceived and didn’t work, but none, in my opinion, that could be declared complete failures. Thompson’s guitar always pulled him through the weaker episodes, even as the team of Mitchell Froom and Tchad Blake often sabotaged his sound during the late ‘80s/early ‘90s with their overproduction, studio tricks and other superflous sonic thickets. That’s just my opinion, and for all I know, Thompson loved that stuff. Maybe you’re a long-time fan who stayed away during that period, despite some superb songwriting and performances: 1991’s Rumor and Sigh (Capitol EST 2142 LP) for instance, which included the mischievous “I Feel So Good,” and the transcendent “1952 Vincent Black Lightning.”

Michael Fremer  |  Aug 01, 2003  |  1 comments

A cold-steel stoic intensity inhabits the faces of Canadian folksingers Ian Tyson and Sylvia Fricker on the cover of their 1965 Vanguard album Northern Journey. The photo’s low light and blue cast amplify the title’s message. Combine the front cover with the scholarly ethno-musicalogical liner notes you’ll find on the back—perhaps a reflexive reaction to the commercialization of folk music back then and an attempt to separate Ian and Sylvia from many trite, packaged folk acts of the time—and you have an almost forbiddingly chilly surface.

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