Site mascot Eno, celebrated his 11th birthday today, July 18th, 2005—a major milestone for a Bernese Mountain Dog.
This breed has an average lifespan of around 8 years due to size (big dogs have shorter lifespans in general) as well as a variety of health issues includng cancer.
You won't find Roy Halee's name on many great sounding records. Not because the veteran recording engineer hasn't made them, but because Columbia Records' policy for many years was to not credit the engineer on the jacket. So, aside from the few that do credit him, the others require you to know who they are. That's one reason I tracked Roy down through Sterling Sound's Greg Calbi who has mastered many of Halee's recent projects. But more importantly, as with Bill Porter, I just wanted to sit down face to face with someone who has consistently provided us with great sound, and find out why and how he managed to do it, when so many others failed.
Some of Halee's recording credits are well known:all of Simon and Garfunkel's records, the best sounding Byrds albums (Notorious Byrd Brothers and Sweetheart of the Rodeo), and of course, Paul Simon's two fascinating and extremely successful projects (both commercially and artistically) Graceland and Rhythm of the Saints.
MF: Sonically, the 3 CD set (issued by Columbia in 1991) is a real disappointment.
RH: Yea, well hey! It's fourth and fifth generation tapes! They lose tapes now. They had a foolproof filing system at one time. I don't know what happened. Anyway, here come these things in the studio, what am I supposed to do with this stuff? So my first reaction is send it back! I call CBS. I say “Hey, give me a break! Let's get the originals. I'll remix it. I'll do anything. Anything you want! I don't care. It's history, I want to do it right.
1)Simon and Garfunkel Sounds of Silence. Columbia CS9269 (“360 Sound label).
Their first “electrified” album features ultra-clean, natural sound on both electric and acoustic instruments. Check out the harpsichord on “Leaves That are Green” along with the deep acoustic bass and the tightly focused and well articulated tambourine. And both voices are absolutely natural sounding, mixed to blend and yet remain individually discernible. The two track master tapes have been lost by CBS. Original pressings are plentiful and relatively inexpensive. But just because you find a “360 Sound” label doesn't mean you have an “original” pressing. -1A is an original. Then -1B, etc. Past a certain number it goes to -1AA, etc. There's great variability to the sound of these different pressings with -1A being best, of course.
When Quantegy, the last analog tape manufacturer, went into bankruptcy late last year, Wilco's Jeff Tweedy was quoted in a Wall Street Journal story saying something to the effect that the tape upon which his albums are recorded may become worth more than the recordings themselves and that the tape may have to be recycled so the group could continue recording.
“Any chimp can play human for a day/and use his opposable thumbs to iron his uniform/and run for office on election day/and fancy himself a real decision maker/then deploy more troops than salt in a shaker,” Jenny Lewis sings with a droll lilt on “It's a Hit,” this album's catchy opener. Hmm. I wonder who she's singing about?
This mostly fabulous sounding 10 LP set cut almost exclusively from original analog master tapes puts into focus a so-called “in between” period for Miles: between the end of the Kind of Blue era and the beginning of the Miles/Shorter/Hancock/Carter/Williams quintet era chronicled on Mosaic's The Complete Studio Recordings of The Miles Davis Quintet 1965-1968 (Mosaic MQ 10-177).
The nearly extinct art of the direct to disc recording got a small boost recently with two produced by Acoustic Sounds' (www.acousticsounds.com) Chad Kassem at his Salina, Kansas Blue Heaven Studios.
Having licked his wounds and moped us into a melancholic swoon on the sumptuous sounding break-up album Sea Change, Beck casts off his blues and self absorbed ballads, puts his ears to the ground and, reunited with Mike Simpson and John King (a/k/a The Dust Brothers), comes up with an Odelay style, beat based musical mélange sure to please fans.